Moving to college

Time Magazine

Hi all,

After the fantastic stickied post by Ms. G'em, I now have a better idea of what I have to eat when I make the big move next Wednesday.

Some facts: I'm 20, about 5'8" (I'm not a bit sure) with a body weight (last time I checked) of 165lbs/75kg. This puts my BMI as borderline with overweight. I'm not that concerned about it (my weight can vary by ~3kgs in a day and if I'm 5'9" my BMI at 23.3) but as the title says I'm leaving the comforts of my mammy and moving a full half an hour away for final year.

I've been living on spuds all my life so I'm just looking for some pointers on what to eat. I've read porridge is great for brekkie (and I do like it). Here's a list of things that I might eat, anyone want to say what they think might be bad. Oh and even though I know it's better than its fuller equivalent, I can't stand that slimline milk .

Breakfast

• 1/3 of a cup of porridge (in 2/3 of a cup of water, 1/3 of a cup of milk, microwaved), with a bit of milk (a little bit less than glass) with a banana and a bit of honey.
  
• Two slices of white bread, lightly toasted, with butter.
  
• Cornflakes, milk.

Because I'm a cheap student who's short on time, I'm more likely than not to cook two portions of whatever I'm having for lunch, refrigerate it and eat it for dinner. I'll probably only change this unless it's really pretty bad.

Lunch/Dinner

• White pasta with pasta sauce, slice of red onion, half a tin of tuna in brine and a bit of sweetcorn.
• Stir-fry. About half a pound of ground turkey, a cup of boiled white rice, half a carrot, slice of red onion, half a tomato, sweetcorn, bit of leek or something other that looks healthy, quarter jar of sweet and sour/etc. sauce.
• Burgers and chips. Half a pound of ground beef with garlic and oregano with barbeque sauce, fried. Oven chips.
• Tortillas. Half a pound of ground beef fried. About 4 tortillas, bit of salsa sauce, bit of lettuce, bit of tomato, maybe a little bit of pepper, red onion.
• Spaghetti Bolognese.

Is water much better to drink than milk?

Also there's the, eh, small issue of drink. How bad is a pint of Guinness? Or a can of Bavaria? Are there any drinks that aren't shockingly beer-belly-creating?

Any ideas for a slightly healthier diet? Anything there that should be limited as much as possible? Anything that's a lot better than others? Given my palette, anyone have any suggestion on what I could eat?

Nevyn

Change to brown bread/ whole meal, to brown rice and what about whole meal pasta.

low

Hey, I'm going to cheat a little bit here because I've met Ibid in person and I have a general idea what condition he's in. When I read the first paragraph of your post I got the impression you're every so slightly worried about your weight. Trust me, regardless of what BMI says you're not overweight at all, I'd just point that out in case you thought otherwise.

Again it's difficult to comment on your diet because you don't really give us to much information about your activity levels. Again, as I know a little bit about you I know you do lots of walking and will probably be playing a bit of 5-a-side football during the year.

If you lived a sedentary lifestyle and you wanted to curb weight gain I'd tell you to change your diet fairly significantly (convert all milk to water, remove all the "bad carbs (white break, spuds etc.)) But if you maintain an active lifestyle or better yet start playing more sports and doing more exercise you should be ok medium term in my opinion.

What I ate when I was in your position was porridge (1 cup oats, 1 cup water) sweetened with honey and fruit (raisins etc.). This usually set me up til lunch time. For dinner I often ate chicken breasts and vegetables (I'd just roast the chicken fillets wrapped in tinfoil in the oven for 40 minutes).

good luck

barclay2

A good question to ask, a lot of people put on weight in college, and im no exception. I went into university at 18 weighing about 12 stone, and then weighed myself just under a year ago (22 years old at the time) at 14 and a half stone! In other words i went from around 168 pounds to 204 pounds. I had to go on a crash course of hitting the gym 5 days a week and changing my diet and have managed to get back down to the 12 stone mark thankfully.

For me, the biggest problem was snacking. When you're studying, or just watchin tv in the middle of the day or whatever, its so easy to just make arandom sandwich even if you're not hungry, or grab a bag of crisps or whatever. Thats what i'd watch out for.

In terms of booze, guinness is actually one of the better pints to drink! I was very thankful when i learned that. A pint of guinness has about 200 calories, less than a pint of orange juice or skimmed milk! (check out this if you dont believe me, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinness). Beer is worse, i think cos it has lots of sugar. For me, the biggest problem with booze wasnt the weight i gained from drinking it, but the weight i gained from eating so many kebabs and chips etc while drinking.

And in terms of what to eat at meal time, i can only really tell you what i ate over the last year where i dropped a lot of weight. I didnt do anything too drastic, just a collection of minor changes. I stopped snacking between meals, i generally stopped buying red meat and ate lots of chicken/turkey and fish instead. I stopped eating pasta, chips and big helpings of bread in the evening, they pack loads of carbohydrates into you just before you go to bed, so you dont burn them up and they just end up getting stored as fat. And i just ate loads of fruit and green stuff instead. After a while i actually did like the taste of vegtables! Oh and i stopped drinking coke, fanta etc. For breakfast, having regular fry-ups in the morning went out the window. I just had cereal with berries/fruit chopped into it. I think it does make a difference which cereal you use. I generally had either cheerios, weetabix or shredded wheat, they're almost entirely pure wheat/grain and have no sugar etc, and are actually really nice when you chop fruit into them. I actually stuck to the full fat milk, i.e. real milk, for most of the time.

g'em

barclay2 wrote:

And in terms of what to eat at meal time... I didnt do anything too drastic, just a collection of minor changes.

bingo, bango, bongo, or words to that effect, and some great advice there. All the suggestions you've made for possible meals sound fine, although if possible swap white for brown where possible. If you've grown up on a diet that centres around the main staple of spuds (as many of us have ) it tends to make you think that you 'need' to have some kind of starchy potato food or bread, pasta, rice etc. But we really don't need that much so don't worry about having meals that consist just of meat and vegetables.

The key thing is to just plan meals that are easy and that you enjoy. If you need to make something that'll last for 3-4 meals why not try a lasagne? You can bung heaploads of veg into it, and come to think of it you can do that with any tomato based source. Have a good supply of fruit to hand that you can snack on, and bags of nuts are great too.

With the booze - don't sweat it too much! If you're drinking 20+ pints a week there's really no point in asking for a 'lighter' option, but it doesn't sound like that's the case here so Guinness is grand Spirits and diet mixers have the lowest calories of all drinks, but in my mind if I'm going to enjoy a few drinks with my friends at the weekends, I just want to enjoy them and not be worried about the numbers. Take care of yourself the rest of the week and you can afford to have a few garggles

neuro-praxis

Cooking for one can be such a pain. Here are some tips to improve your burger and chips meals:

Instead of oven chips, buy some ready-washed ready-to-cook new potatoes (the small, clean ones ). They come in small bags and boxes from 500g - 1kg. (I would eat 250g at a sitting but you would probably want more as you are not looking to lose weight - only to maintain a healthy diet). If they're biggish, cut them in half to make wedges. Boil them for a bit, then bung them in the oven for thirty minutes with some cooking spray (oil replacement you can buy in any supermarket) or a small quantity of a good-quality oil. Season with salt, pepper, herbs, garlic - anything you like - and you've got some really delicious and healthy alternative chips. You can enjoy a larger portion for much less calories and they kick the pants off of oven chips. Oven chips are actually not particularly healthy as they are fried briefly before they're frozen.

As for your burger - use lean mince. Season it well and shape it into your pattie. Then grill it rather than fry - grilling helps drain off some of the saturated fat. Also, a half a pound of meat at each sitting seems like a lot. Perhaps you could make 3 burgers from one pound of mince (and freeze one?). You can bulk up a home-made burger with finely chopped onions and even mushrooms if you like.

Then, eat it with a wholewheat bun rather than a white one. Also, when you have this meal, try to get some veggies in. A salad on the side - or even some tomato, pickles, onion and lettuce on your burger would be good.

neuro-praxis

You're a little lacking in vegetables on the whole. It's good to get into the habit of incorporating a large portion of veg with lunch and dinner (hard I know when we've been raised on lunches of a ham sandwich, a club milk and an apple ).

When you make your tacos and your bolognese for example, you can chop up combinations of onions, mushrooms, tomatoes carrots, courgettes etc. into small pieces and add them to the meat. This will not only make the meal go further but you'll be getting discreetly packed with fresh veg every day instead of trying to force down boiled carrots and broccoli alongside your tacos.

Time Magazine

First of all, thanks for all the replies.

Thaedydal wrote:

Change to brown bread/ whole meal, to brown rice and what about whole meal pasta.

I haven't done my first shop yet (moving out on Wednesday), but would they sell whole meal pasta in SuperValu etc? I'll be bringing a loaf of my mammy's brown bread with me each by the sound of it .

low wrote:

Hey, I'm going to cheat a little bit here because I've met Ibid in person and I have a general idea what condition he's in. When I read the first paragraph of your post I got the impression you're every so slightly worried about your weight. Trust me, regardless of what BMI says you're not overweight at all, I'd just point that out in case you thought otherwise.

\o/

Again it's difficult to comment on your diet because you don't really give us to much information about your activity levels. Again, as I know a little bit about you I know you do lots of walking and will probably be playing a bit of 5-a-side football during the year.

If you lived a sedentary lifestyle and you wanted to curb weight gain I'd tell you to change your diet fairly significantly (convert all milk to water, remove all the "bad carbs (white break, spuds etc.)) But if you maintain an active lifestyle or better yet start playing more sports and doing more exercise you should be ok medium term in my opinion.

I'm hoping to get into the habit of using the gym and pool at least a couple of times a week on top of the football. Famous last words.

What I ate when I was in your position was porridge (1 cup oats, 1 cup water) sweetened with honey and fruit (raisins etc.). This usually set me up til lunch time. For dinner I often ate chicken breasts and vegetables (I'd just roast the chicken fillets wrapped in tinfoil in the oven for 40 minutes).

good luck

Good idea that. Might liven up pasta a bit.

barclay2 wrote:

A good question to ask, a lot of people put on weight in college, and im no exception. I went into university at 18 weighing about 12 stone, and then weighed myself just under a year ago (22 years old at the time) at 14 and a half stone! In other words i went from around 168 pounds to 204 pounds. I had to go on a crash course of hitting the gym 5 days a week and changing my diet and have managed to get back down to the 12 stone mark thankfully.

Fair play.

For me, the biggest problem was snacking. When you're studying, or just watchin tv in the middle of the day or whatever, its so easy to just make arandom sandwich even if you're not hungry, or grab a bag of crisps or whatever. Thats what i'd watch out for.

But I take it brown bread isn't "bad" as a snack?

In terms of booze, guinness is actually one of the better pints to drink!

Best thing I've heard in weeks .

I was very thankful when i learned that. A pint of guinness has about 200 calories, less than a pint of orange juice or skimmed milk! (check out this if you dont believe me, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinness).

He's right you know. Never knew orange juice has so many calories. Two pints a day would be 20% of my daily intake .

Beer is worse, i think cos it has lots of sugar. For me, the biggest problem with booze wasnt the weight i gained from drinking it, but the weight i gained from eating so many kebabs and chips etc while drinking.

I tend not to do this, thankfully. Too much crap in chippers (and I don't even mean the food) at 2am.

And in terms of what to eat at meal time, i can only really tell you what i ate over the last year where i dropped a lot of weight. I didnt do anything too drastic, just a collection of minor changes. I stopped snacking between meals, i generally stopped buying red meat and ate lots of chicken/turkey and fish instead. I stopped eating pasta, chips and big helpings of bread in the evening, they pack loads of carbohydrates into you just before you go to bed, so you dont burn them up and they just end up getting stored as fat. And i just ate loads of fruit and green stuff instead. After a while i actually did like the taste of vegtables!

I was raised on the traditional big meal at 8pm routine but take it a plate of pasta at that time is lunacy? Any tips on what to eat at this time? Fruit?

Oh and i stopped drinking coke, fanta etc.

I rarely have them, thankfully.

For breakfast, having regular fry-ups in the morning went out the window. I just had cereal with berries/fruit chopped into it. I think it does make a difference which cereal you use. I generally had either cheerios, weetabix or shredded wheat, they're almost entirely pure wheat/grain and have no sugar etc, and are actually really nice when you chop fruit into them. I actually stuck to the full fat milk, i.e. real milk, for most of the time.

Cool. I'm going to go with porridge any morning have the time, which will be most of the time, because I only have one 9am this year \o/.

g'em wrote:

bingo, bango, bongo, or words to that effect, and some great advice there. All the suggestions you've made for possible meals sound fine, although if possible swap white for brown where possible. If you've grown up on a diet that centres around the main staple of spuds (as many of us have ) it tends to make you think that you 'need' to have some kind of starchy potato food or bread, pasta, rice etc. But we really don't need that much so don't worry about having meals that consist just of meat and vegetables.

Damn aversion to broccoli and cauliflower .

The key thing is to just plan meals that are easy and that you enjoy. If you need to make something that'll last for 3-4 meals why not try a lasagne? You can bung heaploads of veg into it, and come to think of it you can do that with any tomato based source. Have a good supply of fruit to hand that you can snack on, and bags of nuts are great too.

Nuts? So a Snickers rather than a Mars? . Lasagne is a great idea, thanks.

With the booze - don't sweat it too much! If you're drinking 20+ pints a week there's really no point in asking for a 'lighter' option, but it doesn't sound like that's the case here so Guinness is grand

It's 20+ a night .

Spirits and diet mixers have the lowest calories of all drinks, but in my mind if I'm going to enjoy a few drinks with my friends at the weekends, I just want to enjoy them and not be worried about the numbers. Take care of yourself the rest of the week and you can afford to have a few garggles

Great.

neuro-praxis wrote:

Cooking for one can be such a pain. Here are some tips to improve your burger and chips meals:

Instead of oven chips, buy some ready-washed ready-to-cook new potatoes (the small, clean ones ). They come in small bags and boxes from 500g - 1kg. (I would eat 250g at a sitting but you would probably want more as you are not looking to lose weight - only to maintain a healthy diet). If they're biggish, cut them in half to make wedges. Boil them for a bit, then bung them in the oven for thirty minutes with some cooking spray (oil replacement you can buy in any supermarket) or a small quantity of a good-quality oil. Season with salt, pepper, herbs, garlic - anything you like - and you've got some really delicious and healthy alternative chips. You can enjoy a larger portion for much less calories and they kick the pants off of oven chips. Oven chips are actually not particularly healthy as they are fried briefly before they're frozen.

Great idea, thanks.

As for your burger - use lean mince. Season it well and shape it into your pattie. Then grill it rather than fry - grilling helps drain off some of the saturated fat. Also, a half a pound of meat at each sitting seems like a lot. Perhaps you could make 3 burgers from one pound of mince (and freeze one?). You can bulk up a home-made burger with finely chopped onions and even mushrooms if you like.

3 burgers is a much better idea. The half-pound burgers stem from my summer in America with my girlfriend where quarter-pounders were too small and we'd fight over the last third-pounder .

Then, eat it with a wholewheat bun rather than a white one. Also, when you have this meal, try to get some veggies in. A salad on the side - or even some tomato, pickles, onion and lettuce on your burger would be good.

Are pickles really good for you? Pickles FTW.

You're a little lacking in vegetables on the whole. It's good to get into the habit of incorporating a large portion of veg with lunch and dinner (hard I know when we've been raised on lunches of a ham sandwich, a club milk and an apple ).

We usually got a Time-Out. I don't know why, they were really crap bars.

When you make your tacos and your bolognese for example, you can chop up combinations of onions, mushrooms, tomatoes carrots, courgettes etc. into small pieces and add them to the meat. This will not only make the meal go further but you'll be getting discreetly packed with fresh veg every day instead of trying to force down boiled carrots and broccoli alongside your tacos.

We're supposed to have about five servings of fruit and veg a day, right? So if I chop up a tomato, a mushroom, a carrot and pour it onto pasta sauce (presumably another serving?) that would count as 80% of my veg for the day? That's doable, but probably too good to be true.

g'em

Ibid wrote:

We're supposed to have about five servings of fruit and veg a day, right? So if I chop up a tomato, a mushroom, a carrot and pour it onto pasta sauce (presumably another serving?) that would count as 80% of my veg for the day? That's doable, but probably too good to be true.

A serving of veg is usually about a handful, an a serving of fruit is usually one piece. It's very easy to get 2-3 of your daily portions for the day in one meal by adding veg to sauces, and snacking on fruit or adding berries to your cereal will make up the rest. I love eating carrots and raw bell peppers (the red or yellow ones!) as snacks too.

neuro-praxis

To answer your question about eating pasta at night may I quote Jak:

Jak wrote:

Carbohydrates At Night

If I had a dollar for everytime a member of the message boards asks "Will eating carbs at night make me fat?", I'd be a rich man. The truth is, eating carbohydrates at night is perfectly fine, but you must analyze a few factors first. Calories are what determines whether one gains or loses weight. If one exceeds their caloric matience level, more than likely, the individual will gain weight. If one creates an energy deficit, preferably through cardiovascular activity/restriction of calories/weight training sessions, the individual will more than likely lose weight. Simple as that! It all depends on one's overall calorie total that determines body composition, not the time carbohydrates were eaten. Carbohydrates have many anti-catabolic properties and should not be eliminated at any time of day. They can be very beneficial at night, bulking or cutting, by pulling out all the theoretical stops related to anticatabolism. In conclusion, carbohydrates should not be restricted at night in attempt of preventing one's body of storing them as adipose tissue because the true factor that determines weight gain is a calorie surplus.

I have not found that having my dinner late has had any effect on my weight loss, Ibid, so eating pasta in the evening is just fine as long as you are eating a sensibly-sized portion as part of an already-balanced day.

Yes, regular supermarkets all stock wholewheat pasta and rice. I'm not sure if Aldi and Lidl do though.

And yes, brown bread is a grand snack - just not six slices slathered with peanut butter and nutella. If you can sort your day into either 5-6 small meals or the routine breakfast-snack-lunch-snack-dinner-snack you'll be doing grand. Fruit is a great choice for a snack, as are yoghurt and nuts.

g'em

neuro-praxis wrote:

And yes, brown bread is a grand snack - just not six slices slathered with peanut butter and nutella.

brown bread and natural PB ftw!!! peanut butter is a great protein source, helps to slow down digestion of the carbs. And sooo yum. Prob best to keep the nutella out of it though

neuro-praxis

Personally I *love* peanut butter, but I am sooo not eating it right now. 100g contains 612 kilocalories and 8.7g of saturated fat! And this is the 100% natural variety with no salt or sugar! This is actually more than twice the calories of Nutella (although of course I recognise that Nutella is a nutritionally vapid choice before anyone tells me this).

I weighed a tablespoon to see how I would fare with that much, and it was 40g, which means that just one spoonful of it works out at a whopping 244.8 kcal and 3.5g of saturated fat which is, for a Weight Watcher, 7 points. Have it on just one slice of bread and my "snack" is 9 points. Add a glass of semi-skimmed and we're up to 11...my daily intake of points is only 25! It's just not worth it for me.

...I just took the peanut butter from the cupboard to assess it and now its torturing me with its delcious smell.

Vegeta

40grams of peanut butter is a whopping big portion though. Try a teaspoon or 10 grams of it.

I usually find 10 grams spreads fine on a slice of wholemeal brown bread

g'em

I can totally see where you're coming from, but for me this is one of the times that points-based systems and calorie counting really loses its appeal. Nuts and nut butters are brillantly satiating and jammed with monounsaturated fats, the fats that help lower bad cholesterol. I'm back on a fat-loss eating plan right now to help me get back to competition weight, and nuts and PB will be featuring *very* strongly in my daily eating habits. Lowering overall cals but increasing fats is the tried and trusted way to help me shed fat.

My favourite bed-time snack: PB and cottage cheese

Vegeta

g'em wrote:

My favourite bed-time snack: PB and cottage cheese

you have no taste buds

g'em

Vegeta wrote:

you have no taste buds

cottage cheese is truly one of those love it or hate it foods. But it's literally a perfect food - high in protein, low in carbs, low in fat, super-satiating, packed with calcium, and personally I love the taste and texture!! If I want it sweet I have it with vanilla whey or a drizzle of honey and fruit, for savoury it's peanut or almond butter and sometimes I just eat it straight out of the tub coz I luvs it so

CathyMoran

g'em wrote:

My favourite bed-time snack: PB and cottage cheese

One of my favorite meals! I loved noodles and tuna ready meals when I was in college, that and rattatoile which was a good way of getting vegetables in. Pasta and rattatoile - happy days.

nesf

Vegeta wrote:

40grams of peanut butter is a whopping big portion though. Try a teaspoon or 10 grams of it.

Is it? I'd have trouble limiting myself to that little tbh.

neuro-praxis

Unfortunately (for me) 40g is only one tablespoon. Like, one "breakfast spoon"'s worth. It isn't much at all. 10g...pfft you'd barely taste it.

nesf

neuro-praxis wrote:

Unfortunately (for me) 40g is only one tablespoon. Like, one "breakfast spoon"'s worth. It isn't much at all. 10g...pfft you'd barely taste it.

You can work larger portions into a diet, you just need to account for them. Fat isn't the enemy, you just need to be smart about where your sources are coming from. Getting half your daily target of fat from nuts is far better than getting half of it from chocolate, chips etc. Get organic 100% peanuts, peanut butter and you're sorted. A lot of the off-the-shelf brands have quite a bit of salt etc added. The amount of saturated fat in peanut butter is hugely outweighed by the amount of unsaturated fat in it. Once your ratio of saturated to unsaturated is good then the amount of fat you eat becomes less of an issue from a cholesterol point of view.

Seraphina

g'em wrote:

cottage cheese is truly one of those love it or hate it foods. But it's literally a perfect food - high in protein, low in carbs, low in fat, super-satiating, packed with calcium, and personally I love the taste and texture!! If I want it sweet I have it with vanilla whey or a drizzle of honey and fruit, for savoury it's peanut or almond butter and sometimes I just eat it straight out of the tub coz I luvs it so

you make me sick!!!