Eating healthily with a young baby and little time

[Shallow07]

How do people do this?! I have quite a lot of weight to lose (about 4 stones ) and feel so knackered with looking after 4mo DD/getting through lockdown/dealing with our house purchase falling through that I don't seem to be getting anywhere. I need to sort it- my knees and ankles hurt in the morning and I'm only 30 but feel like I'm looking much older at the moment.

How do other people eat healthily with young children? I know I'm eating far too much sugar and salt. An average day:

B. Cereal and semi skimmed milk
L. Tortellini and sauce or something like fishfingers, chips and peas
D. Gousto meal, 500-600 kcal
Snacks. 2 M&S teacakes, piece of fruit, mini Magnum

So yeah pretty rubbish and I need to sort it out. I walk for an hour a day with the pram. I definitely have issues around food I don't want to pass onto DD. Any ideas for quick, healthy meals or just some sort of strategy to get started would be very, very welcome- DD often only wants to nap on me and doesn't love being put down so time is of the essence

I understand the difficulty at the moment ! It’s hard when we are at home all the time!
I had weight to lose after dd2 and joined slimming world. Did it for four months and lost the 2 stone I needed to lose.
If you have a slow cooker it would make your like easier as you can just shove everything in and forget about until dinner.
My youngest dd would only nap on me too until she was 12 months old!
It’s hard but once you are motivated it’s easier ! Good luck

I used My Fitness Pal to lose baby weight. It's a calorie tracker so there's no dieting, no cutting anything out, no faffing about. You use it to calculate your daily calories allowance based on height, weight, activity level, and whether you want to lose/gain/maintain then you stick to that calorie allowance.

The main downside to it is that you have to log everything you eat/drink and be honest about it, it's easy to forget or think if you don't log it then it doesn't count but if you use it properly it does work. I liked it because I could still have everything I wanted so long as it kept me under my daily allowance, could go out to eat and order things I actually liked, and I didn't have to make separate meals for myself or think too much about what to make. If I was going out and knew if go over my calories for that day then I could account for that by having slightly less in the days leading up to it. I linked it to my Fitbit so that my calories burned through activity were tracked too. I still use it now to maintain my weight.

I'm in a similar situation and it's really hard isn't it? I've recently bought some food scales, weighing everything and logging it on My Fitness Pal. It's really helped me to focus on eating better. Soup has been my "go to" for lunch, with some wholemeal toast and fruit. I also sometimes make a batch of salad in advance when LO is in bed in the evening, or extra for tea and save a portion for the next day.

Im usually short on time at lunch, so what i do is just a piece of fish or meat and i put some veggies in the steamer. Fish takes 5mins to cook, steamer you just put it in and leave it.
I cut down on carbs, so when i make pasta/rice i just boil or steam a whole bunch of veggies and eat a plate of that and i mix some veggies in the kids pasta/rice.
Simple, but healthy.

I have a 5mth old. Breastfeeding is quite forgiving but I still stick to 2-2.1k calories per day (my usual intake) as after bf I will return to my brisk 5-6 mile walks and fast yoga routines to burn 200-400cals. I have so far lost approx 1kg per week but only have 5kg to lose to get back to my pre-ivf weight.

Typical breakfast is late and consists of porridge with nuts and semi-skimmed milk or two eggs and spinach-approx 500 cals, lunch is usually skipped, dinner is usually 600-700 cals and is some kind of fish, lentil or pulse with lashings of veg. For snacks I’ll drink cups of milky tea with biscuits or have steamed veg with butter.

I would probably love look to cut cals at lunch. Increase the veg so something like a poached egg with tomatoes on a slice of wholemeal toast. A home made veg soup with a small roll, a salad with a piece f grilled chicken. Do you drink much alcohol, fruit juice, milk based drinks, fizzy drinks? They all pack a punch in calories.

For breakfast I usually have overnight oats (baby sleeps pretty reliably during the evening so I make them the night before) or 2 weetabix with 1 sugar.

Lunch I have poached eggs on toast if I have a bit of time or chicken and salad (make a nice dressing yourself to keep in a jar in the fridge).

Dinner is whatever we fancy tbh I just try to watch my portion sizes and add extra veg. But with gousto you should be fine.

I have 2 squares of dark chocolate every night. Don't deprive yourself.

Try to keep snacks under 100 calories.

MyFitnessPal really helped me get an idea of normal portion sizes again. Turns out I was making 500+ calories worth of overnight oats and the healthy looking bread I was buying was 140 calories per slice.. oops

Oh and you'll feel SO much better once you start eating healthily. DS2 is 12 weeks old and I don't even feel tired anymore. Take a vitamin D supplement too if you aren't already :)

I can't see that your meals are that rubbish. Maybe replace the chips with a jacket potato or sweet potato or a microwave rice packet. How do you feel about a muesli or wholemeal toast for breakfast?

Gousto meals really are great. They gave me such a buck up on the treadmill of same safe ingredients every week(I buy mine through My Quidco to get cashback)
You mention you are worried about the sugar. What is your take on just not buying processed sweet biscuity things anymore? Buying instead, Twiglets(baked) or pots of yogurt with grain and fruit in it. How are you with unsalted nuts and fruit packets?
One thing I did notice about Gousto was their portion size. I was shocked at how small they were. Turns out I was eating too big portions for years. Oops.

Life is too short to be miserable. Stick to Gousto portion sizes and change up your snacks.

Honestly, low carb was the only thing that worked for me.

It also meant that I could have lots of easy picky meals in the fridge - cooked chicken, cheese, veg, full fat yogurt, deli meats, nuts etc. Plus the natural fats are filling.