Tell me your honest opinion of this post-exercise food pls

[tulips27]

I've exercised all morning today and for some reason I've got really ravenous and I think I've undone all my work (although I'm not exercising for weight loss in particular).

Breakfast: two black coffees
Cycle 5 miles
Swim 45 minutes

Post swim snack: banana from my bag, a few nuts (so far so good)

Now at this point I would normally go home and eat nothing till my evening meal, but because the weather was so nice I treated myself to a Tesco meal deal which I never do because I can't afford it! I just got carried away.

Meal deal: Brie and cranberry sandwich, hot chocolate

Cycle 5 miles

Evening meal: two samosas and a side salad (no dressing)

Then (!) I was still hungry and this is where things got out of control, I've just demolished another samosa and a small bag of kettle chips from the meal deal that I was saving.

So if you look at it, I've ended up putting away a lot of unhealthy food and probably lost my gains from exercising at all. But I was soooo hungry, I still am. I could eat another dinner right now if I'm totally honest. 😩

Regular exercisers, where am I going wrong? I'm starving. Any advice welcome.

*using energy

I think you need to read up on healthy diets and how exercise fits in to health. You don't seem to know a lot and may be causing more harm to your body by not fuelling properly for the physical activity you're doing.

If you're hungry after exercising than eat.
I would eat tuna, eggs, cheese, avocados, nuts, smoothie etc
I wouldn't worry about the calories, just the density of nutrients.
Exercise is about so much more than burning calories.

But you would normally eat nothing but coffee, a banana, and a few nuts until your evening meal? And you would then have essentially an unheated snack for your evening meal?

I think most people would see that as disordered. You're not fuelling or nourishing your body, even if you were sedentary all day.

I mean, the only veg you ate all day was the small amount in the samosas! And this is you "trying to eat healthy"?

Exercise is good, no matter what we eat. It wouldn’t have been better to stay at home.

10 miles cycling and 45 mins swimming (especially in open water) IS a good lot of exercise.

3 decent meals. I understand about not wanting to use lots of energy to cook. A sandwich with good quality wholemeal bread, cheese or hummus etc and salad is a good meal. Two sandwiches, even.

Good lunch options include oat biscuits with cheese/ hummus. Lentil soup, microwaved. Microwaves are lower energy than the cooker. Chick pea salad, with tinned chick peas, chopped onion, tomato etc.

I think you're being ridiculous expecting to function at max power on fresh air.

You went open water swimming today for 45 minutes but live in a house without heating?!!

There are people (sometimes) at my pool who swim 1-2x/day in the north sea for 9-10 months a year. They sure as hell don't stay in 45 minutes in November AND I bet there's nice heating in their homes.

Pretty sure they / we all eat like pigs. Drink like fish too I suspect.

I'd need 2100-2300 kcal to do all the stuff OP did today (and not lose weight).

Tbh, the more I look at this thread, the more I think that it's a wind-up, designed to bring the MN undereaters out ("A whole samosa! That would keep me fed for a week, even after a 10mile run!")

Do people who aren't regular exercisers suddenly decide to cycle 10 miles and do 45 mins of openwater swimming in November? And then express surprise that they're hungry?

The nuts are good protein for a snack or light meal but not a whole day. Have the samosas, if you must, but with a bowl of dal and an egg or some paneer. If you normally eat dairy, keep on eating dairy

You need to eat protein to fill you up.

You need to eat more of the right things-

B.Microwave porridge with nuts (optional warned frozen berries)
S. Banana and nuts
L. Scrambled egg (could add spinach, tomato etc) and wm toast
D. Chickpea and veg curry with wm pitta
S. Natural yogurt and fruit

Batch cooking then freezing portions to defrost/microwave could be used for curries, stews, soups etc.
The rest are microwaveable.

After exercising like you did I would first have a protein shake (vegetarian here and without this I'd never cross 30g of protein in a day despite best attempts!). Then I'd follow this with a high protein, medium carb meal like 2 eggs with 1 toast and salad. This would replenish my energy without adding back too many calories and keep me going until dinner.

When doing cardio I try to time it before a meal as I am ravenous right after.

The average protein content of a handful of nuts is 6.8g. The daily protein requirement for a woman is about 45g.

This. Your post is actually extremely worrying and you sound like you have disordered eating

It's not, actually I took photos so I'm linking them because I can't upload them here directly:

i.imgur.com/pnO1RSn.jpg
i.imgur.com/Ruv87qk.jpg

That's not much exercise really.

🙄

A whole samosa! That would keep me fed for a week, even after a 10mile run!"

yep

100%

If true, it's extremely disordered eating.

I'm avoiding using heat to save money on the electricity bill.

why would this mean you eat samosas?

@ivykaty44 I meant energy, not heat. It means I'm having things that can be eaten cold or only cooked quickly on a hob. But as it happens, I'm also not using heating either, like a lot of people. I;m in the south so it's not too bad yet.

Make yourself a big pot of spicy carrot and lentil soup that you can have before meals, and have porridge with nuts, banana and milk for breakfast.

On the off chance that you're real, OP - I'm a frequent exerciser, and my weight is healthy, and this is what I ate today, which was a heavy exercise day -

Exercise: mountain running, +4hrs, >1000m of ascent
Breakfast: home-made muesli with whole milk, banana, tea
During the run: 2 cheese & salad wholemeal wraps, 1 home-made energy ball (dates & seeds etc.), half a flapjack, a few sweets, some diluted orange juice (proper juice mixed with water)
Dinner: (ate out) sweet potato soup, followed by sea trout with various veg, new potatoes & a creamy sauce, 1 beer
Supper: small slice of ginger cake

Normally there would be more veg, but veg isn't easy to eat on the run.

Use a slow cooker, hot food for pennies.

you can make jacket potato
chickpea curry

cheap eats ti keep you going for days
Dahl
Peanut butter & chickpeas are protein foods
Beans high in protein and fibre