To ask what you think of my average "working day" food?

[Stamen196]

Just got off phone to doctors. BMI is 37 and I need to get it down to below 30 for many reasons.

Background: I carry my weight relatively well so am a size 16, but this doesn't help as I just let it creep up without many people seeming to notices. I have PCOS, not planning on kids so no particular issue with fertility, but it does affect my ability to lose weight and metabolism.

I would say this is my average working day:

• Breakfast: 6.30am. porridge with honey or fruit and fibre with milk). Cup of tea.

-Snack: 10ish. Usually a mini kit kat or apple, or both if I'm hungry!

• Lunch: 12.30. Soup and bag of low cal crisps such as pop chips for lunch, and maybe a yoghurt if I'm home or an apple. On a particularly bad day, a couple of biscuits.

• 3.30pm: Afternoon snack. If I'm out it's a skinny cappuccino. If I'm in, whatever is in house. I am tired and energy levels low and so reach for 2 biscuits (not if I've had biscuits at lunch though). 🙄

• 8pmish: Dinner. Usual types of thing such as jacket potato, mushroom risotto, salmon stir fry or pasta, but probably a bigger portion than I realise. Veggies in there though. Some sort of sweet thing afterwards... Usually chocolate.

I only drink wine at weekends but I tend to stick to 1 glass. But my weekend diet is probably way worse with a meal out or takeaway featuring at some point!

What do you all think of my average day of eating compared to your own? Is it awful? Any tips would be very gratefully appreciated.
Do you worst....I need it!

Also, just to add I average about 15k steps a day in working week, but I appreciate that I need to do proper strenuous exercise to actually burn the calories I need for weight loss. I've put on about 1 stone of the excess weight in lockdown though, WFH style...

Breakfast: 6.30am. porridge with honey or fruit and fibre with milk). Cup of tea.

Weigh out the porridge or cereal to make sure you're not having a huge portion.

-Snack: 10ish. Usually a mini kit kat or apple, or both if I'm hungry!

Neither of these things help hunger, and actually make it worse. Try something with more protein. Like nuts.

- Lunch: 12.30. Soup and bag of low cal crisps such as pop chips for lunch, and maybe a yoghurt if I'm home or an apple. On a particularly bad day, a couple of biscuits.
Low cal crisps are useless and just empty carbs. Make sure the yoghurt is full fat because it's more filling and actually nutritious. The biscuits need to go.

• 3.30pm: Afternoon snack. If I'm out it's a skinny cappuccino. If I'm in, whatever is in house. I am tired and energy levels low and so reach for 2 biscuits (not if I've had biscuits at lunch though). 🙄

Try more nuts or houmous etc. Bin all biscuits

- 8pmish: Dinner. Usual types of thing such as jacket potato, mushroom risotto, salmon stir fry or pasta, but probably a bigger portion than I realise. Veggies in there though. Some sort of sweet thing afterwards... Usually chocolate.

Make sure to weigh everything and get rid of chocolate.

Add everything to MyFitnessPal and make yourself accountable.

Will power required!

It doesn't sound awful, but it's hard to judge without knowing portion sizes. Download my fitness pal and track a days food and see. Everything, milk, drinks, sugar etc.

Sounds totally normal really, although your lunch is quite small imo.

@ItMustBeBedtimeSurely

Sounds totally normal really, although your lunch is quite small imo.

It's not normal for weight loss at all. And portion sizes need to be controlled.

We always underestimate calories. It's eye opening when logging food how calorific some things are.

I weigh butter, and cheese, and always count the oil that I cook with. Makes the difference.

Well it's not good. Youre eating a KitKat, a bag of crisps, biscuits and then more chocolate in the evening ever day? These are all treats and completely unnecessary. Have higher protein, higher fat larger meals and you won't need snacks. The snacks you're having aren't in any way filling or nutritious so really are empty calories.

Today I'm eating low fat high protein yogurt with berries for breakfast.

Lunch - omelette probably with a bit of cheese and salad/veg. Often I'll have leftovers.

Dinner - DP is making a gnocchi/veg bake with ricotta. I'll have a smaller portion than him with prawns (he's vegetarian).

A cup of tea and a skinny mocha.

If I get desperate I'll have a cracker or two with peanut butter. Always tempted to grab snack a jack's but they literally do fuck all to satisfy me so why bother.

Thanks so far everyone!

I would say my portion size is usually a standard dinner plate full. Not spilling over, but probably more than it needs to be. Will try and find pic of recent dinner!

Probably portion sizes and snacks and the takeaways. High protein yoghurt like liberte are good. You could try intermittent fasting to see if that works. I order a children's portion for a takeaway now.

Get rid of all snacks, all biscuits and chocolate. One piece of chocolate a week.

Up the activity too, do a fitness workout on an app each day, morning lunch and night if you can. And try to do steps/jogging each hour. Just jog on the spot in your house when working from home. Been doing this for just over a month and I've lost half a stone.

Are you losing weight on that?
If not, I think you need to look at your potion sizes.

I'd be hungry and fat on that. I'd try to add more lean protein like chicken breast, eggs, ham etc, cut out the chocolate entirely, and snack on vegetables like carrots in hummus or sweet pepper straps.

*strips

There's a lot of sugar and 'processed food' in there with low cal crisps, chocolate and biscuits which aren't helping you. Dh struggles with weight and found noom helped him understand food better and get better behaviours. Find an exercise that you like to and try to do it a few times a week as that will help to. Foodwise, its not horrific but not great either. Swap the crap for healthier snacks and i bet you'll start to see changes.

Everyone overestimates what a portion size is. If you want to lose weight then you need to cut out all biscuits and really think about portion size. Basically imagine feeding a child

Are you very short? Size 16 doesn't sound in line with BMI 37.

Your diet doesn't look like one that would make someone extremely overweight, especially with your activity levels unless your portion sizes are very large.

I would suggest honestly tracking your calories and calculating your total daily energy expenditure and then cutting your portion sizes or unhealthy snacks so that you have a 500-1000 daily deficit so you should lose 1-2 pounds a week consistently.

Fundamentally, it's going to be portion size. Well, that and the 'extra' calories you're getting from snacks. There's no magic to it (although no doubt by the time I post this, someone will tell you to cut out carbs) but I imagine if you weighed out your food and added up the calories, it would be more than you expect.

Also using smaller plates is a good trick. Makes you think your portion sizes are bigger than they actually are

Personally I’d say you need more protein, less carbs and not to be eating so late at night (appreciate this might not be possible depending on your job though).

Use a much smaller plate. This what my daughter and I do and we are not overweight. Having a standard plate can be the cause as we tend to fill whatever we are eating out of.

This is as good as I can find. Probably an average representation of my portion size. It's a pasta bowl, by the way...

That is a similar amount of food that I eat in a day (apart from I rarely drink wine, and I would probably not have the crisps with lunch).

I'm a size 8/10 and stay a steady weight on that...but I'm breastfeeding which gives me around an 'extra' 500 calories a day to eat.

"3.30pm: Afternoon snack. If I'm out it's a skinny cappuccino. If I'm in, whatever is in house. I am tired and energy levels low and so reach for 2 biscuits (not if I've had biscuits at lunch though)"

I'm not surprised your energy is low because your diet is very carb heavy. I think you need a lot more protein and to ditch all the rubbish snacks. Given your PCOS and that sugars impact our hormones, I would be adapting a low carb lifestyle.

Your dinners are high on carbs. I lost weight reducing my carbs, so have lots of veg like broccoli, kale instead of potato, pasta etc.

Obviously cutting out sugary treats like biscuits will also help.

Measure your calories. Two eggs and two rashers of bacon would be the same calories as a porridge. One has 18g of protein, almost no carbs and the other 11g with 46g of carbs. I know which one would satisfy me for longer and make sure I didn't snack until lunchtime.

Sorry, just to clarify, I haven't started losing weight yet. Plan to this week. That is my average day before changing my ways!!!