Is this a healthy diet?

it does look healthy but for me not nearly enough complex carbs. i would run out of steam in the gym quickly without brown rice, sweet potatoes, whole grain breads and oatmeal

Not nearly enough veggies IMO to be considered a "healthy" diet.

Too much reliance on processed foods ie food bars, protein cookies, etc and not enough "real" food.

Eliminate the Larabars and eat a piece of fruit and some real nuts.

JMTC

job561

Yep, I agree with Job. The more involvement from "man," the less healthy a food becomes. Real, whole, straight from the ground (or the animal), unprocessed foods are the way to go for health (and for fat loss, I might add).

Once in awhile, a protein bar would be an OK "cheat snack" I guess, (like once a week at most), but I personally wouldn't include any of them on a fat loss/healthy eating program. They're basically candy bars, with lots of hydrogenated fats in them, which we know the body can't break down and assimilate.

If you need motivation to eat more real foods, what always worked for me was telling myself that real whole foods are highly thermogenic (you burn a lot of calories just digesting and processing them). The more processed a food is before it hits your mouth, the less work your body has to do to assimilate it (less calories burned). The thermic effect of food can greatly boost your daily calorie burn AND your overall metabolism. What could be better than that????

The reason I do the bars in between meals is because it's handy. I take care of an Alzheimer patient and it's hard to sit. I'm going from 7:00 am till 7:00 pm. I tried an apple and almonds at one time but it left me hungry.

If fruit and nuts left you hungry as mid-day snacks, you are not eating enough "volume" at your regular meals.

At breakfast, eat a large bowl of oatmeal with protein powder mixed in ... add fresh fruit to the mix to sweeten it.

For Lunch, large salads will "fill" up your stomach ... add just a touch of dressing to get enough fat to convince your body that you feel sated.

Throughout the day, drink lots of liquids ... these help to keep you hydrated AND will keep you feeling full.

That's what I do for breakfast, and it holds me over for a good 3 hours: I have a bowl of oatmeal (about 1/2 cup) with a scoop of Whey Light, some sugar-free vanilla syrup, and coffee with 2% milk as creamer, and YUMMMMMM--'Im good to go.

Meal 2 is usually a starchy carb like a sweet potato and chicken,

Meal 3 is a piece of fruit or another starchy carb and fish or something like that,

Meal 4 is a fibrous carb, (veggie or salad) with olive oil and seasonings and red meat of some sort,

and meal 5 is protein only (fish, chicken, meat, etc., or a big-'ol bowl of cottage cheese) with 3 or 4 fish oil gels. If I'm in the mood for something sweet, sometimes I'll make 'protein pudding' out of casein powder and sugar-free vanilla syrup. )

I can honestly say that I'm never really hungry on this plan. I eat every three hours and by the time I'm even slightly hungry, I look at the clock and it's time to eat again!

Hope that gives you some ideas of ways to ward off hunger!

For me personally, I don't eat nuts because they're so caloricly dense, in other words, you don't get much 'bang for your buck' hunger-control wise, if that makes sense. I know they're healthy but I'd rather 'save' my calories for things that have less fat, and more slow-burning carbs and protein, which are more filling. Also, fat isn't nearly as 'thermogenic' as carbs and protein, so for fat loss, I don't think they're ideal. Your body doesn't work nearly as hard processing and digesting, and storing fat as it does carbs and protein.

Originally Posted by FIT42

casein powder and sugar-free vanilla syrup.

Interesting...sugar-free vanilla syrup like the ones that are used in the espresso stands?

Yup, that's the stuff! I get the Torani brand, because it's basically just Sucralose with Xanathan gum.

I learned from Alex that Splenda packets, if you look at the ingredients, have maltodextrin and dextrose added to them, so they're not pure Sucralose, and they actually have 4 sugar calories per packet, which they don't list on the box. That's fine if you only use one or two packets, but to sweeten up my homemade "protein pudding," that certainly wasn't gonna cut it. So I did a little research and discovered that most brands of sugar-free coffee syrup use Sucralose and a thickener, which I can live with. So it helps sweeten and thicken a lot of things. Plus it comes in 9 million flavors so you can really get creative!

In my coffee I use either a liquid sucralose that I get on Bodybuilding.com, made by "Healthy Cheat" foods. I think it's just called "Liquid Sucralose." Anyway it doesn't have all the sugars added to it. Or I use some of the syrup, but oddly enough, I don't like my coffee to be "thick" so I tend to use the Healthy Cheat stuff in coffee.

how do you make your protein pudding?