No-Suppliment Diets

**Mental_Hernia** · 03-10-2003, 05:29 PM

Im looking for a good overall food plan to get the necessary protein carbs and calories ( among other things ) for building muscles, yet not puting on too much fat weight. I simply dont have the money for suppliments such as proteins and the like, and EVERY poster here seems to use these things in their diets.

There has to be some way for me to get the same amount of nutrients naturally without the suppliments..

**abstrack** · 03-10-2003, 05:31 PM

If you got money to buy food for a diet , a 10lb tub of <a href="http://www.allsportsnutrition.com/listproducts.php?style=category&value=PROTEIN" target="_blank">protein</a> will not break your pocket book

**Big_Dan** · 03-10-2003, 05:43 PM

To cut you will need around 6 meals per day. 5 at least.
Now, tuna cans cost more than a buck. Buy a 6lbs protein tub at the high priced gnc for 48$ and you are actually saving money.
TIP: www.proteinfactory.com
For cheapest protein, go there, and www.bodybuilding.com
Good stuff, cheap, and will save you tons. You get hooked though, beware

**Mental_Hernia** · 03-10-2003, 06:21 PM

There has to be a non suppliment way to get this stuff; im 16 and my parents just dont think that suppliments are necessary when I can just eat more regular food...

**yellows2k** · 03-10-2003, 07:34 PM

The only supplement you absolutely must have are multivitamins. Everything else is not needed, but your gains wont be optimal, better than nothing right?

**Mental_Hernia** · 03-10-2003, 07:38 PM

Ive got the average daily vitamins, that brand with the slogan " From A to Zinc "

**painintheazz** · 03-10-2003, 07:52 PM

Get some chicken, steak, eggs, tuna, canned salmon, milk. And start cooking and eating. Next you will need some carbs, oatmeal, grainy breads, fruits, veggies, rice (brown and not instant) ... For fats, get some olive oil and peanuts, try to con your parents into Flax seed oil. Tell them Pain said it is OK.

Pain

***BIG TEXAN*** · 03-11-2003, 09:46 AM

Mental- painintheazz is right here. Supplements are not needed to have a healthy diet. Well except a multi-vitamin. Tell us your stats...height weight and such and we can help you piece together a good diet. Oh yeah, congrats at deciding to start eating clean at a young age. Most guys at 16 are to busy stuffing their face with cheeseburgers.

**Mental_Hernia** · 03-11-2003, 07:22 PM

Height: 5'11
Weight: 170
Age: 16
bf%: 18% ( http://www.healthcentral.com )
BMI: 23.7

First off, I do not eat the following: ( Decision to eat like this was made inorder to lose weight )

Red meat ( I eat lean turkey, chicken, fish, all with no butter/oily dressings; either grilled sauteed or baked )
Sodas
Cheese
IceCream
Butter
Peanut butter
Any highfat dairy products
Cakes/Cookies/Snacks
Chips
Eggs( I eat the whites, but NO yolk )
Fried food
ALL fast food ( The only Subway I eat is 12inch Wheat with turkey, lettuce and bell peppers, no mayonase, no cheese, no oil... )
Any sort of packaged sweet candy whatnot.

Any food I make in the stove/frying pan is either with PAM or with nothing at all; even Macarroni is butterless, as well as Eggwhites, chicken, all that.

Took me about 4-6 months to go from 220 to 170. Quite noticeable.. Now I want to get my muscles back going, and Im not sure what all Im losing from the food I dont eat ( For 1-2 months after I started, I would get UNGODLY stomach aches from sudden loss of regular food/acids; I was absolutly miserable thought the entire day )

Basically, now that Ive pretty much gotten rid of my loads of extra fat, I want to get my muslces pumped up again. I work out at a gym near by, but after the first week or two of working out, I stopped getting sore. No matter how many reps/sets of any weight I do, I never get sore anymore. Thats a good thing, but Im never getting stronger either. My muscles dont grow anymore; they swell up while working them but then 'deflate' as minutes-hour go by. Ive begun to think that I dont get enoughprotein for my muscles to efficiently grow. I talked to a guy at GNC who said I should be getting ~100 grams of protein a day, and I think I may ( MAY ) get 50 at most, I really dont know.

I work out 3-4 times a week, I run maybe 2 - 3 times a week with a friend of mine, cross country isntead of on a treadmil ( my god does that get boring... ) Because of time and school constraints, I sometimes workout more or less then noted. But I do try to do so when possible.

Daily; I eat something like:

----Breakfast:
-2 peaces whole wheat toast with homemade stawberry jelly ( no idea on sugar amount ),
-16oz glass of skim milk,
-a bananna/apple,
-Nutrigrain bar.

----Bottle of water during the morning

----Lunch (every day):
-No Drain Tuna Packet, 2 peaches whole wheat bread ( sandwhich )
-Nutrigrain bar
-Big Gulp JuiceBox thing
-35-50 FatFree pretzel sticks
-8oz can Low Sodium V8 tomatoe juice
-6oz cup unsweetened Motts Applesauce

----Bottle of water through afternoon

---Dinner
-Some amount of vegetables
-12-24oz skim milk
-Some lowfat dish of turkey/chicken/fish
-Piece of bread/roll/few crackers

**painintheazz** · 03-11-2003, 07:45 PM

You need a lot more protein bro, you need to get about 5 or 6 meals a day each with 30-40g of protein. Start eating.

Pain

**Mental_Hernia** · 03-11-2003, 08:01 PM

Start eating.

Much, much easier said than done my friend.. I have no idea what to eat, and years of listening to media hyped health led me to believe that eating more will have opposite results..

Telling me to just eat more doesnt tell me what to eat and how much, as it is I cut back a lot rather then add more.

**painintheazz** · 03-11-2003, 08:13 PM

Well bro, there are many many diets posted on this board. Search around for them and get some ideas.

Pain

***BIG TEXAN*** · 03-12-2003, 08:44 AM

Ok base rules
Space meals out every 3-4 hours
get in at least 5-6 meals a day
make sure you are getting at least 40 grams of protein per meal
get in your efa's

foods to choose from(not a complete list, but just to give you an idea)
lean beef, lean pork(not often), fish, chicken, turkey, canned tuna, eggs, natural peanutbutter, milk, beans(all kinds), oats, rice, whole grain breads, yams, potatoes, cottage cheese, whole grain pasta, flax seed oil, ALL veggies, nuts I could go on but this should give you an idea.

**Red Ketchup** · 03-12-2003, 10:26 AM

Originally posted by Mental_Hernia

Red meat

...snip snip...

Took me about 4-6 months to go from 220 to 170. Quite noticeable..

...snip snip...

Daily; I eat something like:

----Breakfast:
-Nutrigrain bar.
-Nutrigrain bar
-Big Gulp JuiceBox thing
-35-50 FatFree pretzel sticks

220 to 170? Congrads bro, thats so hard work

Been there, it ain't easy.

Ok, my 2 cents worth now

First I would reconsider the not eating red meat... extra lean ground beef can get you a massive amount of protein.

Second, drop the nutrigrain bar, and replace it with protein bars (yeah I know, no supplements, but you could probably get away with those). Most grocery stores will have a few brands of protein bars along with the granola and nutrigrain bars. Protein bars are usually 10-30g of protein.

Drop the juice box and any other sweet drinks and drink water... LOTS of it. You should be drinking nearly a gallon of water per day.

Fat free pretzels? Hmmm surely not carb free

Watch the carb intake, I don't believe in no-carb diets, but am hardcore low-carb.

Just remember, to grow muscles you need around 1.5-2g of protein per pound of body weight. Thats a lot of tuna, chicken, beef and stuff

Red

**yellows2k** · 03-12-2003, 01:29 PM

Originally posted by Mental_Hernia
Start eating.

Much, much easier said than done my friend.. I have no idea what to eat, and years of listening to media hyped health led me to believe that eating more will have opposite results..

Telling me to just eat more doesnt tell me what to eat and how much, as it is I cut back a lot rather then add more.

research, find what your body responds best to

It's not as easy as all of a sudden trying to cut and then finding the perfect diet on a forum. It takes years of trial and error to find the right diet for you.

Eating is so easy, I find that even eating 4000 calories is too little and I wanna eat more....

**painintheazz** · 03-12-2003, 01:37 PM

Originally posted by yellows2k

Eating is so easy, I find that even eating 4000 calories is too little and I wanna eat more....

Me too, I have a very hard time keeping myself under 2400cals a day when cutting. Once you make eating a major part of your life/training it gets very easy.

Pain

***BIG TEXAN*** · 03-12-2003, 02:25 PM

Originally posted by painintheazz

Once you make eating a major part of your life/training it gets very easy.

Pain

Eating is my favorite part of training!

Everyone here at work always asks me how I keep from ballooning up, because everytime they come into my office I'm usually eating.

**Mental_Hernia** · 03-12-2003, 05:22 PM

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Red Ketchup

First I would reconsider the not eating red meat... extra lean ground beef can get you a massive amount of <a href="http://www.allsportsnutrition.com/listproducts.php?style=category&value=PROTEIN" target="_blank">protein</a>

Ground beef ( as lean as it can be ) still seems like a TON of fat; hamburgers are what I think of as having the most fat when it comes to beef...

What type of steaks are the leanest? Or is hamburger actually leaner?

Second, drop the nutrigrain bar, and replace it with protein bars

Any suggestions on the best tasting ones? I think I can manage to get them.

Fat free pretzels? Hmmm surely not carb free Watch the carb intake, I don't believe in no-carb diets, but am hardcore low-carb.

I never understood how carbs work when it comes to making you fatter; infact I never even bothered to look at how many carbs something has, for htat reason; I had no idea what they actually did.. I may be getting rid of them though, since they have lots of carbs.. and sodium

How many carbs are recomended as a max? Again, I never concidered them as being anything truly important, but according to essentailly every other post, people eat much more fat then they do carbs; they all seem more worried about the carbs in something then the fat

**painintheazz** · 03-12-2003, 05:48 PM

Look for meats with the american heart association label on them, they have less than 5g of fat per 4 oz portion, for hamburger get the leanest meat you can get 95% is the highest I have seen. I like nitro tech bars, low impact carbs and solid protein bars same idea. Plus they taste great. Carbs are a killer, they effect your insulin and insulin is the most anabolic ingredient in your body, also the device that stores energy as fat and makes getting into fat stores to use them as energy very hard. That is why real dieters (bodybuilders and whatnot) know that carbs are the killer on a diet. Fats will actually help you lose weight as they allow your body to get energy and not release insulin, also since your body sees it is getting fat in its diet it wont have a fear-of-famine effect and hold on to your body fat in fear of starvation. Hope this helps.

Pain

**Red Ketchup** · 03-12-2003, 05:53 PM

Originally posted by Mental_Hernia

Ground beef ( as lean as it can be ) still seems like a TON of fat; hamburgers are what I think of as having the most fat when it comes to beef...

Remember that there are MANY categories of ground beef... From greasy stuff with pork mixed in, all the way to extra lean beef only.

Extra lean ground beef (5% fat) has the following stats:

For a 1/4lbs patty (82g) broiled so the fat can drip as it cooks...

21.5g protein
5.3g fat
0g Carbs

Any suggestions on the best tasting ones? I think I can manage to get them.

Personally I like the ones I get at Costco (Sams Club, Price Club...). I'm all out of them so I cannot remember the brand but I'll get back to ya.

I HIGHLY suggest try a few brands by the unit before buying a box of them. I have bought some that were delicious, and some that were a nightmare to eat.

I never understood how carbs work when it comes to making you fatter; infact I never even bothered to look at how many carbs something has, for htat reason; I had no idea what they actually did..

Uh oh...

Well, to make a long story short, here is the scoop.

- Protein = Muscle building and repair, you need a LOT of it.
- Sugar = Short term energy, depletes very quickly
- Carbs = Long term energy, stores itself in your body as... fat... you also need some of this in moderation, most people eat WAY more carbs than they need.
- Fat = needed by your body, in moderation, and no you cannot completely cut it out of your diet.
- Sodium = Makes you retain water, but is also needed by your body... in moderation.

How many carbs are recomended as a max? Again, I never concidered them as being anything truly important, but according to essentailly every other post, people eat much more fat then they do carbs; they all seem more worried about the carbs in something then the fat

They are...

As I said above, carbs store themselves in your body as "use me later" energy for your body's internal furnace, and the average person eats WAY more than they spend so they use the carbs in their system and not the ones stored as fat (I am over-simplifying of course).

How much do you need? Good question... and everyone is a little different there. Anywhere from 0.5g to 3g per lbs of body weight is a good starting point.

I suggest you study carbs a bit... lots of good info on this forum.

Red

**Mental_Hernia** · 05-22-2003, 06:46 PM

With lots of school stuff going on in the last month ( 5 days left! ) Im just now trying to plan out a healthy summer's diet and routine.

Trying to eat 5-6 meals a day is really hard when I have to make it work with school's timeframe. But this summer, I should be able to follow a routine perfectly.

I've stopped drinking juicy boxes for lunch ( good ol water! ), stopped eating Nutri-Grain bars alltogether, and cut out the pretzles as well. But Im running out of things to fill my lunch with! I started having raisans / OceanSpray Craisans instead; but they still have a lot of carbs in them I think..

What is the max amount of sugar I want to have per serving of something? I think my final stronghold of sugary things would be Nestle Chocolate Milk; it just tastes sooo sooo good.

**fyerstarter** · 07-11-2003, 06:17 PM

I think a really great book for begginners is Body for LIfe by Bill Phillips. It's oviously a less "hardcore" approach targeted toward average people, but it is full of no BS easy to understand information on nutrition, cardio, and exercise. The basic premise of the diet plan is to eat six meals a day, consisting of equal sized portions of lean protein, low GI carbs, and fibrous vegetables along with 2 glasses of water. There is also a nice spreadsheet which contains a list of "authorized" food for each category and you just pick one from each column. It provides a great foundation on which you can build your diet. Then as you become more knowledgable about nutrition and your own bodies reactions you can make adjustments. I wish I had read it years ago.

Ideally the max amount of sugar you should have is 0, except for post workout.