What should I eat more or less in Asian Cuisine?

A lot of people around here are Westerners, you guys eat more salads, appetizer, main course and stuff. But in my cuisine(Chinese especially), one fried rice has about 900 calories, and that's only for lunch.

Can anyone suggest me what should I eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner for Chinese or Asian cuisine?

Normally, we will have rice noodles(not pasta), rice as main course. Breakfast we ate fried noodles, we can hardly find any salads around here.

A Westerner here, but I would say more tofu, steamed veggies, and brown rice instead of white, maybe?  Oh, and soup!  Soup can be made healthy easily, and is very filling.

I guess the best I can say is more vegetables.  They usually are lower calorie than rice/noodles/meat, and can be more filling.

Yes, yes. Thank you! How could I forgot about tofu?  It's cheap and healthy too...

After reading your profile, I just thought I should tell you that since you are already at a healthy weight, losing even more weight will most likely not change the shape of your hips. Your body type simply holds the kind of proportions in which you have bigger hips, and it is impossible to change because that is the structure of your skeleton, which we cannot change.

If you mean to say that your hip area is a little more "flabby" than you would like it to be, that you feel as though you have fat in that area, the best thing for you to do is strength training exercises that target that area so that you can build muscle. Once you build muscle there the area will look leaner and thinner and you will lose inches that will help get you into smaller sizes a lot easier than if you just diet in the hopes that they will get smaller, because we  also cannot choose where our body decides to lose fat.

Hi there,

Thanks for your reply! My friends used to tell me the same thing, maybe it was the structure of my skeleton. Sigh~

I will try to excercise(I hate it), I only swim~ it's the only sports that I know.

I understand where you are coming from, esp. being Chinese myself. That's why I don't eat Chinese food. Lots of oil and refined carbs. I don't think a lot of people here understand that Chinese food in the US is way different from Chinese food in China/Taiwan. In Asia people don't do brown rice. It's pretty much impossible to find if you go out to eat. They also don't do steamed vegetables. Everything is stir-fried with oil. It's still a big mystery to me why people in Asia aren't as overweight as in the U.S. Although compared to fast food authentic Chinese food is probably healthier, it isn't exactly low-calorie at all, mostly because of too much oil in everything.

Anyway, I think you can eat it in moderation or adapted (less oil) if you can cook for yourself, but for me I'd rather eat more of something else. 

Hi. I lived in Japan for awhile but I have never been to China.  I don't really know if this will help but here is what I did.  I ate a lot of vegetarain sushi and when I used soy sauce I just used a tad bit.  I also ate a lot of edamame, sea weed salads, soup.  I sort of avoided the tofu though since it always looked like it was deep fried. 

Good luck!

I'm Chinese too, and I grew up eating chinese food, with lots of oil, and a LOT of refined carbohydrates (white rice, processed bread etc)..

For breakfast I usually eat scrambled eggs or and omelette. I use two eggs (including the yolk) and a cup of milk. Sometimes I'll have an apple too. If I don't have eggs, I'll go for either more fruits, or some cereal (toasted oats, with no added sugar, with some raisins thrown in).

I then snack on nuts or fruits until lunch time, where I usually eat MORE fruits (I usually eat papayas, guavas, apples, oranges, pineapple) or some vegetables with protein, like chicken or fish.

Dinner, will usually be steamed vegetables and steamed/boiled chicken (I season with soya sauce and oyster sauce and some pepper). Vegetables I usually have brocolli or cauliflower (cos they're easy to prepare) and sometime carrots.

Soups are wonderful! I love carrot + white radish soup with pork, or lotus root soup.

You don't necessarily need to have salads for every meal, because liek you said, not much salads in Chinese cuisine, but any type of vegetables is good for you. You can have fried rice, fried noodles, etc, but just make sure you eat in moderation. When I eat out, I usually order noodles in a soup, so I can drink the soup instead of the noodles, and leave some noodles behind.

I recommend cooking meals yourself, because not only is it cheaper, it's actually healthier and I usually cook almost all my meals without oil. I also stay away from fried foods, and junk food.

Yes, thanks for your comment. In my country(Malaysia), nobody eat brown rice. And they said it tasted very weird, we only mix it with white rice.

We do not steam vegetables too. We stew our food, or stir fry. I think I know why Asian aren't overweight as people in the U.S because they really use a lot of oil/butter/cheese in their cooking and we only use oil. I'm a chef student, so everytime I cook Western food I don't want to eat it anymore. When you see the process of cooking it, you know how much fat you put inside.

I heard eating sushi also healthy, it's eaten raw and fish is the most low calories food?

My friends told me eating fruits will makes you fat too because you eat the sugar from the fruits. Is it true? I used to eat lots of fruits especially the sweet one like papayas, mango etc.

Thanks to da1gal, I got new ideas for my lunch and dinner now!

The sugars in fruits will not make you gain weight, eating too many calories overall will make you gain weight. Since fruits are generally low in calories you would have to eat A LOT of them to make you gain weight, although they have sugar, it is natural sugar that is better for your body than the sugars found in junk foods. Eating fruit is very good and healthy because it is low in calories and high in fiber which will keep you full :) Just make sure not to eat 2,000 calories in fruits!

I think that white fish is relatively low in calories, oily fish like salmon has more calories, but again those calories are healthier for you than eating the calories from unhealthy red meat. I think that the serving size of fish is also bigger than what a serving size of red meat would be, so you can have a bigger piece of fish for less calories. :)

Haha conn1e, you're from Malaysia too? So am I! I've actually never eaten brown rice before, so I don't know. Some of my friends say it's very chewy, but it's better because it has a low glycemic index, plus it has more fiber. So what it does is, it makes you feel full for a longer period of time, and also I think the calories are lower..

True, you don't often see people steaming vegetables, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist at all! You just have to think of different alternatives for ways to cook, and since you're a chef student I'm sure you know of many different ways to cook vegetables. Even roasted/baked vegetables can be really yummy! (But use olive oil, or use none, if you can) Stews are good, but it also depends what you put in the stew.

I love sushi, but I don't eat it often, because of the rice they use. When I do, I usually go for miso soups, and sashimi. Fish is great, and I love the texture of it, so it works for me.

You should go online and do some research. Like ibii said, fruits are "generally" low in calories, but fruits like durian are EXTREMELY high in calories. Papaya has pretty low calories, and mangoes are okay in moderation. Just don't overdo them, and try to stick with fruits like guava or oranges, even.

So you're from Malaysia? Well, I think apple is the safest. An apple a day keeps the doctor away right?