Can't stand weighing food, counting points/calories or avoiding food types.

[Wooodpecker]

Is there any hope for me?

I am overweight and unhappy. I feel I have tried every diet on the planet and still need to lose 2.5 stone at least. One of the reasons I fail is that I hate all the planning and thinking that goes with diets. All that counting, charting every morsel on an app or note pad or weighing food or avoiding carbs/fat etc.

I want to lose weight as quick as I can and for good. I have had a think about what I am doing wrong and have settled on:

3 meals a day plus a light mid afternoon snack.
Fruit for breakfast.
Sandwich for lunch.
Small handful of nuts or fruit for snack.
Same dinner as normal but half the plate will be veg and overall a smaller portion
Max 2 drinks a day that are not water and then just water.

Please tell me this will work and I am not the only one who cannot abide the weighing and counting business.

[spudmasher]

Have you tried 5:2?
You have to go easy on eating days but you won't have to do any weighing or avoid any food groups. Lots of info on the 5:2 threads.

[spudmasher]

I wouldn't have fruit for breakfast. Protein is best for keeping hunger pangs at bay. Eggs?

[Wooodpecker]

Tried 5:2. Was in danger of eating my own limbs by 4 each day so then binged.

Good point about fruit. I had eggs for breakfast on Saturday and didn't eat lunch until 1.

[wiltingfast]

My sister did the 5:2 but from lunch to lunch? Said it worked quite well?

Losing weight involes planning whatever you do. But once you've a routine set up surely it looks after itself?

[spudmasher]

How long did you give 5:2? I found it got easier after the fourth week but I did have to be determined. I've now lost everything I wanted to lose and I feel great. What about low GI? Very good for reducing hunger pangs and simple changes to make rather than weighing/ avoiding. Easy once you know which foods to avoid. Tesco do a good meal planner thing for a low Gi diet.

[BIWI]

Bootcamp was designed specifically for that reason - no weighing or counting at all!

[Wooodpecker]

I did 5.2 a few weeks but never managed to make a whole day on 500 calories .

There must be someone out there who has lost weight without counting.

[Wooodpecker]

Boot camp?

Is it painful? It makes me think of sergeant Majors and press ups.

[BikeRunSki]

Slimming World.
The only thing I weighed was cereal, although I didn't actually have it very often.

[Wooodpecker]

Really? I didn't know that about SW. I might go and see how that works then. Thank you.

[BIWI]

No! Low carb Bootcamp that I run here on MN No press ups involved

We're on week 2 (of 5) but you're welcome to join us!

[BikeRunSki]

I did the SW "green" days (you can mix red and green, but I am veggie which is suited to veggies).With SW you have a big list of "free stuff" , an A list and a B list. I think you eat 2 things from each list every day. But it's stuff like "3 Babybels" or "1 Alpen bar" or "" 2 Slices of bread". There are measured amounts of cheese, fish and meat, but it's very simple, and you could work around it. I did eat fish in those days, and the salmon portion size was the size of Tesco salmon fillets. I weighed them a couple of times, then stopped.

Free stuff (on green) is pasta, rice, fruit, veg, eggs, pulses, loads to build a meal on.

[Wooodpecker]

Ooh sounds good Bikerunski.

I will take a look BIWI but am not sure about cutting food groups.

Need to do something though. I am in danger of being harpooned.

[BIWI]

You don't cut a food group. That's one of the biggest myths about low carbing. It's low carb not no carb.

[Sleepwhenidie]

Eating better thread (in Food). Mindful eating-no diets-minimal sugar and processed food/white carbs but nothing is banned. Put the lose weight quickly idea out of your head though, it's not about that, it's about working with your body, listening to it, giving it what it needs and what you enjoy (they come to be mostly the same thing after a while ). Posters who want/need to lose weight are doing so.

[Wooodpecker]

Aahhhhaaaa I see. I am going to check your link out. It needs to be easy to follow though as I am terrible at diets. Hence why the need to be on one. [Grin]

[Viviennemary]

I agree with giving the 5:2 diet a go. I am kind of trying it. Slimming World did not work for me though it does for quite a lot of people. Ijust couldn't stick to it and kept getting indigestion.

[msfreud]

5:2 affected my monthly cycle and I got worried it was damaging my fertility so I stopped.

You need to eat foods that are nourishing for your body. I've started having a big green smoothie (I use NutriBullet for making mine) for breakfast and they keep me satisfied until lunch time. I usually make mine with a couple of handfuls of greens (usually kale, baby spinach or cabbage/spring greens), one banana, one type of other fruit or berry (blueberries or strawberries at the moment), a spoonful each of wheatgrass and spirulina powders, some seeds or tahini and a half/half of almond milk and water as the liquid. It gives me a good mix of carbs, protein and fat.

[tobysmum77]

I always have fruit for breakfast. Have it with a small pot of total 0% greek yogurt. I find that really filling.

My other tips are to choose wholegrain foods wherever possible, cook from scratch and choose low fat protein where possible (for example look on the labels of meat, the differences between the cuts is ). One cut off beef may be 20% fat and another 3%. The 3% one isn't less filling.