Do you think it is possible to save money and get in shape at the same time? I am going to try it and here is how.
Off shopping list: beer, cheese, fowl, fruit juice, meat, most fruit, milk, spirits, wine.
On shopping list: almonds, beans, brown rice, buttermilk, couscous, lettuce, limes, melons, miso, olives, olive oil, organic eggs, pasta, seltzer, squash, tamari, tofu, tomatoes, tykmælk, vegetables, vinegar, wild local fish, yogurt.
Will accept but will not buy: boring or rare foods such as butter, bread, caviar, cereal, honey, organic or wild fowl / meat / shellfish, sugar.
Rationale: down with sugar, fat, and industrialized food! What do you think? The locals say this is far too radical, but I think it sounds good.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
That sounds super healthy! I could never do it though. I will never willingly give up fruit, juice, or milk, and only grudgingly cheese. I think as long as you eat lots of greens/vegetables and pick meats that are lower in fat, and eat lots of grains and things with polyunsaturated fatty acids in them, and walk an hour or so you’re good. I do eat cheese, but small amounts of it. Milk was canon in my parents’ house as my dad grew up on a dairy farm. This is the “diet” that my parents taught us as kids, and that I try to stick to now. I say diet in quotation marks because I think the whole concept of eating ridiculously small amounts of food in order to lose weight is intrinsically unhealthy. What you are doing sounds great. What has helped me to eat healthy is finding vegetables that I actually think taste great.
P.S. Miso for the win!
Well, that’s what I do normally, but I want to get more extreme and see what it will do. This is not for the academic year, I couldn’t be disciplined enough, or for parties. I want to cut down on cooking, it’s too hot for that, and on shopping, it’s too hot for that too.
What exactly do you mean by ‘getting in shape’?
List looks good except I wouldn’t lump fat with sugar. Fat should be an integral part of a healthy diet and it’s, well, yummy. I’d also try to eat more protein and fiber.
How about oatmeal (steelcut)? Great source of protein and fiber.
Another thing I like to do is to cook lentil soups in bulk and then quickly warm them up and add sauteed spinach/dollop of yogurt/fried egg/knock yourself out with whatever else on top. Saves time, it’s cheap and highly nutritious. If there’s an indian store nearby you can get dozens of different kinds of lentils for cheap. Otherwise it may not be worth buying as standard american supermarkets sell lentils at premium prices because of, you know, the exotic factor. Frozen spinach or broccoli aren’t too bad (and they’re much cheaper) if you’re planning to add them to soups.
If you know how to take apart a whole chicken, that’s a lot of cheap protein for you. And you can use the carcass to make delicious chicken stock.
Well the chicken, this is what I do in winter, and I may add that to the list if I can get organic or halal ones or something. These Arkansas industrialized chickens we’ve got, I am not convinced are healthy.
Soup in general I should make more of though. I wish I liked lentils better than I do. Maybe I can work on that. There’s a new Asian market I haven’t been to and maybe it has Indian things.
Oatmeal, I know I should, but it’s on my list of boring foods. I want ratatouille and pisto with couscous or kasha or bulghur wheat or something. Fat, yes, but I want meat to be organic and I’m not a butter person … olive oil! Almonds! Pistachios! Swordfish! Salmon!
(Out of budget!)
In shape, this town is too fattening, 10 pounds have got to go and I want more muscles! I want to be in shape for … Mt. Whitney? Aconcagua? I used to be in better shape than the students, but the tide is turning … they’re less blob-like than in the 90s and I will be moreso if I do not stop! 🙂
Kinda offtopic, but as far as getting in shape goes, I think it would be beneficial for you if you set some specific and measurable goals for yourself. ‘Losing 10 lbs’ is a different goal than ‘gaining muscle’ or ‘getting in cardio shape to climb a mountain’ and the diet and exercise strategies you’d employ to achieve those goals would obviously be vastly different.
Also, muscle gain means weight gain but you also want to lose weight, so a candidate goal for you could be to lower your fat%. Overall weight is never an issue if it’s composed of mostly muscle.
Another candidate goal in terms of strength gain could be something like ‘by the end of x months I want to be able to bench press my body weight, squat 3/4 my body weight. And so on.
OK then I’ll do the weight lifting goals. I want both more muscle and less weight. The fact that I’ve gained 10 pounds and lost muscle and cardio fitness means things have gone further than I would like to think. So, now really is the time to get on it. I want to be in good high Sierra style backpacking shape and right now I only am insofar as I still know how to hike!
I’m engaging in the same efforts. I’ve gained over 15lbs since I started my grad. program, and I think a lot of it has to do with moving from a city where I walked everywhere, to a location that does not make it easy to walk from place to place (nor is there anywhere to walk to, really). My shopping cart is always filled with produce, but without exercises, not much happens. I stop and start, stop and start, and I’m starting again, this time with running.
Maybe it was living in such a great metro area for walking and outdoor life in graduate school that gave me the wrong impression of what it was like to do academia?
I remember the shock at the poor quality of produce in the stores at my first job, and the lack of farmer’s markets … in the US and abroad I’d never lived without a farmer’s market before. I was a lucky dog for quite a while and there are ways in which I still am!
Sounds very sensible.
Also, I’ve noticed when eating healthy I stay fuller longer and stuff.
But tonight we will have pizza-fueled grading.
Here’s a cool graphic that might help you identify some health foods and supplements that aren’t effective.
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/snake-oil-supplements/
That’s pretty — and interesting! I seem to be big on: liver – spinach – fatty fish like tuna, swordfish, salmon, and herring – zinc – B complex with C.
In the program outlined here, I am liking the elimination of dairy products other than yogurt. It’s still hard to resist cheese, but – cost, cost, cost. I’ve fallen off the wagon a few times on fruit, fruit juice, and wine, I like these once in a while, but – cost, and sugar.
Ideally, all my fruit would be from my own trees, and wine and cheese and dried fruits would be for times like Christmas, I think.
OT: if you feel like revealing: are you at Irvine (you say you’re in OC) and if so, do you like UCI?
Hmm. Can I email you?
profacero@gmail.com
I’m thinking about the new law program at UCI. I’m from Santa Barbara and have lived in LA, but none of this since the late 80s. I am wondering what it really feels like to live there now, or whether I should prefer Houston and the DF.
I’d love to end up in some sort of beach cottage in, say, Corona del Mar or wherever is good now, still unpolluted and not too pretentious.
…the food is working! I have only lost one pound but I look amazing now, comparatively speaking.
Where I have fallen off the wagon: some wine, some fruit juice, some fruit, some small amounts of meat and fowl; no brown rice yet.
Modifications to plan: I am going to add honey and skim milk. And start grooving on that brown rice, seaweed, and miso. I want to stay away from both wine and fruit juice, at least at home – too sweet – some fruit is OK if I can afford it – need more tofu. I am such a glutton for meat and vegetables, though.
Your weight fluctuates between 3-5 pounds in a single day so that one pound weight loss doesn’t mean much. More important is that you look better. Congrats on that!
More power to you if you can drink skim milk. I can’t stand it!
…it’s to put in coffee. On the no liquids with calories in them theory, I’ve been drinking it black. I don’t like skim milk either but… everything is different in the current regime.
…I found whole wheat couscous, good. Rice is one of those things one should eat but it’s one I get bored with, cooking it and having it and eating it.
…and it is probably a lie that I will ever be big on tofu.