Poor Diet - Critique Pls!

[crashley]

My diet needs work. Yday was a fairly typical day (as below), so i thought i'd jot it down and ask for you lot to critique it. Bearing in mind i'm desk based for 10-11 hours a day, and can usually escape to the gym 2-3 times a week if i'm quiet (15mins cardio/45mins free weights, which i really enjoy and work bloody hard at) with the odd 25-30min run thrown in after work when out with the dog.

I am annoyingly married to one of those women who can eat whatever they want and remain super skinny, and she's a feeder... hoping if i show her you lot saying how bad i am, we might be able to sort it! Here goes:

Black coffee
3 Weetabix w/ skimmed milk
Black coffee
Home-made sandwich, typically chicken mayo or similar
Cereal bar
Apple/banana
Skinny Cap
Handful of salted peanuts
Chicken stir fry (big portion) or big pasta bowl w/ lots of cheese, ham, etc.
Half big bar Toblerone (wifey had other half)
2 large glasses of white wine

What's doing the most damage there? If i'm going to sort this out, it must be realistic. We both love our food.

Cheers!

[HarryFlatters]

crashley said:

What's doing the most damage there?

Black coffee
3 Weetabix w/ skimmed milk
Black coffee
Home-made sandwich, typically chicken mayo or similar
Cereal bar
Apple/banana
Skinny Cap
Handful of salted peanuts
Chicken stir fry (big portion) or big pasta bowl w/ lots of cheese, ham, etc.
Half big bar Toblerone (wifey had other half)
2 large glasses of white wine

Mayo is about as calorie dense as you could imagine.
Cereal bars are high in sugar
Peanuts are high in salt and fat
Portion control, reduce cheese and carb amounts and replace with vegetables. Check how much oil you cook with, it's massively calorie dense.
You don't need the chocolate.
You don't need the wine.

[Digger]

Why does the diet need changing?

i.e. what is your height, weight, waist size etc?

[crashley]

Digger said:

Why does the diet need changing?

i.e. what is your height, weight, waist size etc?

33yo, 5'11, 92kgs, 33" waist. Pretty solid but carrying too much fat, last check around 19% a few months ago, which i'd like to reduce, especially around my gut.

[BoRED S2upid]

I'd say it was going ok until the half bar of choc and half bottle of wine those combined must be over 1000 cals in the evening on a school night! How often in the week does that happen?

Do you drink any water or is it all black coffee and wine?

[crashley]

BoRED S2upid said:

I'd say it was going ok until the half bar of choc and half bottle of wine those combined must be over 1000 cals in the evening on a school night! How often in the week does that happen?

Do you drink any water or is it all black coffee and wine?

That is most nights, and i entirely blame my wife. Forgot to add, i do drink a few litres of water a day, more so on a gym day.

[BoRED S2upid]

crashley said:

BoRED S2upid said:

I'd say it was going ok until the half bar of choc and half bottle of wine those combined must be over 1000 cals in the evening on a school night! How often in the week does that happen?

Do you drink any water or is it all black coffee and wine?

That is most nights, and i entirely blame my wife. Forgot to add, i do drink a few litres of water a day, more so on a gym day.

And probably more wine at the weekend because well it's the weekend. Yes? If so that's a lot of booze over a week and a massive amount of extra cals.

[dieselgrunt]

33" waist at 5ft 11 is excellent, doesn't sound like you need to change anything.

[PixelpeepS3]

dieselgrunt said:

33" waist at 5ft 11 is excellent, doesn't sound like you need to change anything.

i agree.

[PixelpeepS3]

olly22n said:

PixelpeepS3 said:

dieselgrunt said:

33" waist at 5ft 11 is excellent, doesn't sound like you need to change anything.

i agree.

Its not excellent. I'm 6 foot, have a belly and am a 30" waist. You can also have a small waist and an even bigger belly over the top.

You can no way argue that half a bar of toblerone and half a bottle of wine a night is good for you either!

half is the key here - shows remarkable constraint in these days of constant comfort seeking. IMO.

Nothing goes back in the fridge in our place. Then again, i am quite short for my weight.

[crashley]

olly22n said:

Its not excellent. I'm 6 foot, have a belly and am a 30" waist. You can also have a small waist and an even bigger belly over the top.

You can no way argue that half a bar of toblerone and half a bottle of wine a night is good for you either!

At no point did i argue it was. I appreciate this is largely stating the obvious (albeit the frozen yoghurt vs "sweet stuff" is very useful), but having specific criticism in a written format is very useful, i guess from a psychological perspective!

[thebraketester]

No mention of any vegetables. That's the worst bit of you ask me. The rest you could live with if your exercise balances it out

[johnwilliams77]

crashley said:

That is most nights, and i entirely blame my wife. Forgot to add, i do drink a few litres of water a day, more so on a gym day.

That is ridiculous. Cut the booze to once per week.
More walking, running, if possible.

[J4CKO]

Leave the Chocolate int he Kitchen, take a piece or two each, kiss of death is a big bar between you,

You rip into it, hand have three or four bits, then just keep grazing, then it gets near the end so you may as well finish it.

We get a brew, and, if we fancy it one square of Dark Chocolate, then, eat it slowly and it switches off that "must have a sweet thing" alarm going off in your head, and if you want more you then have to get up and go and get it, not just reach to the side of you.

Also, Dark Chocolate is very beneficial in loads of ways, we get the 70 ish percent, the 80/90 percent stuff is properly hardcore.

We are now programmed to eat loads, pack sizes and just the availability, people were loads healthier during the war when on rations, would be interesting to see what the wartime chocolate ration was ?

Sometimes I think too much choice and availability confuses and overwhelms us, we tend to work well with limits and a framework to work within, so millions of channels of TV versus just 4 when I was a kid, can buy £50 worth of sweets now a week, used to have 50p to spend and that was that, there is definitely food overload and can see how and why we get so fat, it wasnt that our forebears had more willpower, they just didnt have industrial sized bars of chocolate whenever they wanted them.

[arfur]

Cutting out the breakfast, lunch and choc would work for me

6ft2 78kg 32 waist 22 bmi

[crashley]

arfur said:

Cutting out the breakfast, lunch and choc would work for me

6ft2 78kg 32 waist 22 bmi

Would that actually work, and mean wine/choc could be maintained? I know it's not healthy... but out of interest.

[arfur]

crashley said:

arfur said:

Cutting out the breakfast, lunch and choc would work for me

6ft2 78kg 32 waist 22 bmi

Would that actually work, and mean wine/choc could be maintained? I know it's not healthy... but out of interest.

My diet most days :

0530 Black Coffee then off to train to work
0830 Black Coffee
then water through to leaving office
1700 bag of peanuts on train
1800 Glass Red
1930 Home cooked food, various pastas, salads, meats ... all home made
2100 Glass Red
2100 Couple chocs from box
2200 bed

If I cut out the peanuts I lose weight.

Add in weekend changes, ie some lunch or a roast or suchlike and my weight varies 77-79 but flattens to 78 by every Friday

it works for me and has done for maybe 30 years so far

[HarryFlatters]

arfur said:

My diet most days :

0530 Black Coffee then off to train to work
0830 Black Coffee
then water through to leaving office
1700 bag of peanuts on train
1800 Glass Red
1930 Home cooked food, various pastas, salads, meats ... all home made
2100 Glass Red
2100 Couple chocs from box
2200 bed

If I cut out the peanuts I lose weight.

Add in weekend changes, ie some lunch or a roast or suchlike and my weight varies 77-79 but flattens to 78 by every Friday

it works for me and has done for maybe 30 years so far

So you eat nothing from 2100 until 1700 the following day? You don't eat for 20 hours?

[aka_kerrly]

HarryFlatters said:

So you eat nothing from 2100 until 1700 the following day? You don't eat for 20 hours?

Madness, breakfast is meant to be the most vital meal of the day, if i skip breakfast I'd be at the point of chewing my own arm off by lunchtime.

Surely no amount of coffee & water plus a few peanuts is going to provide enough energy to get you through the day?

I found instead of grazing on chocolates/breakfast bars between 8am>lunchtime I've been trying to get onto apples, satsumas, raisins, grapes and hit the fruit a lot more.

By keeping a good amount of food at work and planning ahead rather than popping out to the shops everyday I have been eating far healthier as I used to find that when i'm hungry I end up buying the biggest packs of sandwiches, pasties, sausage rolls & chocolate bars plus other rubbish.

[TheJimi]

Just to pick up on the above; the idea of breakfast being the most important meal of the day is bks, in both my experience and opinion.

That said, I couldn't (or wouldn't want to do!) arfur's diet.