This is very possible too. What's the criteria for judging "healthy"?
I mean, I have no ego, and I'm not doing this out of narcissism or some silliness like that. I genuinely care about "the truth". So if the truth is I don't look healthy, then I'd like to know why.
I was just about run up to the local gas station and buy a $0.72 44oz Cherry Coke, then run up to McDonalds and grab a McChicken for $1.09, then head back and keep programming. Total time: 15min, total cost: $1.81. If you give me convenient alternatives, I guarantee I'll switch. And maybe this thread will help educate other people who are doing similar things as me.
I used to be just like you. I didn't care, and my weight was fine. Until it wasn't, it was very very slow. So slow I barely noticed, but eventually I was overweight.
Now I have to work doubly hard to get it back down.
Tap water = 0$
1 Apple, 2 Banana < 1.81$
Problem solved.
Edit: You could also buy 20 apples at once and keep them stored. This reduces your time overhead significantly.
On health criteria - I'm not implying that you should be all "Jersey Style". However - for me, first sign of health is muscle tonus - yours seems not very good (as is most geeks). Then your hair seems in a pretty bad shape - that has less to do with washing and more with food you consume. And your general posture does not imply - "I am fit for battle" (you also look sleep depraved).
On convenience of healthy food. It's very subjective for me since I was raised on organic food (farmerboy here, it is quite interesting that our farm was organic waay before "organic" even existed. Industrial farming just didn't seem "right" to my parents) I have a general distaste for any kind industrial food (except various sweets :D). Thus you will not find any sodas and/or McStyle food on my menu - because I just don't like the taste of it. (Yes I will turn into a BK or MD every now and then - just to find out that I don't like it - over and over :))
But - being a geek I also have (or at least had) this problem of seeing food preparation as too mundane for me. However since I quit my corporate job I actually started liking to take care of our garden (40m2 in backyard) and orchard, and I have always liked cooking (I love nice tasty food). So now I have learned to treat it as a stabilizing factor in my life, to just you know - slow down for a while while doing gardening tasks it also provides a basic exercise. I know understand that producing your own food is not an option for you - I'd just like to point out that eating a meal that you produced from ground up is one of best experiences in life - right there with drugs, sex and programming. Just to let you know that if you ever get a chance at producing your own food - you should take it. It's not too much work either. A couple of weeks in spring and one in autumn - in between its mostly about basic maintenance and pest control - nature takes care of the rest. Like mentioned - this last paragraph may not do much for you and you might even see me as (rightly) bragging - but it's here just so you can understand what angle I am coming from.
Now about how you can make healthy food convenient and cheap. 1. Accept that it will take more time than junk-food (thats half of its point), but it will take less time than you expect - especially once you get used to it. 2. Stop consuming sodas and just divert "soda fund" into "food fund" - you are meant to drink water and should learn to do it ASAP. 3. Beans, Pasta, Potatoes, Full corn Bread, vegetables, nuts and dairy products should be the staple of your diet. 4. A lot of home cooking can be done fast or semi-absent (vegetable soup - cut vegetables, add water, put on an appropriate power setting - return after an hour or two - enjoy delicious vegetable soup). Pasta is fast and simple to prepare (also will keep you well fed for quite awhile). To maximise yield, learn to cook larger amounts - don't just cook a single meal worth of soup or pasta. Example: Cook a pound worth of beans (this is 4 days worth of protein) - meal 1: eat some beans with cracklings; meal 2: use some of the beans in salad; meal 3: cook some bean soup with pasta; You can also use your vegetable soup as basis for your pasta sauce, etc.
5. Salads are super fast to prepare. 6. Fruit meals require no preparation.
But you could also view your food preparation as a ritual that will help you stay balanced in your life - and thus not a waste of time.
Oh and to be honest - its perfectly possible to grow fat on healthy food. It's just not so easy and your organism will not have to endure so much stress.
Thank you. It's so rare nowadays to find someone willing to give perfectly honest feedback, like "your posture sucks, and you look sleepy". I didn't realize hair quality might be linked to nutrition. Also, I appreciate how much work you put into your reply.
Do you have any thoughts on using Crystal Light to make water taste less terrible?
Someday, when I have more than $1k of savings, I hope to live in a nice rental house with a garden in the back. What all foods do you grow?
As they say: cheers!
>Do you have any thoughts on using Crystal Light to make water taste less terrible?
Water tastes fantastic. It's sweet. An all-soda-and-mcsquats' diet has killed your taste buds, so anything that isn't loaded with sugar and salt (never mind the Coke, your McChicken has a crazy amount of added sugar) will taste bland to you. Cut the crap out of your diet, and the good stuff will taste good again.
Now, all of this is modulo your local water supply. Here in Vancouver our water tastes great, but we're lucky. You might not be in the same boat. Try grabbing a brita water filter and keep it full, in the fridge.
As for grown foods: tomatoes are great and easy to grow. If you have sun, blackberries are literally weeds and will take care of themselves. Carrots and potatoes are the same way. You should always have some chives growing somewhere; they add delicious flavour to most things. Lettuces and cabbages are fairly easy, but you have to keep slugs and whatnot away or they'll eat them before you get the chance. Same deal with spinach. Peas and beans are pretty easy to grow, although you'll need a lattice. Cucumbers and zucchini are easy to grow, as well. Note, that is in no way an endorsement of zucchini. I don't advocate it's consumption; I'm just pointing out that it's easy to grow.
"Healthy" means free of disease.
"Fit" is another matter, and it implies "for a purpose" or toward some goal.
I'd start with a mix of body composition (your body fat percentage, nut just scale weight, and certainly not some crap bogus metric like BMI). You can come up with a pretty good estimate just by eyeballing, or you can take tape or caliper measures and run them through a model. A good online site for same: http://www.linear-software.com/online.html http://www.linear-software.com/online.html
If you want some fitness basics a good start is here: http://liamrosen.com/fitness.html http://liamrosen.com/fitness.html
For books, "The New Rules of Lifting" is decent. You can do the workouts at home, though a gym helps: http://www.amazon.com/New-Rules-Lifting-Maximum-Muscle/dp/1583332383 http://www.amazon.com/New-Rules-Lifting-Maximum-Muscle/dp/15...
I actually prefer a good 5x5 program for beginners (simpler, brutally effective). Check out http://stronglifts.com http://stronglifts.com or look up Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength .
Fitness metrics: body fat, strength, speed, flexibility, endurance, heart rate, lipids, etc.
I've worked in tech for 20 years. I've contributed to some major open source projects and worked at some significant organizations. I've also taken fitness pretty seriously after letting it slide. I do lift weights, hike, bike, swim and row. What you do with it is up to you, but I've found that the investment pays off very high dividends.
I've eaten at a McDonalds once in the last 20 years. That's not food. Neither is Coke refreshment.
based on your spice tolerance, thai food is the best option.
It usually uses flat rice noodles (which just need to be soaked... not even cooked) and thousands of stirfries made possible with ready pastes and a few veggies/meat. I would bet that you can whip some up under 5 minutes.
And diet coke will not cause your body to have the same insulin response as sugar based drinks.
Also, go read fittit (/r/fitness)
"And diet coke will not cause your body to have the same insulin response as sugar based drinks."
This has recently been shown to be untrue.
Recent research on rats and humans shows that drinking diet drinks gives the body an expectation of calories that it then does not receive. Perhaps due to a Pavlovian response but physically real nonetheless, the digestive system switches on and gears up to digest. When no calories are received the body reacts by demanding the calories it missed out on: an effect very similar to to the 'insulin' response.
In lab tests: rats fed water + food kept a steady weight; sweeteners + food put on weight; sugar-water + food lost weight.
44oz of water: $0.00
Put water in a pan, bring to a boil. Meanwhile cut one onion into small pieces. Put oil in a frying pan and heat, then add minced meat. Add pasta and a bit of salt to now boiling water. When it starts to be a bit brown, add the onion, stir. Add any spices, e.g. thyme and laurel leaf. Add 500ml pureed tomatoes (you can but this you don't have to do it yourself). Add a crushed broth cube, and a teaspoon of sugar. Add crushed, diced garlic. Let it stay on the heat for 4 minutes. Now your pasta should be ready. Eat with Parmesan cheese and some vegetables.
Total time: 10 minutes. Number of meals cooked: 2, so 5 minutes per meal. Total cost per meal less than $1.81.
You are not doing it the convenient way.
Hi, I've been where you've been. From early programmerhood I've lived on a steady diet on coca-cola, pizza, crisps and other fast food. It was by no means an extreme diet and probably more healthy than an "all-in programmers diet" Even though the diet was pretty unhealthy I still maintained my weight in my early 20-something years.
When I was 30 my weight ballooned into the overweight area, and this was even when I was doing plenty of exercise. I started experimenting with different diets, wanting to find something that I could actually enjoy, didn't leave me hungry and didn't require preparation. Some diets worked health-wise but was too complicated and too boring, I've finally managed to find a diet that suits me, it might not be the one that suits you but I thought I mention it anyway.
The first thing you need to do is to stop eating sugar and that includes any High fructose Cornsyrup. I stopped having sugars in my coffee and eventually got used to it. Soda's was harder, I've eventually learned to enjoy carbonated water with meals and drink coffee and tea for programming fuel (A habit I plan to experiment with dropping)
The next thing is to cut out any fried food. It's a no-brainer since it's easily one of the most unhealthy things you can eat. Not so much for the fat content (which weirdly isn't as unhealthy as you think) but because fried food is loaded with carbohydrates.
Next you need to find a plan for what you actually should eat. I tried to find fast food alternatives that I could enjoy but that was more healthy, things like wook, thai food and sushi. It'll be a bit more expensive but you'll save lots of money from not drinking soda/candy and other crappy snacks
Eating out all the time is boring and expensive however, and the food isn't always that good so you need something healthy you can cook at home. My rule is to build meals around a quality protein (fish/beef/chicken) and have that with a vegetable that provides carbohydrates. Lenses, spinach and beans are especially good. Mix that with some other vegetables, spices and a non-carb sauce (ie bernaise) and you have a very nice healthy meal for the same price as eating out that you can prepare in 3 minutes. Hamburger patties isn't as healthy but since they're easy and probably more healthy than the alternative feel free to endulge.
Yeah, and no bread, rice, pasta, grain, potates, candy, fruit juice, cereals either if you can manage.
Eat eggs for breakfast, like 3 eggs in an omelett with some sallad and an avocado
The really good thing about this diet in contrast to other I've tried is that I'm not hungry, the cravings for sweets and snacks has essentially dissappeared and I need less portions of stuff.
This might sound extreme and I don't recommend you do everything at once. Start shifting parts of your diet and se what works, try having some of these meals and see if you like it.
Finding a diet that fits one taste and lifestyle is a continous process so take it one step at a time.
I think my diet pretty closely follows the Paleo Diet (though I don't really subscribe to all of it). A really good book to read is Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It by Steve Taub
run to the grocery store instead. Buy a can of black beans and a can of rotel (diced tomatoes with green chilies). Open, drain, mix, and microwave. Grab a glass of water and BAM! You've got a healthy and spicy-delicious meal. Total cost? $1.05 if you shop at Aldi. I can get 2 meals out of it. YMMV.
Add chips if you need something extra. Dump them onto a plate to keep yourself from eating the entire bag, though.
While you're at the store, grab a romaine lettuce. rinse it off and just start munching. No need to chop it into a salad, that's a pain in the ass.
Shop the perimeter of the store and avoid the frozen and boxed stuff.