Help with my diet/supplements!!!

[iufan4lifeul]

Ok so just a brief background I have been a basketball player all my life, for the most part for fun but I play "competitively" at least twice a week. I also go to the gym 2-3x a week. I am 22 years old, 6'1", ~170lbs, my body fat is roughly 7-9%. I do a variety of exercise to build strength, stamina, explosiveness etc. I have always wanted to put on a little more weight but I naturally have a little gut that hides my abs so I am scared of putting on too much fat. I want to be pretty "big" without hindering my sports abilities.

Normal day's meal:

Morning: Glass of 2% milk
- I generally have stomach problems in the morning and it makes me sick to eat when I get up
Lunch: Some sort of sandwich/lean cuisine. I know I need to start bringing my lunch with me but this is what I have been doing.
Dinner: Any variety of things (ie subway, pastas, tuna, brats etc.)
Snacks: chips and other bad things...
Supplements: GNC Mega Mens m/v and green tea extract, BSN syntha 6, creatine


I need ideas on things that I can prepare large amounts in advance to take to work, and to have for dinners and snacks. Should I be doing mostly fish, meats, dairy, or mix in some multi-grains etc.?I also need to know how much I should be eating! I think I will be going up to somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 gallon of milk a day for a while to see if that helps.

I appreciate the help! If I left out anything that would help people with suggestions just let me know.

 

[MJinZ]

Buy some milk and store at work fridge. Have a glass every now and then, no need to go crazy though.

Nuts are great for keeping you satiated - no grains needed for snacking.

Skim Milk or you will have a heart attack from 2% milk before Black Friday. I'm srs.

 

[Kipper]

I have never personally seen anybody with 7-9% body fat who did not have visible abdominal muscles.

Care to elaborate on these "stomach problems" that keep you from eating breakfast? As the term suggests its purpose is to break the overnight fast. Assuming you stop eating at around 8PM, you are probably going on upwards of 12+ hours without any solid food. Let me guess. Around lunch, you are pretty ravenous?

On the whole I would say that your diet is pretty high in processed foods and eating out (? fast food), a good first step might be picking up a few simple recipes you can use to cook on your own. A more comprehensive diet recall would be helpful as well - although it looks from your post like you already know where the major changes to your eating can be made.

 

[Herald85]

Drinking milk isn't a bad idea but it won't entirely fix your diet. The positive effect of milk (casein, whey and calcium) are pointless if you keep eating crisps and fastfood.

1) Replace the unhealthy snacks with nuts. Almonds are the best but are expensive, unsalted peanuts are good too. I prefer taking a mixed bag of nuts (50% peanuts, 20% almonds, 20%walnuts, 10% cashew) because it's tastier! Be careful with nuts however, they're very easy to pop in your mouth so don't bring an entire bag, you'll munch it down in no time. Maybe you have better selfcontrol than me though

2) Try starting your day with cottage cheese. It's very easy to digest, I mix in some Special K with the dried red fruit (not optimal but easy and tasty) and a dash of honey. If you don't like cottage cheese you should check out oatmeal. Again, easy to digest and very good for you.

3) Your lunch does not have to be hard. I used to take +- 150gr of lean meat (chicken usually because it's cheap) and +- 100gr of vegetables to work together with one big slice of multigrain bread. That was enough for me combined with the nuts I ate at 10:00 and the piece of fruit at 15:00.

Those are some basic tips that I'm sure you knew already If you're really serious about this there are tons of posts on bodybuilding.com with healthy recipes that are really tasty and easy to make. I no longer work out (I've moved on to Jiu Jitsu, much more fun!) but I used to be able to fix my snacks and lunch for the next day in half an hour.

 

[SociallyChallenged]

As others have pointed out, your diet is lacking a whole lot of substance. You need to integrate a lot more veggies and fruits and need to cut the processed Lean Cuisine/fast food crap. The thing that helps me do this most is to make the next day's lunch and snacks in advance. Typically, I'll make something like a big batch of healthy chili at the beginning of the week and then stagger eating that and the previous night's dinner leftovers for lunch. For snacks, I eat dried apricots or dates, almonds, apples, kiwis, cherries, berries, unshelled sunflower seeds, cashews, etc. They keep me satiated and I get quite a bit of nutrition from the fruit + nut mix. For dinner, just google recipes of things you like and find the simplest one you can make. Make sure it's not loaded with crap and then make it. It works out great for me.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

I'm a big fan of cooking large pieces of meat that I can eat off of for a week or so. I built myself the flower pot smoker, and now I'll smoke a whole turkey one weekend, or a big ol' pork butt, or a few slabs of ribs, or a couple of whole chickens... I know the pork isn't the ideal meat, but it's whole meat, not processed deli slices or fast food junk. I couple that with extensive use of the crock pot for beef roasts, pork roasts, chickens, etc.

When these are done, I basically piece out the meat into little tinfoil packages that I then seal up in freezer bags. They either get frozen or simply left in the fridge for lunches. Sometimes I'll make sandwiches if I take the time, but most of the time I simply take a few little baggies of the pieced-out meat (variety is good), another baggie with cubed cheddar or swiss cheese, a baggie with cleaned raw broccoli, and a baggie with raw baby carrots. I put those all in a little lunchbox-sized cooler with a gel ice-pack and I'm good.

Oh and my breakfasts are almost always the same: 1/2 cup (measured dry) oatmeal, with raisins, blueberries and chopped pecans added, coupled with 3 or 4 fried eggs.

As I'm typing this I'm eating a bunch of smoked turkey I just pulled off a leg I defrosted from the freezer yesterday and reheated for lunch today.