Been at a desk for 20-years, now at physical labor. Recently figured out that I’m running a serious caloric deficit, and I’m already a skinny fucker. Also, I’m aiming to build a little muscle and a lot of endurance. How do I eat?!
Back when I was working hard, ate tons of fast food. Too expensive and time consuming, don’t want off the clock to go eat (hour round trip including eating). Took a 12-hour shift today and did OK sucking down granola bars, water and kratom, ate my wife’s kickass meal when I got home.
What can I cook or bring to work to power me? What’s simple and cheap and doesn’t require much on-site prep? (We have a microwave, toaster, all that, I just want calories and protein in my face with no fuss). Afraid I’m half-ass cannibalizing myself.
I’m basically in the same boat as OP except opposite job direction (went from labor to desk). Over a decade of manual labor with no scheduled lunch breaks has left me with poor eating habits. I tried meal prepping but ended up doing what your friend was doing, loading up on fruits and vegetables with some protein. Wouldn’t eating stuff like buttered potatoes and drinking a couple glasses of milk everyday lead to heart problems? Or would cardio and being underweight basically cancel that out?
I don’t have data to quote here but considering heart problems were rare back in the day when butter, lard and tallow was used in generous amounts in combination with obesity being rare and daily labor was common, I would assume it would be mostly fine. Heart problems in non-overweight people are rare even today, especially at younger ages.
There are also 2 new high quality studies out there showing milk fats being significantly safer for heart health compared to other saturated animal fats. I can link that study for you on request. However you wouldn’t need to use butter for your potatoes necessarily. You can oven bake potatoes in rapeseed oil or olive oil just fine and get the same calories in, if you happen to be afraid of milk fat that is. Finding a milk alternative would be harder however since the seed and nut oils out there are generally much less nutrient dense than whole milk. The exception would be soy milk but then you have to be careful not to get a version full of sugar.
Fat has been way over demonized in modern times, it’s nowhere near as bad as people think it is. There are some unhealthy trans fats, but those have been banned pretty much everywhere.
My brother in Christ, I’m GenX. We were brainwashed to hate fat. And I’ve never been a fan of fat on my meat, not even a little. It’s been a time trying to get over that aversion.
And of course they were pumping us full of straight sugar. No problem with that!
Now I eat bacon and butter all day long. And guess what? I have energy when I do that and it tastes better. (I know, I know, moderation in all things.)
There’s things to be concerned about still, but it’s mostly about the ease of consuming a shit ton of calories with oils. Using real butter or eating fattier meat isn’t really a problem.