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 lost 2st by cutting out all fat and sugar. I used low fat salad cream instead of butter in sandwiches, no cheese, lean meat, no biscuits, cakes or chocolate. I made ordinary meals but added more veg. I had a treat of a small portion of fish and chips once a week and it helped me stay motivated in cutting out stuff during the week. ie: If I eat that I won't be able to have my takeaway on friday.

I have dropped fruit juice from my breakfast, and flipped my breakfast. So, instead of granola with yoghurt and a fruit topping, I have fruit salad with yoghurt and a sprinkling of granola for crunch. Or I may have 2 poached or scrambled eggs with a slice of toast, but then I won’t have bread at lunchtime - carbs are the basis of breakfast or lunch, but not both.
A sandwich for lunch or salad with some protein or a homemade soup.
I have a pint glass of water at my desk and make sure that I drink at least one pint every morning and every afternoon.
Dinner is a portion thing for me. I eat the same as the rest of the family but make sure I limit my portion size, particularly the carbs - 3oz pasta or 2oz rice or 1oz cous cous is enough, and though I may like more, I don’t need it. I try to serve food at the table so we can help ourselves, but I always try to prep the right amount of meat and carbs but have plenty of veg or salad available, so if we want seconds we naturally gravitate to those. No-one is hungry, but I’m not tempted and we’re all building good habits.

@YinuCeatleAyru thanks for answer. I wondered about sizes especially after ot said teaspoon of hummus.

1/3 of any plate of food was filled with either veg or salad.

I'd have my fibre in the morning, porridge or wholemeal toast

Salad and protein for lunch and fruit for smacks

Tea would be something home made, shepherds pie, chilli, curry, toast dinners etc but again 1/3 would be veg with no or little processed foods

Hardest thing on counting calories is the nonstop unit googling😂 I work on metric so have to "translate" all imperial😂

I lost a stone starting just before lockdown although am only just slightly above healthy weight for my height so would like to get on with phase 2..... What did I eat? I tracked the calories and tended to eat one main meal (no breakfast as IF works well for me)- often salmon with veg stir fry, steak, duck, eggs, lots of sardines, that kind of thing.

People have to find what works for them but for me healthy normal foods like meat, fish, eggs and veg and good fats like olive oil seem to help. I m a kind of paleo/keto kind of person - natural although you can argue these things until the cows come home and unless you eat fewer calories than you expend you don't lose weight

So on the first post

Breakfast - 2 poached eggs with a slice of toast and some orange juice [ have zero instead and never any toast and no orange juice as that is just spiking your blood sugars]

Mid morning snack - Nakd fruit bar [ have no snacks at all and certainly not a processed carb bar]

Lunch - chicken soup with a small portion of salad, handful of grapes [ avoid grapes as they are carbs again - go for loads of salad and some chicken - no need to have it as a soup - first meal of day]

Afternoon snack - latte made with whole milk and a rice cake with peanut butter [ have no afternoon snack at all and avoid rice cakes as yet more carbs and no peanut butter as usually fairly processed and fattening [ and I hate it]]

Dinner - spaghetti and meatballs [ ditch the spaghetti and just have a lovely large plate of meat with veg -I do a lot of steak fried in olive oil with a whole red pepper cut up, leeks and courgettes]

Some great ideas here, thank you!

I'm guilty of not eating enough veg, I'll start trying to use that to bulk out my meals instead.

Get a portion divider thing of amazon.

If I was you, I'd have 2 eggs on wholemeal toast for breakfast. Eggs cooked using frylight. No butter on toast.
Snack - fruit
Lunch- chicken salad no dressing
Dinner - spag Bol (5%fat mince) sauce made using tinned tomato/pasata, courgette, peppers, mushroom.
I'd stop using the full fat milk and switch to skimmed

I snacked my way through 6 stone of weight loss. Including a (very) small ice cream most evenings before bed

Most people cut out milk but anyone on a diet is low on calcium so thats not necessarily the best switch out for you if coffee is a treat (Although you may find you can tolerate the switch to 1% or skimmed).

Half the stuff people say to cut I dont necessarily agree (2 egg and toast sounds fine) although cut the orange juice is pretty universal advice

Thats the thing about My fitness pal, you can actually work out what works for you and where the best compromise for you are. It's stayed off too. Not quite as low as my lowest but within half a stone of it. If i get to a certain point I do my fitness pal for a bit and sort it out. You also learn a bit of nutrition by osmosis if you have the premium

I agree with Names that it's all about calories in/calories out.
I lost weight by tracking all my food intake and exercise on my Fitbit app. It was really helpful for a number of reasons:

1. it made me consider the calorie content of all my food/drink so lots of reading labels and thinking about portion size. It also made me a more "mindful" eater. No more just throwing a few biscuits in my mouth while I made a cup of tea, but I could still have a biscuit or two if I fancied, as long as it was in budget.
2. no food was off limits. I just had to eat less of it/less frequently. I hate being hungry and really don't think I would stick to a fasting or low carb diet and this is less restrictive.
3. I could trade off exercise and food, which also made me realise that with weight loss, food is way more important than exercise! It's super easy, and quick to eat a 200cal bar of chocolate but way harder to burn 200cals on the treadmill
4. I automatically ate more veg as it's often low calorie so a good way to bulk out a meal.

The downside is all the counting and logging! I gave it up for that reason and because it's tricky with eating out where it's hard to gauge the calorie content of meals. I really should start it up again now that eating out is no longer an option!

So easy to make this lose you weight!

Breakfast - 2 poached eggs with a slice of toast and some orange juice - get rid of OJ have orange squash instead. Add some spinach to fill you up.

Mid morning snack - Nakd fruit bar - terrible choice, these are full of sugar. Have a fibre one bar or a banana

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

Afternoon snack - latte made with whole milk and a rice cake with peanut butter - use skimmed milk instead. Get low cal peanut butter.
Dinner - spaghetti and meatballs - use 5% mince for this and reduce portion size, add a big salad

@IToldYouIWasFreaky I do the same.

I don't eat my exercise cal each day. I just keep on same cal like normally. I however, am 200 under what MFP suggested, plus some hundreds a week on exercise so I can have a "day off". Which I think is what's kept me going. No counting, but not going crazy and eating whole Maccies menu either. Just a relax day with more cal (I saved for it).
A stone down in 4 weeks. Inch and half over waist! I tried keto before and gave up pretty quick. I need to know I can have anything otherwise I crave that something I can have so badly, I could cry

That's great progress OMG, well done! I don't think I'd do well with keto either - I love my carbs too much!

I lost just under 5 stone over a couple of years, and have kept it off for well over a year now.
My main meals are -
Breakfast - porridge (made with skimmed milk powder and mixed dried fruit), / baked beans with a poached or fried egg on 1-2 slices of wholemeal toast / spinach, poached egg, wholemeal toast. No butter on toast.

Lunch - cheese or houmous sandwich with salad / homemade soup with wholemeal bread or pitta / heinz tomato soup with a cheese toastie

Dinner - tinned mackerel with salad and new potatoes / something vegetarian (eg lentil curry, bean chilli) with lots of veggies, a bit of rice or pasta

Snacks - mainly fruit, or a small bowl of porridgd if I was really hungry

Drinks - coffee, green tea, water. Mainly teetotal, though I did drink a little wine sometimes

Most important thing I did was buy smaller plates, it means you eat smaller portions. I didn't calorie count apart from really high calorie stuff like cheese, pasta, cooking oil, etc. I am very energetic though, I swim whenever I can (obvs not at the moment ) and usually walk 10 miles a day .

Drink big glasses of water before eating :) and yes to slowly serving small portions as you can always get more later.

@IllustriousToad & @Acrasia - well done both, great achievement.

I find low carb really helps with weight loss - I lost a lot about 4 years ago, started putting some weight back on with lockdown, so doing it again, hopefully get back into good long term habits.
I've just started intermittent fasting after reading another thread on here - it's never bothered me that much to miss breakfast, so seems ideal, although a bit soon to see results.

Although I low-carb, I ALWAYS have porridge for breakfast, often with berries (or now lunch!) which is about 20g of carb - I find it really filling. I make it overnight, no added milk or sugar.

Agree with PPs on the NAKD bar - if you really crave a bar of something rather than fruit/veg/salad, 'Kind' bars aren't too sugary (the plain chocolate ones). And skip the orange juice.

Also swap dairy milk to an alternative if you must have the latte!

@IToldYouIWasFreaky thank you and congrats on your loss! I am the same. #Carbs4life

I would stick to a few healthier choices. All I know was that it was at a similar BMI in my mid 20s that I got into the diets and the continual cycle that lasted till my mid 30s.

I think if you accurately count calories for a few days (weigh everything) you'll soon find out that you're not in a calorie deficit and therefore you can't lose weight.

Bottom line - it doesn't matter what you eat as long as you're in a calorie deficit

Obviously best to eat healthily but as long as you're in a calorie deficit you will always lose weight

When I want to get some weight off quickly I eat 1200 calories a day for a couple of weeks - I can lose 6 pounds that way.

Portion control and no snacks. Even more portion control.

Weighing everything until you can judge it accurately by sight, and understanding exactly what a portion is, makes a huge difference.

I've got thyroid problems, so I can't 'eat back' my exercise calories, which isn't a bad thing, as the calorie burn of exercise seems hugely over-rated on most apps etc.

Breakfast- breakfast bar at my desk, anything below 100 calories

Lunch- salad. I don't mean a boring salad. Mixed salad bag, sweet potato, humous,coleslaw, meat maybe bacon or chicken or tuna, apple, anything really. Obviously not all of the above at once. For example in tomorrow's salad. Sweet potato (not a whole one) some pesto linguine, lots of mixed salad from a salad bag, bacon and coleslaw. I find I can easily vary a salad if I make sure I have the bits in my fridge

Dinner - I dont always cook for myself so I don't tend to track my dinner but if I do it would usually be a lot of veg and a small portion of meat and carbs

I try and get some exercise in a couple of times a week and if I can't get out to the gym or on my bike I'll do a home workout

I don't like to track calories as there's so much more to a diet than just numbers. I've had an interest in fitness and health for a long time so can usually guess at calorie content to fair accuracy. But knowing what you burn in a day just existing is important to be able to know how much you need to eat and exercise

I agree that salads should be interesting. I fell in love with tuna quark salad (quark instead of mayo and keep part of the tuna juices to mix in) with rocket/spinach/cress mix, cucumber, tom, pepper, spring onion, mixed beans and healthy dose of fresh chives. Salt, pepper, squeeze of lemon. So simple, so good.

I also found that half a teaspoon of oil instead of dressings is more than enough when you use some nice herbs.