stabmaster

A regular healthy diet can be based on the food pyramid. This is a traditional 40/40/20 protein/carbs/fat calorie split. This can be a very healthy way to live and diet. There are other splits in that range such as 60/25/15 or 30/40/30 and those are all reasonable.

What i notice is that most people don't have enough protein in their diets. If you don't track your caloric intake, than i bet you don't get enough protein. Shoot for at least 1 gram of protein per pound of lean mass per day. I've read ranges all over the place, but if you go from around .75 to 1.25 grams of protein per pound of TOTAL bodyweight, you're in the right zone. Don't put it all in one meal. Try to eat 4 or 5 meals a day. If you're training or cutting, 6 meals is generally preferred.

For dieting, you should try for 10x bodyweight for caloric intake. This may be fairly low initially. 11 or 12x can be tried and adjusted accordingly. You may, otherwise, use [url="http://www.******.com"]www.******.com[/url] to estimate your daily metabolic calorie expenditure which tends to be very accurate. Also use it to track your intake. It's tedius work, but for af ew days at least it will give you an idea of what you're eating too much, or too little of.

Generally, you should eat the majority of your carbs early on in the day, and those should taper off later on, where you may replace those calories with fats in your meals. Try to keep the protein intake constant, and present, in every meal.

When you say "you work out", does that mean that you weight train, or do cardio? Diet is a very important peice of the puzzle here. If you weight train 4-5 times a week, you are likely overtraining (unless you really have it together), but that's another story. Your diet is absolutely essential. For cardio, there are many schools of thought. In general, it's beneficial to have a quick dissolving protein (whey protein shake) directly after a cardio or weight training routine. This should also be augmented with some simple sugar intake. The sugar boosts your insulin, which helps transport the protein into cells, where anabolism occurs (muscle building). If your body is starving of nutrients, your system will generally be in a catabolic state (muscle wasting for energy). So after a workout, a protein shake, potato, rice, or a high GI carb would work well. The bottom line is quick dissolving protein and quick sugars (if you're serious about it, try 30g whey and 30g dextrose after weight train, and 30g whey and 10g dextrose after cardio).

You may opt to eat before cardio, or not. I believe in the former, myself (others believe different). You should not be hungry when weight training. It's generally a good idea to get some carbs in 1-2 hours before weight training, although you can still weight train in ketosis (having been without any carbs for days), but it's harder, and you still need energy (from fats).

I think that the traditional pizza, bagel and peanut butter, and pasta all have the same downfall: they are meals full in both carbs and fat. The insulin spike from carbs results in a more efficient storage of fat. If you try to limit the intake of large amounts of BOTH in one meal, you will be making progress without much effort.

Some of the best things to eat for breakfast include oatmeal, bran cereal (all bran with extra fiber), or another low GI food. Also, since your body has not been with nutrients for many hours when you wake up, it is starved of nutrients. You normally wake up in a catabolic state; therefore, protein is always a good idea in the morning (Eggs!).

Your five servings of fruits or vegetables per day is also a very good thing to remember.

Bagels and pizza suck. Pasta is kindof a cheat food, but I can't tell you not to eat it unless you are on a strict diet.

I eat salami and cheese every day and i lose weight like crazy; however, i am in the state of ketosis. In essence, i am eating less than 25g of active carbs per day in order to train my body to utilize fats as the preferred source of energy. This is the idea of the atkins diet, but in my case it's widely different (I add carbs periodically, and post workout). You shouldn't worry about this sort of diet unless you are very disciplined and need to cut down seriously.

For desert, or before bed, try not to eat any carbs. Instead, it is a good idea to have eggs or casein protein (a slow digesting protein poweder). casein takes around 7 hours to digest, and keeps your system out of a catabolic state qutie efficiently.

Hope this helps. It's a start, anyways.