Average Guys Diet Revisited

Its been about a year since I last blogged for Average Guys and I think I'm over due. A lot has happened in the past year, and I am still dealing with some of the fallout of these changes. Along the way I kind of lost sight of what I was trying to convey. Recently however one of my office colleagues had a health issue. He's an Average Guy, and its guys like him who need this advice more than most.

Way back here I laid out the template for the Average Guys diet. Today when I look at it again, I think it stands up pretty well. That's not to say that its perfect, it isn't. Or that in light of today's economy that some changes and variations couldn't work just as well. Now, having read over it again I will say this.... If you can still afford to eat according to the original plan with out limiting your selections to hamburger and hot dogs, by all means feel free, and use these updates as needed or desired.

Generally speaking, the most expensive part of any higher protein, lower starch type diet is meat. My original recommendation was to divide your body weight by 10 to get the amount of meat/eggs/cheese your are supposed to eat everyday. In our cheap eating model you are going to divide your weight by 13 and round down any remainder. So in this case our 210lb guy would be eating 16oz of meat/eggs/cheese a day instead of 21. Since we are taking away 5oz of meat we need to add something back. That my something my friends is beans. Navy black, kidney, garbanzoand lentils, etc... Yes, the musical fruit. I can hear the paleo purists howl already, too bad. Beans have gotten humans thru some pretty tough times in history, and likely they will do it again. Both canned and dried bean will work, with dried being the most economical, but most time consuming. Four our example guy, since he is reducing his meat by 5 ounces, he is going to add 1 1/4 cup of beans , (.25 Cup per ounce of meat), to his daily plan. So chili con carne, sausage and bean casserole, even baked beans are back on the menu.

In doing this you no longer get to count beans as a vegetable however. So in dividing your weight by 30 to get veggie servings, our average guy would be eating 7 servings of mostly non-starchy vegetables.

Fruit servings are still weight divided by 70.

Still eat an ounce of nuts, nut butters or seeds everyday.

Add at least two tablespoons of fat from olive oil or real butter to you plan. This is important when eating the beans and vegetables to aid in digestion.

As before, the above are minimums that are too be eaten every day. If eating all of this you still want a biscuit or something, go for it, just don't stuff yourself to do it, and don't do it everyday. A serving or two of dairy is good if you digest milk. Plain whole yogurt or kefir is always a good choice, especially mixed with fruit. The plan isn't perfect and you shouldn't worry about perfection. The idea is to be on track most of the time, with allowances for special occasions and real life situations.