I want to thank some of you, including the flapping, grey-gummed “Grady,” for entirely losing the forest for the trees when it came to my suggestion of eating pre-packaged foods to help get started on a calorie-restrictive diet.
Grady wrote:
You’ve lectured about how there are things you have to admit to yourself if you want to be successful losing weight. You’re going to have to admit to yourself that you must eat fresh, minimally processed food regularly if you want to be healthy.
I wanted to include Grady’s comment in its self-congratulatory entirety, but that sneering excerpt will have to suffice.
Some of us have lives, jobs, stresses, and realities we face every day that make switching from our unhealthy lifestyles—and we know they’re unhealthy; our bodies testify—straight away into a wholly organic, hand-prepared, completely healthy lifestyle difficult. The thought of purchasing and preparing every last bit of food that goes into our bodies is daunting and serves as a bulwark in which we can hunker down with our insecurities to inaction, stocked as it is with cheeseburgers, chocolate milk, and the echoing rejoinders of self-righteous, preening princes like you.
But you know what we can do? Buy some fucking TV dinners and try to power through a couple weeks of calorie restriction. It sucks a lot—and god knows most pre-packaged food is made from horse semen and basalt—but at least it’s something that’s possible and practical, albeit a lacking platform from which to leer and jab at the choices and shortcomings of others.
It’s awesome that you eat well—seriously. And you know what? The more one starts monitoring one’s diet and calorie intake, the more quickly it becomes apparent how much more flavor and tangible feelings of health come from fresh, hand-prepared food. And then once we’ve taught ourselves how to eat healthily from experience, Grady, we can start accusing those who never claimed otherwise of imperfection.
your reasoning behind the tv dinners is spot on! i recently found myself tired of the i.t. beer belly and began doing something about it. i work out every morning at the local apt. gym, changed my diet, and results are beginning to show.
i simply don’t have the time to make breakfast and lunches every day so i eat a nutrigrain in the morning and a michelina’s for lunch. there are many options out there, but i like the michelina’s for variety, great taste, and more importantly portion control. and they’re cheap! ($.99 at walmart) i find that when i DO go out with the guys for lunch i can’t finish more than half of what i order. dinner is where i spend my efforts in making everything fresh and it pays off.
a nice side effect? the food budget has dropped at least $250 a month if not more.
I do my best to stick with organic products but that doesn’t mean you have to be a crazy granola hippie that grows everything in his garden. Check out Wholefoods, Wegmans or Trader Joe’s. They all have plenty of prepared foods made with organic products that are made out of free-range horse semen and organic basalt.
Another thing to look for is try avoiding to be healthy is high-fructose corn syrup. Bread is the first place to start with this, somebody must be spreading the word because a few months ago there was only one style of one brand that didn’t contain high-fructose corn syrup and now there is a handful.
Also, don’t feel bad about turning down organic products that are extremely over-priced. $3 a box for mac and cheese is ridiculous when compared to the $.69 generic stuff.
I believe I had found a similar diet plan, quite by accident, and am having similar success with it. While it’s been slow going, I wasn’t exactly Baron Harkonnen to begin with.
My diet is to have a large and substantial eggs and bacon breakfast, a light lunch and whatever I want for dinner. And nothing else. Not one thing. Not a sausage.
My problem has always been the snacking and the 10 p.m. “supplemental supper.”
7 lbs in two months ain’t bad.
That said, I do need to eat some fruit.
I am currently using http://www.dietgourmet.com. You can order breakfast, lunch and dinner and the food is prepared fresh, but is delivered in the style of pre-packaged. See How DietGourmet works. In one month I lost 15 lbs. in one month with http://www.dietgourmet.com and moderate exercise. There are a lot of online food services that provide the same thang as http://www.dietgourmet.com specific to one’s geographic area.
I applaud your decision to eat less, but I must ask whether you have come across the Shangri-La Diet? Google it. Try it. It works. I know. I’ve lost 9kg slowly and steadily over about 15 weeks without once having felt any hunger or deprivation.
I use frozen packaged stuff myself, and it helps. I cut it with a fair amount of homemade food…especially starting this time of year, when it’s easy to make up a pot of soup and freeze enough for a week’s worth of lunches. I also watch out for the HFCS.
There’s no reason to be snotty about someone else’s methods…you do what works. I suppose it’s trite, but it might be worth reminding Grady that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
Oh well.
I tried the South Beach Diet, and it worked great for one week. I just couldn’t take the time to make all of my food. I was either cooking or shopping. So the diet failed. It’s all about finding what works and ends up being healthy.
I don’t know which is healthier–being overweight but eating quality foods, or being thin and eating junk.
(Here via 43 Folders, by the way…)
One thing that really bugged me about people’s reactions to the diet I went on earlier this year (using lots of pre-packaged, frozen meals with convenient calorie counts on the label), was that people don’t seem to realize there’s a difference between what you have to do to *lose* weight and what you have to do to maintain a healthy weight afterwards.
Losing weight sucks, and it’s unhealthy and your body doesn’t want to do it. But once it’s done, you’re better for it.
Once you’ve lost the weight, though, you’ve got a very different challenge ahead of you: finding a balance that works and eating healthily again. That’s where all the advice about organics and lovely healthy stuff applies. It’s not really an easy thing to accomplish either, but it’s fundamentally a different problem. And there’s no point worrying about it till you get there.
Seriosuly: you aren’t the only one who suggests training yourself regarding what a portion truly is using these prepackaged foods. Many doctors do. What it comes down to is this: is eating a prepackaged, portion controlled meal better than what you might do in the alternative? Yes? Then eat it in good health.
Is it just me, or is Grady a pretty opinionated jerk? He brings to mind the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.
Right on.
I’ve lost 90lbs, and in the beginning I relied heavily on packaged dinners, and even the highly synthetic meal replacement shake. Much to the horror of organic purists like G., I still occasionally toss a can of Slim Fast in my book back or chew my way thru a Lean Cuisine.
With each passing month, as my health improved, my kitchen skills did as well, and so did my energy and capacity for trying new things, and you know what… starting to cook more and eat organic foods naturally evolved out of that. But had I been hardcore about this and insisted on dropping every bad thing the first day, I would have quickly retreated from the sheer magnitude of healthy living. I have spent a lifetime talking myself out of things like getting healthy, writing a novel, or entering a relationship, because of this desire to have things perfect. Things rarely are, and many times being a purist is just an excuse not to do things. I put that shit aside, and have lost 1/3 of a person, while eating whatever worked for me.
There are two ways people lose weight… changing little things one at a time, or changing really big things all at once. I did the latter, and my transformation was profound. But only because I gave myself a fuckin break and allowed myself to grow into healhy living. Each week I become a little more “clean” in the way I eat. But I could not have done it without letting myself grow into it. Master one thing, then move on to the next. It works.
(Like Darcy, here via 43 Folders)
As someone who’s struggl[-ed|-ing] with weight loss, you’re absolutely right. If you’re in a situation where, despite your best intentions, you just don’t have the time or energy to be cooking organic meals for yourself every day, then your options are something like Burger King, or a pre-packaged frozen dinner that might not be the “healthiest” choice on the planet, but is a damn sight better than a Triple Stacker Value Meal with a Coke & a Large Fry. (For those of you who might be unfamiliar with a BK Stacker Value Meal, imagine something composed of approximately 100% pure evil, on a sesame seed bun.)
What Grady seems to have lost sight of in his missionary zeal for organic food is that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, whether it comes from a twinkie or a tomato. If you eat 5,000 calories worth of organic whole wheat bread a day, you will get fat. If you eat 100 calories of Twinkies a day, you will lose weight, and drastically. What twinkies — and any other “processed” foods, to varying extents — lack are the same amounts of nutrients such as the vitamins and minerals your body needs. But a frozen or canned vegetable sure does have a lot more nutritive value to it than a Twinkie, even if it doesn’t have quite as much as the “whole / organic” version of the same vegetable.
Losing weight healthily takes a while, unless you want to try the classic “tapeworm diet plan”, though I don’t recommend it. Start *somewhere*, take the time to develop good habits, and learn what works for you — it won’t come all at once, so trying to start with an “all or nothing” approach is a recipe for failure.
I try to avoid the pre-packages, highly processed food like Grady does, but I don’t think anybody was a right to stand on a virtual soap-box and waggle their finger at someone else.
That being said, there are ways you can have your fresh, home made, organic meals and your lifestyle as well.
Here’s how I do it; on Sunday, I kind of plan ahead what I want for the week. I then figure out what I will need. From there, I prep as much stuff in advance as I can (including cooking things that can stand re-heating well) and put it in zip lock bags, or tupperware, or whatever. Preparing the meals later in the week is a breeze, and tates 100 times better than the frozen stuff.
Just my $0.02
Jenny Craig’s made millions of dollars promoting calorie restriction via packaged foods. It works! And with Lean Cuisine, et al, you can easily create your own plan. They’ve even got South Beach prepared foods now.
As for the Shangri La diet, I tried it and it didn’t work for me. Tried oil, tried sugar water. Didn’t work. Jenny Craig, however, helped me lose 15 pounds.
Re: James B’s comment about preparing stuff ahead of time & storing them in ziplocs or tupperware:
For those of you who are preparing meals for just yourself, and find yourself throwing out spoiled food pretty frequently, I’d recommend the “Fresher Longer” storage containers you can find at places like the Sharper Image. They have some sort of anti-fungal / anti-microbial treatment embedded in the plastic of the container, and they absolutely work… stuff that usually would spoil in 2 - 3 days will now frequently last up to about a week in these containers.
I’m not associated with Sharper Image or the Fresher Longer manufacturer in any way… I’m just very pleased with the containers, and find they’ve saved me a lot of money in thrown-away food. They definitely keep things edible much longer in the refrigerator than the standard Rubbermaid/Tupperware containers.
Joel,
I just read Grady’s post. While he was out of line, I think your response to him was a little over the top as well. And yes, I know it’s your site, and I risk getting my own “hate-post” but the fact is that NO ONE here making comments or posts (you, me and Grady included) have represented themselves as profession trainers, nutritionists or doctors and ALL of our advice should be considered anecdotal and taken with a grain of salt.
Certinly, everyone should probably at least consult a professional (websites trying to sell you somethig don’t count) before beinging any serious diet and/or exercise program. You would be suprised how much damage the wrong diet or training program can do; you’ld be better off staying fat! :p
Again, just my $0.02
Guys, it’s really not difficult to eat healthy food! Potatoes don’t spoil. Many vegetables don’t spoil fast. Rotisserie chicken is easy to get, tasty and cheap.
I dunno why the anger at this Grady person. Maybe he’s otherwise a sanctimonious idiot. But he’s got a point, definitely.
Personally I wolf down a few cups of chicken a day, eat some vegetables, a microwave-baked potato. It’s convenient and a lot easier than TV dinners, which, like it or not, have all sorts of crap in them that you don’t want in your body.
The other point about packaged dinners is that they are usually a bit more expensive than their fresh counter parts. Sure, you have the convience, but there’s a price…
It’s hard enough to count calories, but, to learn to cook, and to learn to shop for specific foods at the same time, is asking a lot. Being on calorie restricted diet is pretty painful, physically and psychologically. Using packaged foods to do it is totally legitimate.
Now, that said, maybe it’s smarter to lose weight by completely eliminating packaged foods, fast food, and maybe even restaurant food, from your diet, then reducing calories by cutting portions. This is also difficult, but the difficulty comes from scheduling the time to prepare food. Has anyone done this successfully?
Look, I didn’t mean to piss on your parade, Joel, but it really is bad advice. However, you’re making a good faith effort and for some people your plan really is better than what they’re currently doing, so I shouldn’t criticize so harshly.
I apologize if my comments came off sounding like a know-it-all and a smart ass. I sincerely meant to add worthwhile content to your series by adding my knowledge, but I hear the same wrong things over and over and it just drives me a little crazy sometimes. I spend too much time at Metafilter, probably. Nonetheless, I shouldn’t have spoke out so strongly, nor took as many not-as-clever-as-I-thought digs in the process. I hope you’ll forgive me and allow me to contribute in the future. My intentions are good, even if I can’t stop the inner bastard sometimes. To see what I mean, look at my history at Ask Metafilter here: http://www.metafilter.com/user/22919
The one point I’d like to get across here is that weight loss isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Forget weight. It’s one small measurement among many that go into determining health and attractiveness, and it’s not worth ruining your health to get there.
John K,
Yes, I have.
As I posted above, I prepare as much as I can over the weekend, which saves me a lot of time during the week. And frankly, how hard is it to broil a steak and steam some green beans?
And as far as learning to cook and shop for specific foods:
If you want your weight loss to be permanent, you have to treat is as a lifestyle, which means it has to be something you can maintain. I don’t know anyone who can “live” on frozen, pre-packaged foods long term.
In adulthood, learning to shop for and prepare foods is (should) be a fundamental life-skill in my opinion. But, if you missed out on learning this, just take it slow. Learn one or two healthy meals, how to shop for them, how to prepare them. Once you get those down, build from there.
No one expects you to be Gordan Ramsey out of the chute, but if you never start you’ll never get there.
Asshole, dumb reader, flapping, grey-gummed, self-congratulatory, sneering, self-righteous, preening ….. put the thesaurus down son, you’re gonna hurt somebody.
Well I have to agree with Grady, basically, are you shooting for better health, or lower weight? There are plenty of ways to lose weight, but they aren’t all healthy.
It’s not a question of perfection vs. imperfection, but rather having the right goal to start with.
“better health, or lower weight?”
Both.
But one step at a time, and the former is much, much easier after the latter.
I think if you ate TV dinners for two months you’re going to have a hard time maintaining the weight loss for very long, because (1) you’re not going to be able to continue with that diet forever (it would drive you–and the people around you–crazy); (2) you haven’t learned anything about how to survive outside your TV dinner diet, such as the calorie content of foods, appropriate portion for home cooked foods, cooking skills, tricks for keeping the calories down while home cooking, how to eat properly when eating out, etc.
So at the very least you need to be thinking about how to transition after you quit the TV dinners. Cooking is not the big, complicated, time-comsuming thing you make it out to be, but it does take a few months of practice until you get efficient at it. If you insist that you are too busy and stressed out to worry about food and cooking and the like, you are too busy to be thin, my friend. Welcome to the yo-yo.
1. It is good to see a snarky comment get lambasted.
2. It is better to see the author realize his mistake and apologize.
3. For those who may not have been reading all week, this is a “beginner’s guide” to weight loss. Last week was cooking stuff. I’m sure Joel will have a week for “Healthy Eating” in the future. For now, the goal is to kick start us “fat fucks” (Joel’s words) into an improvement in our waistlines.
4. It is good to see so much traffic and comments.
Lots of people seem to have very firm opinions about dieting. I find that very few of them have any basis in fact. They all turn up in comment threads when a blogger mentions diet. For example, Grady’s opinion that “fresh, minimally processed food” is the key to dieting success is very common, but there is zero research to back it up. It’s one of those things that sounds so good, you don’t even *need* evidence. Organic! It’s got to be better, right? But think about it: if such research existed, and was conclusive, we would hear no end of it. Results like this are the holy grail of the organic food industry. Yet they have proven elusive.
The other thing everybody just “knows” is the danger of high fructose corn syrup. It mimics fats, or hormones, or something or other, right? Wrong. There is ZERO research to show that HFCS has any detrimental health effects. Sorry Andrew Barrilla, but there just isn’t. You can go right ahead and avoid products containing HFCS if that makes you feel better. Don’t walk under ladders either and watch out for black cats!
And “processed food”. Terrible, bad, horrible. But what the hell is processed food? Washing is a process — I prefer mine to be washed. Cooking is a process too, and I like most things cooked. Have you ever seen a good definition of what “processed” means? I haven’t.
_Jon,
The problem with point number three is that more harm can be done with a bad weightloss plan than by just staying fat.
43 Folders Reader,
You’re right; Organic food will not, in and of itself, make you healthy, as evidenced by the avaialability of organic sugar, donuts, cakes, pies, cookies and cheesecakes. Personally, I think Organic tastes better, but that’s just me. But take “The O word” out for a mintue and look at just the concept of prepareing your own fresh food. Cooking can be a very rewarding experience. But, cooking your own food give you the ability to make dishes to your taste and gives you more vareity than whatever type of frozen dinner the store has. Also, it’s easier to sustain a lifestyle where you know how to feed yourself as opposed to getting a meal our of a cardboard box all the time.
You’re also right about HFCS. It’s simply sugar. But, too much sugar is bad for you. It raises your blood sugar, and eating too much can lead to diabeties.
And perhaps a better term is “over-processesed.” I wash and cook my food as well. But, I try to avoid food that has had lots of chemicals and perservaties added. Again, I notice a taste difference; most of these foods probably don’t taste as good as the box they came in. By cooking, I can make a dish exactally as I like it.
I’m a nurse, and my mother’s a dietitian, so we’ve got some family history on reading health research. My mom’s work definitely taught her that packaged food was a great way to get people started on understanding portion sizes. If you read the side of a box of KD, for example, it mentions that there are 4 servings per box.
You can’t believe how much that shocks her patients.
But, then, she can use that to help them figure out how much meat (frozen chicken breasts, often) to put on the plate, and then encourage them to fill the rest of their plates with vegetables.
After a few months of doing that, people find it easier and easier to figure out how much food they should eat when they’re making food from scratch. Plus, she can help them learn a new healthy recipe every week or two, instead of feeling trapped and uncertain because the only things they know how to cook are high-fat.
Food has such emotional power that anything that helps the transition towards health is a good thing.
Smoothies.
Quick and easy to make. Easy to do healthy as well. And depending upon the ingredients, smoothies can give you a little pick me up to prepare a quick, light meal. Or to pull those pre-packaged foods from the fridge.
Seeds of Change, Amy’s, and Kashi make some great organic, healthy, delicious frozen dinners! It would get tiresome to eat them on a daily basis, but once or twice a week it’s great.
Not saying my way is better than anyone else’s, but…
…I’m 6′. In college I was @235lbs. Lifted all the time, never ran, ate nothing but fried frat food, and had the 37 inch waist to show for it. About six months before I graduated, I realized that, as a former high school athlete, I wasn’t very happy with who I was physically. I began studying nutrition plans in depth, applied the principles I (and science) agreed with, and-within a year-dropped to @175lbs. (29 inch waist!) while gaining strength in the weight room.
Most of the nutritional plan (don’t call it a diet–diets are temporary) comes from Bill Phillips’ “Body For Life”. I do my own weightlifting routines and more cardio than he recommends (I care about being able to run fast, not just looking cut), but the nutritional advice is spot on–and ridiculously simple. Cut most saturated fat from your diet–unsaturated fats are fine in moderation. Eat six times a day–one palm sized portion of lean protein and one fist sized portion of low glycemic index carbs. Throw veggies in at least twice a day. Tailor your eating times to your goals; if you just want to shed weight, don’t eat for an hour after cardio. If you want to build muscle, make sure you eat directly after a workout.
It seems time consuming, but it’s not. I work about 50-60 hours a week and I still have time. I drink a protein shake after my morning lift and run, eat four pre-prepared meals throughout the workday, and cook dinner when I get home. The pre-prepared meals are simple: I cook twice a week (usually on Sundays and Wednesdays)–four different recipies (usually casseroles/salads for wraps/burgers) with three portions each. Takes an hour and a half, max. For some great recipies, either get the Body For Life cookbook, or–and this is better, since it’s free–go to their website. They’ve got literally thousands of user submitted, approved recipies. The women at work are incredulous that I’m not married, as I always come in with fantastic-smelling home cooked meals (sorry if that was a bit sexist there, but…) I eat healthier and cheaper than pre-cooked, pre-portioned meals, and without sacrificing much convenience, to boot. It’s not too hard to teach yourself portion sizes–just look at your hand. Also, pre-fab dinners tend to be quite high in sodium, which can lead to water retention and hypertension.
I know I sound like I’m shilling for them (BFL), but I’m not. It works, the food tastes great, it’s easy, and the best part is–you can definitely maintain the lifestyle without sacrificing much of anything. Now if I could just stay away from the beer…
WW proponent here, but as a busy mom, I’ve had success with frozen dinners dumped in with a lot of cooked fresh veggies as a quick and filling meal. Minimally processed seems logically better, but anything you can do that improves your eating habits is a (baby) step in the right direction.
I’ve been both trying to eat better and eat less, but neither I or my wife has had much time to cook lately. We tried returning to our college “home heating” days with frozen and pre-cooked meals, but even the better ones (Trader Joes, for example) were pretty unappealing and it was hard to stick to it as a diet.
As a stop-gap, we’ve been eating fast-food salads, most often from Wendy’s. It’s easy and quick (a Wendy’s is close to our house), relatively cheap ($10 for both of us) and we get a decent tasting meal that really isn’t so bad for you, even though I’m sure the organic/whole foods folks will turn up their noses.
I’ve lost over 20 pounds in a few months, and I’m pretty satisfied with it. But what I will say to everyone is — the most important food you can eat when you’re trying to lose weight is the food that will allow you to lose weight while not driving you back to your old eating habits. Because for most people (not counting specific health conditions) losing weight is probably more important to their health long term than the benefits provided by any specific dietary style (atkins/organic/whole grain/macrobiotic/etc).