[peletiah]

> relegated to preparing all my food from scratch

> find a snack incredibly difficult [..] I basically had to eat carrots and hummus

You make it sound as if it was not normal to cook your own food from basic ingredients and not regularly eat processed snacks.

[toomanybeersies]

For many people, it is normal to regularly eat packaged foods.

When I was growing up, practically everything I ate came out of a packet, and was usually cooked in a microwave.

My parents never made sauce from scratch or used their own herbs and spices. Any sauce came in a jar or a packet. Gravy was that disgusting mix of maltodextrin, MSG, and colouring that you simply add to hot water. Pasta sauce always came in a bottle, with the inevitable hit of sugar. If we had tacos, the seasoning came in a packet, which is mostly sugar with a little bit of cumin and chilli.

The meat would inevitably be cooked in a microwave so as to not require using oil to cook it. My mother practically had a phobia of fat and salt. The only meats I ate were chicken breast and ultra lean mince with the grease drained off.

It wasn't that my parents were unhealthy, I ate a lot of vegetables, and as I mentioned, I had a very low fat diet. I guess it was a lack of time and creativity that drove them to using packages for everything.

[peletiah]

I'm sorry you had this experience. I grew up with a stay-at-home-mother who cooked two fresh meals every day (And usually bread or Müsli for breakfast), my grandmothers did this too. I loved helping her in the kitchen and now with my own family I try to do the same, fresh ingredients, diverse meals - and I always prefer home-made meals even over restaurants, which are pretty high quality here in Austria. Homemade, self-cooked still tastes better, has higher quality (Organic and wholefoods) and you can't beat the price of basic ingredients. And cooking is surprisingly easy once you have some basic skills, surely a much flatter learning curve than software development or other professional skills!

[rexgallorum2]

This is down partly to cultural and lifestyle differences. This sort of communal food culture is still alive and rather widespread in continental Europe but largely dead in the US.

[ricardobeat]

Low fat, high carb, is actually quite unhealthy. It is a shame to hear this, with just a little practice and preparation you can learn to make fresh, tasty and healthier food in under 20 minutes every day.

[nsomaru]

Any resources for meal planning for a time-strapped bachelor-vegetarian? :D

[black6]

"Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant" is a fantastic cookbook with a vegetarian emphasis.

And Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" is the most read book in my house. My wife and I have taken to calling it The Bible.

Both books have a good number of quick recipies (Bittman tends to write his more like guides), with general cooking tips and history mixed in.

[loco5niner]

I love "How to Cook Everything".... and I'm working on the newer "How to Cook Everything - Fast" :-)

[UnFleshedOne]

Cook in big batches -- a big pot of soup lasts most of the week for two people if you eat it as one meal per day (dinner for example). Cook a batch of something else to provide lunches for a week (probably not soup based if you want to bring it to work), whatever you usually eat for breakfast (oats?) and you are set for a week with an our or two of cooking per week. This way you have 3 different meals per day and you only need to reheat them.

This is easier with meat based meals (better calorie density), but works fine with vegetable based meals too. Just get bigger pots. :)

All those people cooking for 30 mins per day are hardcore.

[Djvacto]

Not a resource so much as a tool, but getting an instant pot was a game changer in a lot of ways for me. I never minded cooking but now when I don't want to cook, I still have it remarkably easy.

[Jedd]

Search on 'four hour body' or 'slow carb' -- following the release of Tim Ferris' book there's a huge wealth of blogs, forums, etc that contain lots of fast, tasty recipes that meet the general criteria. Vegetarian complicates matters only slightly -- either way you're looking to consume a lot of legumes unless you're going completely carb-free.

[H1Supreme]

I eat a primarily vegetarian diet, and my advice is to make a big pot of vegetable stew on Sunday. I quite literally just put a bunch of veggies, rice, potatoes, whatever in a pot with onions, garlic, salt and pepper. It freezes great, and I can get about 2 weeks of lunches from it.

[geekagirl]

Budget Bytes has relatively healthy, cheap, fast vegetarian and meat recipes.

http://budgetbytes.com/

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Practically everything I eat comes out of a package these days. I'd prefer it wasn't like that, but it was the easiest way to measure calories when I was losing weight. You don't lose half your body weight by not making extreme sacrifices, despite what charlatans might tell you in an effort to sell you something.

After I hit my lowest weight I decided to ease up on the extreme calorie counting and shift my efforts towards eating simple home cooked meals since they'd be less expensive and, if you believe the common wisdom, healthier. Consequently, I put on about 30 pounds. This was mostly eating tofu, eggs, potatoes, fruit, mushrooms, various vegetables, cheese, and homemade bread (usually whole grain).

So I went back to what worked. One other thing eating packaged foods did was give me a bunch of time back. I'm still about 10 pounds up from that experiment.

[JoshMnem]

I wasn't able to lose weight and keep it off until I permanently eliminated certain categories of food: added sugars, refined grains, all flours, potatoes, dairy, eggs, most oils, and most meat. The only grain-like things I eat are rice (mostly brown rice), amaranth seeds, and buckwheat groats. My staples are things like steamed Brassica oleracea vegetables and legume soup, which are easy to prepare in bulk in advance. The only oil I use during food preparation is a couple of tablespoons of uncooked olive oil per day. I get most other fats from avocados, nuts, seeds, and fish. I cook almost everything from scratch. I also do some calorie restriction and water fasting (3-5 days at a time).

I lost about 70 pounds and now am easily maintaining a normal BMI.

[JacobJans]

I don't know what you've tried, in terms of home preparation of food. One strategy is to switch to two meals a day, plus one snack. Another is to focus on high-volume, low calorie density foods, such as vegetables and beans, while limiting high-calorie dense foods such as bread, cheese, and meat. This allows you to feel full from fewer calories. Another way to think about this is to dramatically increase your fiber intake (and not just from hard fruits, but from a variety of sources). For example, if you were to make a pasta dish, use half the regular amount of pasta, and greatly increase the amount of veggies in it, so the pasta is just a small component of the dish.

[philbarr]

I watched this the other day which was more informative than I'd imagined [0].

Main take away for me was to eat fibre rich foods - so instead of potatoes eat squash and celariac, instead of rice eat bulgar wheat, and so on.

[0] The Truth About Carbs: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b5y6c0

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

I've been fighting my body for the better part of a decade now, trust me when I say that I've probably tried every piece of advice ever parrotted on the internet. For instance the high-volume low-calorie high-fiber plan ultimately just made me extremely bloated and often constipated.

[JacobJans]

The bloating is caused by the production of gas by the bacteria in your gut. If you add a lot of fiber at once, the bacteria will overpopulate, and produce too much gas, causing bloating/distension. One way to avoid this is to gradually increase the amount of fiber, so your microbiome will adjust slowly, allowing you to avoid the excess gas/bloating. Not sure what to say about the constipation, though it could be a similar issue.

These things are not simple, are they?

One strategy is to focus on the healthy veggies that your genetic ancestors likely ate; your body is more likely to be adapted to those foods.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

I didn't ask for your advice and I'm not a moron so I know how to use google just as well as you do.

This is the shit I'm talking about. If you have difficult losing and maintaining weight people crawl out of the woodwork to parrot bullshit advice they got from some clickbait article as though knowledge isn't the easiest part of the process. People don't have difficulty with their weight because they lack knowledge, people have difficulty with their weight because suffering sucks and the human body doesn't like having to eat itself.

[woodandsteel]

The high-volume low fat high-fiber plan works for most people. Apparently there is something different about your body.

[com2kid]

> Consequently, I put on about 30 pounds.

Kitchen scale and MyFitnessPal.

Also don't have food around that doesn't require prep! It is super easy to snack on fruit and bread. If everything in your fridge is raw meat or veggies that require cooking, there is no way to over eat.

Also I try to avoid prepping too much food in advance, since if the food is good I am tempted to eat it all without waiting! So I cook each meal individually, which takes a lot more time, but it works for weight loss.

Either that or I do a weeks meal prep and commit to not buying any more food, that way if I am stupid and eat more food per meal than I should, one of my future meals is going to come up short. It is amazing how quickly self control develops under those situations. :)

In comparison, packaged food requires at least a bit of conscious prep work, so people are aware of the time they spent and of the calorie consumption, thus I can see why that route can be easier.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> Kitchen scale and MyFitnessPal.

Yes, somehow I managed to lose half my body weight and keep it off despite a setback from a failed experiment without every knowing how to count calories or properly measure things in a kitchen.

What is it with talking about health and nutrition on the internet that makes everyone come out and offer their unsolicited advice that assumes the person they're speaking with is an idiot?

[com2kid]

> Yes, somehow I managed to lose half my body weight and keep it off despite a setback from a failed experiment without every knowing how to count calories or properly measure things in a kitchen.

You mentioned that you had problems with home cooking, and found portion control easier with pre-packaged food. I proposed that measuring out home cooked food gives the same effect as prepackaged food.

I fail to see how that is accusing anyone of being an idiot.

[donovanh]

When people reply they aren’t just talking to you but lots of other people also reading this thread. The information may be useful to some.

[Djvacto]

I think a decent trick is learning to approximate calories/meal sizes for your body. I usually know when I'm eating 1 portion vs 1.5 portions of my home-cooked stuff, just by virtue of having cooked and paid attention to serving sizes long enough.

Another useful tool is a food scale. Everyone has measuring cups and stuff, but having a food scale can make stuff like measuring a serving of mixed nuts for my breakfast way easier.

However, packaged foods vs. from scratch is an element of time and convenience as well. I just make food when I have the time/feel like it (I enjoy cooking as a hobby, but am not always up for it) and use 'easy' meals when I need to: throwing together some pasta and a pre-made sauce jar I keep in the pantry, plus some frozen TJ's meatballs or something.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

I'm well aware of the concept of estimation, and I own a food scale. Even when you make things yourself you know that an egg is ~70 calories, 100g of flour is ~400 calories, etc. It isn't exactly rocket science.

Knowing how much of what to eat isn't the problem. It has never been the problem. The problem is actually sticking to that diet when your body is screaming at you to eat more, when the part of your mind that evolved to keep you from starving --which is what losing weight is, since your body literally has to eat itself-- starts playing tricks on you and conveniently forgetting that you ate earlier, and when your metabolism, which has been unavoidably and permanently damaged by the mere act of losing weight at all, requires that you eat substantially less than the daily average.

I'm really sick of people assuming I'm a moron because losing weight is difficult. Do you know what it is like to only eat one meal a day? To have to avoid all social functions at which free food might be present? To ensure that there is only ever enough food in your house for exactly one week of your caloric allotment of 1600/day?

Trust me, whatever parroted advice you're thinking of offering next, I've heard about it and tried it.

[GLjEI4YbnGD27LB]

Well, this would then probably not work for you, but it worked for me. What helped me to lose weight was to still cook my own food from bought ingredients, and measure everything that I was eating for weight and calories. But mostly what I did was switch the type of food that I was making, and the ingredients I was using to things that were far less calorie dense, that worked for me. It does still suck to go to social events with plenty of food, because then I will totally eat it.

[JCharante]

The solution to overeating at social events is to go vegan. Then you'll only snack on some cantaloupe.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Corn chips and salsa, pita chips and hummus, popcorn if it doesn't have butter, and since I live in a relatively liberal town vegan sweets are not even that rare at social gatherings.

[runamok]

I get everything you said but the eternally damaged metabolism. Don't have the source handy on mobile but from what I have read the difference between a so-called fast and slow metabolism is < 10%.

Food is absolutely addictive and we have so much available. Combine that with a car based and sedentary lifestyle and it's a huge problem. The only thing that has worked for me is being a lifelong runner and cyclist. Burn an extra 500 to 800 calories a day and most weight loss goals are much more attainable. I am trying to help my mom lose weight and when you are very overweight adding huge amounts of activity is very hard.

She seemingly also has a 'slow' metabolism but in reality she moves as little as possible. Whereas I am always wandering around doing things at top speed. Activity begets activity because it begins to hurt less to move.

Anyways, best of luck in your efforts.

[krageon]

Your sources about metabolism are wrong. I know because I've done base metabolic rate tests in uni (with one of those hoods) and have seen (repeatedly) that some people breathe out ~4k kcal per day and others only ~1.6k. This is at rest and at different times in the day.

[krageon]

Yes, I know what that is like. While I agree that is is occasionally excruciatingly hard to not eat when there is plenty of food available, it's not impossible for me. It has nothing to do with whether or not you're a moron - loads of people will be perfectly able to just not eat unless it's within a certain timeframe, as you've no doubt repeatedly read.

[miranda_rights]

Keep in mind that there are different levels of 'from scratch.' Making your own sandwich is pretty normal. Making your own bread for your sandwich but with store-bought mayo is probably less common. Making your own bread and making your own mayo is probably even less common, and that was about the level of 'from scratch' that the other user is talking about.

[peletiah]

Ok, I'm not talking about sandwiches or making your own bread, but "proper" meals, like aspargus-risotto, (store-bought-)pasta with homemade-sugo, cooked beef with homemade-gravy, vegetables and dumplings as a side, diverse soups made from fresh vegetables/beans/meat, vegetable casserole, mixed salad, grilled fish, curry with rice etc. (Just a selection of the stuff we had in the past days). Guess as a european I'm still naive about life in the USA :-)

[wst_]

I think people are overestimating the quality of products they used to call "fresh." Do you know the source of all the products you use? Preparing your own meal doesn't change much, unless you really trust the source.

[PeterisP]

If we define "normal" as whatever most people do, then yes, currently in USA it's not normal to cook all (or even most) of your food yourself from basic ingredients; most people do not do that anymore, when they cook themselves, a lot of ingredients are highly processed or pre-prepared.