Quick diet tips?

[desura]

I need to improve my diet. I sort of go on these see-saw binge eating diets, often feel bloated, often eat for the sake of eating. How do you improve your diet?

 

[Iron Woode]

step #1

learn to cook. seriously. this way you can make healthy meals by controlling the ingredients. plus you also learn a new skill.

step #2

portion control. when you are dieting you want to still get your proper nutrition and eating healthy also means not over eating. eating the right foods in the proper amounts will lead to good health and weight loss.

step #3

get some reasonable exercise. this helps build muscle and burns fat.

step #4

get into a good frame of mind. this is important to overall health. if you are eating because of depression or other mental issues then you need to deal with this underlying cause. otherwise a diet is going to fail.

 

[Chocu1a]

Eating right is not easy. Easy is junk food, fast food, easy access food. Eating right takes patience & preparation. For snacking urges, keep carrot & celery sticks readily available.
An ideal diet(not "going on a diet") would be one high in fiber, low in carbs, & moderate in protein.
Fiber keeps you feeling full longer. Protein takes longer to digest, thus burning more calories resting. If you can't cut out carbs completely, at least limit them to before 5pm. Later in the day your metabolism slows down, so eat the carbs earlier in the day.

 

[blackdogdeek]

Read the fat-loss sticky.

1. determine BMR and TDEE using one of the many calculators online
2. weigh all your food and calculate the number of calories you take in
3. make sure calories you take in is between BMR and TDEE
4. if you're not losing weight, eat fewer calories

 

[Auric]

Eating right is not easy. Easy is junk food, fast food, easy access food. Eating right takes patience & preparation. For snacking urges, keep carrot & celery sticks readily available.
An ideal diet(not "going on a diet") would be one high in fiber, low in carbs, & moderate in protein.
Fiber keeps you feeling full longer. Protein takes longer to digest, thus burning more calories resting. If you can't cut out carbs completely, at least limit them to before 5pm. Later in the day your metabolism slows down, so eat the carbs earlier in the day.

It may actually be easier to eat "clean" 'cause it avoids the blood sugar spikes and crashes which trigger phony hunger. Even beyond that, there are certainly "tricks" to prolong satiation including protein and blending (i.e. soup) but if serious then any pangs can be embraced as positive with will power.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Educate yourself. If you're of even average intelligence, it's not difficult to sort out some of the basics of how to eat right. Some of the finer points will drive you crazy, as you find opposing viewpoints from varous "experts", but the basics are widely agreed upon.

Be prepared to put the time and effort into eating well. Preparing meals, avoiding convenience foods and fast food. Prepare simple meals to take to work for lunch, maybe the night before, or even a few days at a time. You may think you have more important things to do than cook dinner and clean up afterward, but what's more important than your health? You'll slowly get the hang of cooking, learn some techniques, some time-savers.

Use a food scale and keep a journal. Single best thing I ever did to control what I eat. I have an approximate daily caloric intake that I aim for, but I don't get anal about it. After a while, just from learning the basic caloric values of different types of foods and from getting a feel for proper portion sizes, I tend to end up plus or minus 100 or so calories with only a little effort in planning meals.

 

[FalconHorse]

If you feel bloated a lot you might want to try experimenting with a low-FODMaP diet. In general I tell people to eat a lot more fat (good fat = animal sources, coconut oil, red palm oil, macadamia/olive), and a lot less carbs (zero sugar) for a couple of months and see how they feel. Talk to your doc before going zero carb though (I only say this b/c that can be an extreme change for some people).

 

[Lana230]

The best thing to do is eat healthy and exercise. Get on a diet plan set up by a dietician or trainer that you can do on a daily basis that will help get you motivated. Completely eliminate junk food and caffeine because that will make you gain weight and feel bloated too. Track your calories so you can moderate how much you're putting in your body.

 

[Kaido]

I need to improve my diet. I sort of go on these see-saw binge eating diets, often feel bloated, often eat for the sake of eating. How do you improve your diet?

Quick diet tips:

1. You're not eating enough.

2. Seriously, you're not eating enough. If you like to eat, I'd encourage you to switch to 6 smaller meals a day so you have an excuse to eat. Then you will feel full all the time. I lost 50 pounds doing this.

3. Begin with baby steps. That means don't go nuts on healthy foods or eating a bunch of useless salads and stuff like that. Start with something small: make a turkey sandwich with tomato & lettuce on whole-wheat bread. Easy to make that taste good, probably healthier than you were eating before.

Basically, the whole thing boils down to doing something you can sustain as a habit. Diets aren't habits because they're meant to be short-term. When you finish, you go back to what you were doing because you have no long-term plan. The fix isn't to keep dieting, the fix is to change your habits. And that doesn't mean giving up everything you love, nor does it mean making crazy changes overnight.

The best way I found to combat hunger was to never let myself get hungry. Eating a small meal, like half a sandwich, every few hours kept me from getting hungry. It's pretty easy if you make one change at a time. For example, I switched from boxed cereal to oatmeal in the morning...you can do maple, honey, berries, peanut butter, brown sugar, nuts, all kinds of stuff to dress it up & make it taste good. You don't have to make a kale smoothie with hemp hearts & soy protein powder, you know?

Getting into the bigger picture, you can pretty much eat whatever you want within numerical limits if you do IIFYM (i.e. eat Burger King & lose weight). Or you can eat 100% clean and pretty much eat as much as you want and get good results. Or you can exercise for like two hours a day. There's no one way to get healthy; there are multiple ways, you just have to choose what works best for you.

So the question to start off with is, what are your goals? Do you want to lose some weight? Do you feel sick all the time? You mentioned wanting to improve your diet, binge eating, eating out of boredom, and feeling bloated. So basically - do you want to feel better & get in shape?

 

[SlitheryDee]

Track your food intake. I use the myplate app. It's the only way I ever have any clue how many calories I've had. It works wonderfully if you use it religiously. I've lost 85lbs since last march using it. Everything that goes in my face goes in the app. I always know when I've had my limit for the day in addition to being able to hit my protein intake goals every day.

A side effect of tracking your food intake is that you'll naturally start seeking out wholesome, lower calorie, more filling foods just so you can eat more every day. It basically causes you to self-correct your diet, or at least it did for me.

 

[Carson Dyle]

A side effect of tracking your food intake is that you'll naturally start seeking out wholesome, lower calorie, more filling foods just so you can eat more every day. It basically causes you to self-correct your diet, or at least it did for me.

It's pretty amazing what it teaches you. Portion control becomes a habit. You quickly learn that if you want variety in your daily diet, then you can't eat that big bowl of cereal, or expect to have a big plate of spaghetti for dinner. Instead, if I have cereal at all, I'll limit it to a 40g serving. If I have pasta, it's a side dish in a meal with several other foods. One tablespoon of salad dressing instead of two.

I even find myself buying things like small bananas and other fruits. Instead of a 130 calorie banana, having a 90 calorie one means that I can eat something else during the day. Or I have a clementine and a small apple instead of eating one of those 1 lb navel oranges that are so common in markets now.

 

[TheStu]

Track your food intake. I use the myplate app. It's the only way I ever have any clue how many calories I've had. It works wonderfully if you use it religiously. I've lost 85lbs since last march using it. Everything that goes in my face goes in the app. I always know when I've had my limit for the day in addition to being able to hit my protein intake goals every day.

A side effect of tracking your food intake is that you'll naturally start seeking out wholesome, lower calorie, more filling foods just so you can eat more every day. It basically causes you to self-correct your diet, or at least it did for me.

Also, you can alienate your non-nutrition-y friends by talking about macros, and grams of <whatever> per ounce of <food>. If that's your sort of thing.

I've slipped from tracking religiously, and should probably get back to it, my weight loss has mostly stalled.

 

[z1ggy]

Fat loss sticky. /thread

 

[Scarpozzi]

Download the MyFitnessPal app. Setup a weight loss goal.

Start logging everything you eat in the app. If you walk, run, or cycle....use Strava or Runkeeper or Garmin Connect to track your cardio calories and adjust your daily intake so you don't go into a calorie deficit.

Now...the real trick here is to log what you eat and log your calories. Do this and BE HONEST. As time goes on, note which foods you can eat more of and feel satisfied. This is not a lose weight fast scheme. The app won't let you lose more than 1-2 lbs a week...but you can boost this by adding more exercise.

What I learned was that 1/2 cup of quick oats, 1-2 tbsp of peanut butter, and black coffee in the morning is a good breakfast that keeps me full until lunch. I saved that as a meal and eat it almost every day for breakfast. That's 340 calories and then I have 1500 to last me the rest of the day. Just find what works for you with foods you eat often. I cut out a lot of extras....sugary drinks, even sugar and cream in my coffee and got used to drinking things/eating things plain. It just takes a little dedication. I lost 20lbs this way over the course of 4 months and kept off 15 through the winter thus far. I am going to get more active soon and will shed another 10 for a total of 25lbs lost if my body composition isn't too far out of whack. (I've gained a lot of muscle)

 

[Auric]

It may actually be easier to eat "clean" 'cause it avoids the blood sugar spikes and crashes which trigger phony hunger.

A related factor is a "bad" gut microbiome.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24960158
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19041747

 

[PCmastaRace]

A lot of people are giving solid 10k foot level advise. To give you more detailed answers:

Eat more oatmeal! Great for you and for your bod.

Eat more chicken breast.

Only drink water / milk. Cut soda and everything else out of your diet.

3 Simple Tips! Voila.

 

[edro]

Another vote for writing down everything you eat. I track calories and macros.
I use a self made Google Sheets spreadsheet.
It's easy to copy/paste from previous days once you have most of your commonly used foods in there.

It's really amazing how terrible the typical American's diet is.
Even people who think they eat decently are actually eating way too much.
Most people eat waaay too many carbs and too little protein.
Take a walk through the grocery store. 90% of the food is carbs.
The entire center section of the store is carbs. This is because it is cheap to make and doesn't spoil.
The food industry wants you to eat nothing but carbs.

Writing everything down and tracking macros really retrains you to eat correctly.

I personally love protein bars because they are fast, easy, filling, and taste like candy bars.

Personal favorites to eat between meals:
Quest bars (Cookies/Cream and Smores)
Premier Protein bars (Choc/Peanut Butter and Chewy Choc Chip)
Premier Protein Protein Shakes (Chocolate, ready to drink, from Costco)

These all cost more and might be less healthy than making your own snacks/meals... but you can't beat the convenience and taste