Is Budae Jjigae Healthy? (3 Tips For Weight Loss) 

In recent years, Budae Jjigae has become one of the most popular Korean dishes and is spreading like wildfire around media sources such as Youtube and Facebook.

Budae Jjigae, which translates to “Korean Army Soup” is a mixture of cheap and accessible ingredients that all come together to make an extremely flavorful soup. 

Although Budae Jjigae is delicious, is it healthy? 

Budae Jjigae is not the best to eat when sticking to a healthy diet as the majority of calories come from high carbs and fats. It has a poor balance of macronutrients as fat is the highest in grams which makes Budae Jjigae a very fattening option. 

Although Budae Jjigae is fattening, it is very customizable which means there is lots of room for improvement and adjustments to the nutrition facts.

In order to eat Budae Jjigae and stay healthy, let’s take a look at some steps we can take to ensure we stick to our goals. 

Here are the three steps you can take in order to stay healthy while eating Budae Jjigae:

1. Understand How Many Calories Are In Budae Jjigae

2. Customize Budae Jjigae To Make It Healthier

3. Make Sure To Workout & Stay Active To Stay Healthy While Eating Budae Jjigae

Now that we know the three steps to eating Budae Jjigae while staying healthy, let’s take a deeper look into each of these steps. 

Tip 1: Understand How Many Calories Are In Budae Jjigae

The key to a successful diet is to look inside the nutrition facts of your favorite foods.

When you want to eat something like Budae Jjigae and stay healthy, it’s crucial to understand what you are putting inside your body. 

Budae Jjigae has its calories coming from 24 grams of fat, 20 grams of carbs, and 14 grams of protein per 1.25 cups.

This means that, out of the 350 calories, most of them will be coming from carbs and fats which can lead to weight gain if left untracked. 

So much of staying healthy revolves around portion control and making sure that you are not overeating on calories and certain macronutrients (carbs, fats, and protein).

We want to make sure that we are in a perfect range of calories which means we must understand how many calories we need to eat on a daily basis. 

Here is an article you can check out to understand how many calories you need to eat in a day and how to properly track your food so you can stay on track. 

https://www.aspirefitnesswalnut.com/how-to-actually-get-a-six-pack-after-30

Once you’ve figured out how many calories you need to eat in a day, you simply need to find foods that fill up those calories and to make sure you don’t go over them.

Overeating on calories is the sole reason why weight gain occurs and, if untracked, can really get out of hand. 

We know that Budae Jjigae is not optimal for staying healthy as there are too many calories coming from carbs and fats.

However, the great part about this dish is the huge potential for adding healthier whole foods that can keep the flavor while adding much more benefit towards its nutritional contents.

Let’s take a look at how we can customize a typical Budae Jjigae dish. 

Tip 2: Customize Budae Jjigae To Make It Healthier

Like many different types of Korean soup dishes, the toppings are what really make the dish amazing while the soup adds tons of spicy, savory, and sweet flavors.

Let’s take a look at some of the aspects of Budae Jjigae we can change in order to make sure we keep its delicious flavors while adding some better ingredients. 

The Soup Base 

The soup base is very similar to Korean Tofu Soup as the ingredients you can find there are virtually the same.

Some of these ingredients are Korean chili flakes (gochu garru), Korean chili paste, garlic, soy sauce, rice wine, sugar, and mirin.

You can expect the combination of these flavors to add lots of sweet and savory flavors to the dish with a hint of spiciness coming from the chili. 

The soup base as itself is actually pretty good and doesn’t really need adjustment as many of the ingredients you can find don’t really add too many calories.

What we really need to worry about are the toppings which are the real culprits of adding tons of fat to the dish. 

Let’s take a look at some replacements for the typical toppings you can find in Budae Jjigae.

The Toppings 

Typical toppings for Budae Jjigae are spam, instant noodles, tteok, american cheese, hot dog sausages, and a variety of different veggies such as green onions, shiitake mushrooms, and shallots. 

While the vegetables are fine to eat, many of the options above can really hinder a healthy diet as they are packed with fat and processed ingredients.

Let’s start with the spam. Spam is essentially an emulsified pork product with loads of sodium that will take you over your daily intake within a single serving. 

A good replacement for spam would probably be something like pork loin or, even, pork shoulder as these two offer much more protein that fat to the dish.

Pork loin has 12 grams of fat for every 0 grams of carbs and 24 grams of protein.

This is way more protein you can get compared to spam and will really drop sodium levels by a half. 

It’s a bit of a sacrifice but this dish is in dire need of some protein. 

The second ingredient that you can probably omit has to be the instant noodles.

Instant noodles contain a ton of carbs and are shelf stable as they contain TBHQ (tert-Butylhydroquinone) which is a preservative that can possibly be detrimental to your health in the long run if eaten in large quantities. 

A good replacement for instant noodles would just be some vermicelli noodles as they offer half the calories with all the chew and texture.

You can still have your cake and eat it too. Vermicelli noodles are typically low in carbs so it’s a great alternative to the already heavy dish. 

The third ingredient you can probably take out would be the hot dog and cheese combo.

These two are super high in fats and are processed beyond belief.

Staying healthy with your diet means adding whole foods that are good to eat and are simple.

This dish still needs some more protein so adding some seafood would probably be a better option than these two. 

Seafood offers a ton of protein with smaller amounts of fat.

This is what this dish needs and can really benefit from lower fat toppings.

My family actually eats Budae Jjigae like this.

We add oysters, squid, fish, and fish cakes which adds a ton of protein while taking away from the fats. 

If your goal is to stay healthy, then these are the adjustments we recommend you take in order to get a more balanced dish without the addition of preservatives and fatty dishes.

Now that we know how to transform Budae Jjigae into a nutritionally balanced dish, let’s take a look at how we can utilize those calories to stay in tip top shape.

Tip 3: Make Sure To Workout & Stay Active To Stay Healthy While Eating Budae Jjigae

Staying healthy means taking care of our bodies by staying active and seeking out workouts that help us utilize our calories well.

When eating a dish like Budae Jjigae, we want to make sure to use those calories to fuel our workouts and build some awesome muscle. 

Muscle is what keeps us lean as it burns calories at rest.

A mixture of building muscle with high activity throughout your days is what really keeps the body lean and healthy throughout the years.

There is something called TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) which is the amount of calories our bodies burn by living our lives. 

The key to staying within a healthy range of calories is to make sure our TDEE is high and maintained at a healthy amount of calories.

This where building muscle and moving more comes in.

The more muscle we have, the more calories we burn at rest: the more movement in our day, the more calories we burn daily. 

To build muscle and stay active, however, resistance training muscle be done throughout the week so let’s get started with lifting those weights!

It can be intimidating to start lifting weights so we’ve come up with a simple workout plan that teaches you all the movements while building some really awesome muscle. 

Here is a workout plan you can use to get started with lifting some weights.

You can easily learn these movements online or by finding yourself a personal trainer. 

WOMEN 

Monday (Full Upper):  

• Seated Shoulder Press: 4x20 

• Lateral Raises: 4x15

• Lat Pulldowns: 4x12

• Dumbbell Row: 3x10

• Dumbbell Fly: 3x10 

• Knee Push Ups: 4x20

• Weighted Crunches: 3x35 

Wednesday (Back/Hamstrings/Biceps) 

• Assisted Pull Ups: 3x10

• Lat Pulldowns: 4x12 

• Cable Row: 4x15

• Stiff Leg Deadlift: 4x15

• Hamstring Curl: 4x15

• Bicep Curls: 3x10

• Hammer Curls: 3x10

Friday: (Legs/Butt/Abs): 

• Squats: 5x5 

• Goblet Squats: 4x20

• Glute Bridge: 4x20

• Glute Kickbacks: 4x20 each leg

• Jump Squats: 4x20

• Weighted Crunches: 3x35 

• Leg Lifts: 3x35

MEN 

Mon: Chest, Shoulders, Triceps, Abs (Push Day) 

• Bench Press: 3 sets 10 reps

• Dumbbell Press: 4 sets 12 reps

• Shoulder Press: 3 sets 10 reps

• Lateral Raises: 3 sets 15 reps

• Triceps Rope Push Down: 3 sets 15 reps

• Cable Crunches: 4 sets 15 reps 

Wed: Legs & Abs

• Goblet Squats: 4 sets 20 reps

• Weighted Walking Lunges: 2 sets 20 steps

• Stiff Leg DeadLift (Romanian Deadlift): 4 sets 15 reps

• Glute Bridges With Weight: 4 sets 20 reps

• Jumping Squats With Resistance Bands: 5 sets 20 reps

• Weighted Sit Ups: 4 sets 25 reps

• Weighted Toe Touches: 4 sets 25 reps

Fri: Back & Biceps (Pull Day)

• Assisted Pull Ups: 3 sets 10 reps

• Lat Pulldowns: 4 sets 12 reps

• Dumbbell Rows: 4 sets 10 reps (Each Side)

• Seated Cable Rows: 4 sets 15 reps

• Bicep Curls: 3 sets 10 reps

• Hammer Curls: 3 sets 10 reps

The key here is stay consistent with these workouts and to make sure you do it for the long run.

It takes a long time to build muscle so make sure you stay patient and dedicated to your goals.

You’ll start to see how different you’ll look and feel by staying active and by having more muscle on your frame. 

Now that we know the importance of muscle we need to make sure we stay on track with our workouts.

Consistency and longevity are the two key factors when building muscle so there will be some commitment involved.

You can either go to the gym or build one for yourself.

It really just comes down to 3 pieces of equipment that you need to do most workouts.

These three are the workout bench, dumbbells, and gym flooring.

Check out our recommended gear page to see our best picks for these pieces of equipment here. 

https://www.aspirefitnesswalnut.com/home-workout-equipment

If a home gym is not for you then getting a membership somewhere works too.

As long as you are starting your muscle building journey, we’re happy! (1)

Stick with it for the long run and you’ll see how amazing the results can be. 

There It Is! 

In this article, we went over what goes inside a typical Budae Jjigae dish and the importance of looking inside the nutrition label.

We also went over the benefit of building muscle and why staying active will help you reach your fitness goals. 

Make sure to try out our version of Budae Jjigae and try to add higher protein sources in your foods just as we did.

If you want to know more about your favorite foods, the make sure to check out our other blogs where we go over more fitness tips and healthy habits you can implement into your food today! 

RECENT POSTS

RECENT POSTS