Nutrition for Beginners? | Simplifying Nutrition for the Sake of Compliance

[Reygunz]

I have had very little success with nutritional compliance since I started training; therefore, I consider myself a beginner in this realm. As such, I am turning to you guys in order to get objective opinions.

I never really learned how to cook so when I try to cook, the food turns out pretty bad which causes me to eat out, or I’ll be unprepared and end up eating trash food or totally skipping a meal. As you can imagine, I’m terrible at tracking calories and protein let alone carbs and fat.

I’ve read the article “To Be a Beast” and several others, but I think it’s foolish for me to attempt to incorporate all of those things as a beginner who has poor eating habits. Tell me if I’m wrong. Simplifying nutrition in order to create compliance adding complexity as an individual becomes more compliant and starts experiencing diminishing returns seems like a much better plan to me personally. I think this is relatable to more than just a handful of beginners (maybe not on this platform). With that in mind, I’d like to broaden this topic to not just cover myself.

Now I guess one way to start is understanding the goal. I think that most of the goals could be categorized. Here is my suggestion (which could be very wrong): weight gain, weight loss, and recomposition. This could be further subcategorized or maybe the macro categories should be based on sex.

Where would you start a beginner based on each goal (these goals can be changed based on what you think is more realistic or based on what you think the categorization should be)? Would you need more information? What should be tracked to start with or should the beginner not track if his eating habits are so poor?

(My personal goal is to increase muscle mass. I am male, 5’5-6”, about 160 lbs, and have a 33.5” waist circumference.)

[BenM]

I would look for low hanging fruit within the person’s current diet and try to make small changes, one or two at a time, to improve nutritional habits and make it easier to comply.

For example: you are no good at cooking, you could obviously learn but that takes time and effort. However if you can afford to eat out instead, then you can probably afford to engage a meal prep service to provide some healthier/more goal friendly options, or you could even (if you do want to put the effort in) use someone like Blue Apron which would lower the barrier to entry to actually learning how to cook for yourself.

If you’re eating ‘trash’ when you eat out I’d see what sort of trash it is you like and try to find better substitutes that won’t take much effort to switch in,

Nobody would/should expect a beginner to be perfect or to track macros from day one, it’s just about developing better habits over time. Little things like changing the food environment at home can help too. Then you just monitor the effect those changes are having towards your goal and continue to adjust things. Once you start seeing some progress it’s usually pretty motivating and gets easier as you go.

[ohlol]

start tracking what you currently eat, as close as you can. it doesn't have to be perfect.

if you're not cooking food, start by prepping food for one meal a day. find something you enjoy but is easy to prep. i do a lot of <x protein> and rice. this is easy, because I don't have to portion it all out when I make it. I make a bunch of rice, I make a bunch of protein, and every morning I put together my meals with protein, carbs and veggies.

Progress from there linearly. Add another meal. Get to where you are eating 80-90% of your weekly meals from food you cooked.

At that point you can very easily adjust macros based on your goals.

[Wilhelm]

Tracking has become second nature to me, but i eat the same things pretty much all the time.
If and when you track, a food scale is pretty much essential, imo.
A good one is not at all expensive.

You mention gaining muscle is your goal.
You could simply target a protein number and track that each day.
That will help as you need that for building muscle, and it could maybe get you started on the habit/process of tracking.
then overall calories, at least enough to know you are maintaining a reasonable surplus.

For me, the initial work of tracking was just looking up the numbers on the foods i eat.
Then i have a cheat sheet i can refer to if needed.
But you just get to where you remember most of it.

[lonestar777]

start tracking what you currently eat, as close as you can. it doesn't have to be perfect.

THIS! I’m a big believer in Barbell Medicine and they have said in multiple podcasts and such that this is where they start people. First they will have them track food for a few weeks, then they will slowly introduce the changes. For context, I’m 45 and have been skinny my whole life. I’ve screwed around with weights with no result since my late teens. I paid for nutrition coaching with BBM and now I’m making great progress. Most of what I got from the personal coaching is there in the “To Be a Beast” article. There was a “laziness hump” I had to get over to start planning out my meals more but after 6 months it’s second nature and I don’t even track every day now.

[cwd]

Re: not "knowing how" to cook,

You mean you don't know very many recipes yet. But you really only need a few. I recommend:

* oatmeal
* scrambled eggs
* microwaved potato
* microwaved frozen vegetables
* fried hamburger

These are all super-easy, and sufficient to feed you all day every day. You can do these.

I'm not going to explain oatmeal to an adult who can read. Let's not be silly here.

a) scrambled eggs
a.1) put Teflon frypan on stove, set to medium-high heat
a.2) wait a few seconds for the pan to get warm-ish, put in a spoonful of cooking oil or butter
a.3) optional add fancy shit you like: chopped onions, mushrooms, leftover meat bits, peppers, whatever, let them get warm too
a.4) crack 4-6 eggs directly into the pan
a.5) keep stirring the eggs until they aren't too runny for you
a.6) get them out of the pan right away so they don't overcook

b) microwaved potato
b.1) rinse the dirt off of a potato, cut off any yucky-looking spots
b.2) put it in the microwave, press the "potato" button
b.3) if you don't have a potato button, use trial and error. Maybe start with 5 minutes, but it depends on your oven and the size of the potato.

c) microwaved vegetables
c.1) grab a bag of your favorite frozen veggies from the freezer, put as much as you want into a microwave-safe bowl, put a lid on it
c.2) put it in the microwave, turn it on at high power for a couple minutes
c.3) check to see if they are warm all the way through, if not give them some more time
c.4) add your scrambled eggs and potato, plus some ranch dressing or sriracha sauce, or soy sauce, or whatever you've got in the fridge

d) fried hamburger
d.1) put your biggest frying pan on the stove, turn it to max power
d.2) put as much hamburger as will fit into the pan, plus salt and pepper
d.3) wait for it to make sizzling noises, then wait for it to start smelling good. Then chop it up and turn it over. Add more salt and pepper
d.4) repeat step 3 until no more pink meat is present, and many hamburger fragments have dark brown yummy bits
d.5) if you used fatty meat, drain the extra grease through a collander into a bowl. Don't put the grease down your kitchen drain, let it get cold then put it in the trash. It would congeal in the drain and stop up your sink.
d.6) combine hamburger with potato and veggies, add favorite sauce from bottle. Put leftovers in fridge for later -- I like gallon ziploc bags for this
.

[cwd]

If you get tired of potatos, buy an automatic rice cooker!

[GlasgowJock]

Frying hamburgers or braising steak is extremely easy in tandem with boiling some rice or pasta and mixing with butter and cheese. If even cheesy scrambled eggs on toast or tuna mayo pasta is beyond your culinary abilities, you could just go with shakes:

milk + whey powder + Huel ( https://uk.huel.com/?gclid=CjwKCAiA9K3g ... BQQAvD_BwE )

For the complete scrub who doesn't want to meal prep.

If you get tired of potatos, buy an automatic rice cooker!

+1

[ohlol]

a.1) put Teflon frypan on stove, set to medium-high heat
a.2) wait a few seconds for the pan to get warm-ish, put in a spoonful of cooking oil or butter

FWIW this fucks your pan up. Don't ever heat nonstick without oil in it.

[BigDave]

FWIW this fucks your pan up. Don't ever heat nonstick without oil in it.

*citation needed*

[cwd]

FWIW this fucks your pan up. Don't ever heat nonstick without oil in it.

*citation needed*

For scrambled eggs, I don't let the pan get to sizzling temperature. Browning does not improve eggs. Heating a pan to 200 degrees F will not damage it, oil or no oil.

I do use high power on the stovetop, just because I'm impatient to eat. I stand over it the whole time so things don't overcook.

[ohlol]

https://www.today.com/food/7-ways-you-a ... em-t104329

[mettkeks]

FWIW this fucks your pan up. Don't ever heat nonstick without oil in it.

*citation needed*

If you heat a steal pan to cooking temperature and pour in some cool oil it will warp, higher quality steel will warp less but you can observe cheap pans warping into a bowl. This is not a unique feature of non-stick pans. Cast iron won't warp.

That said, cwd said warm-ish. How are you supposed to melt the butter in a cold pan?.

Easy meal prep: Buy some MRE's at ALDI. The quality, texture, and taste of ALDI €1.99 MRE's is absolutely insane!!!

In light of @cwd's post, If you learn how to boil pasta, potatoes, rice and dead animals, You mastered 80% of what you need to cook for yourself. Meat, chicken or fish is easy to cook, and doesn't need more than some salt or pepper to taste really good. Potatoes, pasta and rice are done even easier, and if you heat some sauce of your liking in the micro-wave, you already have a whole meal. The frozen veggie-mix in the microwave or added into the pan is also my preferred way to get greens, if I don't just have a ready to eat salad mix on the side.

I buy Ready to Eat chicken breast frozen. Cooked and seasoned, just needs 15min in the oven, I can do up to 6lbs at a time if I wanted, but 2lbs is enough for a couple of meals.

Tracking is very easy that way too since the cals and macros are listed on the packaging, 15€ food scale helps with portion sizes. Even though many people don't require beginners to track, It becomes second nature after the first month and you become much more aware of your nutrition and you can ballpark macros and cals just by looking at food items.

[mettkeks]

Also, I like these:

SpoilerShow

[ohlol]

@mettkeks its the PTFE that you can't let overheat. It will get ruined and it also releases a gas

[Chebass88]

I have had very little success with nutritional compliance since I started training; therefore, I consider myself a beginner in this realm. As such, I am turning to you guys in order to get objective opinions.

I never really learned how to cook so when I try to cook, the food turns out pretty bad which causes me to eat out, or I’ll be unprepared and end up eating trash food or totally skipping a meal. As you can imagine, I’m terrible at tracking calories and protein let alone carbs and fat.

I’ve read the article “To Be a Beast” and several others, but I think it’s foolish for me to attempt to incorporate all of those things as a beginner who has poor eating habits. Tell me if I’m wrong. Simplifying nutrition in order to create compliance adding complexity as an individual becomes more compliant and starts experiencing diminishing returns seems like a much better plan to me personally. I think this is relatable to more than just a handful of beginners (maybe not on this platform). With that in mind, I’d like to broaden this topic to not just cover myself.
...
Where would you start a beginner based on each goal (these goals can be changed based on what you think is more realistic or based on what you think the categorization should be)? Would you need more information? What should be tracked to start with or should the beginner not track if his eating habits are so poor?

Start small and be consistent.

Re. tracking - if you have a smartphone, use My Fitness Pal. You can scan a barcode to automatically log something, can input your own recipes, etc. If you don't have a smartphone, you can use something as simple as a composition book and a pencil. You have internet access, which means you have access to nutritional information on almost anything you can imagine. It can be as simple as a few columns (calories, protein, carbohydrates, fat, fiber, etc.), and then just add them up at the end of the day.

Most simple rule for tracking: If it goes in your mouth, it gets logged. No matter how small - it gets tracked.

At first, don't worry too much about hitting macros - just get in the habit of counting what you eat. After you have a habit established, make some small changes (e.g., reducing daily fat content by 20g, increasing protein by 50g, etc.), and learn how they impact you.

One thing that helps me is consistency. I eat the same thing almost every day for breakfast and lunch, so logging is easy, especially when using my fitness pal. For example, most days I eat about a pound of meat at lunch, two servings brown rice, and ~4 raw fruits and vegetables (whole red pepper, 3-4 large carrots, apple, etc.). This might end up being ground turkey or chicken breast, depending on what is on sale in a given week. Combined with a couple servings of cereal & a cup of lowfat Greek yogurt, and I'm at about 1700 calories, which leaves me enough to eat a large plate at dinner most nights with a handful of calories left over.

Re. eating habits - eliminate garbage from your diet one thing at a time. Maybe start by cutting out soda, then fast food, then snacks at home, etc.

It can also help to simply not buy junkfood. If you have it available, you'll eat it.

[cwd]

One thing that helps me is consistency. I eat the same thing almost every day for breakfast and lunch, so logging is easy, especially when using my fitness pal.

Yeah, this is the "one weird trick" to well-controlled eating -- boredom.

Eat the same 3 meals every day, with trivial variations, i.e. BBQ sauce vs ranch dressing vs vinaigrette on your chicken-rice-veg bowl.

Not only will you not be tempted as much to overeat, but the tracking is really easy. Also the meal prep, and shopping are easy.

[Reygunz]

Thanks guys! I’ve read you’re replies. I’ve got some great ideas and some direction. I’ll do my best.

[alek]

I'll second the "write down everything you eat" suggestion by @chebass88. I personally don't like tracking macros, calories, etc., but I typically have better compliance if I'm at least logging just what I eat and tracking just animal sourced protein--in fact, I'm going to start doing that again as my cut has stalled a little bit.

For example, this morning I had a protein smoothie consisting of strawberries, ice, oats, ~36g of protein from whey, and ~8g of protein from milk; so that gives me about 45 grams of protein for the day so far. Only 155g left to go.

As much as I don't like tracking (I'll quit saying that eventually I think.) it's not bad for just protein--animal sourced anyway. Whey and milk are easy. Just read the labels; ground beef has about 5 grams per ounce, and whole(???) pieces of meat are around 7 grams per ounce. I typically ballpark the number of ounces I'm eating based on doing it for a while, but as also said, a food scale is best. Once you've done that for a while, you (and I!!) can probably handle tracking your other macros and calories (but I just don't want to).

[Allentown]

How do people survive college without hamburger helper? It's not fine dining, and I probably wouldn't recommend it to lifters looking to clean up their diet, but if you can make hamburger helper, you can make chicken, rice, and broccoli. Combine those things, and a sauce you like. Make a bunch.
Every once in a while, try a small variation on your normal recipe. Before you know it, you will be able to cook 5-6 different foods, and cook them well enough to serve other people.