Healthy balanced diet... without fish or eggs?

[Demrog]

Hi all, as I mentioned in my intro post, my main concern at the moment is my diet, and is probably the main reason I'm losing weight as slowly as I am.

The main problem is that if I eat seafood of any kind, or eggs (doesn't matter whether its the white or the yolk) then I usually bring it back in fairly short order. It has now got so bad that I only have to smell an egg to start feeling nauseous.

I've looked at a number of people's diets, including some on here, and they all seem to contain fish and eggs.

Is it possible to maintain a healthy balanced diet while training without incorporating either of those foods into my diet at all?

I currently weigh in at around 268lbs and have been training each weekday morning for 7 weeks (apart from 6 weekdays i had off because I was ill) and I have only lost 8 lbs in that time. Granted I may have increased my muscle some but since I was doing mainly CV any gains in mass will more than likely have been negligable.

I started losing weight before I started training and went from 297lbs to 276lbs just by changing my diet (which was truly, truly awful) but I have to be honest, I expected better results while I was training, even though I know I am still not eating right.

To give an indication of how I have been eating recently, I will post my diet in a moment - but I want to enter a caveat that in no way do I say that my diet is good, just that it is better than before. Also my evening meal is almost always very late because I work until fairly late and normally don't get chance to eat until my 20 month old girl has gone to bed.

Also, for info my daily workout is usually from 07:30 until 08:30/08:45

Breakfast (06:45):
1 Bowl of Special K cerial, using skimmed milk

Mid morning snack (11:00):
1 Apple

Lunch (14:00):
4 Chicken breasts usually with some salad and low fat dressing but sometimes just chicken breasts on their own.

Afternoon snack (16:00):
1 Apple

Evening meal (20:30):
varies from day to day but is along the lines of
meat (usually Chicken/Gammon) plus potatoes (and sometimes chips) and usually 2 veg.

I do not usually snack during the day and if I do then I usually grab an extra apple (I always have at least 1 full bag of apples in my desk drawers) but I'd be lying if I said I'd had no chocolate or crisps in the last 7 weeks, but very little of either.

As for what I drink, it's usually water but sometimes swap it out for diet coke. I do also have 1 or 2 cups of tea during my work day and also 1 or 2 cups of decaf tea on an evening.

I don't drink so there is no alcohol to take into account and my diet doesn't change much on weekdays. On weekends I will more than likely have 2 sandwiches (usually chicken) and the evening meal will be along the same lines as before except that I do have my cheat meal usually at the weekend.

I don't take any supplements at all, although I have just taken delivery of a tub of MP Impact Whey Protein that I will use on training days, twice a day.

Now when you've all finished gasping at how bad my diet is... I could really do with some help. Please?

[NU_nutrition_TS]

All the usual suspects, I'm afraid!

Too few calories overall - you're existing in borderline starvation mode - and most of them are in the latter half of the day and not the beginning. Remember the old adage: Breakfast like a King, Lunch like a Prince, Dine like a pauper! Breakfast cereals like Special K [and Bran Flakes!] are a sin against gastronomy - You'd get more flavour and nutrients if you ate the boxes they came in! Eat a bigger breakfast [more calorific/nutritious] with a good protein source in there. Not being able to eat eggs or fish is not unusual [if you have always had this problem] you may be allergic but if it is a situation that has slowly evolved, you may have developed an intolerance due to some other diet related factors [leaky gut syndrome, hypochlorhydria, etc.]. An apple a day is fine...but a bag of apples? You need more variety of food sources. What about things like nuts [walnuts, pistachios, brazils, etc.]? Definitely need to rethink your position on fats...a low-fat diet is not necessarily the way to lose weight or maintain health. I recommend that you read around these topics and arm yourself with a bit more up-to-date knowledge. Use the sites search function.

Oh...If you are doing a lot of steady-state CV to burn away fat you are wasting your time...you will gain/hang on to fat more effectively and could compromise your cardiovascular health. Short, intense weight sessions followed by at least a full day of rest will do more to get rid of fat than all that CV! Aside from resistance training...just walk more [as briskly as you can manage!].

[hailtotheking]

Quote

Breakfast cereals like Special K [and Bran Flakes!] are a sin against gastronomy - You'd get more flavour and nutrients if you ate the boxes they came in!

Ha, ha. So true!

All in all, good advice nu.

Try and get some protien in in the morning Demrog. I find cottage cheese with pineapple chunks quite easy to eat first thing in the morning (the pineapple improves digestion). Generally speaking, processed breakfast cereal is nutritionally poor, and i would even go as far to say it is a major weak link in many, many westerners diets.

A diet without fish and eggs is quite possible. Poultry, game, beef, lamb, pork, cheese, nuts, certain pseudo-grains (like amaranth and quinoa) all have high protien contents.

It may seem a silly question, but have you tried eggs prepared in different ways? If it is only the texture or smell that makes you nausious, you could experiment with different egg recipes to see if any agree with you. For example, oat pancakes are an excellent high protien, high fibre and complex carb meal, and they do not taste or smell 'eggy' at all.

[Demrog]

Thanks for the advice guys.

Regarding my workouts, it has actually changed as of today as I have had a new program written for me by one of the personal trainers at fitnest first where I work out.

Before today though, Monday Wednesday and Friday were pretty much an hour of fairly steady state cardio although I'd push myself to go further/faster each time if I could. Tuesday was upper body using weights machines and thursday was lower body again using the weights machines. Again, this was written by one of the trainers to see me through the first 6 weeks of training.

Now I have 3 days compound exercises on free weights, and 2 days high intensity training on the cross trainer which I will be honest is killing me. But I seriously want to lose the weight so I'm willing to do pretty much anything to make sure I lose the weight and keep it off.

Regarding my diet... I am going to try and turn it in it's head so to speak and do as NU suggested and eat more in the mornings and reduce the amount with each meal.

With eggs, I can eat things made with eggs: bread, cakes (not that I eat them any more) etc but I cant eat ommelettes, egg mayo any egg cooked however you please, even egg custards (which isn't exactly a bad thing )

I will do some more reading and try and come up with a diet that works for me and see what people think of it.