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G'day Folks!

I'm 5' 11 128lbs with a swimmer's build.

My passion as far as athletics is concerned is swimming but I also want a good body say about 170 pounds by mid Jan 2009. Is this a realistic goal?

I gym 3-4 times week and swim 1-2 a week. Ideally my other Goal was also to get to swim competition level.

my question is what's a good diet to follow while on a budget?

also i cant eat seafood (ironic being a swimmer)

cheers
Nitin

There is a weight gaining diet on here, check it out for pointers:
http://www.realjock.com/nutrition/1082/

swimisme saidG'day Folks!

I'm 5' 11 128lbs with a swimmer's build.

My passion as far as athletics is concerned is swimming but I also want a good body say about 170 pounds by mid Jan 2009. Is this a realistic goal?

I gym 3-4 times week and swim 1-2 a week. Ideally my other Goal was also to get to swim competition level.

my question is what's a good diet to follow while on a budget?

also i cant eat seafood (ironic being a swimmer)

cheers
Nitin

I could go on forever on this. I eat healthy and can keep under $120 a month. Where to begin...

Don't buy anything processed, or that comes out of a can or goes in the microwave. You are only paying the extra $ for someone else to cook it and add salt, fat, additives and preservatives. As they say, shop the perimeter (produce, dairy, meat and bakery sections).

Learn to cook Mexican food which is cheap and the leftover ingredients can be saved for other dishes (yes, it can be done very healthy). Or just cook whatever dishes are regional and have cheap raw ingredients.

Cooking may seem like a pain in the ass, but when I am alone I try to keep the cooking+eating under :30. After a while you'll get some quick, cheap, healthy meals in your arsenal.

XRuggerATX said

I could go on forever on this. I eat healthy and can keep under $120 a month. Where to begin...

UNDER $120 / month?!
Could you give a few examples of meals you tend to cook?

I make a lot of pasta dishes. When I make something like spaghetti, I find myself spending more on the veggies for the sauce than I do just buying a pre-made sauce. Mind you, not nearly as tasty as using the veggies, but I'm broke as a joke.

A nice cheap meal is an onion, green pepper (1 or 2), about 3 tomatoes, a few mushrooms, and an eggplant for a sauce, then pasta to go with it. Not much in the way of protein, but you can get by with about 3 meals of it for under $10.

I'm also in a... uh... "difficult cash flow situation" lately.

Doesn't matter that you can't eat fish, cause the price of fish has skyrocketed beyond reach anyway.

One secret I recently discovered: ground turkey! It seems to be one of the consistently lowest prices of protein out there, and you can do a LOT with it.

Safeway, the Western US grocery chain, regularly has 2-for-1 specials that put it around $2.30/lb.

Define "budget" : )

Here is a neat trick that worked for me in college & had limited resources: when milk/meats get a day or two out before the expiration date (but still perfectly fine/consumable) stores put it onsale for as much as 1/2 off or even more---if you have time to fool with it, you could shop pretty often to sniff this out & it will be better quality, more easily/quickly absorbed by your bod, and cheaper than most suppliment store "fake" proteins.

Since you will also need QUALITY (not crap/sugars) carbs, if there is a day-old bakery in your area, you can pick up high end (e.g., German breads are awesome) bread really cheap. If you see a fab bargain---high-end $5 loaves for .50, stock up & stash in the freezer---bread freezes/thaws/reheats well.

You'd be better off doing this for vittle intake than using store-bought suppliments anyway & it will be cheaper.

Hope this helps.

Best

Brett

BIG bags of frozen chicken breasts...it's my secret.

In Chicago we have a store chain called Aldi's. I think they are in other states as well. Surprisingly there are none in LA and maybe even the entire state of California. And even more surprising was that I found an Aldi's grocery store in Spain when visiting there a few years back!!

Aldi's is a great store, with good prices on everything. They don't have as many selections but they do have prices that are comparable if not cheaper than that of Costco. And remember, factor in the membership that Costco requires in order to shop there.

I can buy a can of beans for about 50 cents at Aldi's. I like buying canned items because they won't spoil as fast. But other than that I eat brown rice, fruits, veggies, I buy frozen chicken breasts, canned chicken, canned tuna. They also sell frozen strawberries and sometimes they have other frozen fruits. I also buy oatmeal as well. For fresh veggies and fruits I buy avocados, zucchinis, onions, apples, lemons, grapes. I get quite a bit of food for about $45 a week. I feel very blessed to be able to shop like this and pay less than other stores.
When I was in LA my food bill was out of control. I eat basic foods. The only packaged thing I buy are beans in cans. I need the fiber and cooking them takes so long and a bit cost prohibitive since I have to either keep the stove on or a crock pot working for hours in order for them to be cooked.

In order to gain weight, make sure you get your low glycemic starches like brown or parboiled rice. Both are cheap items to buy. Eat egg whites with a couple egg yolks per day. Buy a decent olive oil and take about 2TBSP a day. These are very healthy foods and will help give you extra calories to increase your weight.

You seem to want to gain roughly 40lb. I don't know if that's realistic. Actually you say you want this by 5 months time since that is how far January is. That is COMPLETELY unrealistic. The only possible way to do that is if you were to take a shit load of steroids. And even going that route takes time to build quality muscle. 40lb in 5 months is basically 8lb of muscle a month. So that's basically 2lb of muscle a week. Sorry but not possible for extended periods of time. But you will gain a lot of muscle when you first start lifting weights seriously for the first time. If you were to gain 15lb naturally and it was lean muscle you will really look different and substantially more muscled.

Let us know of your progress. Good luck. And by the way, I wasn't recommending that you do steroids. I was simply speaking in a hypothetical sense.

I've been thinking I should go through and make a table of servings of protein and their rough costs.

I consider 30g protein a serving, since that's the amount it seems your body can absorb in one meal / few-hour-period, so it's the amount I try to eat every few hours.

I'm pretty sure the cheapest sources of protein I eat are straight-up protein powder from proteinfactory.com (at $10 a pound it's about $0.75 per serving) and eggs (even at $4 a dozen for the ultra-awesome eggs from the farmer's market, it's $1.33 a serving, since 30g protein is 4 eggs, or thereabouts.)

I know you said you can't eat seafood, but for the sake of completeness, a pound of farmed salmon is $8 from the grocery store here, so that's $2 a serving (a quarter pound of boneless lean meat is about 30g protein.)

So then all meat kind of comes in around there. The good organic ground beef is $7 or so a pound here, so it's a bit cheaper.

Interestingly, while I eat a lot of yogurt, it's pretty pricey, at $12/gallon, which is four servings (I strain it so it's not an unreasonable volume of yogurt, but a gallon of yogurt has 120g protein) it's the most expensive protein source I eat.

I'm starting to make my own out of nonfat milk, which brings it back down to a reasonable level since a gallon of good local nonfat milk is around $5 here, so that's $1.20 a serving.

In trying to put on muscle I try to eat six servings of protein daily. So if on average a serving of protein is maybe $1.20 (I don't eat a ton of the more expensive ones like meat, and I usually make about 3 of the daily servings be the protein powder because it's easy and I'm lazy) then that's $7.20 a day just for protein. Admittedly some of those foods also have fats in them and whatnot, but I generally divide my diet up as those -- the protein sources -- and then everything else is just culinary accompaniment and other necessities like vitamins, minerals, and fiber. So it's mostly fruits, veggies, nuts and whole grains (usually breads) for me. And that stuff is really pretty cheap.

So baseline weekly budget just for protein sources is $50 or so. As far as I'm concerned this is just a basic requirement if you really want to put on muscle, especially 40lbs of muscle in 6 months. That's ambitious and you need to eat a lot of protein every day. You weigh a lot less than I do so you could probably get away with only 4 servings of protein a day and still be putting on mass, but nonetheless, consider where your protein is coming from, what you pay per 30g serving for it, and how many servings you are eating per day, and this is just an unavoidable part of your budget.

Everything else you can do on the cheap. Eat cheap fruits and veggies like onions, bananas, leafy greens, etc. and skip expensive exotic fruits and other seasonal treats, pricier non-local veggies, stuff like that. Take a good daily vitamin supplement if you're worried about not getting all the right stuff. Drink lots of water, don't bother getting any calories from liquids.

That's my advice, I'm having pretty good luck with it.

Oh yeah, and I'm sure you can go cheaper than my examples -- you don't need to eat only the most organic crazy meats. If you can find good ground turkey on sale for $2.30 a pound that is a crazy good deal, that's less than $0.60 a serving, which would bring a weekly protein budget to just $25 assuming six full servings a day, which is basically the max you can eat in your waking hours.

Wow, that's really good work Atx. I'd love to have a spreadsheet with all that stuff.

muchmorethanmuscleIn Chicago we have a store chain called Aldi's. I think they are in other states as well. Surprisingly there are none in LA and maybe even the entire state of California. And even more surprising was that I found an Aldi's grocery store in Spain when visiting there a few years back!!

Thats a really great store, but in fact Aldi is a German grocery chain, so not surprising you found one in Europe.

For those of us poor saps out here in California who don't have an Aldi store nearby, I find that if you are looking for the best deals on produce and meats (at least in my town), it is often best to skip the major chain grocers all together and head to the Mexican markets which often have produce from the exact same souces as the big chains but at far cheaper prices. And like at any ethnic market, be they Asian or Latin American or whatever, if you like to cook ethnic foods you can find a lot of ingredients that would be hard to find elswhere. Eating on a budget doesn't have to be boring!

Hey, Mars. Yes, the Mexican marts are great. When I was in California I was spending 3 to 4x more for food in LA than I do in Chicago. It was insane. I can't afford to live there with the amount of food I eat. I go to Aldi's and spend about $40 a week and get a TON of food.

And thanks for the 411 on their origin. I didn't know that they were a German company.

Yes it is ironic that in a state that produces more variety and quantity of produce than any other single state, we seem to have the highest food costs right here in CA. I can litterally hop in the car and drive for 3-5 minutes before I am surrounded by thousands of acres of lettuce, spinach, onions, broccoli, cauliflour, artichokes, berries of every imaginable variety, apricots, pistacios, almonds, walnuts, and so much more that I have not even begun to scratch the surface of what grows here in a 5-10 mile radius of my house (or the rest of the state for that matter) and yet my grocery bill for me by myself is well over $100 a week if I go to Safeway, Albertson's, or Nob Hill (Railey's). Its kind of a slap in the face when you think about it since agriculture is our biggest industry by far in my area. I mean these farms produce more than we can possibly ever use, so much of it goes to be exported to other parts of the nation and the world. I didn't realize that I could cut my grocery bill to 25% or even as low as 20% by moving to Chicago. WOW!

Hey, muchmore, you need a roomie??

LOL....well. I have a studio so I guess I'll have to set up bunk beds for the two of us.

Bunkbeds?? Who is going to be sleeping on the other bunk??

Uhemmm..... Ok back to the subject at hand. I am curious what success, if any, swimisme has found in his quest for greater nutrition on a tight budget. Any thoughts, swim??

I'm a big bed hog. I need at least a double or a queen for myself alone.

Fear not, Muschmore, I have no plans to move to Chicago. I spent enough time there in my youth to know that I prefer the west coast for all it has to offer out of the city life. Chicago is a great town but Illinois pales in comparison for what it has to offer in the great outdoors department.


Still no word from our OP??