Eating healthy but using supplements

This post is partially rant and my own view so feel free to disagree with me.

I had couple days ago chat with a person who contacted me and we talked about nutrition when bodybuilding. I know that person but he didn't know before that I was into lifting weights and eating healthy. So eventually we ended up disagreeing with each others views.

I mainly eat healthy. I don't follow restrictive diet so if I want a chocolate, I'll have it. I keep my treats in low quantities but bad days may happen and what happens then isn't so pretty to look at. The point still remains that my diet is 95% healthy with little sins to keep me sane. A cup of coffee every day keeps me jolly thought it contains sugar. Many may disagree on my view of healthy eating. Many say I restrict myself too much and my diet is quite plain. This basically happens at school during lunch. Others take more rice, potatoes, sauces and creamy things, while my plate consists of 70% salad without vinegar, oils or dressing and rest on the plate is meat with possible 1 potato or few tbsp of rice. Instead of oils or dressings on salad I just add lots of seeds. Well truth behind my choice there is because I dislike taste of oils and vinegar. I add seeds to get fats to my diet. I rather eat more of salad than potatoes or rice because I like it more tastewise. Reason why I take so little meat at school is because it's always in creamy sauce. I balance out the low amount of protein on my plate with drinking 2 cups of buttermilk.

Here's one example of school meal. Salads that day weren't that tempting so I had only one of them, that's why there's less of it on plate. As you can see meat is kebab sauce if I remember correctly. I had more than usually rice and had some cottage cheese with pineapple to have more protein in my meal.

At home I eat more meat and less salads. Instead at home I eat eggs, porridges, few vegetables and mainly fruits. Occassionally I ofcourse eat berries, yogurts and much more. Unfortunately at home I'm more restricted with my diet, partially because of student budget but partially because I only eat tuna, pollock, turkey and chicken. I dislike taste of red meat. Beef is okayish. Unfortunately if the choice is to eat meat I enjoy greatly or something I rather keep in fridge for days till I'm in the mood for it, the choice is obviously skipping beef. Once a week I visit my family, where I eat whatever they have. Even if they are offering the worst red meat aka pork. I believe in constantly having ready meals, all meals calculated and never eating anything else is mentally unhealthy. If you have such huge fear to eat out with your boyfriend at times without calculating every little spoonfuls nutrional value, you need help. It's not normal! Make better treat choices and make them rare. So in conclusion I think my diet isn't that bad.

Meal of my choice at parents. Bowlful of strawberries, other bowl has oatmeal made with milk topped with peaches and a pear. Those chicken thighs in picture aren't part of the meal.

I have tried many different kind of diets in my life and I believe this what I'm currently following is the one for me. I eat more than anyone else I hangout with but my calories are never too high because I eat so much low calorie foods. Incomparison to rice (1 cup = 110 kcal) my big lettuce pile (1 cup = 15 kcal) is quite small caloriewise thought it looks massive. So my meals often look bigger than most mens meals. I eat more than my boyfriend who is very tall and almost twice heavier than me. Afterall I'm not big and I'm often told when met in real life that I'm actually quite tiny. Apparently I look on pictures like big strong amazons warrior. No idea what pictures of me they been looking at? My mealsizes to me don't matter because I feel good with my meals and that's all what matters. I also get more musclemass and my bodyfat remains the same so I must be doing something right. I believe in IIFYM like thinking that aslong as you get all nutrients your body needs, it really doesn't matter what you need. I eat some days more and some less, completly depending on how my body feels. Some days I eat even 400 calories more than I should. Some other days I eat 200 less. For me aslong its 100 kcal more or less to goal.

I try my best as much as possible to avoid eating supplements and get instead all necessary from my diet. I get daily all necessary vitamins without any worries but some I can't get.

• Fiber I often lack because I don't eat much of high in fiber foods. I get 60-70% daily from food and rest of it I get from supplement. Having that extra 5g of fiber daily makes a big difference in my body. It works better and I feel better. 
• Creatine I lack because I don't eat red meat and fish that often. Mainly because of heavy training having creatine would help nicely.
• Omega 3 and 6 again because of my own preferances. For example salmon I can't stand at all. Fish I eat approx once or twice a week. Sometimes less than that.
• Calcium. I almost reach daily calcium but it would be nice to have more of it to get full 100%. I do believe thought that I calculate something wrong in this case. Maybe forgot to enter calcium amount to some of my daily food.
• BCAA's. I do get quite a lot of my daily BCAA's in my meals but not enough incomparison to my workouts.
• Glutamine has same issue as above one. 
• Probiotics. I barely eat any yogurts or anything fermented so I don't really get these. 

I don't eat all of the supplements I lack. For example when my skin gets dry and I been eating too little fish, I start eating omega's again. D-vitamins I consume during winter every few days if I feel tiredish. Calcium I never take as supplement, I just eat more high on calcium foods and believe in it being enough. So far been eating fiber and probiotics daily at times because I have noticed that they make a big difference in how my body works. Extra biotin I been eating at times when my hair badly suffered from bad diet and stress, but mainly I do get enough of it from my diet. So far I been only consuming omegas, biotin, fiber and probiotics as supplements occassionally.

The reason why I lack so much in my body is all because of what I prefer to eat. If I were to add all the missing things into my diet, I think eating would become too complicated and I wouldn't enjoy it anymore. In other words it kills the meaning of eating well to feel well when all you do is stress if you get everything daily in your diet.

Back to the disagreeing part I had. Lately I have hit plateau in my workouts. I simply can't progress and I believe that now is a good time for first time ever to try eating creatine, glutamine and bcaa's to improve my working out. Working out while feeling too sore often causes more harm than good. I noticed my posture suffers then and instead of focus being on my back it switches to forearm which can't handle such heavy load. In his opinion having any kind of supplements is comparable to steroids. In other words he claims that if I take something I won't get any better and I'll end up just filling my body with unnecassary crap. I on other hand believe that having something that I lack in my diet is only good myself. He believes in eating well is all you need to be healthy and strong. I disagree that his diet is so healthy aswell because it lacks important nutrients. My view is that eating as well as you can is important but there's no such thing as eating so well that there's never anything you can improve on.

What's your thoughts on eating well and still using supplements? How's your diet and do you take any extra supplements?

PS. Boyfriend read this and asked me to add that he infact does eat less than me, more like his eating reminds a little anorectic girls daily eating. Thought he doesn't look like one.