What do your daily meals look like each day?
I have unintentionally become pescatarian recently because I've come to realize that fish have a lot of nutritional value. So far, my meal plan looks like this:
Breakfast
- 3 eggs
- 1 slice of Ezekial bread toasted
- Mixed berry smoothie with banana, peanut powder, collagen peptides, chia, creatine, non-fat greek yogurt, and water
Lunch
- 2 tin cans of sardines, mashed
- Non-fat greek yogurt
- Tzaziki sauce
- Lemon
- Black pepper
- 2 slices of Ezekial bread toast or one ezekial tortilla, depending on my mood
Dinner
- Shrimp kebabs made with olive oil and veggies
- 1 corn roll or asparagus
Some days I'll switch out my dinner for a salmon salad / salmon wrap, or I'll change the shrimp kebabs for a shrimp ceasar wrap with a nice avocado oil based dressing. Being pescatarian is really great because it's easier to make, shelf life lasts very long, and it's generally cheaper than buying meats.
I'll eat a snack later in the evening if I'm still hungry.
Not sure how old you are but you might want to mind the sodium content of the two tins of sardines. They likely exceed your daily allotment. I know people don't worry about these things when they're young but tge habits you build now will be with you when it does matter, and they will be hard to change.
I'm 22, and believe it or not, I actually lost 120lbs over the course of 8 years. I have a whole spreadsheet dedicated to my meals which shows me everything (Calories, fats, mono/poly, sodium, fiber, etc.) I try my very best to make sure I'm healthy, tracking everything down to the gram.
Right now, I'm averaging about 2000mg sodium a day, and the seafood also provides a sufficient amount of Iodine too.
Thank you for showing concern at least haha, you're right that people need to build these habits early on.
I checked a can i have of Brunswick brand sardines in olive oil. That has 16% DV or 370mg. If theirs is similar, it looks like they may just get other sodium from the bread or tortilla or when they do caesar and they might be fine.
Bruh I'm just trying to survive out here
I feel you. People here seem to be so particular about their diets? Wtf is Ezekiel bread, and how do they manage to make it look like the blandest white bread one could imagine? Why is there baby food with added protein now? So many questions???
I’m in the UK. Wtf is ‘Ezekial’ bread?
It comes from the Bible, Ezekiel has some stuff of what should be in bread. (It is pronted on the packaging all over) Its sprouted and has like 11 different seeds in it. It is usually in the organic freezer section in stores.
Even if you don't care for the origin story - it supposedly really good stuff, it tastes good also.
Why is it frozen?
There are no chemicals added - so the shelflife isn't comparable to the "regular bread".
Also, they are not cheap and well hidden so I don't think it is particularly a fly off the shelves item.
Also UK but I looked it up - bread made from sprouted grain/legumes instead of normal flour.
Breakfast: no fucking way you chase me out of bed in time.
Lunch: leftovers from dinner.
Dinner: 300g of meat/ fish/ chicken. Salad (usually red onion, lettuce, peppers, feta cheese, cucumber).
I've got about 80% adherence to this diet. Either my belt has gotten longer or my waist has gotten smaller.
Breakfast: Coffee, maybe with milk.
Lunch: Usually nothing, maybe a salad.
Dinner: Burritos
It works for me
the bowel mover diet
Brunch: pemmican
Dinner: every now and then pemmican
Snacks: none
One to two meals a day is the win
Heyyyy +1 for pemmican! I almost never hear anyone talk about it nowadays.
It's pretty much all I eat :) the simplest portable whole food
Yeah, that would be because the popularity of it peaked in the 1800s. And it contributed to the near extinction of the American Bison.
It was deliberate action by European settlers that drove bison to near extinction. Amerindians had been making bison pemmican for thousands of years sustainably
Buffalo Bill wasn't making pemmican, he was trying to destroy the food supply of the natives
I just try to not eat too much processed food and go to the gym
Breakfast, depends a lot on the day but a good one would generally have:
Some days it's Soylent. I take B12 and D on a gummy.
Lunch my easy go-to I can eat almost any time:
Dinner:
Today I had:
(Yes, I love avocado, I'm Mexican) While fish does have a lot of nutrients it's quite easy to get them from other plant sources too :p
Right now I am on ~ 1000 calorie a day. Still have some weight to loose.
Breakfast: oatmeal with 1/2 cup of milk 2% + vitamins.
Lunch: most often a frozen healthy meal ~400cal or salad with meat + fruits.
Dinner: coffee with 2% 1/2 cup of milk, and usually 2 seeded thin toasts with 1tbs of sour cream / sometimes added some hard boiled eggs.
Snacks: sometimes crunchy rice rolls with honey, fruits or a tiny tiny bit of sweets (chocolate/cake etc)
May I recommend very low carb? No need to count calories and the weight just vanishes quickly
If you do it with high meat and meat fat you won't lose muscle either
A couple of warnings: it takes up to a few weeks to become used to running on fat instead of sugar (running on fat is how it works), you will need extra salt during the first few weeks; see the keto community for more advice
I appreciate the advice! My problem is that I just love carb, like crazy.
And I only need to keep it up for about +60 days more.
I know very low calories with keto is the way to go if I want it fast, but so far I'm only about 60 days in with 30lbs loss, so that's not too shabby in my books :D and I still can eat a bit of cheesecake. A tiny one, but it is still cheese cake!!
I'm on a high fat diet.
Make it high in animal fat and get rid of seed extract oils for better health
You've been getting advice from the brain worm controlling that leather handbag.
yeah high protein + high fat seems to rule
high fat and moderate protein (1.1-1.6g/kg/day) seems to be the best for long term health.
I've been simplifying my routine, after the gym I typically just have 300-600g of very fatty meat plus a coffee or two for lunch - that's it for the whole day. OMAD. I'm lazy, very lazy.
Reading the comments mine might be the weirdest...
::: spoiler Breakfast:
::: spoiler Lunch
::: spoiler Dinner One of:
I have prediabetes along with a dozen other health conditions lol
ensure?
:::spoiler unsolicited advice on prediabetes If your worried about pre-diabetes and other metabolic symptoms (hyper tension, fatty liver, visceral obesity excess adiposity, snoring, etc) ; you might want to talk to your doctor about going low carb. Lots of the food you listed will spike your blood glucose (especially the adult formula), which will spike your insulin, which is the foremost cause of pre-diabetes and other metabolic problems. While whole grain/complex carbs are less bad then refined carbs - they are not good and will still spike your blood glucose. You can see this in real time if you put a CGM (continuous glucose monitor) on for two weeks :::
Yep ensure was the one. I wasn't sure if it was available internationally so I didn't put name brand in there.
::: spoiler Complicated Medical Stuff
Yeah I have all those problems lol. I actually did use a CGM and the most concerning thing noted was I was going into high 2's and low 3's blood sugar. Normal range is 4–7 so I was hypoglycemic for a big part of every day.
It turns out I was massively undereating for a long time and slowly starving to death, somehow without losing weight as well. When I brought it up in the past doctors were like, well you're not massively losing weight so you're fine. But I was measuring my calories and only getting 800–1400 on a good day, when my maintenance was meant to be 2400.
My doctor told me to stop starving to death as a top priority, but due to various other medical issues I physically can't eat enough food per day. It got really confusing so now I'm using Ensure even though it's not ideal for prediabetes (I can see it on the graph). All the doctors I've seen have mostly just been confused and not really sure how to help me. My disability makes it impossible to exercise enough per day.
My body seems mostly ok with my current diet of whole meal stuff, but any sugar or refined carbs really fucked me up and made me very unwell. So I'm definitely avoiding all sugar like the plague. I did keto for a while but it wasn't sustainable for me long term. So wholemeal is my compromise.
Overall a shitty situation, not much can be done to help me it seems. :::
::: spoiler complicated response
That is a common sign of insulin resistance, basically the human insulin is more attuned to the insulin curves (gentle but long lasting) for protein, but we have a diet high in carbs which spike blood glucose - so to get enough insulin to bring down the glucose in a resistant person will actually cause hypoglycemic events!
The vast majority of doctors receive little to no nutritional training (even endocrinologists) outside of tube feeding in a hospital setting - so nutritional help isn't what they are strong at.
I'm curious what happened, if your open to going into details.
You might want to reach out to medically supervised low carb programs, they may actually be equipped to help you with your medical history. Virta health is the one I have personal experience with, and they are great.
:::
Oh that's interesting. Maybe I'll try a dietician instead, I just assumed doctors know all about diabetes stuff...
::: spoiler Keto Problems
What happened with Keto was, I felt like I was eating too much fat per day. I felt greasy and horrible and disgusting and heavy, and my LDL cholesterol went even worse (6.3–7.8).
I tried fixing it by eating mostly protein and low fat instead, but considering I can't eat much volume per day, that just ended up with me eating almost nothing and things went real bad from there. I couldn't get out of bed for days at a time levels of fatigue. So I slowly added back in wholemeal carbs and some fat, and at least now I know what types of carbs cause spikes.
The reason I can't eat much is I have erosion in my esophagus, stomach, and intestines from GERD acid reflux (confirmed via endoscopy). I've been on strong acid suppressants for a while but it seems like the "damage is done" so to speak from decades of acid splashing all over the place, and it's not healing. At least I don't wake up with a melting throat anymore so I'll take that.
I'm on statins recently to try and reduce my LDL. The first type I tried gave me severe full body cramps so hopefully this type is better. And this is only a small part of my medical problems. Before we get into POTS, CFS, hEDS, MCAS, chronic migraines, arthritis, hormone problems, heart problems, neuropathy... I always forget most of my issues as well I can't keep track of them all. I take more than 10 pills per day to manage all that.
I just accepted I'm going to die sometime soon based on this trajectory.
I've been trying to increase my walking per day because I heard walking is a great way to reduce diabetes and heart attack risk. I'm up to 15 minutes walk per day and some sneaky resistance training, which knocks me out for the rest of the day, but it makes me feel like I'm doing something at least. :::
Basically my body is failing in a million different ways at once at this point. If I only had one problem it would be easy to fix, but everything interacts and compounds the issue. Thanks for listening and trying to help by the way, you're a kind person.
::: spoiler nerdy details
They do! They know how the hormones work, but not how the food relates to the hormones - they really don't get training on this.
This sounds like a gallbladder wake up issue - after a long time on low fat the gallbladder has some starting pains.
LDL, and cholesterol is not a disease - if your doing proper LCHF and in ketosis - very lean people do see a elevation in LDL, but since you indicated some adiposity this probably wasn't your scenario.
Low fat isn't sustainable on keto, if you join one of the medically supervised nutrition programs they won't let you stay low fat for the reasons you describe. The probably will have you slowly increase fat so your gallbaladder can keep up, or add some bile supplements while you adjust.
Suppressing stomach acidity does match up with your fat intake symptoms. The literature does indicate that keto (but especially zero carb) helps with GERD, but this must be done under medical supervision as medications will need to be adjusted during the onboard phase. I'd recommend either revero (zero carb) or virta health (keto) as programs to work with their physicians in a Telehealth setting.
Statins increase the risk of t2d, so that lines up with the prediabetes.
I'm not familiar with all of those - but migraines, arthritis, hormonal issues, heart, and neuropathy all have strong foundations in the underlying diet and hyperinsulinemia.
I don't think thats necessary. Work with a low carb doctor to improve your metabolic health. There are LOTS of people with testimonials about how their life turned around by focusing on small metabolic changes. I'm happy to share those if you would find them motivating. Where ever you are - you can improve - just focus on one step at a time.
That is great! every bit of movement helps.
My suspicion is that everything is rooted in metabolic problems just manifest in a hundred different ways.
Yeah! I'm happy to help if I can. I really think you should reach out to virta, this is exactly their focus. Please reach out to either revero (zero carb) or virta health (keto) to see if they can help with your health management.
:::
I get high LDL on very low carb even at 20% body fat (but with a waist smaller than my hips)
You don't need to be super lean to be a lean mass hyper responder
Really? wow. I didn't realize the effect was so common
I am here reading and snorting a bit about how particular some people are about their food and its protein content, and wondering who can afford all that salmon and greek yoghurt ... although, I'm fussy about my food as well, just in a different way.
Morning is home made sourdough, butter, cheese, often an egg, sometimes meat. Lunch is the same, if I don't forget. Dinner is either insane amounts of meat and vegetable, all home raised and grown, or something insanely unhealthy, like 1l of custard or a ramen soup or two pieces of cake. Meals I forget are replaced by coffee and a blunt (lots of small meals throughout the day are good for you!).
It's balanced in the way that very unhealthy things are combined with top quality stuff in a balanced way. 🧐
Since I often forget to eat I always have to have a quick option available, therefore custard and ramen are the lesser evils. Other than that I try to produce everything myself out of local ingredients and eat really well for really cheap.
Right now it's oatmeal+cinnamon+maple syrup/honey + raisins with milk or water
I learned I love oatmeal
Mediterranean diet, more or less.
Breakfast: toasts with grated tomatoes and olive oil, smoked salmon spread or some pate
Lunch: lentils, beans or chickpeas twice a week, pasta, tortilla, croquetas, stuff like that
Dinner: salad, fish, chicken or some omelette. some vegetables + bit of wine
Breakfast: cereal bar
Break: toast
Lunch: Ham sandwich
Dinner: chicken dinner; mash, chicken breast, peas, Yorkshire puddings, gravy.
I don't really tend to eat snacks very often.
This sounds very dry and very British.
Thank you. Although I do switch up dinner, this evening I had a gammon joint instead of chicken.
doesnt sound like youd poop very often too
once a day lol
Main bulk of the meals are the same, of course there is some variation over time, but generally rather similar. Been tracking food for last 3 years with nearly 95% accuracy. And yes i can give any random day within last 3 years and know exactly what i ate, only exclusion is some events. Intake has been correlated to bodyweight changes over time as well.
Breakfast, always the same: custom mix. 200g of yogurt, 100g of quick oats, 30g of protein powder.
Lunch depends on a weekday and work.
Lunch 1: after gym, low fat curd 180-200g, yogurt 150g, protein powder 30g, quick oats 50g.
Lunch 2: on a workday, usually last nights dinners leftovers.
Dinner: potatoes/pasta/rice/buckwheat in rotation. Some lean meats and some greens. Usually 1/3 of the plate for each.
Snacks: that's too random to write down and changes depending on what ohase im in, whatever mass gaining or fat burning.
I do more of a 5 meal thing lately. I became very regimented over the last couple years.
Morning is a 2 hour procession of water, protein coffee, regular coffee, and oatmeal.
Late morning is a piece of Ezekiel toast with a light cream cheese spread and either smoked salmon or sliced chicken breast on it.
Early afternoon is often a full or half banana. Late afternoon is protein drink and either a banana or a rice cake with honey. These two mini meals bookend my workout.
Dinner is the wild card. Chicken, salmon, shrimp, scallops, tuna.. all fair game. Usually with a vegetable and a an egg or half avocado.
Then my night snack is usually Greek yogurt with something mixed in. Mix ins range from Stur to blueberries to peanut butter.. just depends on the day. I’ve also been known to do a hard boiled egg or two instead.
what fantasy world you guys live in where you can afford SECOND BREAKFAST???
and what about PO-TA-TOES???
Lately been eating mostly salads, fajitas (kinda) and pizza.
The fajitas instead of adding mexican spices to it I add soy sauce and sweet mead. Could maybe call it a stir fry wrap? Although the cooking is a bit slower than a typical stir fry.
every meal:
i mostly don't cook. i'm not cooking for 1 person only.
i don't eat 3 meals a day. fuck that shit. snacks all the way.
For me it's
Breakfast: Wholegraim bread with a Banana (sometimes a nut spread) + Coffee
Luch: Currently due to the heat wave some type of bean salat with tofu bites and a protein bar.
Dinner: Proteinshake & lentin wavers with hummus and some vegies & vegan cold cuts.
I'm not a big bread fan, due to it not being much better than junk food IMO, but that stuff looks great!
A good reminder to me that a pescatarian diet includes non-fish seafood. That said, I haven't checked on the nutritional profiles of crustaceans for a long time. Not sure how 'healthy' or not they're currently considered...
Btw, for my wraps, I like to have these, which are mainly made out of resistant starches and only have about half the typical # of kcals. Altho when I get around to it, I'm going to try another round of making my own oat-flour wraps as a similar health upgrade.
Anyway, in terms of fish, I have salmon fairly often, and a bit of canned tunafish, and some omega-3 capsules every day. Diet is mostly soup and stew-based in general, with fresh veggies and some low-cal noodles. Air-fryer is also an essential food prep tool, as well as the spiral elements on my oven, great for precision grilling.
Shellfish should be pretty reasonable in a balanced diet but they are so expensive. Want to catch my own though not had a huge amount of success when I have tried. Need to try more places.
Molluscs? I'd be checking online (and wherever else) to see if the local ones are in clean water and/or have any issues like that. Or maybe canned would make sense.
Crabs, no chance I would go for filter feeders here and there aren't that many places suitable for them to grow anyway. Although there are a few rocky areas for sea defences they mostly have limpets on them. I think limpets would be safe to eat but are very chewy and not something you normally eat when you have other choices.
I wonder if you could make a seafood stock from them, but it feels a little wasteful to only use them for that.
Oh, crustaceans, then. I thought "shellfish" referred to molluscs specifically (because of the valves, or "shells"), but I see now that I was mistaken.
Seafood bisque is a fairly high-end item IIRC, so there's no shame there I should think. If the cooked limpets weren't good for anything else, they might also be good for fertiliser in a garden. *shrug*
Not sure if limpets are crustaceans, but yeah anything with a shell I would think is shellfish.
IIRC limpets are not filter feeders, mussels are. So in water that is sometimes polluted they are not as much of a risk while filter feeders are very high risk. Does also depend on the type of pollution though.
I know people eat crabs from the Thames, pretty sure the Solent isn't quite as bad as that for pollution. As for using them as fertiliser, maybe, but isn't protein recommended against usually? Might be ok if it's only a little but to make a stock I would think you need quite a few of them.
Quick edit - Could use limpets as bait though. Otherwise likely most suited as a famine food.
Limpets are indeed molluscs. Crustaceans are like underwater insects, with every single part of their bodies typically covered in thin-ish keratin-based plating. That said, they include some oddballs like barnacles, which build shells more like bivalve molluscs do (clams and such).
You're right about the different feeding methods of limpets and filter-feeders. Limpets are like gastropod molluscs (snails, etc) in that they eat directly from a surface or prey.
Oh, I'd generally thought that most animal material (and of course waste) makes for good fertiliser, but maybe it depends. In truth, I was thinking back about a garden project in which we used a kind of 'fish guts' solution to help grow produce. The plants loved it!
I think the main problem is that it's far more likely to attract things like rats if you are throwing out stuff like that. But it probably also depends on how you compost it.
For the last 20 years I’ve been eating only once a day (working shifts) so I’m trying to reintroduce a breakfast other than coffee with milk.
To facilitate it I’m trying the "everything smoothie" with milk, banana, cereal, protein, frozen fruits.
Lunch: water
Dinner: The everything rice with vegetables and chicken or fish.
Maybe I'm just tired after a 13 hour construction work day, but what is ezekial bread? Is this a christian bread?! And why? I googled it and it just seems to be whole grain bread?
I have:
Breakfast: random toast (peanut butter) or oatmeal (dried fruits)
Lunch: Apple, cheap superstore granola bar, Sandwiches - Winnipeg rye, lettuce sand which meat, homemade mayo, cheddar, random other ingredients. or Bulk homemade burritos - whole wheat tortillas, black beans, eggs, salsa, cheese, rice, random other ingredients.
Supper: wild variety of different meals.
Ha, can’t comment on the name but it’s a flourless bread, using sprouted grains instead. It has good macros for a bread, too. I’m a convert from 88 cent Aldi loafs.
Wild. It seems like it must be popular, there a bunch of comments here with it! I guess I am really not in the same kind of meal planning world the rest of the commenters are in! These have been really entertaining & educational for me to read.
I have a weird diet that works well for me.
I don't like fish. So it's chicken thighs for me. I get the organic ones to avoid antibiotics. I take omega-3 supplements. Sardines are supposed to be very good for us, but I just can't do it.
Breakfast: some baby carrots, and a handful of roasted cashews, plus coffee.
Main meal at lunchtime: spinach, brussel sprouts, broccoli, tomato, and onion heated up in the microwave, while the chicken pan-fries in olive oil. Topped with a simple Parmesan cheese sauce. Plus an apple.
Evening meal: frozen blueberries with a bit of instant coffee, cinnamon, sugar, and milk. A square of 85% dark chocolate.
I snack on nuts and drink decaf coffee throughout the day.
This has been my routine for over three years now. This is everything I eat, I don't go out. The meals have varied only slightly over the years. For instance, I'm currently experimenting with replacing the chicken with lentils once or twice a week, to save some money and get a bit more fiber and reduce the calories, but it might be too much fiber.