Not losing weight

Annisele

You might find that your downfall is your "normal dinner".

Last August I was morbidly obese; I'm still overweight, but I'm getting there. At first I spent a couple of months eating ready meals (please don't flame me; it makes calorie counting very easy and somebody else has decided on an appropriate portion size). I found that when I went back to cooking for myself, my old recipes were suddenly producing twice as many portions as they used to - so my portion size must have halved My old "normal dinner" was obviously not very good for me!

And apologies for my assumption that you're female!

smitchy73

Cheers Pete, have read your blog very interesting, I am starting the diary of food and another poster suggested the myfitnesspal site too.

smitchy73

thanks again anisele, I run a constant fight at home too, my oh and kids wanted to go for kfc tonight and the normal from there would be a boneless bucket and of course rather than waste some, i'd finish what was left, the kids got to go and i cooked for me and oh, but doesn't help having to fight with them to not go to these places, I think a good talking to them needs to happen as well, of course maybe she just wants the life insurance, lol.

vax2002

All bread ! All potatoes ! NO !
There is enough starch in the other food items.
As we get older we dont do the same exercise and your body converts the starch in to fat.
expect nothing for the first 3-4 weeks.

jessicamb

if it helps to lose 1lb in weight you need a 3,500 calorie deficit. SAying that though you need to make sure you eat enough calories everyday to stop your body going into starvation mode. Storing up all your calories for one big meal doesnt sound like the best way to manage your calorie intake - could you have a low GI breakfast like porridge, healthy sandwich or salad for lunch and then around a 500 calorie dinner? I'm far from a nutritionist but I can see how your body would want to store as much energy as possible if it knew it wasnt getting any more fuel for another 24 hours.

Rebob

I have lost 10st and followed these rules and still do to keep the weight off.

Look at your portion sizes. Plates over the years have got bigger. It helps if you downsize your dish and plate.

Do not drink starting from 30mins before your meal until 30mins after. This means you can eat enough to keep you full and that you dont wash it back out of your stomach.

Eat protein first (proper meat and not processed at all), then veg and if room then a few carbs.

Eat low fat and low sugar and swap any bread to wholemeal.

Hope this is of help

xoxo_2

smitchy73 wrote: »

The worst bit of the diary will be the dinner I tried it tonight and it worked out at about 850 calories which was chicken pieces, chow mein sauce(from a jar) along with an express rice and a handful of oven chips, add this to two apples, two bananas, a litre of water at lunch three cups of coffee all day, doesn't add up to a lot. But we'll see how it goes over a week or two.

That's quite a lot for dinner. What time did you have that? Try not to eat after about 7pm. You should aim for a proper breakfast and lunch and a light dinner. Also as others have said, no potato and no bread.

Are you exercising? Sorry if you said and I missed it

willing2learn_3

Not sure if this helps...i'm going to say the opposite of some of the posters, not because i don't agree but because the approach i'm going to talk about worked for me. I actually wasn't on a diet rather i was bereaved and scared about the foods i was eating after i witnessed my dad die of a heart attack (and this is someone who didn't eat badly anyway, but i still realised my diet needed to change).

I just looked at the ingredients of everything i ate and kept my daily saturated fat to under 10g a day - half of the guideline daily amount (which i don't believe after all my research will protect anyone from heart disease, it's still too high - i can give you some book refs if you want but i realise here you are doing it for weight loss whereas i was focussed on the health). Other than that i ate pretty much what i wanted...

What i'm seeing with your meals is not a lot in the earlier part of the day - so not kick starting the metabolism....and then the bulk meal in the evening, which is not bad but i almost get the feeling you need more for lunch and breakfast. Then cut out the chips with the meal, if there's rice, chips are actually not needed....but you probably needed them because you'd only had four pieces of fruit earlier which is not enough in my opinion.

To keep sat fat that low you can only really eat fish also - other meats would have to be incredibly lean.

I was not hungry on this 'diet' and i dropped from a 12 to a size 8. I ate a huge bowl of porridge in the morning, but only made with water and then put blueberries or banana in it and almonds....that pretty much kept me going so that i didn't need lunch....but you could have smaller.

It was a diet higher in carbs, but only complex carbs, not refined sugars. It's debateable what's healthy but it actually caused me to lose loads of wieght even though i wasn't trying.

Also thyroid results can come back normal but doesn't mean the thyroid levels in your blood are normal for you. I take Thyroxine and i need a little more than would be expected by my blood levels to stay well. Clues to under active thyroid are if you feel cold and sluggish all the time.

all the best with this! :-)

Eric_Pisch

1) As suggested keep a food diary, my fitness pal is great, people on avg underestimate how much they eat by 40-50%

2) eat protein with every meal, protein is the best appetite suppressant and it helps resist lean muscle loss

3) you need to understand that if you do not eat enough your body goes into starvation mode, your eating habits seam to fluctuate a lot. The goal with weight loss is to burn fat, not to burn lean muscle, slow and steady does this, a little resistance training helps a lot.

a) First work out your BMR here

http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/

b) you sound moderately active so multiply this figure by 1.55

If you are moderatetely active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55

c) Subtract 500 from this total, this will be your starting point for calorific intake. (You can then adjust this figure over the weeks by 100 cals at a time until you start to loose weight.)

d) divide this number by 4 and eat 1/4th of the calories for breakfast, lunch and dinner and then eat the last 1/4th in two snacks.

my BMR is

2350 * 1.55 = 3643

3643 - 500 = 3143

3143 / 4 = 785 cals per meal plus 2 snacks of 392 cals

5) DO NOT AVOID FAT, especially saturated fats, 30-40% of your calories should come from fat. Every cell in your body is made from saturated fat. It is not unhealthy to eat it, there is no scientific evidence to support not eating saturated fat. Do avoid trans fats and hydrogenated fats like the plague.

6) The reason we get fat and stay fat is that we eat way to much carbs. Excessive carbs raise insulin levels, when we have elevated insulin it is impossible to burn fat, the body also stores everything we eat as fat. It can also cause carb craving.

Try to stick to 100g of carbs a day and to make sure there slow release (low GI) carbs to keep insulin levels low.

Try to only eat things with a score of 55 or less

http://www.the-gi-diet.org/lowgifoods/

smitchy73

jessicamb wrote: »

if it helps to lose 1lb in weight you need a 3,500 calorie deficit. SAying that though you need to make sure you eat enough calories everyday to stop your body going into starvation mode. Storing up all your calories for one big meal doesnt sound like the best way to manage your calorie intake - could you have a low GI breakfast like porridge, healthy sandwich or salad for lunch and then around a 500 calorie dinner? I'm far from a nutritionist but I can see how your body would want to store as much energy as possible if it knew it wasnt getting any more fuel for another 24 hours.

Hi jessiecamb, I can see now where the problems may be lying I got up earlier and have just had some cereal, two slice of toast(wholemeal and oats stuff!) and an actimel, have my fruit and cupasoup for lunch and will worry about dinner later on, but will drastically look at my portion size and content a lot closer.
Thanks for the advice.