Food Marketed to the sedentary?

[tehcr33d]

Many of my friends and I are graduating from college and getting settled into technical jobs that involve sitting around for many hours. On top of that most of us enjoy board or video games as a favored pass time, which also involves sitting for many hours. As a result, many of us are putting on weight. Cooking home made meals takes away video game time and requires skill, and ordering out is generally expensive (about 5-7$ a meal) and generally unhealthy. I'm not opposed to exercise, I swing dance a few times a week, but I'd like to solve this by modifying my diet. Any suggestions? It feels like I'm looking for the Jetson's food in a pill, lol.

Current solutions I've found:
I cook in very large batches of easily reheatable food, and supplement it by making spinach/veggie side salads.
Nutrition shakes (as distinct from protein shakes), generally intended as weight loss supplements can be used as a meal substitute for someone who doesn't burn an lot of calories.

Anybody else come up with something they like?

[philsov]

You're looking for food for weight loss? That's... fundamentally flawed. You need a lack of food (literally -- burn more than you eat.) Besides, there's enough premade food in the grocer's freezer aisle that's already marketed for the sedentary, not to mention several non-freezer aisles.

"Cook in huge batches and freeze/store in single portions" is the only advice I have, if you're looking for food that's:
- cheap
- easy prep
- low-medium caloric density

Most of the insta-food out there only hits two of those points.

The best foods for weight loss are going to be vegetables of any degree (minus the calorie-rich ones like potatoes), the fruits that we like to call veggies (eggplant, tomato, cucumber, etc.), and protein rich foods (meat, dairy e.g.). The goal here is to eat about the same volume of food to prevent hunger, while reducing overall caloric intake, and eating foods that take longer to digest to further increase satiety. In short, minimize the sugar (caloric-dense, quickly digesting) and the butter (caloric-dense) while increasing fiber and protein intake. Some fat intake is fine (don't go 0g on me), but if the fat content trumps any other content (say, a donut) it's better off avoided, unless you start tracking caloric intake and know that said item is perfectly within your daily budget.

The kicker is that you need corrective action. So if you want to shed those pounds, you need a combination of mild caloric restriction and exercise. Just dieting alone without exercise will cause you to lose lean body mass as well as fat; so you'll see a slight metabolism drop and still look worse naked than you did prior to gaining the weight if you stay sedentary.

May I suggest investing in a crock pot/pressure cooker? It's about as passive as food prep gets.

[Jorpho]

Cooking home made meals takes away video game time and requires skill

In my experience, it's not difficult as long as you're not particularly attached to things like flavor and variety. I stick with frozen meats and frozen entrees, like fish and chicken breasts – preheat the oven, put the food in the oven, maybe flip it once, and boom, it's done.

It feels like I'm looking for the Jetson's food in a pill, lol.

A lot of people would like that sort of thing, it seems. Soylent has been back in the news lately.

[Izawwlgood]

I find it pretty disheartening how few things you've claimed to be willing to try. You don't want to exercise beyond your one or two salsa nights, and you don't want to cook your own meals. The cooking your own meals thing is kind of hilarious, because you also claim you can't afford to order in regularly.

Shrug. You'll figure out what works for you I suppose.

[Iranon]

I'm not keen on reheating stuff... takes any joy out of food preparation, and any food that doesn't become nasty when reheated is probably not very healthy to begin with. But that's not really the problem.

Biggest rule imo is "don't eat crud". Well, don't make a habit of it - occasional crud won't kill you, but don't deceive yourself.
Most methods of preserving food (including simple freezing) sacrifice both quality and taste, which is often remedied by more salt, more fat, or flavour enhancers. If the food requires additional dodgy tricks (e.g. sauce together with solid parts and it's not supposed to become soup-like), things get worse. Some processing methods are also directly harmful (e.g. hydrogenated fats - manufacturers love them because they're cheap and convenient - they keep forever, aren't too affected by temperature changes and so on. There are some serious concerns about their safety).

Artificial crud marketed as healthy, weight-loss-inducing or whatever is worse than most other crud. Same concerns as the above but more extreme since it doesn't have to even look/taste like real food. And if it works as advertised, tricking your body into something isn't going to be conductive to having a healthy appetite (which, after all, ought to make you crave the food you need in the amounts you need).
The sedentary hoping dietary science will come up with an easy, low-involvement solution to their lifestyle worries are generally easy marks for cynical marketing.

[Jorpho]

I like how you mention "crud" and "dietary science" in the same post.

Darn near every food has the potential to be described in scathing terms by some blogger or another.

[JudeMorrigan]

any food that doesn't become nasty when reheated is probably not very healthy to begin with.

I've never noticed this to be the case. I mean, don't get me wrong. Food definitely has a shelf-life. But there's plenty of perfectly healthy food that I'm perfectly happy eating for three days straight. But then, I suppose this is a literal case of de gustibus non est disputandum.

[Izawwlgood]

any food that doesn't become nasty when reheated is probably not very healthy to begin with.

I've never noticed this to be the case. I mean, don't get me wrong. Food definitely has a shelf-life. But there's plenty of perfectly healthy food that I'm perfectly happy eating for three days straight. But then, I suppose this is a literal case of de gustibus non est disputandum.

Some foods are noticably better if they've had some time to mellow prior to reheating.

[tehcr33d]

Thanks for the good advice and encouragement everybody. And just to clarify, my metabolism is keeping me really trim despite of my current food intake, but I'm sure that my lifestyle with catch up to me soon (I'm 24). The main goal was making some good habits as some preventative measure. I received some good advice that the amount of time its taking me to cook my own food should decrease by a factor of 3 or 4 as I get more practiced. As of posting it was taking me over an hour to make recipes that boast 20 prep time. Its less now, but sill taking long, but the practice of food preparation seems like a good investment in the whole food/money/game equation. I really like the idea of freezing food into individual portions as well. Thanks all!