Fresh food, juice and all that healthy stuff

Triathlon Forum
1

Hey ho! The Couple Tibbs are looking to eat less shit and need your sexy healthy help. We are looking to get red of processed foods and cut way way way back on red meats and get most of our food from vegetarian sources. We are meat eaters so we want to keep fowl and fish just not all the time.

Any recipes?

Is juicing as great as advertised? Will a cheap juicer work or do we need to bite the bullet are buy a good one? What is a good one?

How do you eat?

Will eating this way help my memory?

Just lay it on me.

2

Tibbsy

If you get rid of the processed stuff and eat fruit and veggies instead that’s 90% of it.

Vegetarian-ness, good stuff: quinoa, eggs, peanut butter, beans, chocolate biscotti and no-bake cookies (whoops, those are my favoites lately), anyway back on track: milk, yogurt, tofu, edamame (soybeans. put them on salad)

Big salad with beans or hardboiled eggs - good stuff. Is dinner tonight for me, with stuffed shells on the side.

How do you eat?
Here’s what i had today:

snack: cliff bar

10 mi run, 1000 yd swim… 20 oz sports drink

breakfast: 2 ww English muffins, 1/4 c peanut butter, little bit of jam. Coffee, 1/2 c milk

snack: big no bake cookie; pint of milk

lunch: ww wrap with cheddar, basil, spinach, lettuce, portabella mushroom, roasted red peppers, tomato, mustard

1:20 on the bikeling… 20 oz sports drink

dinner: 1/2 c glazed carrots; big salad with tomato/cuke/lettuce/carrots/lite balsamic vinegarette. 2 hardboiled eggs. 4 stuffed shells.

I really do eat fruit. Lots of fruit, most days. I just missed that today I guess LOL. can we count the sports drink it is fruit flavored :wink:

3

Juice is actually not all that great for you - high glycemic index and high in fructose; causes blood sugar spikes when you drink it.

Eat fresh fruit instead, lower in glycemic index when you eat the fruit whole as you’re getting all the fibery goodness as well which makes it take longer to digest among the other benefits.

4

pasta and bread are processed foods
as is cheese
and yogurt
and hummus

i just like to point that out as I think restricting processed foods is a weird thing to do.

=)

5

I would skip the juicer. You will grow tired of the hassle in a hurry.

6

Drinking large quantities of juice are a good way to increase your blood sugar and your risk of diabetes…

…unless you can drink the juice of ONE piece of fruit…

Buy a juicer. Juice ONE large orange. Look at the volume. THAT is the recommended portion of juice.

I just cut it out, no more juice, after a pre-diabetes diagnosis. Now I just stick to whole fruit.

7

Smoothies are great. My standard recipe is a banana, some frozen fruit (my local supermarket sells bags of frozen cherries, blueberries, raspberries, etc which are great for quick and easy smoothies), some juice or soya milk, a couple of spoons of yoghurt and maybe a couple of spoons of oats and/or protein powder if I’m having the smoothie on it’s own. Without adding in some fibre and protein I get pretty hungry within an hour or 2 otherwise.

8

One of the best things I did was join a CSA (community supported agriculture). Each week I pick up my random box of vegetables and fruits. I never know what I am going to get. Somethings I like, somethings I don’t. Either way it gets me eating a whole lot of fresh, local, unprocessed produce and that can’t be a bad thing. I also like getting random things. It helps me mix up my diet and try things which I would otherwise not have bought. For instance, who knew kale tasted good? I certainly didn’t until a week or two ago.

9

and hummus

Right, those raw chickpeas are yummy. :wink:

10

No need to cut out red meat. Eat it on the rare side this way you can take in some of the great effects from the steroids used in the cuddly little animals food.

11

I think there are a lot of ‘right’ answers to your questions but it depends on what your goals are. It doesn’t sound like you have an animal-centric agenda or an environmental agenda, so I assume that you want to do what is the best, healthiest thing for you. Maybe for health reasons and maybe a little bit just to experiment?

For all the people who knocked juicing, i would argue that there are a lot of pluses, too. Juicing doesn’t have to be just sugary-sweet fruits. People who are really into juicing juice all kinds of veggies and herbs. It can be a great way to use up extra produce (for example, if you joined a CSA and didn’t know what to do with all your kale). I don’t juice a lot, but I do believe it is one decent option to get some extra fruits and vegetables that you might not otherwise eat. Juicing a bunch of sugary fruit and then adding honey, peanut butter, etc. to make a 2000 calorie drink is not smart. But, it doesn’t have to be that way. Here’s a link to Daily Juice’s menu in Austin. Just a few ideas for other things to juice.

There is a lot of interesting reading out there. I highly recommend The China Study and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Both give strong ethical and scientific reasons for eating in a particular way. It’s good “food for thought” as you explore the topic. Ultimately, I think it comes down to a lot of personal decisions like time that you want to spend buying and preparing food, money that you want to spend on food, and your personal need for convenience.

For me, eating well means sticking to what I’ve been told allergy-wise and avoiding certain foods. This has made the biggest impact on my health - bar none. If nothing else, I would recommend getting a broad spectrum blood allergy test. I think the one I did covered 96 foods.

I went to an interesting session at a conference a few weeks ago that talked about sustainable food, connecting with local growers, etc. If you want some links, let me know. There are some really awesome programs that are just getting off the ground.

12

Drinking large quantities of juice are a good way to increase your blood sugar and your risk of diabetes…

…unless you can drink the juice of ONE piece of fruit…

Maybe.
But check out Jack LaLanne. That guy is like 95 and in great shape. He’s a huge juicing proponent. Also, I agree with the other poster, you don’t have to turn your juice into a sugar sundae. Add some vegetables to cut the natural sugar from the fruits your using. Plus fresh juice tastes great, a hundred times better than off the shelf “juice”.

13

Screw Jacks sales pitch eat fruit and vegetables
Juice is just a little better then soda
You paid for the whole thing just eat it
Read a book
Mindless eating
Omnivore’s dilemma
Fast food nation
It is tough to change eating habits
Just don’t give up.