To ask what kind of meals you ate to lose weight?

[Waxonwaxoff0]

I want to lose a bit of weight. I'm not hugely overweight, my BMI is 26.3 so I need to lose about a stone to be healthy. I do a lot of walking as I don't have a car, probably about 2 hours a day.

Food is my downfall though. I don't eat a lot of junk food but I probably eat quite a lot of calories. Yesterday I ate -

Breakfast - 2 poached eggs with a slice of toast and some orange juice
Mid morning snack - Nakd fruit bar
Lunch - chicken soup with a small portion of salad, handful of grapes
Afternoon snack - latte made with whole milk and a rice cake with peanut butter
Dinner - spaghetti and meatballs

I have quite a big appetite so I find restricting my calories really difficult. Anyone have any tips?

I would rather drop the nakd bar and keep the latte tbh.
I found that keeping 1 thing you really enjoy helps not to give up. At least for me. I do think it's the pasta rather than the rest of the food. Pasta is incredible sneaky bugger

OJ is totally wasted calories.
Instead of spaghetti have courgette or lettuce.
Chicken and veg or salad or fish with veg or salad is always good.
Grapes are high in sugar as well.
You will need some natural sugar though.
Have some crudites in the fridge and some nice homemade or low fat dips. That's a better snack.

I had about as much to lose as you and I dropped all snacks unless I was very hungry, in which case I had an apple or other fruit, had tea instead of latte and just ate less of all my other meals. So I didn't change my evening meal but just had, say, 3 meatballs instead of 4 and 2 scoops of pasta instead of 3.

I am doing MFP at the moment. Breakfast is usually weetabix with milk and a small glass of orange juice. Lunch a salad with a packet of crisps. Dinner is a wide range of things, if it is low calorie I can have a bigger portion, if high calorie I have a little portion. I can only have a snack if I have enough calories remaining. I never eat back exercise calories. I find this gives me a slow but manageable weight loss, I can't do things like fasting as mypod deteriorates rapidly if I don't eat breakfast and my DH would actually divorce me I think, he starts to panic if I haven't eaten breakfast by 8am

My mood!

As others have pointed out, looks like carbs/sugar are the main thing here. I have to watch my sugar intake as I have reactive hypoglycaemia and these things from your list would ring alarm bells for me: toast, OJ, Nakd bar, grapes, rice cake, spaghetti. Maybe try replacing some of your carbs by proteis, which is more filling and will help with keeping your blood-sugar levels healthy.
You also mention portion size. You may find it interesting to weigh things for a while. When I did Weight Watchers many years ago, our coach got us to serve up "portions" then weigh them and see how they compared to suggested portion sizes. We were all far more generous than we should have been, sometimes serving more than 3 times the suggested amount. It was a real eye-opener.
Good luck!

Smaller ones, with dinner earlier in the evening.

The snacks are unnecessary, also orange juice. If you want something mid morning have an orange. Soup or chicken/tuna/sardine salad for lunch, or hummus and crudités, Americano instead of latte or try steaming some lower calorie non dairy milk, and swap out the pasta for courgetti and add salad.

Low carb worked for me. Don’t need to count calories, just need to look at the label... anything > 3g carbs/100g gets rejected, anything < 3g carbs can go in trolley. small amounts of inbetween foods around 3-5g are fine, eg onions/nuts.

Breakfast - 2 poached eggs with a slice of toast and some orange juice

Swap the toast for smoked salmon/parma ham/bacon etc. Orange juice is no different from full sugar coke/lemonade metabolically, chock full of sugar. Swap for an americano with pouring cream.

Mid morning snack - Nakd fruit bar

Sugar bomb... swap for some nuts, olives or cheese.

Lunch - chicken soup with a small portion of salad, handful of grapes

Check the label, probably carby if made with rice/potato. Make your own with a roast chicken carcass. Salad prob fine, grapes are basically nature’s Haribo, super sweet and no fibre to slow the absorption of the fructose... have some full fat greek yoghurt & double cream whipped together with berries.

Afternoon snack - latte made with whole milk and a rice cake with peanut butter

Have an americano with cream, nuts, deli meats, cheese, feta, olives etc

Dinner - spaghetti and meatballs

Have more meat and grated cheese. Ditch the spaghetti for courgetti or serve with roasted courgette/cauliflower sprinkled with an Italian seasoning mix.

I like a bigger dinner too. So I don't snack (peanut butter and bars are both really high calorie), except maybe fruit. I count calories on my fitness pal which I have found very effective.

Sometimes I reduce spaghetti and supplement with courgette etc but really I just have as small a breakfast and lunch as possible and count everything. I can't go low carb because I lose all my energy and I also walk everywhere (and work out when gyms are open) but I do make sure to eat enough protein and veggies. A common dinner here is roasted salmon and veggies over rice.

I agree with smaller ones. If you start eating smaller portions especially of carbs your appetite will decrease quite quickly. I found that the only thing that works and is sustainable over the long term. I generally eat want I want but much less of it.

It's portion size mainly. Most people are surprised by how little a portion actually is and how many calories are in such small amounts of food.

I put on a lot of weight (for me) after having my two children. I have lost it by cutting down my portions.
Also I don't snack and never have. If you are eating filling nutritious meals you will not need to snack. 3 meals a day is plenty.
There is no need to do keto, low carb etc etc... It really is just portion control and calories. I eat bread and chocolate (as part of a meal) every single day but manage to maintain a healthy weight by being conscious of hidden calories and no snacks. A latte with one sugar is a meals worth of calories for example.
Download an app to count at first but after a while you end up knowing approx what calories are in stuff.

I lost weight using the 5:2 diet so how I ate was somewhat different to you but some ideas:
Your diet looks ok but you could increase your vegetable intake to fill you up. Also, lots of carrot sticks, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, grilled veg in the fridge for snacks.
Replace spaghetti with shredded cabbage - surprisingly tasty.
A big mixed salad with tuna fish or chicken. Allow yourself some low cal dressing to give the salad some flavour.
I used to drink flavoured sparkling water - the bubbles made me feel full.
Healthy stir fries - bit of meat, lots of veg, bit of soy sauce.
Natural yoghurt with fruit for breakfast.
My favourite thing for an occasional treat - 3 rashers of smoked streaky bacon on thin sliced white bread with tomato sauce. About 300 calls. Yummy.

You can easily get rid of 300 calories or so without much effort

Have water or low sugar squash instead of orange juice. Have skimmed milk in your latte or better yet no milk. Then replace peanut butter with something with fewer calories like lower sugar jam, low fat Flora, cucumber or something.

That's about 2000 fewer calories a week!

Cook broccoli / cauliflower or your fav veg with a stock cube and have that as a third of your spaghetti so you eat less of both but don't realise .

I was quite shocked at how big some of my portions had gotten. Also how much I was using food to satisfy what was actually thirst. I noticed when I cut down my portions and realised I was feeling way more thirsty. Drinking water 20 minutes before your evening meal makes a massive difference to how much food on your plate it takes to make you feel full.

I like Pinch of Nom recipes - I have 1 of their books but loads on their website too. I don't find the portions too small and there are so many tasty things, we had a lovely homemade healthy chicken katsu last night and having a fakeaway chow mein tomorrow. Or I like Joe Wicks stuff too.
I have used my fitness pal every now and again but find it easier when I track more roughly and just keep an eye without meticulous calorie counting and wear my fitbit and get my steps in.
If I have a decent breakfast (I like turkey bacon and scrambled egg or poached egg on brown toast) then I can get away with quite a light lunch, fruit or some nuts if I want a snack then a healthy filling meal for tea. Cutting out unhealthy/unnecessary snacks has been the biggest thing for me for definite.

Doesn't seem to be much veg there? I swapped carbs for veg mostly. Cauliflower rice, veg noodles, veg chips. Just ate loads of vegetable, they fill you up longer

@OmgThereAreNoPlanesAboveMeNow I am aiming for 1200 per day - that lot was probably nearer 1100 but I have occasional days when it strays nearer to 1400 e.g. if I have a couple of slices of pizza as a treat.

Quantities are important of course and it would make for a very boring mumsnet post if we were all specific about exactly how much of everything we eat, but for example when I said "tomato salsa" you might have imagined a tablespoonful, whereas in fact it more than half-filled the pudding basin I use to make Christmas Pudding - so there was plenty there!

Today I had mushrooms, spinach and 3 rashers of Quorn Bacon for breakfast and am planning to have asparagus with a couple of poached eggs for lunch. Dinner will be risotto (which will be about 60% vegetable matter) with probably a banana and a small square of chocolate later on (I like to have a couple of hours between eating dinner and having a final "pudding" thing to round off the day).

It doesn't atcually matter WHAT you eat, as long as the calorie count is right. I'm doing a (semi strict) Calories In vs Calories out diet- I have eaten pizza, ice cream, chocolate and cake- and as long as it's logged and within my daily "allowance" (varies by person), I'm still losing weight. That said, I can obviously eat more if I choose wisely.

For bigger, more filling meals with a lower calorie count, I have found that things like omelette, scrambled egg, fruits/vegetables, stir fry and jacket potato are the most filling and stop me being hungry till my next meal.

What I think (no evidence) has made the biggest difference to me is ditching all drinks but water.

If im really trying to lose weight, i try and cut right back on bread, rice and pasta. They have a very poor calorie to satiety ratio. Eat more vegetables instead. If you eat vegetables as your carb, you can still enjoy the taste of the sauce or topping, but you cut out abour 300+ calories from the meal
Also fruit juice is really sugary and its just a drink. A glass of water or orange squash would be better.

Smaller portions at breakfast and lunch

Low carb

I’ve even did Keto for a while which really worked but I was worried about the cholesterol impact of doing it long term - it worked though bad meant I could have certain things I really enjoy

Almond milk in hot drinks

Cut out wine - gin and slimline instead

On a lunch I eat a lot of hearty soups (no bread on the side), homemade when I can but look for one that doesn’t have added sugar if not.

Chocolate sweetened with Stevia

Sorry it’s a no to grapes as a snack here - they are sooooo high in sugar you may as well have sweets.

I struggle with snacks as I do like a little snack. I have things like, a tangerine, little bag of salted pop, slice of leerdamer with mustard on, celery sticks with a little tatziki, couple of Quorn cocktail sausages, those Organix crisps for toddlers, small portion of berries with a table spoon of Quark or 50% fat Greek yog.

Also cut out topping things with cheese.
I suggest putting a littlr soy sauce or maggi liquid seasoning on top of things youd normally put tonnes of cheese on.

If you have to use cheese, edam is the least calorific, and use sparingly

Before my wedding I dropped from a size 14 to a 10. Very little exercise because I'm lazy, mostly just being stricter with food.

I had a grapefruit for breakfast instead of toast, a chicken or tuna salad with white wine vinegar for dressing for lunch instead of a sandwich, and swapped rice, pasta and chips for quinoa. Spag bol with quinoa, curry with quinoa, chilli with quinoa. For snacks I had pumpkin seeds or fruit. It was very samey but it did the trick.

Two children and one lockdown later and I'm definitely no longer a size 10 more like a 16 but sometimes I gaze wistfully at the quinoa in the supermarket and wish I had the self control to start dieting again.

Good luck!

On what you’re listed:

No to the full fat milk - especially in a latte, you could have another lunch for the amount of calories in that. I’d cut put milk completely , especially if you like a latte

Cut out the fruit juice - lush but just empty calories. Have a small portion of actual fruit with your brekki instead - tangerine/berries

Swap the rice cake topping for some sugar free jam

Swap the spaghetti with your meatballs for courgetti (invest in a spiraliser), we had meatballs last night but had chicken instead of beef as less calories, I made the sauce myself and had courgetti instead of pasta. I bulked it out with peas and spinach in the sauce.

Stop eating grapes.