Hi,
I'm new to 3FC but already love it here! I'm a vegatarian (have been one for years) and generally try to avoid dairy and bread products for health reasons. Recently, I've been really trying to clean up my diet and lose weight in the process. I live on a college campus and eat off a meal plan, so my choices are somewhat limited as far as fruits and vegetables-- trust me, I've looked.

Currently, I'm eating a fruit/nut mixture (no sugar added) called Nut Harvest for ~520-600 calories a day and two servings of dried fruit (not wild about the preservatives, but it's the best I can do, and there's no added sugar) for 100 calories each, giving me a base of ~700-800 calories per day. I'm leery of going into "starvation mode" and hindering weight and of lacking nutrients (no access to supplements I'm afraid). I also have a day or two per week when I go out to eat for a (large) crepe. I'm not wild about the carbs, cream cheese, and whipped cream, but it is an opprotunity for fresh fruit and is usually all I eat for the day, though I may top it off with some dried plums or apricots.

I'm considering adding 1-2 Harvest Bars for 240-480 calories to give me between 1000-1200 calories a day and add nutrients.

Nutritional info is here: http://www.powerbar.com/Products/Har...3-4804FF3AA1D4

I've had them before, and they're delicious and seem pretty nutrient dense. I'm a little warry, though, about the processed nature and sugar content. Any thoughts of these or other such nutrient bars?

Thanks,
miluna

1) You don't give your size/weight, but a general rule of thumb is to eat 8-12 times body weight in calories to lose weight. Eat at the lower end of the range if you're inactive or starting out at fairly high levels of body FAT.

2) Where are the vegetables? It;s hard to believe that a modern college campus today would have a vegetable-less dining hall. The regular dining halls on my campus are chock full of salads, vegetables of various sorts, even vegetarian entrees. Presumably the vegetable selection is even better in the vegetarian dining hall and vegetarian co-op, though I've never visited them.

However, if your campus is really a vegetable-free zone, perhaps you could drop to an ala carte plan and use the savings to invest in a dorm fridge and some fresh vegetables. There are plenty that you can eat raw and/or cold.

3) There's also not much protein in that diet. Nuts are fine in small quantities, but for every gram of protein in nuts you get about 3 of fat and 1 of carb, which works out to only about 10% calories from protein. This would be for a nut harvest package that's all nuts. Dried fruits will add a lot more carbs, driving down the % protein even further.

The power bars have more protein in them, presumably from soy powder, but you're still not getting much protein relative to the number of carbs.

If you can't find vegetarian sources of protein on campus, consider buying a tub of Next designer whey or even soy-based protein (though I find that the latter taste nasty). Yes, it's processed, but it's a good source of clean protein. Designer whey doesn't have any sugar (some brands do, so check) and has very little fat, so you'll be efficiently offsetting all the carbs you're getting from dried fruit.

Good luck.
Kim