College Diet

Diet and Nutrition
1

First off, I’m a poor college student that lives in the dorms. Meaning I cant really cook anything because they are Nazi’s about grills and stuff. I came up with a diet that I have been following for about a week and I have seen some results so far.

meal 1: Egg whites

Meal 2: 1/2 turkey sandwich on wheat with lots of turkey and veggies

Meal 3: Handful of Almonds

Meal 4:1 Scoop Surge pre-workout (Protein shake on off days)

1 scoop Surge + creatine PWO

Meal 5: 1 large cup chili

Meal 6: 1 Spoonful peanut butter

Meal 7: Can of Tuna

A few things change sometimes, buts its roughly:

1800 cals
160 g protein
90g carbs
60g fat

I supplement my fiber and take fish oil.

Body Stats(I don’t have pictures yet):
5’10"
~187 lbs
Around 15% BF

I do a 15-20 minutes steep incline walk 5 days a week.

Also I don’t have much of a lifting routine because I am still recovering from shoulder surgery, but I do what I can with leg press, calf press, seated rows, light lat pull downs, bicep and tricep work.

Any other info you guys need just let me know. Any help would be appreciated.

2

I feel your pain. What are you trying to do? Get bigger? Trim the fat? eating is a hard thing for me b/c I enjoy good food. They sell marinated Tuna in a pouch that is head and shoulders above the can, they are little more expensive but good to treat yourself. Add some fruit with the Almonds(I say that b/c I love fruit =) also you can check out some of the recipes that Shugart puts up there, the last one was awsome. 1800 cals to me seams low unless your trying to loose fat

3

What results could you be seeing? Must be fat loss because that’s a very low calorie diet.

4

My guess is that you could up your calories a bit (maybe to 2500 or so?), especially if you’re doing that amount of cardio.
Overall your diet looks OK, but not great.

I’m 5’6", 160, and a girl and I out-eat you day in and day out … AND I’m cutting (and successful,too, for all you naysayers).

You can just supplement with, say, two protein shakes a day.
Throw a piece of fruit into your first meal.
Cottage cheese.
Whatever.

Also, get more green, leafy veggies :slight_smile:

5

Do you have a microwave, refrigerator/freezer, blender? Blend some grains with your shake, 1-1/2c of oats and flax with Metabolic Drive is tasty.What’s the source of your chili? If you have access to a friends kitchen once a week I’ve got a great low GI chili recipe that freezes well, PM me. Learn to spice things up to give your food some variety. A boring diet leads to cheating with tasty crap food “MMMMM—Donuts”.

6

[quote]Phileaux wrote:
Do you have a microwave, refrigerator/freezer, blender? Blend some grains with your shake, 1-1/2c of oats and flax with MD is tasty.What’s the source of your chili? If you have access to a friends kitchen once a week I’ve got a great low GI chili recipe that freezes well, PM me. Learn to spice things up to give your food some variety. A boring diet leads to cheating with tasty crap food “MMMMM—Donuts”. [/quote]

Point. Eating is the hardest thing for me. As I said, I like good food. Sadly I have a confetion to make…I had a a Snikers to day =_(

7

You’re 187 lbs. I’m thinking you need a good 2800 - 3500 kcal a day to grow.

8

You are poor and can afford Surge?

9

[quote]Ripsaw3689 wrote:
First off, I’m a poor college student that lives in the dorms. Meaning I cant really cook anything because they are Nazi’s about grills and stuff. I came up with a diet that I have been following for about a week and I have seen some results so far.

meal 1: Egg whites

Meal 2: 1/2 turkey sandwich on wheat with lots of turkey and veggies

Meal 3: Handful of Almonds

Meal 4:1 Scoop Surge pre-workout (Protein shake on off days)

1 scoop Surge + creatine PWO

Meal 5: 1 large cup chili

Meal 6: 1 Spoonful peanut butter

Meal 7: Can of Tuna

A few things change sometimes, buts its roughly:

1800 cals
160 g protein
90g carbs
60g fat

I supplement my fiber and take fish oil.

Body Stats(I don’t have pictures yet):
5’10"
~187 lbs
Around 15% BF

I do a 15-20 minutes steep incline walk 5 days a week.

Also I don’t have much of a lifting routine because I am still recovering from shoulder surgery, but I do what I can with leg press, calf press, seated rows, light lat pull downs, bicep and tricep work.

Any other info you guys need just let me know. Any help would be appreciated. [/quote]

coming from a fellow poor college student, get a mini-foreman grill. its beig enough for cheap frozen chicken (6 lbs for $12 at walm-mart BTW) and some bugers/small steaks. also doubles as a griddle if you put a magazine under the front, so the cooking surface becomes flat… and fits in any drawer or cabinet easily in case your RA shows up.

10

Oh my bad. My goal is fat loss at the moment while I am limited in the weight room. I have seen my stomach legs, and back getting more defined as diet results. With my fat loss experiences I need low carb to lose fat; I put on fat very easily.

The chili I eat is campbell’s select that they have in the cafeteria.

And for the Surge, i pull the poor college kid card on my parents.

11

[quote]Ripsaw3689 wrote:
Oh my bad. My goal is fat loss at the moment while I am limited in the weight room. I have seen my stomach legs, and back getting more defined as diet results. With my fat loss experiences I need low carb to lose fat; I put on fat very easily.

The chili I eat is campbell’s select that they have in the cafeteria.

And for the Surge, i pull the poor college kid card on my parents. [/quote]

If the mirror is telling you you’re getting results then keep doing what you’re doing.

Taking pictures at certain dates can be an eye opener though.

I’m amazed when I compare pictures that are sometimes as little as 6 months apart.

12

Take a couple days and write down the calories and macronutrients in everything you eat, it may suprise how few calories there are. I realized how hard it is to really eat enough food this semester.

I only go about 155 (5’6", 8% bf), and trying to eat enough quality food this semester to gain some decent size is rough. I’ve been relying on whole eggs a lot lately, 4 for breakfast, and maybe a hardboiled or pickled egg for a snack or whatever. They don’t strike me as a real expensive food. Cottage cheese is good, but its getting more pricey now too.

I figure on eating my parents out of house and home this summer.

Anybody else on a limited budget with some good low-cost-home-cookin tips?

13

Being a fellow poor student, here’s my advice:

Get a membership to someplace like BJ’s or Sam’s Club.

They sell these tasty little tuna and chicken fillets for about 2/ea. They come in a packet, pre-cooked. They’re usually very low in fat, no carbs, and tons of protein (35-40g) … pop a few fish oil with them, and there’s a good small meal on the run.

Cottage cheese, again, if you buy it in bulk and at the store’s brand (not a name-brand), you’re good.

It’s actually cheaper, in my experience, to just take the whites out of eggs themselves rather than buying egg whites in a carton.

Check the deli counter for turkey (low sodium, low fat, whatever) on sale, and buy a few pounds of that. You can add it to salad, make a low carb wrap, whatever.

Nuts are pretty cheap: a couple lbs of almonds or walnuts goes a long way in terms of calories and fat …

You can buy frozen chicken breasts and fish fillets for about thirteen bucks at Sam’s or BJs (or Costco, wherever). Cook up ten at a time for a few days of good eating. Much cheaper than buying the fresh stuff.

I make big batches of chili on Sunday night, and then portion it out throughout the week into little tupperware containers. Then I can just take that with me for the day and eat it (usually 2.5 lbs of ground turkey, a can of beans of some sort, some chili powder, and tomatoes)

When you’re on a tight food/supp budget, the trick is to buy in bulk, prepare your meals ahead of time, and realise that sometimes you have to APPROXIMATELY get what you should … it’s not going to be perfect all the time.

14

Eat WHOLE EGGS!!!

Over half the protein of an egg is in the yolk. The yolk contains 13 bioavailable vitamins and minerals.

2 months ago, I started eating between 12-18 whole eggs a day. I cook the whites and eat the yolks raw. I’ve gone from 227 to 213 in this time peroid while gaining a lot of strength.

Even buying the organic omega 3 enchanced eggs my food budget is about $30 a week, which also includes about 6 bags of frozen spinach. Mix the spinach with the eggs and you get slower digestion. My supplements and food come out to about $200 a month.

15

I’ve been going over these same questions with my son, he’ll be a freshman at Texas State next year. They sure make it look like you can eat pretty healthy in the dining halls, is it not as good as it sounds? They require everyone that lives on campus to purchase some level of a food plan.

We’ve been thinking he’d get by with just a few easy items and some protein along with the all you can eat meals from the school. A quick look at the menus looks pretty good. Should we start rethinking the whole situation? For the past three years he’s had the best diet I’ve ever seen any High School kid have. He’s really hoping to be able to keep it up.

16

[quote]sniper1 wrote:
I’ve been going over these same questions with my son, he’ll be a freshman at Texas State next year. They sure make it look like you can eat pretty healthy in the dining halls, is it not as good as it sounds? They require everyone that lives on campus to purchase some level of a food plan.

We’ve been thinking he’d get by with just a few easy items and some protein along with the all you can eat meals from the school. A quick look at the menus looks pretty good. Should we start rethinking the whole situation? For the past three years he’s had the best diet I’ve ever seen any High School kid have. He’s really hoping to be able to keep it up.[/quote]

Forcing a student to buy a meal plan is a horrible idea, but if the food is good and healthy, then it’s not as bad as it could potentially be. My school (UCF) has a pretty good selection of food, thanks to vocal members of the student body who continue to push for healthier options. You’d think most college cafeterias would be similar.

Since you have to purchase a meal plan, purchase the one that best suits your son’s dietary necessities. However, if the plan doesn’t fulfill your son’s desires (or yours), I’d get the minimum plan and let him figure the rest of his diet out. I don’t think the meal plan will be too much of a problem unless your son has strict guidelines that he follows (which he might). So, I don’t think there’s much to worry about, everything should work itself out nicely in the end.

17

Without considering nutrition content, I’ll defend the cafeterias as decent. I loved it as a freshman to have an all you can eat meal plan for the convenience alone. They usually had a decent variety at each dining hall, and if you didnt like one, you could go to another and find something different. And now and then they’d throw us all you can eat strip steak night.

18

[quote]sniper1 wrote:
I’ve been going over these same questions with my son, he’ll be a freshman at Texas State next year. They sure make it look like you can eat pretty healthy in the dining halls, is it not as good as it sounds? They require everyone that lives on campus to purchase some level of a food plan.

We’ve been thinking he’d get by with just a few easy items and some protein along with the all you can eat meals from the school. A quick look at the menus looks pretty good. Should we start rethinking the whole situation? For the past three years he’s had the best diet I’ve ever seen any High School kid have. He’s really hoping to be able to keep it up.[/quote]

I think the meal plan is probably a good idea–often the choices of neighboring restaurants are not the healthiest (granted I have not been to San Marcos since the late 1980s). A&M had a set up where you could cook some of your food, I used it for breakfast. They did not limit how much you cooked, so getting 4 to 6 eggs in was easy.

They probably require the plan for on campus residents because cooking in the dorm is a significant fire hazard.

19

Dorm cooking facilities aside, it’s not a bad idea to have the all you can eat plan as a freshman in college when time management will probably be at an all time low.

I would like to second the Sam’s Club idea, it’s done me wonders. Cooking one or two healthy meals a week and using them to fill in the cracks has done very well for me over my last two years of college. You should be able to do this in your dorm or at a friend’s house (they’ll definitely appreciate a free plate of food in return).