My diary of my new diet and fitness.. eeeeek..

puddy

obviously its horses for courses, but personally i would have a much bigger breakfast than the oats so simple, then im really full up until much later in the afternoon when i may have a couple of crispbreads and some of my home made vegetable and tomato sauce/mixture thing

if i have the oats so simple, i also have a low fat yog, apple and banana, but usually i may have small tin of beans on one or two slices of toast, or 2 scrambled eggs on the same, or today, 3 egg omlette, 50g of lean ham chopped up in it, tbs of tomato sauce. i also log EVERYTHING, like your carrot and swede mash and squirts of sauce or salad dressing

GEEGEE8

I'll have a look at that food focus website, currently I'm working it out from the packaging and the internet and just putting it onto an excel spreadsheet.

I also am just sick of all the big, heavy meals I have. I feel uncomfortable and always turning over in bed and it's disturbing my boyfriend. I also 'snore' / breath really heavily, and I'm really embarrased by this as I know it's due to my weight.

I need to change, and like you said, as long as you are eating less than you burn then you will get there in the end.

I'm stuck at about 1800 calories at the moment, but I know with a bit more will power I can bring that down gradually.

Breakfast I struggle with, never really know what I fancy. I used to to have the oat so simple with a banana chopped into it, but we ran out of banana's lol.

Today I had 5 rashers of low fat bacon, just the main part of a normal rasher with no fat, and half a tin of beans, then I've just had a go ahead bar. I would have liked to have a sliced up tomato grilled in there too, but ran out. Shopping day tomorrow, so I should be more prepared next week.

Puddy, do you think I should count the carrot and swede too then? I guess as it is calories then I should really.

GEEGEE8

I had a look at the foodfocus website. It says to lose 2lbs per week and get to my 12 stone goal I need to be eating 1293 Calories a day. I would reach my target 28th October 2011.

Obviously I will need to work towards reducing my calories to this over the next few weeks, and not all of a sudden, as I know I'll not manage it.

October would be amazing though I go snowboarding every year at xmas and can't imagine being 12 stones for the next time we go!

puddy

well you sound a bit like me in that you got used to (presumeably because you enjoyed at some point) big heavy meals, so i wouldnt be unhappy that you are reducing your intake slowly.

i often felt 'empty' after eating a normal sized portion because i would feel a bit denied, even though its perfectly adequate, so that takes some getting used to, you can cut this down and down until you are eating recommended sizes for protein and carbs (obviously subject to debate!!!)

personally, yes i log all veg because i have woken up to the fact that i have spent many years in denial about portion sizes but also about 'oh thats quite healthy, i can have as much as i want, it doesnt count'

much as slimming world did work well for me many years ago, (i lost about 3 stone on it), the methodology of is is that some foods are 'free', you can have as much as you want, i have to learn that i cant graze my way through mountains of food, that is my struggle, so im not using that technique now and so am counting everything so that i learn what is reasonable. it means that i need to make sure that the meat/fish and potato/grain/pulses part of the meal needs to be smaller to take into account me veg

puddy

GEEGEE8 wrote: »

I had a look at the foodfocus website. It says to lose 2lbs per week and get to my 12 stone goal I need to be eating 1293 Calories a day. I would reach my target 28th October 2011.

Obviously I will need to work towards reducing my calories to this over the next few weeks, and not all of a sudden, as I know I'll not manage it.

October would be amazing though I go snowboarding every year at xmas and can't imagine being 12 stones for the next time we go!

i like it because it works out for you carbs, protein and fats so you can see what proportion of foods you eat and if you find your loss isnt coming off as quick, tweak your intake so that you can see what works for you. i seem to react better to high carbs, high protein, low fat

there are a couple of blips in the programme every now and then, sometimes you look at the calories remaining and its wrong or the calorie target for the day and its wrong, just click in and out of the page a few times and it rights itself but for a free programme its not bad.

2lb a week is quite high, ive set mine at 1.5lb but i would still be happy with 1lb a week (with my new positive mindset about longevity of progress)!!

GEEGEE8

Great stuff, thanks Puddy, that's helped me out loads

I've created my profile and am just putting in my food so far today. I just realised I'd been counting the low fat bacon as double what I should, the packed says based on two rashers and I'd been counting it 'per' rasher. Ooops, oh well, at least it means I had less calories and not more.

It's very good that it shows the carbs, protein and fats too, I like that.

What does it do with exercise? Does it say that you can eat more because you have exercised? or does it just log it for you?

I did it based on a 'sedentry' lifestyle, as I'm afraid in all honesty, apart from snowboarding once a week I don't do much else. I'll be starting to walk a lot more once I'm back to uni next week, and that will help a lot.

puddy

yes, thats what ive done, put it as sedentary and then any exercise is a bonus. you can mess about with stuff, put food in and take it out, put exercise in and take it out to see what effect it has.

i put any walking or cycling i do and then the minutes. there is an orange X on the left of whatever you put in (food or exercise) so you can change stuff if you get it wrong or decide that you dont want 3 eggs you only want 2 etc etc

it will change your calorie target on the food log page to include the exercise but on the 'home page' it will call it 'net calories' that means what you have eaten in respect of any exercise you have done.

you can add your own foods and creat meals. remember that if you make up a large batch of something, you wont be eating '1 unit' it might be .5 or .25 or .3 of something

i always try and overestimate what ive eaten so i dont get disappointment on the scales!

you can go back and forward with the days so you could put your previous 2 days in. if you eat something regularly put it as favourites and enter things that are not in the data base (quite a lot i found).

there are massive differences in the calories for different brands i find, so if i know the calories of something and i cant be bothered to enter the food separately in 'enter foods' i just pick the nearest equivilent i can find on the data base so that it matches the calories ive eaten, ive done this with some shortbread i ate

GEEGEE8

mmmm shortbread I have a tin of the stuff next to me left over from Christmas.

Okay, I have played around with it and I must say, I'm impressed. I especially like the fact that when I exercise it automatically adds it to my daily allowance, this really should help me to get out and do stuff! If it means I can eat more then I'll be more likely to do it

Strangely enough, I had a magazine delivered today to my address, must be from a previous tenant or something, it's the 'GoodFood' magazine, so I've been having a peek through that for ideas. I love all types of food, so a bit of variation would do me good, so would cooking from scratch again. I eat too many packaged things as this is what my boyfriend likes 'chicken, chips and beans' lol. He isn't overweight though and does a manual job, so it just doesn't work for me. Plus, I think I have much better taste in food than he does and I would enjoy other things much more.

I'm addicted to that website now

puddy

it is a bit addictive and i look at it even when im not actually using to add anything!! i like looking at the dashboard!!

i find it easier to add things to your favourite foods that are tricky to work out, such as cooked rice, bulgar wheat, couscous etc. often it gives you the calories for cooked stuff per 100g, but are you really going to put hot rice on the scales before putting on your plate and spoon it out?

it may also say calories per 'cup' (get one if you havent got one), but how do you know how much raw rice to cook to get a 'cup' of cooked rice? (i worked it out from searching the internet for the weight of a cup of cooked rice etc)

so, work out by trial and error how much a reasonable portion is for you (i use a cup of cooked product) and how much this is to cook up raw so that then you just add it from your favourites when you eat it. i often use a reasonable amount raw, cook it up, scoop out a cup of it for my plate and then OH can have the rest, but the measurement is already in my favourites

puddy

caloriecount.about.com is sometimes useful to work out weights

so one cup of cooked bulgar wheat is 182g. forgot to say that this weight wont save in your favourities, just the food so if you forget the amounts and weights you're eating, check back on your food log diary and it will say what you ate the last time, then just put the weight in