Hey guys, I’m new here and yes, very very skinny. I’m 5’8 and weigh 125 lbs. I eat horribly and inconsistently. I can eat a dozen Krispy Kremes over 2 days and not increase bodyfat at all. I’m super super lean, you can see striations in my shoulder muscles.
However, I’m dedicated to changing my habits and overhaul my diet to support weight gains in conjunction with a solid workout regime. I wanna be “jacked” like you guys are fond of saying!
Problem is so many of the healthy foods taste like crap or arent appealing in the least. Do you all feel the same way and just eat stuff like cottage cheese cause it’s good for you?
I’m looking for some tips and any advice on creating a diet that might actually taste pretty good too. I’ve read TONS of material and feel I have a pretty good handle on the theory of nutrition. Thanks in advance!
I will tell you what I do. Maybe it will help maybe it won’t. I used to eat perfectly, counting everything, having only one cheat meal a week etc. Eventually it just drove me crazy. So I came up with this.
I eat a healthy breakfast(oatmeal and eggs)
Lunch I eat whatever I want.
Dinner I eat alot of chicken and beans but when I want to I eat a burger or something like that.
Snacks between meals. I find all the recipes I can on here and there are a few on the charliefrancis site.
There are a few rules to follow here though.
No fast food
No food out of a box
Only food with very little if any at all preservatives, additives. Basically read the label and the less amount of ingredients on the label the better.
Very little sugar especially no high fructose corn syrup.
Hardly ever eat any dessert unless its homemade apple pie.
Those are most of the rules. I may have forgotten some but you get the idea.
Now realize that my goals are not to be 7% body fat but I am not looking to be 30% either. I have no idea what % I am and I dont really care. This is what works for me and it keeps me sane and lean enough. Your goals may be different but you said you want to be “jacked” so eat and eat alot just follow the rules. Take my advice for whatever you think it is worth.
Cinamman and splenda can make just about any food taste good. You have to get creative with “clean” foods too. There are plenty of ways to make oats, cottage cheese, plain chicken breast, tuna, etc tatse great. Also,
I think that after a while your brain and tatse buds adapt and bland foods start to taste better. Like an apple, to me, is very sweet now. Just give it a shot abd look for some recipies.
I hate the texture of cottage cheese, it makes me gag. Therefore, I just mix in a 1/2 cup cottage cheese with 1.5 cups of lowfat milk, and 1.5 scoops of chocolate Grow!.
Hello there. My stats are pretty close but my bodyfat is probably higher because I’ve been bulking for months (i started at just over 100lbs).
-oatmeal
I despised oatmeal at first but with a few tricks you can make it taste pretty good. First off OLD FASIONED oatmeal is a must. I just put some frozen berries (you can get this at healthfood stores if your grocery store doesn’t carry it), raisins (learn to love them, they’re calorie packed), and some brown sugar if I’m feeling bored.
-hard-boiled eggs
no trick here, tough it out.
-chicken breast
I use some lemon pepper seasoning when I’m too lazy to marinade and it tastes pretty decent. The side dish is what really makes the meal though. I personally like dark mixed greens with e.v. olive oil and some apple cider vinegar (give it a shot if you haven’t tried it) and sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are more expensive than say, russet, but they are a better source of carbs and they taste a lot better plain.
-beef
I just put some garlic-pepper seasoning and some worcester sauce (worcester sauce is your friend) and it tastes pretty damn good.
-yogurt
If you’re serious you’ve really got to go for the organic yogurt. it tastes horrible by itself but I just buy the plain flavor add a bunch of raisins and mixed nuts.
-cottage cheese
I personally just put in some pineapples and eat it with bread but here are a bunch of recipes http://stumptuous.com/weights.html (just go to the eating section).
-tuna
This one is tough. This is a tuna shake recipe list if you’re adventurous HELL YEAH TUNA SHAKE BABY !!!! . I’ve had the orange juice/tuna shake before and it’s quite disgusting but it’s over in just a minute or two and bam the meal is done.
I definitely feel your pain so I’ll help anyway I can. One word of advice though, keep a food log it’s a pain in the ass but it makes all the difference.
You need to taper off your consumption of unhealty foods. Specifically, I can attest from personal experience that if you can get to the point where you seldom spike insulin except after a workout and do not eat candy, white bread, and processed foods, you will find unhealthy foods entirely unappetizing and healthy foods quite appetizing. I can’t eat candy any more - the sugars and trans fats just taste coarse and abrasive.
Sounds good so far, to answer Illuminatie, I’m 28 years old - pathetic I know.
I forgot to touch on this earlier but I also have a problem where my stomach isnt very large I think. I can eat a pretty good load of food, but I wont get hungry in the least for hours afterwards. It makes eating 6 times a day almost sickening cause I always feel overfull. Any tips on that?
This probably isn’t what you want to hear. Don’t expect your tastbuds to change quickly. I didn’t like any sort of fish at all and I HATED tuna all my life but four years ago I made a concious effort to eat it allmost everyday, a full can at that (murcury be damned). The first year it was horrible, I dredded lunch! Then hate morphed into dislike, and dislike eventually into unpleasentness. Up untill about 6 months ago I would still get those slight gagging episodes every-so-often while eating it. Now, beleive it or not, I actually enjoy eating tunafish! So the moral of this story is that if you trully want something bad enough, you’ll do whatever it takes to get it. Sometimes you just need to shut up, put it in your mouth, chew, swallow and repeat.
PS, splenda, cinnamon, vanilla extract, fat-free mayo, butter-buds and herble table seasoning blends go along way flavor-wise.
Yeah feeling full all day is natural. When I started eating big I felt full/sick all day but it went away in a couple of weeks. Many would say gradually increase your food intake but hell, you’ve got nothing to lose. Just dive right in.
cottage cheese texture can be fixed by adding 3 whole wheat crackers all broken up. 3 whole wheat crackers in every 2 cups of cottage cheese will do no damage and makes the texture very do-able.
As far as taste buds adapting it will happen.
Read everything you can by JB (I wish I had done this 3 years sooner), get yourself a copy of JB’s No-Nonsense Nutrition, cook all your food for the day ahead of time and clean all the garbage food out of your home!
PM me if you want addtional info, nutrition is the bottom line to success, without it you will only lose your commitment.
I can’t say enough how amazed and thankful I am for the comraderie thats shown on these forums. Over the past whiles my eyes have just about bled from reading hour after hour all the info these threads contain. All I can say is thank you members of T-Nation.
(the beauty one i mean)