Saved by Soup: The Story of a Reformed Soup Hater
Hello, I’m Colby and I used to hate soup
I’ll admit, I used to trash talk soup pretty hard. I didn’t get it. When I wanted to eat I wanted a full hearty meal of solid food. I didn’t want to drink my meals. Lord knows I consume enough shakes during the week in the morning and after the gym, I prefer to eat as much solid foods as possible.
If you’ve strolled around this website enough you should know fitness and health are of terminal interest to me. Over the last few years I like to think I’ve really recreated my eating habits in a more streamlined, efficient and healthy manner.
I’ve read about ‘If It Fits My Macros’ but I haven’t implemented such a strategy yet so I’m essentially doing the rice, chicken and veggies routine. I really don’t mind this static and repetitive diet. I’ve written previous how eating the same thing day in, day out saves on time, money and mental capacities. But every now and again this rice, chicken and vegetable game get pretty boring. And thereby hard to choke down.
The same food can get hard to choke down when you’re cutting and eating less than normal. Nevermind bulking when you need to be eating a surplus.
Clean eating can be a bit of a chore, I won’t dance around that truth.
But this is where soup comes in.
Soup will help you hit your fitness goals
I’ve been sick this week and conversely doing anything I can to get hot liquids into me. So I decided to throw my usual evening meal of rice, chicken, vegetables and legumes into a bowl and douse it with H2O. Like clockwork I also squirted some Sriracha sauce on the mix and tossed it in the microwave.
Not only did the steaming brew help my throat and nasal congestion, but it was incredibly easy to put down.
And just like that, a light went off in my head. I couldn’t believe my previous animosity towards soup. It made so much sense. Liquid helps the solid food go down. Previously this is why I leaned on sugary sauces – because they made the boring whole food slide down my esophagus more efficiently.
So how does soup help you hit your fitness goals? You can now easily eat all that boring whole food that makes you look and feel great!
Sauces are the sugary devil
Pasta sauces and other various condiments like ketchup, BBQ, and the such are empty calorie packed and full of sugar. If you are consuming lots of these processed sauces with your healthy whole foods and not seeing the results you imagine you should from your hard work, sauces could be to blame.
They are an insidious aspect of eating that we usually don’t pay attention to. You’d be shocked how quickly 20g of sugar adds up within just a few teaspoons of your favorite saucy additive.
I can now throw away all my sugar laden pasta sauces and simply drink/eat my soup with some spicy, sugar free, hot sauce.
Wicked benefits of soup
Since my small personal victory of rediscovering this simple yet effective means of eating, I immediately connected with some of my health conscious friends with this obvious little tip for getting down the boring healthy meals. One of them mentioned he had recently read some outstanding benefits of chronic soup users.
So I thought I would make this post at least a touch valuable and share some of the more legitimate benefits of soup consumption.
Soup is easy
Soup is incredible easy to make. I am very fond of Tim Ferriss’ writings, in the 4 hour work week he speaks of the ‘Minimum Effective Dose’. The least amount of energy you need to expend to complete something. When it comes to tedious areas of life such as cooking and meal prep, I am interested in the MED (Minimum effective dose).
Since I can chop up endless ingredients, throw them in a pot of water to simmer and be done with it. I am also very fond of soup now. Since there is a low requirement of prep and cooking necessary.
Soup is flexible
Do you recall I mentioned in the paragraph above about adding endless ingredients to soup? Well this is another benefit. You can literally flood soup with all kinds of ingredients – hopefully healthy and nutritious ones – to get in your daily macro and nutrient intake. Again, I only track my macros in a rough sense. My attitude is the more protein, and vegetables the better. The less sugar and carbohydrates, the better.
Since there is a myriad of ingredients in any bowl of soup you make, you can easily cover up the bland or even unappealing tastes of those uber healthy foods.
Skip the salty and sugar filled sauces or flavor packets and add some hot sauce for enhanced flavor.
Soup fills you up quicker
Since all that food is mixed in with near copious amounts of water, you stomach is going to get filled up faster. This can be a good or bad thing depending on your goals. But for most people getting full without overeating in the goal. Soup achieves this.
You’re indirectly drinking more water through soup. And I know not nearly enough of you are supremely omnipotent individuals like myself and get your 8 daily recommended cups of water.
So you’re welcome.
Sold on soup yet?
There you have it folks, memoirs from a reformed soup hater. I can only hope you found some humor in this writing and maybe it’s inspired you to have some more soup in your diet. Or given you a strategy to achieve your healthy eating goals. Though I can only imagine many of you are thinking ‘DUH, I’ve known soup is the tits for years’.
What’s your favorite soup recipe? Share with me down below.. I’m new at this, after all.
Onwards & upwards,
Colby
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