Diet Perfecto

at least twice as much. (it's very hot here)

>red meat no more than three times a week,
nope. maybe three times a month.

>five portions of fruit and veg a day,
no. :( lots of fruits but not nearly enough veggies. keep saying I need to start drinking v8.

>AND ingests the correct amount all of the required vitamins and >minerals?

I take way too many pills. I can't manage to choke down huge-ass vitamins on top.

>Do you keep your sugar and salt levels to a minimum? Avoid 'bad' >fats?

er, I think so. Should probably watch the sugar more (see fruits), am encouraged to have salt, avoid fatty things yes.

>Do you exercise at least three times a week?
uhh, I walk about a mile a day just commuting. My obgyn however has instructed me to wear a pedometer and see if this averages out to 10k steps. If not I need to do more. :(

>If so, do you have perfect health and a perfect body?
eh, I'm okay. I recently lost ten lbs so I'm okay with my body although I could use some firming up. all my things like cholestrol are okay.

are you conducing a survey rumpsy?

Five portions of fruit and veg? I don't even have five portions of food a day.

The only thing I follow is the eight glasses of water.

I'm overly curious about how I compare to other people and this is a great medium for finding out!

But don't forget that if you have something like spaghetti bolognese or chilli, the tomatoes in the sauce will be at least one portion. It's not like only a plateful of spinach or a whole melon counts.

At least that much

red meat no more than three times a week,

No, maybe once or twice.

eights five portions of fruit and veg a day,

5 EACH or 5 total? 5 total then yes, more than that, but if I'm supposed to get at least 5 EACH of fruit and veggies then no. You guys realize that your average salad is more than "one portion" of veggies, right? It's really, really easy to do this.

AND ingests the correct amount all of the required vitamins and minerals?

This is what your daily multivitamin is for, filling in the gaps...

Do you keep your sugar and salt levels to a minimum?

I rarely add salt to food and I have to watch my sugar so yep.

Avoid 'bad' fats?

I don't understand this term--I use olive oil or butter virtually exclusively for cooking, besides the odd drizzle of dark sesame oil on asianesque stuff, eat avocados and fish more so than beef...so I dunno is what I'm saying.

Do you exercise at least three times a week?

Purposeful exercise I'm starting to work at again but I've been doing that at least 2x per week. And I walk home from work regularly and basically walk all over the place so I get a lot of incidental exercise.

If so, do you have perfect health

I have a cold right now. I'm constantly ill.

and a perfect body?

...but I've got bangin abs so I don't really care that much about the cough.

I've never eaten in The Rumblin' Tum, but I'm still alive (and slightly overweight).

The whole five portion thing annoys me sooo much, I only eat three meals a day - wholemeal toast for breakfast and a cup-a-soup for lunch (does tomato cup-a-soup count?) so I'd need to get all my portions from my evening meal.

http://dms.dartmouth.edu/news/2002_h2/print/08aug2002_water.html

The universal advice that has made guzzling water a national pastime is more urban myth than medical dogma and appears to lack scientific proof, he found.
[...]
Valtin thinks the notion may have started when the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council recommended approximately "1 milliliter of water for each calorie of food," which would amount to roughly two to two-and-a-half quarts per day (64 to 80 ounces). Although in its next sentence, the Board stated "most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods," that last sentence may have been missed, so that the recommendation was erroneously interpreted as how much water one should drink each day.

He found no scientific studies in support of 8 x 8. Rather, surveys of fluid intake on healthy adults of both genders, published as peer-reviewed documents, strongly suggest that such large amounts are not needed. His conclusion is supported by published studies showing that caffeinated drinks, such as most coffee, tea and soft drinks, may indeed be counted toward the daily total. He also points to the quantity of published experiments that attest to the capability of the human body for maintaining proper water balance.

It's so easy to make excuses as to what I eat. I need to know if the folks that go to all the effort following these guidelines ARE perfectly healthy.

In the paper today it was saying that KFC are to be sued over using too much trans-fat in their foods. (More than the recommended weekly amount)

All that done for me was remind me how long it's been since my last Zinger Tower Meal. I'll be having one tonight.

How can a chicken breast in a bun be so fatty?

This is why I pay no attention to the whole good fat/bad fat thing. I mean fat is fat is fat. It strikes me that we're better off eating natural fats than more processed fats but that's my opinion of processed foods in general.

I do tend to avoid frying foods at home.

As for the rest of the perfect diet, we eat red meat all the time, and eggs (which used to be anathema). I'm all about avoiding HFCS, so bake most of our bread etc. We drink excessive amounts (compared to most people) of red wine and other forms of alcohol, thinned occasionally with some form of water. We hit the gym with some frequency and I walk to and from work most days. Perfectly healthy? Pretty much (speaking for me). Perfect body? HA! Hahahahahaha! But I'm happy with it.

thats about it. once in a while i eat a salad. im full of preservatives!

I tend to agree.

it certainly keeps you slimmer than the other options

i've been eating lots of hard-boiled and soft-boiled eggs as snacks and light meals. they're supposed to be really good for you (as long as you don't fry them).

barney should try it himself, then, the tubby fucker :o

i try to do all the stuff you mention, rumpie: mrs fiendish is very good with this sort of thing, and keeps me on the right track. my water intake isn't what it should be right now - i seem to have got lazy there - but other than that ... yeh, i watch what i eat, go to the gym twice a week, and consider myself pretty fit and healthy. i hated my body until about five years ago, when i began working out; it's far from "perfect" 'cos i am, after all, a wee short-arse with a gym membership and not charles atlas, but i'm happy with it and really that's all that counts.

i suffer from perennial rhinitis, which i think is probably hayfever/allergy-based and almost certainly genetic (my mum has all the same symptoms), and perhaps because of this i do tend to get colds if anyone else has 'em. but compared to five or six years ago - when i was living off takeaways, smoking industrial quantities of weed and doing no exercise at all - i'm fitter, happier and, er, more productive :)

Also, surely onions are a vegge - what else would they be? I wonder about pumpkin though, I suspect it sides with potatoes, kumera and yams as a starch.

Finally, if I ate only what my great-grandparents recognised as food there'd be no avocado, no pasta, no mango, banana, pawpaw, coconut or pineapple, no salad greens except lettuce and spinach, no olive oil, sunflower oil or sesame oil. No garlic, ginger or chilli. Rice would be a pudding. What there would be is an awful lot of meat, bread, potatos, butter, cheese, milk and meat. Which is fine when you're pioneering but not when you're sitting on your ass in front of a computer.

I don't eat as I should though, and I don't have a perfect body or health.

fry eggs in olive oil. it's all good.

I have always crowed that I can eat whatever I want and while this has begun to change, "whatever I want" ends up being some pretty healthy stuff by and large so I think it's all right. The only thing, Rumpy, about your diet, is that it seems a little out of whack - like, nothing much until evening, when I bet the hunger starts a-gnawin and you kinda go crazy. At least, I would if I'd just had a piece of toast and a cup of soup all day.

Then I went out with an italian and his mother fattened me up with pasta and veal and more pasta but I was still only about 55kg.

Then I had a bout of depression and lost a ton of weight cos I just didnt eat at all. And now, I eat like Rumpy's list: a litre of water a day, loads of vegetables, next to no sugar; but I have a fair bit of cheese and white bread, and the kicker? A lot of booze.

And now, I'm still ok but I have a belly and I'm about 65kg :( :(

Cheese, bread and booze is the diet of an old Bavarian, give or take some sausage.

Yeah, my parents, who live in Japan, claim you have to do at least 30 different ingredients per day. This probably includes spices. Not sure though. It sounded silly to me.

Avoid 'bad' fats?

I don't understand this term

Uh, how do you not understand this? You have saturated fats (which are bad and can be found in french fries,...) and unsaturated fats (for example ones found in seafood and olive oils).

eat avocados

High in calory but oh so yummy (with soy sauce).

Unfortunately I live in a 'studio flat' - no door between kitchen and living-area. If I'm on an early (up at 6.15) I don't want to disturb Mr, cue lots of skulking and no kitchen activities.

I never leave in time to eat in work, and the facilities in here are CRAWLING.

Oh, you mean eat one?

Ok just because your ancestors didn't have them doesn't mean they wouldn't recognize them as edible. However things like yogurt in a tube, twinkies and those awful slim-fast bars I used to eat for breakfast (and soda I guess!) they probably would be shocked to see people eat.

is not true because to qualify as "portions" they have to be diff fruit/veg--drinking five glasses of orange juice wouldn't constitute a "five-a-day", as some seem to think

red meat no more than three times a week
sometimes more, rarely less

five portions of fruit and veg a day
yes

AND ingests the correct amount all of the required vitamins and minerals?
I've no idea. The only supplement I take is cod liver oil.

Do you keep your sugar and salt levels to a minimum?
I use lo-salt and artificial sweetener if it's available but I don't make that much of an effort to avoid salt/sugar otherwise. I probably over-salt food.

Avoid 'bad' fats?
No.

Do you exercise at least three times a week?
Lots of walking and the gym three times on a good week.

If so, do you have perfect health and a perfect body?
Hell no. I could lose 30lbs and still have a chin to spare.

Do you keep your sugar and salt levels to a minimum? Avoid 'bad' fats?
Yes, I do that too - really try to cut back on sugar as much as possible. Salt I only use a little because it makes me really thirsty. Always use olive oil for cooking & salads. I guess I started paying really close attention for health reasons but now it's more about being really picky & not wanting to eat too much junk. (though if I go to a bar I still get a burger and fries, I just don't go to bars that much.)

Do you exercise at least three times a week?
If a whole lot of walking counts, I do. Should start going to the gym or start running though. I'm always saying that.

If so, do you have perfect health and a perfect body?
Not perfect but I can't remember the last time I've gotten sick (aside from annoying seasonal allergies & annoying hangover headaches) and am I guess slightly underweight for my height, though I would like to be in better shape (see above plan to go to the gym).

It's pretty easy to not understand this. The thinking on which fats are "good" and "bad" has flipped about 17 times over the past twenty years, and, as JBR has noted, just because something is a "good" fat doesn't mean you can eat it with abandon...As I said in the rest of the post, in my mind it is more about whether or not something is natural: the fat in butter and the fat in avocados seems a lot healthier to me than a lot of the really super processed stuff they use in fast food joints or the really cheap ones you get at the supermarket. Whether or not butter contains saturated fat or not is not something I think about or consider in the least (in fact, I really don't know so if anyone wants to chime in and say either way they should!).

I mean, getting 80% of your diet from olive oil isn't really going to make you a healthy person either so I think worrying about the ever-changing good/bad issue instead of worrying about the overall amount of fat you get is silly.

xpost I think some of us had healthier grandparents than others but yeah, generally, I agree--most of us are too young for our grandparents to actually not be of the generation that started eating absolute bullshit (to be blunt).