Help! trying to get in shape!

[Josee05]

Kibbles,
You might try adding a bit more lean protien to your diet. I know that as a woman at 140 lbs. I eat more lean protein in a day than you currently are. You should try to eat 1-2 chicken breasts. Great thinking to pre-grill the chicken. It really helps keep one on track. I cook up 4-5 packages at a time so it is always a good choice in the fridge.
Also try brown rice instead of white. The brown will stick with you longer and make you feel a bit more full, you can always use chicken stock to cook it instead of plain water, it adds some flavor. I have found Uncle Ben's to have an instant one (for brown rice) to be handy. Multi grains are full of fiber which helps move the protein through your system as well as help you feeling full.
For snacks you should try to add some veggies. Fresh raw green veggies are full of so many vitamins and minerals that will be sure to help in weight loss. They also help with the hunger feelings with out adding a ton of useless calories. I buy a lot of pre-cut veggies as well as cut them up and divide them up in the fridge for a quick grab. Also as Kold has mentioned nuts are an great idea for a snack. Almonds or natural peanut butter are another healthy fat as well as protein. Can always have a handful of those with a pice of fruit.
Keeping a lot of variety in your fruits and veggies can help you diet. It helps to change up flavors as well as keeping you from getting really bored. It has the added benifit of keeping you healthy as well.
Last, can't stress the fish oils enough. They help with so many things from brain function to boosting your motabolizm. The other thing they do is help the body absorb fats and excess skin. Nothing like fish oils to help shrink that unwanted extra skin.
Good luck in your choices! It is always easy to slip and be lazy. If you are feeling unhealthy now, just imagine yourself at 40. Setting yourself up now with good habits will ensure you don't have a very unhealthy lifestyle as an adult where it is REALLY hard to change.
Josee

As a side note, you guys always impress me with your knowledge! I always learn so much when I read this thread! :)

[Fallout]

Question vis a vis food quality:

I'm a poor (Read: poor. Very, very poor) college student.

As much as I'd like to be able to buy good, fresh chicken, the costs add up. I understand that in pretty much all cases, fresh > frozen, but does this severely impact chicken and the like? I'm willing to pay more if it's a drastic change, but as I said, I'm pretty much fucking broke.

[greekrefugee]

How broke? What kind of weekly food budget are you working with?

[Fallout]

I'm four hundred dollars in the hole. It's not that I have no flow, it's that I'd like to keep it as cheap and effective as possible. If going too cheap makes it ineffective, then I'll deal with the costs.

I can deal with shit inside my budget, I'm just wondering about the tangible difference between decent frozen chicken breasts and fresh ones.

[arkinia]

I'm not sure where you got the frozen chicken thing, but I don't think thats a good example of cost versus healthiness. Better examples are things like natural foods, organics etc versus cheap mainstream American foods. Cheaper food is cheaper because of either

1) target market -- people who want to eat better are in a minority, so you have less of a demand, so some things cost more. Also, they can charge a bit more, it's more specialized.
2) how the food is made. Preservatives, fats, sugar added, high fructose corn syrup, etc. Or in meat, how the animal is raised.

I often buy decent chicken breasts and freeze them, as you'll get a much better value and it's hard to go the store often and just buy 1-2 breasts. I don't think theres a lot of value in open range chicken (for many reasons), but buying lean (usually a package will list fat % and something about rib meat, etc), chicken without growth hormones added, without antibiotics pumped into them, etc is probably a good thing.

Food that adds up in price quickly can be:
-organics/natural foods - yogurts for example are usually like $1 each for a tiny little no sugar added organic yogurt.
-fruits and vegetables
-Protein. Fish/Chicken/powder

You can save money by thinking ahead:
-Plan your meals so you don't waste food. People waste a huge fraction of food
-don't eat out when you don't have to. I used to go out for lunch at work every day, and now I bring a much healthier lunch and I save over $150 a month.
-Don't buy things like soda, chips, and other snacks. Snacks tend to be expensive.
-buy in bulk! buy a big box of couscous for example that can be resealed or more chicken and freeze some.
-Make larger meals and freeze/refrigerate some for your next meal
-buy store brands, not name brands. Oatmeal is a great example. You can buy Quaker name brand for twice the cost of your local brand. The ingredients are the exact same.
-Weight in your time versus the cost of the food. You can buy a tiny bag of pre-peeled small carrots for $2, or a huge bag of unpeeled, dirty carrots for $.50. The later takes longer to eat because you need to peel/cut them, but they cost way less.

The end story is eating well costs more and takes more time. But you end up feeling better about yourself, physically and mentally. I actually enjoy cooking and can whip up great meals in a lot less time with practice.

[Fallout]

As for where I got the frozen chicken thing, it was a purely hypothetical question based off of the fact that I know you can buy a big 'ole bag of frozen chicken and I can't see it being that expensive. Again, working hypothetically, I was wondering what the rough difference in nutritional quality would be versus the decent stuff, in the event that somebody just had some weird knowledge about that.

As for your post, I appreciate the candor. I knew most all of what you threw up there, but it's good to see it reaffirmed. Doing the actual preparation and cooking isn't really a huge issue for me; I can cook and I like to do it, so that's really not my roadblock.

I was just wondering what the tangible difference between dirt cheap and decent is, nutritionally. I understand there more than likely has to be one, or else it'd almost all be dirt cheap. What I was hoping to find was some sort of loophole or something similar that'd save me some scratch in the process. If it doesn't exist, like I said, I'll deal with it and pay more.

Thanks again.

[Biffins]

Though I have no medical reason for making this statement (like data or some nutritional information), I can sum up the difference between organic (or better quality) vs. cheap(er) meats with this:

You know that shitty feeling you get for about 5-6 hours after eating fast food like McDonalds? I can bet you do not get that same feeling in your gut should you make your own hamburgers from nice ground meat.

So to answer what you essentially asked:

Will it kill you to get a frozen bag of chicken breasts from Costco? No.
Will you feel better if you buy organic chicken and grill/cook it yourself? Yes.

I used to buy bulk and cheap from Costco when I was 3rd/4th year college and that worked out real well when I was bulking up. Needing to eat all that food for the weight gain is not cheap at all. But now that I am primarily cutting/toning, I find that the healthier, fresher foods are much preferable for the small added investment.

-Eric

[Leica]

In terms of exactly what the supermarket label means:

Fresh Chicken meat freezes at about 26° F. Any chicken labeled "fresh" in a food store has never been allowed to be cooled to a temperature lower than 26° F. Chickens that have been frozen and then defrosted before they are sold, cannot be labeled "fresh". They are usually labeled as "previously frozen". A fresh chicken should be cooked no later than 3 days after the "sell-by date" printed on its label.
Frozen

Frozen In order to be considered "frozen", a chicken must be cooled to a temperature below 0° F. A chicken that has been defrosted before it is sold may be labeled "previously frozen". A frozen chicken may be safely prepared as long as a year after it was originally frozen. A frozen chicken that has been thawed should not be refrozen until after it is cooked.

I tried to Google nutritional differences but wasn't able to find any sources that claimed a distinct change in nutritional value, nutrients when a chicken was frozen. I think the most important thing to do if you're going to choose to buy frozen is to make sure that there are no added preservatives, etc that have been added to the chicken during the freezing process. There is definitely a difference in taste between fresh and frozen chicken, even if there are no added ingredients. Personally I much prefer it fresh.

Here's one of the articles I found: http://health.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=154807

Cheaper foods in general tend to have more preservatives, empty calories, etc in them.

[Amerle]

Any chicken labeled "fresh" in a food store has never been allowed to be cooled to a temperature lower than 26° F.

....

In order to be considered "frozen", a chicken must be cooled to a temperature below 0° F.

And finally, the 3rd category of chicken exists between 0 and 26 degrees F, neither fresh nor frozen, solid nor liquid, man nor beast. Once plentiful, now hunted to near extinction, this rare breed of hyper-intelligent zombie chicken lurks at the back of your grocer's freezer, plotting its revenge.

[Leica]

Actually, anything in between requires no label. So if it just says Chicken you know it's the mutant, zombie, revenge-plotting type of poultry.

[greekrefugee]

Well, to be specific, I'm working on a 30-50 dollar a week food budget, as I'm trying to save a lot of money atm. I would get membership cards at your local supermarkets, and use the circulars to shop for deals ahead of time. I have a Stop & Shop, Shaws and Price Chopper all close to my house, and at least one will often have meat prices lower than the other two. It is an added hastle, but when you've got to work with whatever funds you have, this is what you have to do

The hands down best way to save money is to buy a whole chicken. Legs and thighs get you two meals, breasts get you two meals, rest gets you chicken stock and/or soup. So you can cut it up, then freeze some or all. You can even make the soup ahead of time, and freeze that, giving you a quick wholesome meal on a day you work late, or don't have time to cook for whatever reason. So you're walking away with 5+ meals from one bird.

On the flip side, you can only have so much chicken before you start killing people. You can mix it up by say grilling a chiken filet and then dicing it up in a salad, etc. Learn some basic South/Central American cooking. You can shred the chicken, throw in some kidney beans, chipotle peppers, corn and brown rice, and you've got a banging meal that will get you 3 good servings, and is easy to eat. Throw it in a tupper and take it to work. Goya products are always pretty affordable, so this is a cheap meal to make.

If you don't want to do the whole chicken thing, as it can be time consuming, chicken or turkey filets and cutlets, turkey burgers, ground turkey are pretty reasonable if you use coupons and plan your shopping for the week ahead of time. I think I got 4 turkey filets for like 4.89 at Shaws. Throw in some veggies, and you're looking at like 2 dollars a meal or so, and that's unfrozen lean meat and green veggies.

Unfortunately, the better you eat, the more you will have to spend on food, at least in the States.

[Fallout]

Well, to be specific, I'm working on a 30-50 dollar a week food budget, as I'm trying to save a lot of money atm. I would get membership cards at your local supermarkets, and use the circulars to shop for deals ahead of time. I have a Stop & Shop, Shaws and Price Chopper all close to my house, and at least one will often have meat prices lower than the other two. It is an added hastle, but when you've got to work with whatever funds you have, this is what you have to do

The hands down best way to save money is to buy a whole chicken. Legs and thighs get you two meals, breasts get you two meals, rest gets you chicken stock and/or soup. So you can cut it up, then freeze some or all. You can even make the soup ahead of time, and freeze that, giving you a quick wholesome meal on a day you work late, or don't have time to cook for whatever reason. So you're walking away with 5+ meals from one bird.

On the flip side, you can only have so much chicken before you start killing people. You can mix it up by say grilling a chiken filet and then dicing it up in a salad, etc. Learn some basic South/Central American cooking. You can shred the chicken, throw in some kidney beans, chipotle peppers, corn and brown rice, and you've got a banging meal that will get you 3 good servings, and is easy to eat. Throw it in a tupper and take it to work. Goya products are always pretty affordable, so this is a cheap meal to make.

If you don't want to do the whole chicken thing, as it can be time consuming, chicken or turkey filets and cutlets, turkey burgers, ground turkey are pretty reasonable if you use coupons and plan your shopping for the week ahead of time. I think I got 4 turkey filets for like 4.89 at Shaws. Throw in some veggies, and you're looking at like 2 dollars a meal or so, and that's unfrozen lean meat and green veggies.

Unfortunately, the better you eat, the more you will have to spend on food, at least in the States.

Yeah, solid information all around. It's pretty much what I figured, I was just looking for an affirmation. Good thing I don't mind cooking *shrug*.

Another question:

Ideal meats are chicken/lean beef cuts and I'm going to assume fish, because while I haven't seen many people post about it here, last I heard it wasn't going to kill you short of the ever-fun mercury fuck you's that you sometimes hear about.

What about Pork/Turkey/Whatever common meat type-things I forgot. I'm not talking about running the all-pork diet or anything, but is there anything in any of those I'd want to steer clear of, other than perhaps higher fat contents or lower protein counts, etc?