Lifestyle change, how to go about it?

Dom...I bought some from Allens Swimwear online....they arrived today funnily enough.

Cheers Gary...my mum has a good Vic knife so will look at them.

 

Anyone mentioned the ABs diet yet? A good blokey thing from Mens Health. After years of activity I've spent the last two years inactive and as a result put on 4 stone and became a big tub of lard.

Slowly, slowly getting it off again. A mixture of sensible eating without cutting out food and a little regular excersise. 6 weeks has seen loss of a stone and 4 inches from around my waist.

 

forget the solids,unless you like toking coffee,turps,plastic,dog shit and many other nastys they use to make the stuff,even green is a bit hit and miss if it aint been growen and dried properly.Best bet, grow your own organic weed,no nasty chemicals ,and a dam,site stronger than even the top grade dutch coffee shop stuff.

 

I need to really watch my diet as I don't want to drop dead suddenly like my uncle did. His wife got a sympahty card form the fish and chip shop so I think that says it all : - all though he never drank or did drugs.

My habbits are I drink too much coke [I am dreading what the dentist will say when they see what a mess my teeth are], I tend to be prone to processed foods as well.

I can't really cook, the only healthy thing I can do is pasta based meals or a bit of fruit.

I have at least about 2 processed meals a day, but I do often have a proper dinner with real veg and stuff.

 

The things to avoid are salt, hydrogenated fats, sugar and glucose syrup. Unfortunately these appear in nearly all processed food so home cooking is the only sensible way to go. Fortunately there are plenty of tasty meals that can be rustled within minutes using basic ingredients. Beneficial foods include yogurt, berries, peanut butter (unsweetened), beef, turkey, spinach, avocados and almonds. A little alcohol is always good.

 

yeah, with the colder months coming up - its always a good time to make homemade soup...cheap, tasty and easy to make - with so many combos.

 

Thats just lazy talk anyone can cook. You don't have to start with souflé (sp?) just buy a beginners cook book or something and follow the recipe

 

I agree...although I have always been brought up with home growing and cooking so its very natural to me. Hence as a 27 y/o man I now count chutney making as an interest! I wouldn't dream of buying a ready meal because A) They're rank... and B) Its so easy to do a basic dish thats more tasty, much cheaper and a shtload better for you. It really is soo easy thats the funny thing about it.

AT if you're still unemployed you could do worse than teaching yourself 3 or 4 recipes that you can rely on in the future. You'll be surprised how easy some things are. At uni me and a mate took it in turns to cook dinners. Did 7 different recipes each so we'd have a different meal every night for 2 weeks. Then off to tesco to spend £30 on ingredients again. That £30 covered all my food and I was eating well. I reckon £15 on food a week is pretty reasonable and we didn't touch a ready meal.

Mr Cat...dead on the money with soups.
Heres a good one...
Tin toms
Tin kidney beans
onion
red pepper
2 handfuls red lentils
3 cloves garlic
dash of tabasco
2 tea spoons paprika
1 1/4 pint veg stock
Dash of red wine if you got some lying about
All in a pan, bubble for 30 mins. Blend. Eat with bread. Lurvely. House smells lovely...kitchen is warm and fragrant...thats a saturday afternoon feeling to me.

 

Right guys, this has been a good thread, I'm exceptionally impressed considering we've been here before only I have forgotten about it.

I've already made the first step - i've just *walked* to morrisons and bought 3 litres of their "finest" freshly squeezed orange (for the not so princely sum of nearly £6!), and i will drink 1 litre a day to combat the cold. I've also found some multivitamins which I've started taking.

One fundamental thing I believe I have been doing wrong is not drinking enough water. How much do I need to drink in a day ideally?

Also, one thing I've noticed this week - I usually drink lots of milk. This week I haven't been. One thing I am always plagued with is heartburn. Since I stopped drinking lots of milk, I haven't had ANY heartburn. Is this a coincidence or what? I always thought milk helped for heartburn.

 

Any Delia cookbook is just about idiot proof. She doesn't let "nasty things happen" as someone once said. Try One is Fun or any of the "How to Cook" series.

Meanwhile here's a basic chicken soup receipe. Serves 4

• 225g Chicken breast, diced
• onion, chopped
• tsp olive oil
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1.5 litres of low salt chicken stock (or vegetable)
• small tin of cannellini or haricot beans (drained)
• 60g carrot, diced
• 100g sweetcorn
• 100g tomatoes, chopped
• herbs
• paprika

• Cook the chicken, carrot & onion in the oil for 10 minutes
• add the garlic and cook for 1 minute
• Add stock, beans, sweetcorn, tomatoes, herbs & paprika & gently simmer for 15 minutes.

 

Milk contains a powerful opiate from the morphine family called casomorphin. So don't drink too much Whole Milk, it's addictive

BTW, is that Marvin? I thought I recognised the pic but couldn't place it!

 

yeah, I've just repeated what I said first time round...!!

water - a litre should be enough, tho it doesn't really matter (imo) if iot seither side of that...

going back to soups - you can get a pack of root vegtables from a supermarket for less than a quid - tho, it's always worth adding extra stuff like mushrooms, peas, bag of spinach etc...some stock, herbs and spices, big knob of butter...then cook for aboput an hour (you want everything soft) then I get a hand blender and make it nice and smooth....then you can pour some cream over the delivered product...

a word of warning - if you add a bag of spinach, it goes through you faster than a porsche...which is always a good thing...

 

Regarding water, although old research suggested 2 litres a day was ideal... new research shows that in fact the body can remove the water from other drinks like orange squash and coffee so actually if you drink lots of lemonade, orange squash etc you don't need to drink quite 2 litres but its still not quite as good for you as pure water.

 

Skimmed milk is best for the waist line.

and yes it's Marvin.

 

PB,

Milk makes heartburn worse, water helps to make it better. Im not a doctor, thats just based on personal experience of getting heartburn periodically.

If you 'cant cook' - I'd suggest doing what I did...

Go on Amazon, and look at the student cookbooks. I bought one for less than a quid from an amazon trader.

Its dead easy - they use cheap healthy ingrediants, and the meals take just a few minutes to prepare.

I can now do easy favourites like beef stroganoff and toad in the hole for example.

Another good thing about these books is they dont pretend you're going to have exotic ingredients in your fridge like 'lemon grass' or 'fresh thyme' etc. They tell you to get a few basic herbs and spices, and then use them in loads of different ways for the meals in the book.

Heres the one I bought - http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1899606149/ref=pd_sr_ec_ir_aps/202-4242310-0636602

available for 49p plus p&p !!

 

or use the internet. There are countless sites covering every style

 

Woohoo...good stuff there Paul. Careful with the OJ though....one thing about good eating is not to overdo any one thing. You may find you feel crap after drinking all that and too much vit C can give you diarhoaeha (fkin hell how do you spell that!? I mean the shits anyway) You should drink about 2 litres of water a day (about 6-8 normal size glasses) apparently but I find it easier to go by what colour your pee is. Should be clear or very slightly yellow. If you're pissing out toxic yellow get some water on. Makes it easier than thinking about measurements all the time. Just go by the colour.

Dunno about the milk thing...maybe dairy products don't agree with you?

Remember to get the veg in though...you can't get all your nutrition out of smoothies and juices and pills. Got to be nice and balanced and vits from veg are better than vits from tubs. Tastier too.

I dunno if other people do but I like to think of my food quite analytically. By that I don't mean "hmmm how many milligrams of fat has this got in it?" I mean "Cor this has got loads of good shit in it, its gonna make me feel great". Like when I make that soup a few posts back. I look in the pan and think "That is some good shit right there man, its got vitamins and energy and protein in it". Once you start thinking positively about food like that its hard to look into the microwave and say the same thing. Thats why cooking has more dimensions than just saying "mmmm look at that microwave stir fry, its going to fill me up". Make a stir fry from scratch and its like "mmmm look at all those veg I just chopped up...they are good shit man...and its gonna fill me up!"

That book I recommended in the first thread is good for doing that...you look at all the good things it says about the veg you just slung in your soup and you start thinking about it as nutritional dynamite to blast away all the bad bugs you got. For example Brocolli has got a sht load of calcium in it (aswell as loads of other good stuff). So you're chomping away thinking "Brocolli will sort me out" and because you're thinking so positively it will do even more good because of the psychological sense of wellbeing! Same as I imagine you're doing with your OJ right now.

Get that book of Amazon Paul...I think its a bargain on the marketplace atm and you'll start thinking of your food like I do! haha.

 

Wow, I never knew that!! No wonder I used to be able to drink 2 litres of it in one go!

Anyway, I'll certainly have to invest in one of those books, I think thats part of the problem, I need ideas instead of eating the same old shyte all of the time

 

I'm gonna have to get a new student cook book when we get a decent cooker.

My BIGGEST gripe of recipes is buying the ingredients - if you've got eyesight like mine, trying to find ANYTHING non-standard (ie in large tubs/packets/bright colours) is really frustrating; maybe Tesco Online can come in handy hey??

Paul - too much OJ is also bad for stomach acid.

 

Tell me about it, I cant normally touch the stuff. But since I cut back severely on the milk, I am having no problems with it TBH.