Nutrition advice for family, plus teenage athlete?

[Darrell KSR]

I know, there are millions of sites online that give nutrition guidance. And I haven't begun searching very hard, but here's what I'm looking for.

1. Mostly, for a 17-year old athlete who eats relatively poorly.
2. Part of what i'm looking for are choices. What kind of meats you should be eating. What kind of restaurant choices should you make out of a group of choices.
3. What types of fruits you should be eating.
4. What types of vegetables you should be eating. And the more choices, the better.
5. What types of snacks you should be eating. As a quick example, I ran across this with Fitbit:

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Again, the more the better. The idea here is to have a constant sort of multitude of choices. He/we know he's going to eat poorly--Big Mac, fries, McFlurriers--on occasion. The idea is to try to "fix" eating as an "F" all the time, to a "B," with it being as painless as possible. Still tasty foods. Still "snacks." But better snacks.

6. Really like the "this rather than that" type approach. Rather than eat "Big Mac," eat "Fish Filet without mayonnaise" or "Grilled Chicken Snack Wrap," or "Fried Chicken Snack Wrap as a last resort." And that applies not only to restaurants and fast food establishments, but at home, too.

7. What weekly recipes should be considered for breakfast, lunch, dinner? Again, more choices, the better.

8. What at home "convenience" foods? If he's not going to make steel cut oatmeal with chia seeds, is it better to microwave waffles with syrup or french toast sticks? And hopefully better choices than that, but realizing he's a teenager and some "bad" food is going to be consumed. Just the way it is. Rather than microwave pizzas or bagel bites, what else might fit the mold, but be better for you and fewer calories? (Now, he needs a ton of calories--growing boy, practices soccer every day for 2+ hours, etc.--but they need to be the right type of calories, too.)

IF you have used something, let me know. I'm not asking anybody to dig through the gazillions of internet pages and find this for me. I can do that over time myself. The biggest issue to me is educating my lovely spouse on what to purchase from the grocery store and bring home. If I showed you what was in our pantry (cookies, etc.), on top of the fridge in the "snack basket" (chips, nutter butter stuff, chocolate crunch things), and freezer (see above for microwave breakfast and lunch foods) you'd understand. It's a family thing.

If you've been through this before, let me know.

[MickintheHam]

One way to get the right nutrition is to have a healthy smoothie as a meal or late afternoon snack. My favorite is made with skim or almond milk, OJ, bananas, blueberries, and strawberries. Throw in some wheat germ, vanilla and ice. I drink one for breakfast or lunch. If you need to burn fat, add a spoonful of peanut butter.

For snacks, I like nuts. I buy raw peanuts and roast them in the oven at 325 for 30 min. I do a half bag at a time. That way they are always fresh. With fresh roasted you don’t need salt. Any teen can make the smoothie and roast the nuts. I buy fresh fruit for the smoothies and freeze overnight

[CitizenBBN]

I try to stay low carb. Lots of nuts for snacks, beef jerky mixed in, olives, cheese (esp. hard cheeses). I love junk food, salty fried stuff, so avoid that as much as possible.

The problem is you get bad carbs in everything. Chicken is breaded, fries with your meal, it's not easy to eat out and stay low carb.

But I like nuts as a snack. Lots of types, crunchy salty, pretty much my go to snack and sometimes meal.

[KSRBEvans]

I guess I'd start by asking if this is something the 17 y/o wants to do, or if this is something you want him to want to do. :) We've tried this with our son before and it never really got that far because he just wanted to keep eating what tasted good.

I like Mick and Citizen's suggestions. Smoothies and green drinks are great ways to get valuable nutrition in without putting it in a raw kale salad. Nuts and nut butter are good ways to get protein.

Apparently the big thing in the NBA these days is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/page/presents18931717/the-nba-secret-addiction). The calories would be prohibitive for an old guy like me, but for a teenager who's playing sports it shouldn't be a problem, and he's getting the benefit of the peanut butter.

Avocados and bananas are tasty and have a wealth of important nutrients: monounsaturated fat (avocados) and Vitamins A/C, Potassium (both). Guac on just about anything and banana snacks are great ways to get those in your diet.

I hated most cooked vegetables growing up because my mother and her mother cooked them to within an inch of their lives, for some reason. Take a bunch of spinach, cover it in water and boil it for 30 minutes. Or do the same with Brussel sprouts until they're a smelly, pulpy mess. :puke: Now I've learned to love most veggies by roasting them, and one of my favorites is Brussel sprouts. There's a burger joint in Louisville (https://www.grindburgerkitchen.com/) where their signature side is flash-fried Brussel sprouts tossed in a brown butter/honey sauce. Better than fries, easily. Now frying them probably defeats all the nutritional value in the veggie ;) , but there are lots of ways to roast them (http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/11/the-food-lab-thanksgiving-special-my-favorite-brussels-sprouts-recipes.html) which are really tasty. And you can sneak spinach into just about anything--omelets, soups, pizza, etc.

I love greek yogurt, too. Quick way to get protein into your diet and a good choice instead of ice cream.

Does he have your love of boiled eggs? You could get an egg cooker (https://smile.amazon.com/Elite-Cuisine-EGC-007-Maxi-Matic-Capacity/dp/B00F0RDRFS/ref=sr_1_4?s=home-garden&rps=1&ie=UTF8&qid=1517320799&sr=1-4&keywords=egg+cooker&refinements=p_85%3A2470955011%2Cp_72%3A1248915011) and have a bunch on hand.

I found this slide show about Olympic athletes and what they eat. Here's a blurb on what a teenage table tennis player eats in an average day:

http://www.delish.com/food/g63/olympic-athlete-diet/?slide=11

[Darrell KSR]

Thanks guys, great suggestions. The more the better!

(As far as whether he'll want to or not, I really need to get help from Mom, who doesn't think there's anything wrong with his diet. He's 6'2, 175 pounds, so she thinks that's fine, and that probably is, although the type of sport he plays lends itself more to being lighter, rather than heavier. But the weight isn't the issue, really, it's the food/energy/healthy source of food that's the issue.)

[Darrell KSR]

Along those lines, do you guys know of anything that would allow me to input what he eats in a day, and it log calories, carbs, etc. where i can print it out and show them?

I don't think they have any idea right now.

For breakfast this morning he had 32 oz of skim milk and 4 Eggo cinnamon toast waffles.
For lunch he is having a turkey, cheese and tomato sub sandwich, with 2 apples, a bag of potato chips, and 4 fudge striped cookies

By my count, that is well over 2,000 calories for just those two meals. He will come home, have a snack around 5, as he will be starving. Usually takes an hour nap. Then gets up and will eat dinner around 7 or 7:30.

Now, he burns calories like crazy. Runs 5 or 6 miles daily, I guess, maybe more. And MAYBE all of that isn't as bad as I think. So I'm perfectly fine with being educated if that's the case.

[Darrell KSR]

Spoke to my wife and she tells me he often has something like a PB & J sandwich for his snack, but often skips dinner or has something very light. So the calories are heavily-weighted to the "up to 5pm" thing.

Here's what he had yesterday.

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[KSRBEvans]

Along those lines, do you guys know of anything that would allow me to input what he eats in a day, and it log calories, carbs, etc. where i can print it out and show them?

I don't think they have any idea right now.

For breakfast this morning he had 32 oz of skim milk and 4 Eggo cinnamon toast waffles.
For lunch he is having a turkey, cheese and tomato sub sandwich, with 2 apples, a bag of potato chips, and 4 fudge striped cookies

By my count, that is well over 2,000 calories for just those two meals. He will come home, have a snack around 5, as he will be starving. Usually takes an hour nap. Then gets up and will eat dinner around 7 or 7:30.

Now, he burns calories like crazy. Runs 5 or 6 miles daily, I guess, maybe more. And MAYBE all of that isn't as bad as I think. So I'm perfectly fine with being educated if that's the case.

My Fitness Pal does that, IIRC.

[HerbTarlek]

I would say feed him everything he can get his hands on. Michael Phelps, when training as a 24 yr old, would eat 11000 calories a day. 7 fried egg and mayonnaise sandwiches for breakfast. Now, he spent 4 hrs a day in an 80 degree pool. Then he would lift weights.

My point is, putting him on a calorie restrictive diet doesn’t make any sense at this point. His body isn’t to the point where he needs a carefully curated diet. He needs to eat everything in sight. He’s 17. Wait until he comes home from his first semester in college to make an assessment of his diet. The second he’s out of the house, his diet is going to hell, that is assuming he’ll no longer be an athlete.

[Darrell KSR]

Good points, too, Herb. He's nowhere near Phelps, but does burn a lot of calories doing what he does.

[Darrell KSR]

Just an update.

He was 6'2+, 193 in the Fall of 2018. Had a college coach see him play and liked his skill set and size (soccer), and offered him a scholarship. But he also told him that he could stand to be fitter. The coach said so could most of his players.

He took his nutrition to heart after hearing that. He's close to 6'3 now, but a solid 180. He has been between 179-181 practically all spring and summer. He took several suggestions from this thread, but the main thing was to limit his junk. Has maybe one soft drink a week now. He still has his chips, waffles, probably too much processed and microwave food, but fruits, nuts, etc. for snacks and in between.

I finally got my wife out of the habit of buying oreos and other cookies and things every week. We went to the beach last week, and as a treat, brought golden oreos and regular oreos. We (the 5 of us) wiped those out in 5 days. So it has been good for all of us.

Anyway, he reports to his little college Monday for preseason training and he'll be right at 180. It's a good weight for his body build. 193 was too much.

Thanks again, just wanted to give everyone an update.