Definitely getting old...

[denny]

...I'm going to join a gym this evening. It's a sad day when you have to acknowledge that your body is going to fall apart rapidly unless you do some maintenance work.

Virgin Active have opened a place within a few hundred yards of my flat, which is close enough that even I can't claim it's not convenient... and I'm starting to think that I could see quite an appreciable improvement in my leg if I did some regular exercise with it. On NYE at TG I noticed that my ability to dance is still slowly coming back, and as dancing is the only exercise it gets at present, I can only presume that a bit more exercise might well help it recover more quickly. It'd be really nice to be able to dance all night again...

Anyway, membership is going to cost me 65 quid a month, so I guess I'd better take it seriously. Anyone want to offer any advice? I'm already aware that I'm going to have to eat more, but help yourselves to any more detailed digs at my diet, I know you want to :) I'm sure there must be other things I haven't even thought of as well.

Oh, and obviously I'll be going over things quite carefully with both the personal trainer they assign me, and the physiotherapist I've been seeing, to try to make sure that I don't do myself an injury with this.

Comments

[lusercop.livejournal.com]

Gah, and there was I hoping you'd be at London.pm!

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

You also need to start eating properly.
I'm not kidding when I say you're malnourished. When you told me a while back what you usually ate in a day (bacon sarnies, chocolate bars, fizzy drinks and takeaway/readymeal dinner), I was horrified. You eat so little, and it's all junk, saturated fat, refined sugar and salt. Nothing fresh.

I keep saying this: your body is like a performance car - it needs good fuel and regular maintenance. Just taking vitamins won't do it - you need real food.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

I figured you'd be first in :)

So where's the likely intersection point for 'eating properly' and 'minimal time and cooking skills'? What are my easy(ish?) options for improving my diet?

I'm guessing fresh pasta is probably going to be my best approach... I like it, it's easy to cook, and you can have it with various things (?) that might contain some kind of nutritional value.

[kelemvor.livejournal.com]

So where's the likely intersection point for 'eating properly' and 'minimal time and cooking skills'?
Two words:
Stir fry! A few minutes to prepare, and (usually) no more than ten minutes in the wok. (Unless you're me, in which case the majority of my time management skills go out of the window...) I used to cook a chinese style beef stir fry at uni, if you ever want a meal cooked for you.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Raw food - fruit, salads. That's got to be your first thing. And take unsalted nuts, dried fruit etc to work to snack on instead of chocolate and crisps.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

I think my strong dislike of peppers is usually the stumbling block for all stir-fry recipes I've seen, but I suppose you can throw anything in there in theory?

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Soup is good too - the fresh soups you can get now are really tasty.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Fruit is nice, and I suppose if I was eating it every day it might stop going off before I get around to eating it, which is what usually seems to happen when I pick some up while shopping. Also, work have occasionally started getting fruit in for us all to snack on... one of my bosses is almost as worried about my diet as you are :)

Salad is boooooooooooooooring... I blame this mostly on lettuce, which is highly tedious. Cucumber is quite nice, but a bit dull. I don't really like tomatoes, but I can eat about half of one before I start pulling faces. After that I get lost... what else do you put in salads?

I'm sort-of allergic to nuts, so I'll pass on that one. Dried fruit is unpleasant to eat... a texture thing, I think. I have lots of weird texture things about food.

Remember I told you that I consider myself a fussy eater, and you said you couldn't see it personally? ... :)

[kelemvor.livejournal.com]

Peppers are optional. You can stir fry pretty much anything. Also, it's important to remember that (with a few exceptions) recipes are guidelines, and most things can be substituted for others.
If you like tuna, there's one that my Mum taught me which is pretty much egg-fried rice with tuna and onions, flavoured with soy sauce or oyster sauce. It also takes about five minutes plus the time to boil rice to prepare.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Don't like onions, don't like soy sauce. :) Not that keen on rice either, but I can eat it if it's got some kind of flavour...

The whole concept of substituting in recipes traumatises me :) I like nice precise instructions that you follow and you get consistent results at the other end... I swear I gave up on cooking the first time my mum used the phrase "a splash of milk and a dob of butter".

[faerie-in-boots.livejournal.com]

for my two pennies if you have a grill and a microwave you can cook almost anything!

as a suggested post gym meal -
grilled chicken breast (20 minutes or until cooked all the way through),
pack of microwaveable rice (high power 2 minutes),
baby sweetcorn and sugersnap peas (in a covered bowl with 2 tablespoons water microwave on high power for 3 minutes or until hot)
- simple delicious and filling and if you want to get adventurous a few drop of lemon juice and a sprig of thyme make a lovely marinade for the chicken (put them and the chicken in a bowl and cover, before going out and by the time you get back it wil be ready to cook)

Obviously if you don't like any of the above then its not much help!!

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Don't like peas, really don't like sweetcorn, and not very keen on rice. :)

I think this thread is starting to show people why this whole 'eating healthy' thing strikes me as slightly challenging! :)

Hrm... and I'm not sure if I do have a grill. There might be one in the top of the oven I guess, I've never used it.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

Some lettuce is nicer than others - iceberg is pretty dull, but romaine has more flavour to it. Green salads are more interesting if you add things like avocado, asparagus, cheese (feta or fried haloumi are good), sliced sausages, olives, bacon, chicken, sundried tomatoes, antipasta generally(found in jars, in the same bit of the supermarket as the olives) etc.

Grated carrots with sultanas and a squeeze of orange juice is nice, or just batons of carrots (which you can get ready cut if you can't be bothered, and dips.

Rice salad is slightly more effort, but brown rice with cucumber, tuna, olives, and a lemony dressing is nice.

You could try doing pasta with things other than tuna from time to time. Use a jar of ready made sauce and add a few extra vegetables.

[bluecassandra.livejournal.com]

http://www.realmeatco.sageweb.co.uk/readymeal.htm
http://www.realmeatco.sageweb.co.uk/rdymlside.htm

Chop things up really small then you dont know they are vegetables, thats my tip.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

Don't I remember you being quite enthusiastic at the fried-rice Marcus cooked last time you were here? That had both onions and soy sauce in. The trick with onions is to chop them finely enough, so you get the infused sweetness of them, without the acidity.

I'm afraid most of my recipes are fairly imprecise, as the usually start "Chop some of all the nice looking vegetables you have in the fridge until you have so many they won't fit in the pan..."

[kelemvor.livejournal.com]

But that's part of the joy of cooking! A lot of it comes down to the contents of the cooking vessel looking, smelling, tasting or sounding right.
OTOH, there are some recipes that must be followed religiously, or disaster results. Royal icing is one that comes to mind, and if it goes wrong you get left with either glue or concrete.
A while back, someone mooted the possibility of writing a database that held a kitchen inventory, a list of recipes, a list of ingredients and valid substitutions. As long as you kept the first table up to date, it would then modify the recipes according to what you had in stock. (I had a go, but got bogged down in data relationship problems. Might have another go...) That would take some of the guesswork out of it!

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

OK, there are still plenty of salady things you can do. I don't like lettuce-based salads on their own either.

Try couscous with lots of chopped herbs, greens (baby leaf spinach is good) and cucumber with some lemon juice and pepper.

Of course, you might not fancy salads much in the winter, but you can try finely slicing vegetables and cooking them for a few minutes in vegetable stock or miso soup. It's lovely, and if you cook some noodles at the same time, it can be nicely filling.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

The last one is my best hope, I think... I've got no objection to cooking various other things with pasta, if they're claimed to contain some useful nutrient that I need. Depending on what they taste like, of course.

Brown rice is as nasty tasting as brown bread... needs more refining to make it edible ;)

Throwing lumps of meat in salads would never have occurred to me, that could make them more palatable :)

I'm not generally keen on 'interesting' cheeses... I only really eat cheddar and similar things. I know I don't like feta cheese, never heard of the other one. Fried cheese? Oddness.

Avacado is okay, asparagus is quite bitter iirc? Carrots are good, I'd forgotten about them.

Olives are foul :)

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure I passed on that meal, because it looked to be full of things I wouldn't eat. Or was that a different stir-fry thing?

Chopping onions finely (and indeed chopping anything else) sounds like more work than I'd like to do before eating, unless the result is going to be really impressively tasty. Pre-chopped veg for me maybe :)

[missyasmina.livejournal.com]

Home made hamburgers are good.
You can buy the burger and bread at the store, you just have to add whatever salad you want on yourself, as well as frying the burgers.
The bread can be warmed up in toaster if you have that, if not, just put them in the oven for 3-4 minutes.

Homemade pizza :
Just take a bread, cut it into a lot of slices.
Fry meat, mushrooms, onions (or not) until the meat is done. (not red anymore)
Add some spices you like.
If you dont mind the fat, you can add some cream in the end, that will make a very tasty (but very fat) sauce.
Pore this on to the slices.
Cover with cheese.

In oven on 225 celsius until the cheese is melted. (5-7 minutes.)

Can be frosen after, so you just have to heat it later in the microwave.

[faerie-in-boots.livejournal.com]

Ok, subsitute sweetcorn and peas for baby carrots (don't need chopping!!)and cook in the same way and swap the rice for fresh pasta (If I'm correct fresh pasta is best cooked by dropping into boiling water for a few minutes) - simple!!

As for the grill, I'm sure you have got one most cookers do!

For recipes try this www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/ you can seach for a recipe by the ingredients you have in you cupboard...

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

baby carrots (don't need chopping!!)

Cunning :)

[lusercop.livejournal.com]

You can also get pizza base mix from most supermarkets, which is a add water, roll out and put in oven, then add topping on affair. This leaves you with leftover cold homemade pizza for breakfast, which is definitely a win. I can't really offer much advice to this thread, given that I've been veggie for 8 years now, and it seems that many of the things that I would suggest, have already been discounted. I will point out that red onions taste nicer than white ones, though, and, especially grilled, can be very nice in things.

[booklectica]

I suggest you make a list of all the foods you like and post it. Then the foodies can tell you what to eat. :)

[hilarita.livejournal.com]

You can always pour lots of dressing over there. I usually make my own balsamic vinegar and olive oil mix (this takes about a minute). Mayonnaise is unfortunately full of fat, but does make lettuce about 1000% more interesting.

[aiwendel.livejournal.com]

£65/month!!!! Ouch.
I guess it's good if it gets you looking after yourself and they assign someone to look after you, but if you don't use it, can you get out of it and stop paying or are you stuck in it for a year? (I've heard the odd can't escape the gym fee horror story)...

on the food front things like roasted vegetables (carrot, parsnip etc) are quite a good way of inserting vegetables and still having them taste like real food... And google is good at finding recipies from a random ingredient set if you buy proper food without a fixed plan of what you're going to do with it.

[fiona-kitty.livejournal.com]

Rocket, watercress and spinach salad is not boring! :)

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

The 64 a month includes 10 quid extra to be on a monthly contract instead of a 12 month contract :)

[aiwendel.livejournal.com]

ok, that is probably wise! :)

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

You're a Very Strange Kitten.

[belaroo.livejournal.com]

Frozen mixed veggies can be useful. They are nutritionally best cos they are frozen while fresh and with some pasta and a jar of pasta sauce and a bit of chicken or tuna you have a 10 minute fresh home cooked meal with real food.
I know this is morbid; I lost two (one very skinny) fussy eaters who lived on weed, beer and takeaways in Holland both around 40 years old in the last 5 years. Both were down to diet and lifestyle. It does matter and it can be quickly put right.
I wish you all the strength of your new plans to eat and exercise.
How about get a couple of cookbooks - ones with at least a few recipes you don't need to substitute stuff. I hate following recipes, I'm very much a 'bit of this and that cook' but you can't beat them for new ideas.
Real food is just stuff you bring home and cook yourself, it doesn't have to be fancy, and it’s always better than processed stuff. So long as when you read the ingredients they don't take up more than a couple of cm you are more often than not (OK not a bag of sugar) feeding yourself stuff your body will benefit from.
Also avoid hydrogenated fat - it’s a killer, worse than lard or butter, it's in loads of stuff so if you can avoid it, what is left will probably be more healthy. Do you read labels?
Also good for gym goers, especially busy, lazy/tired ones is a trustworthy protein shake. If you get one from a health food shop, like Solgar or livewell (I think) you will find one you can mix with a bit of water and say apple or grape juice. It has vits and minerals plus fibre. A pint of shake when you get home from the gym might just be the thing for you if you are inclined to skip meals. Also you are a bloke, sweating, using muscles and energy, you will need to re-build what you have lost so, if you can stomach a shake or sports drink, they do work. I tend to avoid the ones they market at gyms though; they are high profit, low value.
I've done the London Gym scene as a spin instructor 2001-2003 and have had my own food fitness and nutrition journey. I tend to believe that realistically, if you aren't naturally inclined to a balanced diet and lifestyle, if you want to get into good habits, keep them simple and easy if you want them to last.
Oh yeah, and if you aren't pooing at least once a day, you need to eat more veg and fibre. It's a sluggish digestion that ends up getting alot of people.
That’s my two penneth...
All the best.

[djlongfella.livejournal.com]

MARINATED STIR FRIED CHICKEN…

PREP TIME 15 MINS
COOKING TIME 20 MINS


INGREDIENTS FOR 2

2 BONELESS CHICKEN BREASTS
4 TABLESPOONS NATURAL YOGHURT
JUICE OF TWO LEMONS
1 GARLIC CLOVE SKINNED AND FINLEY CHOPPED
HALF-TEASPOON TURMERIC
HALF A TABLESPOON OF PAPRIKA
SEEDS OF 3 GREEN CARDOMON’S ( CRUSHED, DISCARD THE SHELLS ) YOU CAN CRUSH THE SEEDS BY PUTTING THEM BETWEEN TWO TEASPOONS AND GRINDING.
QUARTER TABLESPOON OF SALT
2 TABLESPOONS OF OLIVE OIL
HALF A TEASPOON GARAM MASALA ( INDIAN MIXED SPICES )
1 TABLESPOON CHOPPED FRESH CORIANDER

1.)
MIX IN A MEDIUM /LARGE BOWL, YOGHURT, LEMON JUICE, GARLIC, TURMERIC, PAPRIKA CARDOMON SEEDS AND SALT

CUT CHICKEN INTO STRIPS, DIAGONALLY ABOUT HALF INCH WIDE. PUT STRIPS INTO BOWL.

MIX THOROUGHLY AND LEAVE COVERED IN THE FRIDGE 2 -8 HOURS ( THE LONGER THE BETTER )

2.)

HEAT OIL IN DEEP FRYING PAN OR SAUCEPAN, ABOUT MEDIUM TO HIGH HEAT.

ADD CHICKEN MARINADE AND STIR FRY FOR 10 MINS.

3.)

TURN HEAT DOWN TO LOW.
ADD GARAM MASALA AND CORIANDER
SIMMER FOR 5 -10 MINS UNTIL CHICKEN IS TENDER.

SERVE WITH LEMON WEDGES, couscous ETC.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Thank you, very helpful indeed.