You have a FANTASTIC diet and you should not be concerned about eating too many beans unless the volume is preventing you from getting enough calories. Assuming you get 6 servings of canned beans a day, that's roughly 36 grams of protein from beans. Two servings of soy milk would add about 14 grams. You've already reached your RDA for protein in that amount. I've read that vegans (even though you're not a philosophical vegan, your regular diet is vegan) should aim for 20% greater than RDA in protein just in case there's an imbalance in amino acids, which means for an average woman you'd be aiming for 60g. However, most vegetarians have the OPPOSITE problem as you, which is that they eat too many grains and not enough beans, meaning their diets could be low in lysine.

Grains and beans are not missing any essential amino acids, but they are lower in certain amino acids than a similar amount of meat protein would be (or the "ideal" egg). Beans are lower in sulfur-containing amino acids. You seem to have them really well balanced. It's hard to guess how many grams of protein would be in your servings of whole grains because there's a lot of variation in grains, but if you're getting 20% of your calories from protein, you are definitely getting enough and your diet is seriously beyond ideal.

The only thing I'd be worried about is variety - try to mix up the beans, grains, and veggies. Good easy-to-find canned beans are: kidney, pinto, and white (great northern, navy). You can buy frozen soy beans (edamame). Grains: barley, millet, wheat berries, triticale, rye, quinoa (a higher protein grain), and whole wheat pasta/bread. Any kind of green veggies are a good addition: broccoli, cabbage, swiss chard, kale, collard greens, dandelion greens, and then any kind of colorful veggies (carrots, peppers, squashes, sweet potatoes) and whatever fruits' in season. Try to pick olive oil or canola oil for cooking. Hemp seed oil, flax oil, and walnuts would help balance out your fat consumption towards the Omega-3 side (generic vegetable oil is generally very high in Omega-6 so not the best choice).

You might be overanalyzing but I have found recently (over the past few years that is) that there can be too much of a good thing.

Not to give you my entire story but I am a phase eater. During more than one carrot/tomato phase I have become very orange (not a health risk but a sign to me that I'm over doing it).

More recently and more seriously, I am quite sure (through lots of long term experimentation) that I screwed with my thyriod functioning by eating way too many daily servings of veggies from the cruciferous family (broc, cauli, brussels, turnips, cabbage, etc). (Note, things are back to normal and though I will eat some of these again, the serving sizes are small and not more than a few times a week.)

SO, point being ... someone might say ... you can't have too much of xyz but in truth, I believe strongly that a varied diet is the best thing we can all do for ourselves (trust me I'm not perfect with this and I won't even go into my distaste for breakfast).

I would try to not have the same full can of chickpeas each day. And I would try to have more than spinach for my veggies ... yellow veggies, red veggies, purple veggies, all these things are needed too.

I agree with teetime except for adding two things:

a) Lack of variety does really help people control food intake - the more variety we see, the more we will eat, even when we're not hungry. You've found the key to weight loss and done an incredible job, so maybe you should stick with this method if it works for you.

b) Traditional cultures tend to have very restricted diets and are often the model by which we should compare ourselves in terms of health. The longest living people, the Okinawans, for example, eat a very limited variety of food. Similarly, the real (not the diet book kind) "Mediterranean" diet tends to be very narrowly focused.

HOWEVER, each of these diets contains seasonal variability, which enables them to be exposed to a larger variety of vegetables, fruits and grains and ups the nutrition of their diets. The same thing could be done for a diet that generally contains a very limited number of foods, but tries to contain foods that are seasonal (for your area, of course). This is also a much cheaper way to eat - I know berries are pretty darn expensive this time of the year. So when berries are in season, you might eat cups of them every day, but when peaches and plums are in season you might pick those instead. It's just a thought. I think your diet is pretty darn good the way it is now and far surpasses most people's.

quote:<HR>Originally posted by teetime:
Well I agree with you that the poster is certainly doing something right and that it could be much worse.

I have also read about the lack of variety studies but thought they applied to specific meals versus life in general (e.g. one will eat more dessert if at a buffet with 3 different cakes than if at a sit down meal where only one type of cake is offered).

Ariann, did you read the NYtime article Icecream posted last week. It was really interesting and noted that we can't make much of studies on Mediterranean and Okinawan diets and health as the people studied also live such different lives than our own (e.g. fewer video games and cars, more movement etc) <HR>

If at every specific meal you have excessive choices the effect would logically be cumulative. Granted, maybe nobody's done studies on the cumulative effects of such things yet, but that doesn't make it untrue. I have certainly found it to be the case that a less varied diet leads to less eating which leads to weight loss and I think that's pretty common among dieters. The key is to stop looking at food as the next thing you get to try or the interesting thing that will be served at the next meal. An unvaried diet doesn't have to be boring, but making food exciting by adding variety is a great way to convince your brain to let you eat more than you should.

Lifestyle factors are always lifestyle factors. Just because we should play fewer video games and walk more doesn't mean studies on people who didn't have the exact same lifestyle as ours are meaningless. We wouldn't be able to study anything because we can't control any of those issues effectively. But I don't think we should eat like Okinawans, I think we should eat like Americans and focus on the traditional cuisine of the Americas. So what's always on our minds when we're choosing what to eat should be (in my opinion): what's seasonal HERE, what's traditional HERE - that's necessarily going to limit variety, because we're not talking anymore about being able to get blueberries year round. Beans, corn, squash, some grains and a good variety of greens and fruit are certainly things America has going for it nutritionally, so we get to pick from good choices.

...oh...back to the topic...too many beans?...
they're not a good source of protein. Not to pick on you, but if you're too lazy to cook eggs that could mean you're too lazy to eat right, which is a big issue.

quote:<HR>Originally posted by DavidD:
...oh...back to the topic...too many beans?...
they're not a good source of protein. Not to pick on you, but if you're too lazy to cook eggs that could mean you're too lazy to eat right, which is a big issue. <HR>

I have no idea why you would say beans are not a good source of protein. Beans are a great source of protein. Containing 25% or more calories from protein would classify beans as a darn good source. The USDA calls beans an "excellent" source of protein.