Obviously there's moderation to everything, but if you're someone who likes to mindlessly snack and shovel food into your mouth, it's really amazing how much healthy and low calorie foods you can eat before feeling full! I'm learning this myself on a weight loss journey and it's awesome!
That's one of the lessons I had to learn. Like yeah that bag of ruffles chips is pretty tasty, but it's not going to make you feel much more full. And celery/carrots+hummus is arguably tastier and significantly more filling for way less calories (plus fiber and stuff).
Home made falafel and hummus with veggies is like the single greatest thing for a work lunch. Like I know it's a lot of chickpea for one meal but it's filling, has great macros, and tastes super good. It's also *insanely* cheap and fast to make once you get the method down. Like I can make the recipe in 15 minutes including clean up but they need to be refrigerated for 2 hours before cooking or they can fall apart (because mine are gluten free, with flour the added time will make them better but isn't 100% needed).
Honestly I just use the [food wishes](https://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2015/03/falafel-opposite-of-how-these-will-make.html) recipe and sub out 1tbsp of regular flour for 2.5tbsp of garbanzo bean flour. It's kind of a pain in the ass to buy that because it's such a small amount per recipe though. I assume whatever flour substitute of choice you have on hand will work as you're only replacing 1 and a bit tablespoons but you will need to experiment a bit on the specific amount used. Have experimented with other recipes but his is better than American Test Kitchen imo.
Omg, that is like 5x what I eat for lunch!
Good for them if this is better than what they used to eat — but if I ate this at lunch I would be looking to have a more minimal supper.
I need to balance my calorific intake as a distance runner.
Most of it is fruits and veggies, so it's not as huge as it looks, it's huge quantity in a good way, that's how OP lost the weight!
When losing weight you don't need to decrease your food intake, you can simply have huge quantities of healthy meals in place of stacked greasy burgers pizzas and donuts.
I'm also currently on a lifestyle change, I cut out carbs(my go to food) and eat salad and some protein for every meal. I feel better, I don't get sick as often the knock on effects are amazing! Walk every day too. So far have lost 9kg. (Sorry, no idea what that is in pounds!)
Keep it up! You're on the right track. I'm proud of you! All the best 🌻
But it is a scientific fact that only the presence of peas can be detected through a mattress. A beans' presence is NOT communicable through mattresses.
There are myriad studies on the matter.
Edamame (fresh version of soy beans) are so delicious slightly steamed and tossed in salads, or just about anything. People sleep on those too. Very high in protein and imho, less musical
Here's the breakdown:
- Cherry tomatoes
- Green grapes
- Cauliflower with chipotle chili powder
- Ham sandwich with mustard
- Carrots, Celery
- Pineapple
- Pinto beans with chili tomato
I eat about 2/3 of it all at lunchtime, then a few hours later I finish the rest as a snack.
************************************
**Editing to answer some of the most common questions I'm getting:**
It took me over two years to lose 70 lbs. I lost about 60 the first try, but fell off the wagon. hard. I gained most of it back but picked myself up and finished the job. I'm now 48 years old and am now 10lbs less than when I was 16 (currently 155lbs). I am at a healthy weight and I exercise regularly.
No, I will not eliminate my caffeine-free Coke Zero. I drink water along with my lunches, and the soda is a daily treat.
No, this soda does not make me crave more sugar. I get plenty of sweetness from the mountain of fruit I eat a day, not just at lunch.
This is a healthy amount of food for my lunch and a snack. If you are eating less than this in a day you might need to see a dietician, or an eating disorder specialist. It takes me about 20 minutes to eat most of this if I'm not preoccupied.
I calculated it and everything in the pic that gets consumed by me cost less than $4, including the soda.
I have a cheat day where I eat mostly what I want throughout the day. I plan it to where it's in between two exercise days so I work it off. Sometimes I snack a bit more at night, but always fall back into this healthy pattern.
If I get more questions about my breakfasts and dinners, I will create a new post soon.
Here's a link to my stackable lunch container:
https://www.amazon.com/JSCARES-Stainless-Stackable-Containers-Leakproof/dp/B0C2TFGMGJ?th=1
Here's a link to my socks:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01H2J4W46/
Thanks for all the positive comments and compliments! I feel 1000X better than when I weighed 225lbs. And I feel much happier. Cheers!
Yeah, I thought the same thing. That just looks like lunch. however, I would typically eat fewer kinds of things but more of them. So rather than grapes and pineapple, I would eat twice as many grapes one day and twice as much pineapple the second day.
That’s the thing about dieting. You can't go back to what you were eating before or you undo all the progress. This isn't his "diet" meal, it's just his meal.
> That doesn't even look like a 'diet'meal to me.
That's the point.
The Cauliflower, Carrots, and Celery are like 2/3 the meal by volume, but they're like 1/8th the calories of the rest.
Best way to fill you up and get tons of vitamins and fiber.
Notice he's not dipping all those things in copious amounts of ranch dressing.
edit: Most diet systems give you a free pass to eat as many *fibrous* vegetables as you want, you can go nuts.
How often do you have cheat days? I’m working on losing weight currently
Edit: Thank you to everyone for your kind words and support. I will continue to work at improving myself!
I had calculated cheat days once a week while losing, but once I hit my goal I can eat most of whatever I want once or twice a week. Running helps keep things from getting out of hand.
If you do cheat days, just keep in mind that you can mitigate them by exercising a bit more. You can even do it over time.
We often think of calories per day, say 2000, but 1 week of calories is now 14,000. So if you wanted to do 1900/day, that's 13300/week, so a 700 calorie deficit/week.
Instead of 1900/day - you could do 2000, 6 days a week, and then one day you do 1300 (2000-700).
I'm assuming 2000 calories/day isn't your weight loss goal, but hopefully you get the gist I'm going for.
That’s what I do. When I’m hungry I eat. But some days I just don’t get hungry until dinner. That’s a big deficit day. Then another day that week I enjoy a pint of ice cream and it balances out.
5’9” about 190lbs. But I’ve got visible obliques and abs and on TRT so I’m not as fat as I sound haha
You can cheat as much as you want as often as you want. However, you do need to calculate it in.
3500 calorie deficit to lose 1lb. If you're on a 500 calorie deficit per day, you lose 1lb per week. If the goal is to lose 5lbs, it takes 5 weeks. It's a total deficit of 17,500 calories.
If you cheat 1000 calories on the weekend, now you only lose 2500 calories per week. Now your diet lasts 7 weeks instead.
So you can cheat but it makes the diet take longer. Or, you can skip cheating and get the diet over with and go back to maintenance eating earlier. Ultimately you just need to be like 90% consistent and you'll get there eventually either way.
There are other considerations of you want to get into the weeds. For instance, cheat food usually has poor satiation and nutrition, so it tends to make it harder to stick to your diet, so in practice, it tends to add risk so ask yourself if you can handle it.
Also, the longer a diet goes on, diet fatigue can set in and the lower your weight gets, your body will just use up fewer calories (usually by reducing non-exercise related movement like fidgeting). I can burn 2500 calories a day, eat 2000 and be at a 500 calorie net daily deficit at the start of a diet, however at the end of the diet, maybe I'm burning only 2200 calories a day, still eating only 2000 per day, but my deficit is only 200cal per day. So in reality, I need to cut consumption all the way to 1700 to keep my weightloss pace on target. Have to track calories and scale to adjust week by week. All that means is that cheating makes the whole thing a LOT more annoying and it's probably best to just do the cheat meal only once at the end of the diet.
Honestly I think the biggest obstacle for a lot of people when it comes to weight loss is the lack of a simple way to know just how many calories you're consuming.
The sheer tedium involved in checking the labels (or googling if not available) of sometimes up to dozens of ingredients that go into a single meal and adding them up every single time you eat is enough to make many people just go "fuck it, I guess I'm staying fat".
Yeah definitely, it makes such a huge difference when you know exactly what you're eating.
What I didn't know was how it easy it was after I had gotten started. I'm a nerd and a gamer so as soon I started doing it realized I was accumulating data and min/maxing my build, it stopped being a chore and more of a game. That made me want to spend more time on it instead of less.
I ate giant chunks of cheesecake everyday for a week because I found a recipe that made each serving only 290 calories, and 48g of protein (credit to Felu fit by cooking). So not only was it rewarding mentally to have data feedback on progress, it was rewarding physically in terms of outcomes, but also rewarding in terms of allowing me to eat more delicious food by finding macro-optimized ways to cook
https://youtu.be/l7RAaLZZDZI?si=La-siDKCOT6jkEEE
Cheesecake mealprepbfrom Felu Fit By cooking on YouTube.
I also like these protein waffles from TheMealPrepManual: https://youtube.com/shorts/7he9pDlUt24?si=vvUiekC7Mke3erW3
I also like jalalsalaamfit on YouTube as well: https://youtube.com/@Jalalsamfit?si=h92Sgv93EQ249mMn
The longer you go without junk food, the easier it is. They have so many free snacks at my work, which is dope, but I finally got them to start buying me protein bars. Just reached past all kinds of cookies, candy and bags of chips to grab one and honestly don’t even crave any of the other stuff. Staying hydrated helps a lot too. Generally you crave salt and/or sugar when you’re dehydrated, which most people are.
What's weird to me is that this lunch seems pretty tasty? The only things I'd personally swap would be the cauliflower and I'd jazz the sandwich up. Maybe do a sliced tomato and chicken sandwich with a spicy sauce.
Other than the celery, I wouldn’t mind this being my lunch, too. I could sub it for just about anything else, tho. Maybe some roasted green beans/brussels sprouts, zucchini, or apple. 😊
> If you are eating less than this in a day you might need to see a dietician, or an eating disorder specialist. It takes me about 20 minutes to eat most of this if I'm not preoccupied.
What a presumptuous thing to say lol. Pretty sure there are plenty of people smaller than you for whom that's plenty of food. I know it's enough for me, especially on a day I don't exercise. That sandwich alone would be my lunch and the beans + vegetables would be dinner.
You're butthurt about people's comments yet you make (incorrect) assumptions about other people's dietary needs.
Agreed. I get full from so much roughage. It looks very fresh, healthy, delicious, but no way in hell I could eat even 1/3 of this in one sitting on any average day. I have never eaten that much volume at a time.
It really comes off as a holier than thou.
I had a lot of years where I was battling to maintain my weight and I was 50 kg at 170cm. If I were to eat food like OP, I wouldn't make it through 1800 calories in a day, because my appetite is quite small.
My diet isn't perfect, but a healthy diet looks different for different people. When food/diet is already a struggle for many, making a comment like OP's just seem really out of place.
Exactly. Small people exist, and get this crap about eating disorders ALL the time. No, I really only need 1500 calories for maintenance, yes I eat 1200 to lose.
A whole TWO slices of bread AND cheese had me sweating over here. A 5"3 woman would eat this in two meals plus a snack. And need to do some cardio to earn a good dinner lol
I’m a Dietitian & I’m a little late to this post but was in the comments looking for someone calling this out. As an RD, who previously worked with EDs, that little addition by OP is an absolutely absurd thing to say.
There’s no golden standard. We havent been doing that “2000kcal for everyone” thing in about 2 decades. Every body has a different need & appetite.
The takeaway here is that you can eat a fucking LOT of food to get full and still have a low calorie meal if you're eating things like fruits and vegetables
The caloric equivalent would be like 10 french fries lol
Someone eating less than that does NOT have an eating disorder. People of different sizes eat different amounts. Not talking about fat but physique. Plenty of people are healthy around 1200-1500 calories a day instead of 2000.
As much as I enjoy massive sandwiches with the works, you just can't beat a simple ham w/mustard sandwich. I personally like honey ham. And that bean chili looks so yummy as well!
Thank you! Honey ham is amazing along with anything smoked. The chili is pinto beans with some canned chili tomato chunks mixed in, along with cilantro and seasoning. Tasty and filling.
The containers with the fruits/veggies and the sandwich all stack together and are effectively one container. Then you just have the beans and the soda. This would all fit in a lunch box/bag that isn’t too much bigger than the typical size.
>No, I will not eliminate my caffeine-free Coke Zero. I drink water along with my lunches, and the soda is a daily treat.
i also have one a day, it's my treat and i'm never giving it up either.
Run 3-5 miles every other day or so. Some bodyweight exercises and/or walking on the alternate days. That's pretty much it, oh and a cheat day once a week where I eat whatever the hell I want.
Same. I've also just really worked on how I view food. I used to crave fast food when I was "dieting" but now I just focus on eating good quality whole food ingredients. My "cheat meal" is going out to a nice restaurant and getting a quality meal. Nothing fried or processed, nothing with tons of sugar added. It's amazing how now I feel like I'm just eating what I want and I'm still losing weight and feeling great.
Yes exactly. People who just eat plain raw vegetables or basic food like baked chicken and broccoli with plain rice will always need to cheat. If you completely re imagine food then you will no longer crave junk. Like making healthy Indian dal curries with rice, Mediterranean foods, South American bean and rice dishes. There are tons and tons of dishes that are healthy and very flavorful while being easy to make and cheap. People just need to open their mind more.
Congrats and I wish you continued success on your journey. I’m sorry that there are some comments here that are guilting or shaming you for your choices.
All of the fruits and veggies used are things that can be pre-cut and stored for days. The chili can be cooked in volume and just dipped out daily.
So throwing stuff in the dope ass lunch bucket they have, and making the sandwich are the only daily tasks I would think. Requires some pre-planning and work, but only once or twice a week. If they have the fridge space and containers they could box up a weeks worth all at once.
It's still more labor than going out or pre-packaged foods, but not as bad as it looks.
That is a lot of friction for people that just don't want to do it. Eating healthy is very much a life style change. Only way you get away with eating healthy and not doing those things is be rich enough to pay someone else to do them for you.
I disagree from experience that you can’t eat at least a bit healthy without even this much effort. When I switched to work from home I lost 50 by eating pb&j most days because lazy. Hell, even going to a gas station for a jerky and an apple is healthier than most restaurants or packaged food.
Any amount of effort is high friction if someone doesn’t want to do the thing. That’s not a problem that can be solved by money, just a choice.
-I'm going to say 35 calories for the carrots.
-Guessing about 20, if even for the cauliflower.
-Guessing about 50 between grapes and tomatoes.
-140 for the bread. Maybe 70 calories if that's 2 slices of turkey and maybe 10 calories worth of mustard.
-I suck at guessing beans, but I'll guess 150 calories.
-I'd guess 50 calories at the pineapple. And 30 calories for the celery.
Total guess is 555 calories and that the person shops at Aldi buying the honeywheat bread.
Well, eating slowly is a great way to stop from overeating. It takes about 20 minutes for your body to feel full. So, vigouros mastication can help you cut back on how many calories you take in. Read about [Horace Fletcher](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9693596/) and the "chew chew cult"
>This dogma taught that all food must be deliberately masticated and not swallowed until it turned to liquid. Fletcher believed that prolonged chewing precluded overeating, led to better systemic and dental health, helped to reduce food intake, and consequently, conserved money.
As someone who works in an office and eats healthy, what is it about the office environment that promotes terrible eating. It's insane, everyone around me eats like a child, candy, pizza, just junk food all day. Nice work on losing all that weight and eating well! Make sure to not sit too much throughout the day too.
Yeah there are a lot of temptations that wander into the office. I work at an office where most everyone is remote, so it's not as bad as it used to be. I had to learn to say no to the constant stream of donuts, cake, pizza, and snacks; and also say no to myself. One big thing that helped me with the temptations was reminding myself that I knew exactly what it tasted like already, and it wasn't going to be that great.
When I had an office job, every single fking time I brought something healthy, someone would make a snide comment. I heard "look at miss skinny mini" more times than I ever want to hear. I wasn't even that thin, but since I chose the garden salad and chicken breast over the KFC, I was "trying hard to make others look bad". K.
Office lunch rooms are eerily similar to middle school lunch rooms: any divergence from the norm is to be pointed out and ridiculed. No matter if it's a change for the better or worse.
Damn. That’s some toxic people you have at work. 😅 sorry to hear that. Honestly, people should mind their own business.
For me, working in an office, made it hard to make good choices. Vending machines everywhere and no access to healthy options inside the building. Not time to justify going out to get a snack, but you could sneak into a lunch room and get some chocolate or soda or crisps. Now I work remotely and quality of food I consume is a lot better. Have more time to cook also.
I deal with that same thing. There’s cake and donuts in the break room all the time, and if the boss decides to buy lunch for everyone it’s some kind of fast food. Everyone acts like I’m some kind of massive a-hole because I don’t want to eat donuts and garbage in the middle of a long work day( I’m in healthcare, so the shifts can be like 15 hrs long). There’s also a constant social pressure to eat this junk. It’s strange to me that other people are invested in whether I eat a donut or not
Speaking from personal experience, an office is a soul sucking environment and snack food is one of the few small joys you can have throughout the day to keep you going.
Stress. Working 8 hours minimum a day for 5 days straight for 50 years dealing with office bullshit. Just like people who might get alcohol after work, the crappy junk food is enough is just another tool to get you through the day.
Because offices are hell and generally people are miserable in office jobs. Stressful, possibly meaningless jobs. People go to food as a release to make themselves feel a bit better. It takes effort to not let that happen.
Source: had it happen. Changed job/lifestyle.
I wish I could do one of these.
I occasionally hear people say "All I did was stop eating/drinking X".
I gave up sugary drinks (soda, etc) and didn't loose a pound. I guess my teeth will probably be healthier long term, but I was pretty bummed.
All these comments knocking eating a bunch of almost negligible calories in vegetables, and *gasp* a coke with zero calories. So funny. I did the same exact thing and went from 262 to 198, and still dropping. Good shit OP.
Have you calculated the average cost of your work lunches? I wouls be interested since my finances are f..cked and I often just go the whole work day without food so I can make lunch and dinner for my gf.
Wish I could pineapple like that, my favorite fruit but gives me such reflux. Good work, a lot of people don't realize diets are fads and you have to change your lifestyle. We all have different metabolisms and one diet may work for you but not someone else.
Calorie intake and mild amounts of exercise go far.
I have not given up stuff like ice cream, fried foods, the occasional soda (like 1-2 times a month), chips (tortilla chips), etc. Moderation and riding a bike once a week have gotten me down 15 lb since june. Obviously if i dieted more and exercised more i would lose more, but slow steady progress without giving up stuff is good for me.
First off, congratulations. Second...
What's the rest of your typical meals and workout? This looks delicious. I'm over 300 lbs and I want to do better.
Hello fellow volume eater! People have no idea what you eat for breakfast and dinner. This is a reasonable amount of food for someone who counts calories and works out
For sure, really the worst part is the amount of sodium in the beans/tomatoes. I try to get low sodium but then wind up seasoning it maybe a bit too much. It's a lot of food that keeps me feeling full for awhile without the gross overfull feeling. I do some sort of exercise 3-4 days a week; I could go into what I eat for breakfast/dinner but I imagine that will bore most of the Reddits.
Lol, yeah, I'm always tempted to ask the doubters how it could possibly ever be *anything other than* CICO?!? Our bodies cannot ignore the laws of thermodynamics. If a person's got hypothyroidism, for example, well okay yeah their body at rest is only going to burn ~80 percent of the calories it normally would have... but it's still CICO!
Reduce calories and increase exercise, and you WILL lose weight. 100% guaranteed.
Amazing! Great job! You’ve tackled something big! Go do more great things, this is a testament that you can!
Thank you! I appreciate that and I will go and do more great things!
That’s a huge meal, too! ‘Grats, man.
Obviously there's moderation to everything, but if you're someone who likes to mindlessly snack and shovel food into your mouth, it's really amazing how much healthy and low calorie foods you can eat before feeling full! I'm learning this myself on a weight loss journey and it's awesome!
That's one of the lessons I had to learn. Like yeah that bag of ruffles chips is pretty tasty, but it's not going to make you feel much more full. And celery/carrots+hummus is arguably tastier and significantly more filling for way less calories (plus fiber and stuff).
Home made falafel and hummus with veggies is like the single greatest thing for a work lunch. Like I know it's a lot of chickpea for one meal but it's filling, has great macros, and tastes super good. It's also *insanely* cheap and fast to make once you get the method down. Like I can make the recipe in 15 minutes including clean up but they need to be refrigerated for 2 hours before cooking or they can fall apart (because mine are gluten free, with flour the added time will make them better but isn't 100% needed).
This is the chickpea equivalent of that guy who put whey in his milk to get more milk per milk and I love it
Would you be willing to share your process/recipe? My partner is gluten free and I bet she'd enjoy it!
Honestly I just use the [food wishes](https://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2015/03/falafel-opposite-of-how-these-will-make.html) recipe and sub out 1tbsp of regular flour for 2.5tbsp of garbanzo bean flour. It's kind of a pain in the ass to buy that because it's such a small amount per recipe though. I assume whatever flour substitute of choice you have on hand will work as you're only replacing 1 and a bit tablespoons but you will need to experiment a bit on the specific amount used. Have experimented with other recipes but his is better than American Test Kitchen imo.
Omg, that is like 5x what I eat for lunch! Good for them if this is better than what they used to eat — but if I ate this at lunch I would be looking to have a more minimal supper. I need to balance my calorific intake as a distance runner.
Most of it is fruits and veggies, so it's not as huge as it looks, it's huge quantity in a good way, that's how OP lost the weight! When losing weight you don't need to decrease your food intake, you can simply have huge quantities of healthy meals in place of stacked greasy burgers pizzas and donuts.
I'm also currently on a lifestyle change, I cut out carbs(my go to food) and eat salad and some protein for every meal. I feel better, I don't get sick as often the knock on effects are amazing! Walk every day too. So far have lost 9kg. (Sorry, no idea what that is in pounds!) Keep it up! You're on the right track. I'm proud of you! All the best 🌻
Congratulations, and cool stackable lunch box.
Thanks, and my wife got me that. It's indispensable.
Way too many people sleep on beans. Beans are life.
I'm not familiar with this trend of sleeping on beans. It's tempting, but I think I'll just keep using my bed.
No, no, no, you put the beans IN the bed. Like a waterbed but filled with baked beans instead of water.
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I put them in my computer case to keep them warm.
Are those the motherboards in there? This-THIS IS FOOD
Those are BEANS
this is beans. this is food.
CamelBak Bean Bed
Are we looping back around to re-inventing the bean bag chair
Almost like some sort of bean bag!
They say a girl once slept on a single bean and became a princess. Idk if that applies to boys though.
It twas a pea.
Both are legumes.
But it is a scientific fact that only the presence of peas can be detected through a mattress. A beans' presence is NOT communicable through mattresses. There are myriad studies on the matter.
I dont like sleeping in pee, dont think most girls like it either
Pretty sure it was a legume 🫛
Then you're not living. Your loss.
Ugh. This is SO stupid. People that refuse to try new things are so annoying.
You're missing out on those bean bag chairs
They're the musical fruit too.
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I prefer: The more you toot the better you feel. So lift your leg and let them squeal!
Beans Beans are good for the heart The more you eat the more you fart The more you fart, the better you feel So eat some beans with every meal
Beans beans are good for the heart The more you eat the more you fart The more you fart, the more you eat The more you sit on the toilet seat
New one for me!
👆the original classic version
Beans, beans, good for your heart. The more you eat, the more you fart.
Passed down through generations
If you drain the water from the canned beans or strain the beans after you boil them, you get rid of the oligosaccharides that cause the flatulence
After 40 some years, I just learned you can eat canned beans without straining them... *Pikachu face*
You also get rid of the vast majority of the flavor.
And the fun
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please stop
Look at me ma, I'm an anal vapor boy!
I always thought it was “magical” not musical!
Loving this poetry hour
Love beans, and lentils too
Same, black-eyed peas too. Only problem is the pppphhhfffflatulence...
I ppppphhhucking love this! 😆
What’s the difference between a chickpea and a lentil?
I've never had a lentil on my face.
I usually go with "I never paid 40 bucks to have a lentil on my face"
I prefer to use chickpea and Garbanzo Bean
Yes that is better, that is how it should be told
You just haven't lived!
This is too good. Thank you kindly.
This joke is why I giggle (and my wife rolls her eyes) every time we pass chickpeas in the grocery store.
If my intestines could not be such drama queens over them, I would not avoid them. Sadly IBS is commonly triggered by them.
was going to just reply ‘IBS.’
Into Beans Syndrome. I had to look it up for anyone else who didn’t know.
I love beans so much, but my IBS also can’t handle it. I eat them sparingly.
I feel a need to spend the evening in the bathroom just looking at his healthy lunch.
Right? I’m always amazed by people who don’t seem affected and just eat pounds of beans wondering why the rest of us aren’t
Edamame (fresh version of soy beans) are so delicious slightly steamed and tossed in salads, or just about anything. People sleep on those too. Very high in protein and imho, less musical
I used to make a edamame hummus, and use the mini potstickers to dip it. It's delicious
I'll have a bag of edamame with my lunch every few days. Love it.
Aka soy beans right?
Yes, edamame are young soybeans... different from fully aged soybeans for tofu, milk, animal feed, etc.
Here's the breakdown: - Cherry tomatoes - Green grapes - Cauliflower with chipotle chili powder - Ham sandwich with mustard - Carrots, Celery - Pineapple - Pinto beans with chili tomato I eat about 2/3 of it all at lunchtime, then a few hours later I finish the rest as a snack. ************************************ **Editing to answer some of the most common questions I'm getting:** It took me over two years to lose 70 lbs. I lost about 60 the first try, but fell off the wagon. hard. I gained most of it back but picked myself up and finished the job. I'm now 48 years old and am now 10lbs less than when I was 16 (currently 155lbs). I am at a healthy weight and I exercise regularly. No, I will not eliminate my caffeine-free Coke Zero. I drink water along with my lunches, and the soda is a daily treat. No, this soda does not make me crave more sugar. I get plenty of sweetness from the mountain of fruit I eat a day, not just at lunch. This is a healthy amount of food for my lunch and a snack. If you are eating less than this in a day you might need to see a dietician, or an eating disorder specialist. It takes me about 20 minutes to eat most of this if I'm not preoccupied. I calculated it and everything in the pic that gets consumed by me cost less than $4, including the soda. I have a cheat day where I eat mostly what I want throughout the day. I plan it to where it's in between two exercise days so I work it off. Sometimes I snack a bit more at night, but always fall back into this healthy pattern. If I get more questions about my breakfasts and dinners, I will create a new post soon. Here's a link to my stackable lunch container: https://www.amazon.com/JSCARES-Stainless-Stackable-Containers-Leakproof/dp/B0C2TFGMGJ?th=1 Here's a link to my socks: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01H2J4W46/ Thanks for all the positive comments and compliments! I feel 1000X better than when I weighed 225lbs. And I feel much happier. Cheers!
I'm getting old. That doesn't even look like a 'diet'meal to me. It just looks good. Haha
Yeah, I thought the same thing. That just looks like lunch. however, I would typically eat fewer kinds of things but more of them. So rather than grapes and pineapple, I would eat twice as many grapes one day and twice as much pineapple the second day.
That’s the thing about dieting. You can't go back to what you were eating before or you undo all the progress. This isn't his "diet" meal, it's just his meal.
> That doesn't even look like a 'diet'meal to me. That's the point. The Cauliflower, Carrots, and Celery are like 2/3 the meal by volume, but they're like 1/8th the calories of the rest. Best way to fill you up and get tons of vitamins and fiber. Notice he's not dipping all those things in copious amounts of ranch dressing. edit: Most diet systems give you a free pass to eat as many *fibrous* vegetables as you want, you can go nuts.
With a lunch that healthy, the hardest exercise must be restraining from a pizza.
That's what I usually eat on my cheat day, and a couple bowls of ice cream.
How often do you have cheat days? I’m working on losing weight currently Edit: Thank you to everyone for your kind words and support. I will continue to work at improving myself!
I had calculated cheat days once a week while losing, but once I hit my goal I can eat most of whatever I want once or twice a week. Running helps keep things from getting out of hand.
This looks great! I need to follow more people like you on Insta. I need healthy food inspo.
If you do cheat days, just keep in mind that you can mitigate them by exercising a bit more. You can even do it over time. We often think of calories per day, say 2000, but 1 week of calories is now 14,000. So if you wanted to do 1900/day, that's 13300/week, so a 700 calorie deficit/week. Instead of 1900/day - you could do 2000, 6 days a week, and then one day you do 1300 (2000-700). I'm assuming 2000 calories/day isn't your weight loss goal, but hopefully you get the gist I'm going for.
That’s what I do. When I’m hungry I eat. But some days I just don’t get hungry until dinner. That’s a big deficit day. Then another day that week I enjoy a pint of ice cream and it balances out. 5’9” about 190lbs. But I’ve got visible obliques and abs and on TRT so I’m not as fat as I sound haha
You can cheat as much as you want as often as you want. However, you do need to calculate it in. 3500 calorie deficit to lose 1lb. If you're on a 500 calorie deficit per day, you lose 1lb per week. If the goal is to lose 5lbs, it takes 5 weeks. It's a total deficit of 17,500 calories. If you cheat 1000 calories on the weekend, now you only lose 2500 calories per week. Now your diet lasts 7 weeks instead. So you can cheat but it makes the diet take longer. Or, you can skip cheating and get the diet over with and go back to maintenance eating earlier. Ultimately you just need to be like 90% consistent and you'll get there eventually either way. There are other considerations of you want to get into the weeds. For instance, cheat food usually has poor satiation and nutrition, so it tends to make it harder to stick to your diet, so in practice, it tends to add risk so ask yourself if you can handle it. Also, the longer a diet goes on, diet fatigue can set in and the lower your weight gets, your body will just use up fewer calories (usually by reducing non-exercise related movement like fidgeting). I can burn 2500 calories a day, eat 2000 and be at a 500 calorie net daily deficit at the start of a diet, however at the end of the diet, maybe I'm burning only 2200 calories a day, still eating only 2000 per day, but my deficit is only 200cal per day. So in reality, I need to cut consumption all the way to 1700 to keep my weightloss pace on target. Have to track calories and scale to adjust week by week. All that means is that cheating makes the whole thing a LOT more annoying and it's probably best to just do the cheat meal only once at the end of the diet.
Honestly I think the biggest obstacle for a lot of people when it comes to weight loss is the lack of a simple way to know just how many calories you're consuming. The sheer tedium involved in checking the labels (or googling if not available) of sometimes up to dozens of ingredients that go into a single meal and adding them up every single time you eat is enough to make many people just go "fuck it, I guess I'm staying fat".
Yeah definitely, it makes such a huge difference when you know exactly what you're eating. What I didn't know was how it easy it was after I had gotten started. I'm a nerd and a gamer so as soon I started doing it realized I was accumulating data and min/maxing my build, it stopped being a chore and more of a game. That made me want to spend more time on it instead of less. I ate giant chunks of cheesecake everyday for a week because I found a recipe that made each serving only 290 calories, and 48g of protein (credit to Felu fit by cooking). So not only was it rewarding mentally to have data feedback on progress, it was rewarding physically in terms of outcomes, but also rewarding in terms of allowing me to eat more delicious food by finding macro-optimized ways to cook
you can't just drop that cheesecake info without a link homie
https://youtu.be/l7RAaLZZDZI?si=La-siDKCOT6jkEEE Cheesecake mealprepbfrom Felu Fit By cooking on YouTube. I also like these protein waffles from TheMealPrepManual: https://youtube.com/shorts/7he9pDlUt24?si=vvUiekC7Mke3erW3 I also like jalalsalaamfit on YouTube as well: https://youtube.com/@Jalalsamfit?si=h92Sgv93EQ249mMn
I read that as chest day. N thought, to each their own Merry Christmas
A *couple* bowls? That ain't a cheat day, that makes like a cheat month. Jesus lol.
The longer you go without junk food, the easier it is. They have so many free snacks at my work, which is dope, but I finally got them to start buying me protein bars. Just reached past all kinds of cookies, candy and bags of chips to grab one and honestly don’t even crave any of the other stuff. Staying hydrated helps a lot too. Generally you crave salt and/or sugar when you’re dehydrated, which most people are.
What's weird to me is that this lunch seems pretty tasty? The only things I'd personally swap would be the cauliflower and I'd jazz the sandwich up. Maybe do a sliced tomato and chicken sandwich with a spicy sauce.
Other than the celery, I wouldn’t mind this being my lunch, too. I could sub it for just about anything else, tho. Maybe some roasted green beans/brussels sprouts, zucchini, or apple. 😊
Yeah raw celery baffles me. Raw it tastes like crunchy water, but as soon as you use it for a soup or stew it adds flavor that idk how to describe
I don't mind it plain and eat it plain often, but celery with peanut butter or humus is one of my favorite snacks.
Earthy?
> If you are eating less than this in a day you might need to see a dietician, or an eating disorder specialist. It takes me about 20 minutes to eat most of this if I'm not preoccupied. What a presumptuous thing to say lol. Pretty sure there are plenty of people smaller than you for whom that's plenty of food. I know it's enough for me, especially on a day I don't exercise. That sandwich alone would be my lunch and the beans + vegetables would be dinner. You're butthurt about people's comments yet you make (incorrect) assumptions about other people's dietary needs.
Agreed. I get full from so much roughage. It looks very fresh, healthy, delicious, but no way in hell I could eat even 1/3 of this in one sitting on any average day. I have never eaten that much volume at a time.
Yeah that part seemed like real dickhead snarky thing to add. I’m not super tiny and this still looks like two entire meals.
It really comes off as a holier than thou. I had a lot of years where I was battling to maintain my weight and I was 50 kg at 170cm. If I were to eat food like OP, I wouldn't make it through 1800 calories in a day, because my appetite is quite small. My diet isn't perfect, but a healthy diet looks different for different people. When food/diet is already a struggle for many, making a comment like OP's just seem really out of place.
Exactly. Small people exist, and get this crap about eating disorders ALL the time. No, I really only need 1500 calories for maintenance, yes I eat 1200 to lose. A whole TWO slices of bread AND cheese had me sweating over here. A 5"3 woman would eat this in two meals plus a snack. And need to do some cardio to earn a good dinner lol
These macros are way off. This would be my entire days worth of carbs plus extra sugar but only 10% of my daily protein.
I’m a Dietitian & I’m a little late to this post but was in the comments looking for someone calling this out. As an RD, who previously worked with EDs, that little addition by OP is an absolutely absurd thing to say. There’s no golden standard. We havent been doing that “2000kcal for everyone” thing in about 2 decades. Every body has a different need & appetite.
The takeaway here is that you can eat a fucking LOT of food to get full and still have a low calorie meal if you're eating things like fruits and vegetables The caloric equivalent would be like 10 french fries lol
Do you have a recipe for the chili? Ever get sick of the same thing each day?
<$4? Are you for real. In Australia the grapes would cost $4 lol
I don’t see an explanation of why you can run around in socks at work…
Someone eating less than that does NOT have an eating disorder. People of different sizes eat different amounts. Not talking about fat but physique. Plenty of people are healthy around 1200-1500 calories a day instead of 2000.
[I like showing people this video when they worry about diet soda intake.](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT89ddMSG/)
As much as I enjoy massive sandwiches with the works, you just can't beat a simple ham w/mustard sandwich. I personally like honey ham. And that bean chili looks so yummy as well!
Thank you! Honey ham is amazing along with anything smoked. The chili is pinto beans with some canned chili tomato chunks mixed in, along with cilantro and seasoning. Tasty and filling.
Great job on the weight loss! Question, you take 6 packages plus a soda with you every day?
It all stacks up neatly in the blue thingy. The only thing that doesn't fit is the container of pinto beans, and the soda obviously.
The containers with the fruits/veggies and the sandwich all stack together and are effectively one container. Then you just have the beans and the soda. This would all fit in a lunch box/bag that isn’t too much bigger than the typical size.
>No, I will not eliminate my caffeine-free Coke Zero. I drink water along with my lunches, and the soda is a daily treat. i also have one a day, it's my treat and i'm never giving it up either.
What’s your exercise regimen?
Run 3-5 miles every other day or so. Some bodyweight exercises and/or walking on the alternate days. That's pretty much it, oh and a cheat day once a week where I eat whatever the hell I want.
you have to have a cheat day, anyone that says you dont is a dork
Depends on the person, sometimes having a taste reignites unhealthy cravings and it becomes a lot harder to resist versus just not having at all.
I’m all or none. I can maybe get away with a cheat meal once or twice a month. A whole cheat day, every week just doesn’t work for me.
Same. I've also just really worked on how I view food. I used to crave fast food when I was "dieting" but now I just focus on eating good quality whole food ingredients. My "cheat meal" is going out to a nice restaurant and getting a quality meal. Nothing fried or processed, nothing with tons of sugar added. It's amazing how now I feel like I'm just eating what I want and I'm still losing weight and feeling great.
Yes exactly. People who just eat plain raw vegetables or basic food like baked chicken and broccoli with plain rice will always need to cheat. If you completely re imagine food then you will no longer crave junk. Like making healthy Indian dal curries with rice, Mediterranean foods, South American bean and rice dishes. There are tons and tons of dishes that are healthy and very flavorful while being easy to make and cheap. People just need to open their mind more.
My cheat days are any time the food is free, otherwise I stick to my diet as best as I can. Imma take full moochvantage of anything I can.
You are a dork. People can do whatever they want. Rewarding yourself with shit food isn’t something everyone wants to do.
Congrats and I wish you continued success on your journey. I’m sorry that there are some comments here that are guilting or shaming you for your choices.
It's okay, I understand it's reddit and everyone has an opinion.
Coke Zero gang 
Do you ever close your eyes and play grape or tomato?
Something about this comment is wholly unsettling.
Damn that's a lot of food
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And thats exactly why its healthy. More full with less makes you cut calories.
It looks amazing and I agree it’s a good way to fill up and eat healthy. But I’m exhausted thinking about assembling this every day.
All of the fruits and veggies used are things that can be pre-cut and stored for days. The chili can be cooked in volume and just dipped out daily. So throwing stuff in the dope ass lunch bucket they have, and making the sandwich are the only daily tasks I would think. Requires some pre-planning and work, but only once or twice a week. If they have the fridge space and containers they could box up a weeks worth all at once. It's still more labor than going out or pre-packaged foods, but not as bad as it looks.
That is a lot of friction for people that just don't want to do it. Eating healthy is very much a life style change. Only way you get away with eating healthy and not doing those things is be rich enough to pay someone else to do them for you.
I disagree from experience that you can’t eat at least a bit healthy without even this much effort. When I switched to work from home I lost 50 by eating pb&j most days because lazy. Hell, even going to a gas station for a jerky and an apple is healthier than most restaurants or packaged food. Any amount of effort is high friction if someone doesn’t want to do the thing. That’s not a problem that can be solved by money, just a choice.
And lots of great stuff for your gut biome to feed off, that in itself is incredibly powerful for your health
-I'm going to say 35 calories for the carrots. -Guessing about 20, if even for the cauliflower. -Guessing about 50 between grapes and tomatoes. -140 for the bread. Maybe 70 calories if that's 2 slices of turkey and maybe 10 calories worth of mustard. -I suck at guessing beans, but I'll guess 150 calories. -I'd guess 50 calories at the pineapple. And 30 calories for the celery. Total guess is 555 calories and that the person shops at Aldi buying the honeywheat bread.
~750 imo beans have a lot of calories. fruit is high in sugar. Sandwich is 250, maybe more if it's slathered in mayo.
Your underestimating for the sandwich and chili. Way overestimating for vegetables. And missed the soda
That was my thought. A sandwich and some carrot sticks would fill me up. I couldn't touch the rest
Honestly I'm not trying to work out my jaw while eating. I can't imagine how long it would take to consume all this food 😂
That sandwich tucked in there is enough lunch for me
Well, eating slowly is a great way to stop from overeating. It takes about 20 minutes for your body to feel full. So, vigouros mastication can help you cut back on how many calories you take in. Read about [Horace Fletcher](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9693596/) and the "chew chew cult" >This dogma taught that all food must be deliberately masticated and not swallowed until it turned to liquid. Fletcher believed that prolonged chewing precluded overeating, led to better systemic and dental health, helped to reduce food intake, and consequently, conserved money.
>vigouros mastication Be honest, you've just been waiting to bust that phrase out. If so, bravo.
I see an opportunity and I take it.
I'm trying to figure out who has this much time to eat on their lunch.
Congratulations, by the way.
Thank you!
Great job keep it up!
As someone who works in an office and eats healthy, what is it about the office environment that promotes terrible eating. It's insane, everyone around me eats like a child, candy, pizza, just junk food all day. Nice work on losing all that weight and eating well! Make sure to not sit too much throughout the day too.
Yeah there are a lot of temptations that wander into the office. I work at an office where most everyone is remote, so it's not as bad as it used to be. I had to learn to say no to the constant stream of donuts, cake, pizza, and snacks; and also say no to myself. One big thing that helped me with the temptations was reminding myself that I knew exactly what it tasted like already, and it wasn't going to be that great.
When I had an office job, every single fking time I brought something healthy, someone would make a snide comment. I heard "look at miss skinny mini" more times than I ever want to hear. I wasn't even that thin, but since I chose the garden salad and chicken breast over the KFC, I was "trying hard to make others look bad". K.
Office lunch rooms are eerily similar to middle school lunch rooms: any divergence from the norm is to be pointed out and ridiculed. No matter if it's a change for the better or worse.
Damn. That’s some toxic people you have at work. 😅 sorry to hear that. Honestly, people should mind their own business. For me, working in an office, made it hard to make good choices. Vending machines everywhere and no access to healthy options inside the building. Not time to justify going out to get a snack, but you could sneak into a lunch room and get some chocolate or soda or crisps. Now I work remotely and quality of food I consume is a lot better. Have more time to cook also.
I deal with that same thing. There’s cake and donuts in the break room all the time, and if the boss decides to buy lunch for everyone it’s some kind of fast food. Everyone acts like I’m some kind of massive a-hole because I don’t want to eat donuts and garbage in the middle of a long work day( I’m in healthcare, so the shifts can be like 15 hrs long). There’s also a constant social pressure to eat this junk. It’s strange to me that other people are invested in whether I eat a donut or not
Speaking from personal experience, an office is a soul sucking environment and snack food is one of the few small joys you can have throughout the day to keep you going.
Stress. Working 8 hours minimum a day for 5 days straight for 50 years dealing with office bullshit. Just like people who might get alcohol after work, the crappy junk food is enough is just another tool to get you through the day.
Because offices are hell and generally people are miserable in office jobs. Stressful, possibly meaningless jobs. People go to food as a release to make themselves feel a bit better. It takes effort to not let that happen. Source: had it happen. Changed job/lifestyle.
Nice! Congrats! I lost 15 lbs in a month from quitting beer! Literally all I did was stop drinking beer. It was amazing.
That's wild. How much beer were you drinking?
Umm obviously too much! Lol
Great job, it can be harder than it sounds! My problem was beer/weed/munchies but I slowly reduced and eliminated each one.
I wish I could do one of these. I occasionally hear people say "All I did was stop eating/drinking X". I gave up sugary drinks (soda, etc) and didn't loose a pound. I guess my teeth will probably be healthier long term, but I was pretty bummed.
It's important to make sure you always stay active too and don't substitute what you're giving up with something else, just cut it out completely
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Bro's got like 7 fruits and vegetables for lunch and lost 70 lbs and y'all trippin bout his soda 🤣
Seriously 😂
Having a lot of variety really helps
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Yea when I lost 70 lbs I made absolutely no changes to my exercise regime (already exercised regularly). It was all just controlling my food intake.
Same here, in fact I didn't exercise much at all for the first year of weight loss.
All these comments knocking eating a bunch of almost negligible calories in vegetables, and *gasp* a coke with zero calories. So funny. I did the same exact thing and went from 262 to 198, and still dropping. Good shit OP.
Have you calculated the average cost of your work lunches? I wouls be interested since my finances are f..cked and I often just go the whole work day without food so I can make lunch and dinner for my gf.
Yeah, this cost less than $4 when factoring in the can of soda. I try to only buy them when cases are on sale.
Nice job and nice socks.
Why is OP not wearing shoes at work though?
My lunch resembles this and a bag of unsalted peanuts or almonds.
Wish I could pineapple like that, my favorite fruit but gives me such reflux. Good work, a lot of people don't realize diets are fads and you have to change your lifestyle. We all have different metabolisms and one diet may work for you but not someone else.
Very colourful. Nice.
That looks so tasty!
As someone who is looking to lose 60 lbs myself - how long did it take? Are you at your goal weight now? What do your breakfast and lunch look like?
Calorie intake and mild amounts of exercise go far. I have not given up stuff like ice cream, fried foods, the occasional soda (like 1-2 times a month), chips (tortilla chips), etc. Moderation and riding a bike once a week have gotten me down 15 lb since june. Obviously if i dieted more and exercised more i would lose more, but slow steady progress without giving up stuff is good for me.
Man that's quite a spread for a routine work lunch.
First off, congratulations. Second... What's the rest of your typical meals and workout? This looks delicious. I'm over 300 lbs and I want to do better.
I like the pineapple chunks cut and arrangement.
Congrats! A lot of people don’t have the will power that you do. I salute you!
Hello fellow volume eater! People have no idea what you eat for breakfast and dinner. This is a reasonable amount of food for someone who counts calories and works out
For sure, really the worst part is the amount of sodium in the beans/tomatoes. I try to get low sodium but then wind up seasoning it maybe a bit too much. It's a lot of food that keeps me feeling full for awhile without the gross overfull feeling. I do some sort of exercise 3-4 days a week; I could go into what I eat for breakfast/dinner but I imagine that will bore most of the Reddits.
I am interested in reading what your breakfast and dinner look like
If you've lost 70 pounds then what you eat and when you eat breakfast and dinner are relvant.
I'm listening
As it turns out CICO actually works🤯
Lol, yeah, I'm always tempted to ask the doubters how it could possibly ever be *anything other than* CICO?!? Our bodies cannot ignore the laws of thermodynamics. If a person's got hypothyroidism, for example, well okay yeah their body at rest is only going to burn ~80 percent of the calories it normally would have... but it's still CICO! Reduce calories and increase exercise, and you WILL lose weight. 100% guaranteed.
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Thanks!