To ask you to analyse my diet and tell me why I lack energy, motivation and bowel movements?

[TakeMeToTheUSA]

So frustrating.

I went to work today and by lunch time I was fatigued. Brain fogged. Sat in my car feeling like I couldn't carry on with the rest of the day. I just have no energy at all and I'm sure it must be my diet?!

By time my shift finished I couldn't stop yawning. I felt absolutely drained. I didn't go to gym as planned and am instead laid on the sofa eating chocolate wanting to go to bed.

My diet for today was:

Breakfast - fuel protein porridge and coffee.
Lunch - bacon and cheese toastie made with 400g (small slices) 50/50 bread. A packet of hula hoops.
Dinner: spaghetti Bol made with 5% fat beef mince, wholewheat spaghetti and dolmio with a sprinkle of cheese.

A) why am I not losing weight?
B) why do I have no energy?
C) why do I feel hungry and weak?
D) why do I look like shit?????

That is not the diet of somebody trying to lose weight.

Wow you eat like no vegetables!

That’s why you don’t have good bowl movements.

more fruit and veg.do you really not like any fruit.have you tried them stewed,roasted with other things.
add some veg.
try taking some mutlivitamins.
have you done a blood test just to rule out anything else.
you need to snack.some little often thing sto boost you in between meals.

It's not truly dreadful diet.
Truly dreadful is bowl of frosties with a coke, 16 fags, chips, chip butty with brown sauce. With a pack of chocolate biscuits.
A lot of ppl eat like that daily & get away with it (maybe not forever).

I suggest Floradix, too. Iron tablets were awful for me, too.

Sorry, forgot to add 3 pints of stella to last list, too.

I hate fruit, so really try to pile on the veg. Tonight for dinner we had a super-easy spiced chickpea stew, served with warm pitta breads, which had carrots, celery, peppers, onions, garlic, and tomatoes in it, and which has enough leftover for me to take some to work for lunch tomorrow. Might that sort of thing be an option? We had spaghetti bolognese at the weekend, but i essentially make it half mince and half veg (mushrooms, onions, carrots, courgettes, peppers, celery, tinned tomatoes) which also means it makes a portion for the freezer. Veg by stealth can be easy, if labour intensive with chop-chop-chopping.

She isn’t snacking, she’s eating 3 meals a day and not drinking alcohol

Huh? What do you call laying on the sofa eating chocolate if it's not snacking?

You may as well have a line of crack and a fag op, shag a few randoms from Old Kent Road while you're at it.

My food for today was:

Breakfast - 40g porridge, almond milk, blueberries
Lunch - tuna salad with low fat dressing
Eve meal - butternut squash and red pepper soup , 1slice of whole meal bread, 0 fat yogurt with frozen berries

Snacks - banana, grapes, apple, 2 rich tea biscuits,

I try not to eat much bread, pasta, potatoes and think what I can replace the, with

Eggs for breakfast, very filling and some orange juice
Lunch ideas could be a home made salad with the salad veg you like and/or homemade soup with wholemeal roll.
Dinner - go veg heavy with whatever you have, even if its a ready meal have loads of veg on the side.
Drink loads of water and snack on grapes if thats the only fruit you like (im not a fruit lover either)

You are probably low in vitamin d too, so get that checked along with B12, folate and thyroid function.

More water and more veg has already been advised, by lots of other posters.

Agree with the majority. More fruit and veg. Fibre rich foods, ditch the white carbs. Could you swap your coffee for tea? Still caffeinated admittedly but far less than coffee.

Everyone including op seem to have missed her sitting on the sofa eating chocolate,

Floradix or Spatone for iron. Much better than tablets and no constipation side effects.

You just have to add fresh stuff to your diet, whether or not you like it. You need it.

Instead of Dolmio, make a pasta sauce with an onion, a stick of celery, a carrot all finely minced, then add chopped courgette, tomato, garlic, mushrooms, red and green peppers and lean beef.

If you want a bacon and cheese toastie (I'm guessing 400g is a misprint, that's an entire small loaf, not a single toastie) have a big salad with it: cucumber, lettuce, carrot sticks, watercress, rocket etc with a few seeds sprinkled on it. Tbh, if you eat this, you won't even manage or want a toastie too.

There must be some fruit you like. When did you last try anything except grapes? Have you tried fresh clementines? Fresh pineapple or mango? Raspberries or strawberries with some greek yoghurt and flaked almonds? A peeled, chilled pear?

Like other posters have said, you're eating too many carbs and not enough of other things.

For breakfast try something like scrambled eggs with spinach or smoked salmon, vegetable frittata (make it the night before), leftovers from dinner. You don't have to have cereal or oats to be healthy, and there is nothing wrong with having something less traditionally 'breakfasty' for breakfast.

For lunch, have a big leafy salad with meat, cheese, eggs, leftovers, tuna...

For dinner you want something full of veg, protein and fat, but low on carb. So something like a salad or veggies with fish, meat, cheese, eggs. Bolognese made from scratch with tinned tomatoes (not Dolmio sauce - it's full of sugar) and veggies in the sauce with the meat. Homemade burgers with salad. Slow cooked meat and Greek salad. Homemade veggie soup.

If you don't like fruit, don't eat it. Grapes are like little bombs of sugar, so I would leave those off if you can. Have more veggies instead. Have raw veg sticks with tzatziki or hummus, put grated veggies in sauces, put bits of veggies in breakfast and lunch.

Oh I'm sorry ragged, of course op should carry on doing exactly what she's doing and it will all work out fine, because her diet isn't quite as truly fucking awful as it could be. /s

She is ill, tired and constipated. She can address this pretty easily and lots of people here have told her how, but you, ragged, you want her to think it's not that bad. Why is that? Is your own health shit and you want to drag other people down with you?

the OP#s diet is truly dreadful and I want her to improve it because I don't want her to be ill. The first step of making a change is realising a change needs to be made.

To be honest ginger I don't like fruit either. I will tolerate citrus fruits, I quite like lemon in dressings, but I find most fruit too sweet.

That said, I eat enough veg to make up for it.

If you add in fruit/veg a bit at a time, you'll get used to it, and before you know it you will have made really good changes. That and more water, and you'll definitely solve your problems.

Little changes, and stick with them.

You can do it!

I don’t mean to lecture you but if you know you have low iron you really must find a way to take iron tablets. Without iron your body simply cannot function. I had untreated anaemia for a year before they realised that was what was going on and my heart was suffering so badly I was causing myself to have missed beats, palpitations and heart problems to the point I ended up seeing a cardiologist and wearing a 7 day heart monitor as they were worried I had damaged my heart.

I suffer with heartburn and stomach pain from taking the iron tablets (210mg x 3 a day) but I would rather have those than heart problems!

I would cut out wheat and see how you feel. I had major issues couldn’t get out of bed felt so unwell couldn’t pass stools was told was post viral fatigue then m.e turned out most of my symptoms went away when I cut wheat out as told by a Chinese medicine practitioner. Now if I even experience cross contamination of wheat it makes me feel horrendous

ragged, you want her to think it's not that bad. Why is that? Is your own health shit and you want to drag other people down with you?

Blimey @becotide, that's well nasty.

I don't like exaggeration. Or maybe MNers are very sheltered. I can't figure out which.

My diet isn't what ppl would call good probably but it's ketogenic pretty much and I'm losing weight.

Fri lunch: 2 fried eggs, 3 bacon, half a small tin of beans (that was a cheat).

Fri dinner: chorizo, cheese, ham, gherkins, pickled onions.

Sat lunch: chorizo, cheese, ham, gherkins.

Sat dinner: rocket, spinach & watercress salad with cherry tomatoes, spring onion, cucumber, gherkin & feta dressed in olive oil, balsamic vinegar & lemon with 2 pork loins.

Sun lunch: 2 fried eggs, 3 bacon, 4 Richmond sausages.

Sun dinner: same salad as sat but with roast chicken, mayo & nandos sauce.

I've drunk black tea with no sugar, and tons of water, I also only eat between 12-8pm and if I need to snack I'll have cheese or gherkins or pickled onions.

I'd cut the cheese, the bread and the jar sauce. Slimming World diet is a good example to follow if your looking to lose weight.

I don't like fruit much, but I make up for it with loads of veg. I am also lazy. But you can get a packet of soffrito (onion carrot celery) all ready chopped to make a tomato sauce instead of a bought one. I keep packets of it in the freezer. Get bags of ready prepared fresh vegetables to stir fry. It's hardly more effort than baked beans and gives good variety. Ditch the bacon and cheese and load your sandwich with ham or tuna and add lambs lettuce and few slices of tomato. Swap hula hoops for nuts maybe? Ok nuts are very calorific but good for energy and a brain boost. Porridge is a healthy enough breakfast but quite heavy. Try scrambled eggs.

You could have a food sensitivity such as gluten or dairy. Those can cause a wide variety of problems including low energy and bowel issues, and trouble absorbing nutrients such as iron. Do you also have bloating or joint pain?

My advice is to commit yourself to eating whole foods (either follow a Paleo diet or Whole 30) for at least a week (a month would be better) and see how you feel. You would eat fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs, and nuts etc. but not much else. Nothing processed. No sugar.

Ironically, you may feel worst at first because if you are sensitive to something, your body will crave it and can go through something like withdrawal. But then you start to feel better.

When I cut out gluten, I felt fine the first day, like I had the flue the second, rock bottom morning of the 3rd but getting better by that evening, and by the 4th day I felt better than I had in years.