To think I can eat this and lose weight?

[bendywendygivemeablast]

Struggling to lose half a stone🙄

I do a spin class every day for 30 mins, this is what I ate today and kind of typical for me:

Breakfast
1 slice low carb bread with peanut butter
2 black coffees

Snacks:
1 Maryland cookie
2segments of chocolate Orange

Dinner:
Salmon fillet
Jacket potato with cheese
Roasted broccoli and cauliflower with grated parmesan

AIBU to think even with the two naughty slip ups I should still be able to lose weight given that I exercise every single day?!

How are they naughty slip ups? You haven't had anything to eat all day!

One slice of toast and a nibble of chocolate is nowhere near enough to get you through an entire day and a spin class! Is this really typical for you?

Depends on how portion controlled your dinner is and what your starting weight is.

Assuming you're not already at an ideal weight or below, as written and assuming absolutely normal portions (230g salmon, 150g potato with 30g cheese, etc.) yes, that diet would create a calorie deficit. If you're not measuring portions or eating outsized amounts of it all, then you might struggle since there's plenty of cheese in that meal.

That's even before you consider the impact of a 30m spin class (cardio is easy for your body to adapt to and becomes ineffective more quickly than combined or weight training.)

You need to eat a balanced lunch , you’ll be starving if you only eat those snacks all day

@gwenneh

Depends on how portion controlled your dinner is and what your starting weight is.

Assuming you're not already at an ideal weight or below, as written and assuming absolutely normal portions (230g salmon, 150g potato with 30g cheese, etc.) yes, that diet would create a calorie deficit. If you're not measuring portions or eating outsized amounts of it all, then you might struggle since there's plenty of cheese in that meal.

That's even before you consider the impact of a 30m spin class (cardio is easy for your body to adapt to and becomes ineffective more quickly than combined or weight training.)

Thank you, this is really helpful.

Seriously, one cookie is 50 calories. Two segments of chocolate orange is another 100.

150calories in snacks isn’t what’s keeping you from losing weight.

I'd be more tempted to up the exercise slightly rather than cut the already sparse food.

Make the spin an hour in duration twice a week? Even better may be to have a couple of rest days and make the remaining classes an hour long, you should achieve much better output and calorie burn.

This isn't much, and it's not very nutritious. Your body needs fuel!

Unless you're having several heaped tablespoons of PB with your toast and half a block of cheese with your jacket potato, there's so few calories in that list. You should absolutely be losing weight, but I'm surprised you have any energy at all. Especially if you're exercising every day, I think you need to be eating more regardless of what the scale is telling you. Have you ever struggled with disordered eating?

@PurpleDaisies

They taste like sweets but I'm much better for you and your gut.

Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.

Prunes do not taste like sweets.

god love mumsnet

@PurpleDaisies

Seriously, one cookie is 50 calories. Two segments of chocolate orange is another 100.

150calories in snacks isn’t what’s keeping you from losing weight.

My thoughts exactly, so what's the problem?! Perhaps it is just not enough variety in exercise.

I would be chewing off my arm on this amount of food😂

Have you tried weighing everything and working out how many calories you’re actually eating a day? Sometimes portions get out of hand over time.

You would only need to do this for a short time until you’ve got a clear idea of whether you’re eating what you think you are.

My thoughts exactly, so what's the problem?! Perhaps it is just not enough variety in exercise.

It's likely where your weight is starting, what your total daily energy expenditure is, and actually challenging your body with your exercise rather than what you're eating. How long you've been underconsuming food will also play a large role.

I think you also need to build in some rest days. A spin class everyday gives your body no recovery time

I'd shake it up to maybe 2 1hr long spin classes and 2 weight training days, maybe 1 gentle exercise and 2 rest days. You need rest days to allow your body recovery time. You need food to give you energy to get through the day. You don't have any space to cut more calories

Thank you everyone. I think I'll have to start actually logging the calories and mixing up the exercise. I have been eating like this for a long time, now I'm wondering whether I've destroyed my metabolism?

It is impossible to know

You can't really bargain like that with life/nature

Only you know how tall, big, active you are and only you know how much butter and cheese you add to that baked potato

To me it looks like not much food

FWIW I eat a lot more than you, especially a lot more carbs through bread/oats etc and am a good bmi, but I am 6ft and do 1-2 hrs exercise a day... which makes comparing hard!

You’re not in a calorie deficit.

However - this is important.
I’ve estimated your calories about 1300 for the day. This is really low. Unless you’re 3ft tall or absolutely tiny.

When you find you can’t lose weight when your calories are really low it is because your body has adjusted to a continual calorie deficit. Meaning that you have to continually go lower and lower to keep losing weight.

Which obviously is not good, because we need food as fuel. To live, for our body to work.

So what you need to do is not continually keep restricting, you need to reverse diet.
This means to add in more calories slowly over a period of time, like a few hundred a day for one week, a little bit more the next week etc etc.
until you are at a reasonable maintenance level - which I don’t know your body composition or height etc but is likely to be around 2000/2200 if you are active and have good muscle mass.

Then you will need to sit at a maintenance position for a little while before you drop your calories again to achieve weight loss.

This sounds counter intuitive I know but this is the reality of continual restrictive eating.

Look up reverse dieting and have a read, it’s a massive issue especially for women as we tend to spend so many years restricting calories

@LordEmsworth

Oh great, we all love a competitive under-eating thread! Yay!

Lawd yes! Someone else gets it..

@Ohpulltheotherone

You’re not in a calorie deficit.

However - this is important.
I’ve estimated your calories about 1300 for the day. This is really low. Unless you’re 3ft tall or absolutely tiny.

When you find you can’t lose weight when your calories are really low it is because your body has adjusted to a continual calorie deficit. Meaning that you have to continually go lower and lower to keep losing weight.

Which obviously is not good, because we need food as fuel. To live, for our body to work.

So what you need to do is not continually keep restricting, you need to reverse diet.
This means to add in more calories slowly over a period of time, like a few hundred a day for one week, a little bit more the next week etc etc.
until you are at a reasonable maintenance level - which I don’t know your body composition or height etc but is likely to be around 2000/2200 if you are active and have good muscle mass.

Then you will need to sit at a maintenance position for a little while before you drop your calories again to achieve weight loss.

This sounds counter intuitive I know but this is the reality of continual restrictive eating.

Look up reverse dieting and have a read, it’s a massive issue especially for women as we tend to spend so many years restricting calories

Thank you so much, this is really helpful. X

@bendywendygivemeablast

Thank you everyone. I think I'll have to start actually logging the calories and mixing up the exercise. I have been eating like this for a long time, now I'm wondering whether I've destroyed my metabolism?

Destroyed, no.

Buggered up temporarily- likely yes.

See my post above on reverse dieting.

I would ditch this super restricted way of eating and focus on eating a healthy, varied diet centred around vegetables and lean protein with measured carbs. It can’t be much fun eating like this.

I don’t know what your dinner portion is like but it looks like you are under eating especially given the amount of exercise.

I used to eat and exercise like that and it is great for staying very slim but i ended up feeling very weak and suffering from migraines a lot. I wasn’t eating enough.

@bendywendygivemeablast

Thank you everyone. I think I'll have to start actually logging the calories and mixing up the exercise. I have been eating like this for a long time, now I'm wondering whether I've destroyed my metabolism?

The problem with undereating is once you do it for a long time, you have to do something radically different to continue the trend of weight loss - your body needs a larger deficit to keep losing weight.

Obviously on such minimal food that will be a problem to sustain, so you’d have to look into adding more/different movement to create that deficit. That will probably make you more hungry, though, so you may need to eat more to counter that.

It’s easier to create a deficit by cutting calories than by adding exercise - most of us overestimate the amount of energy we really expend when we move and base the calorie counts on things like MyFitnessPal or a movement tracker when those things are very generic. A person who has been exercising regularly for a long time will become very efficient at it and burn fewer calories than someone just starting out.

So yes there are a few things you can do, but ultimately it’s whatever you feel you can sustain.

It’s going to get me lots of criticism but if you want to lose just half a stone you can do that easily by eating literally nothing but vegetables for two weeks. You’ll shed the weight and then once you’re at your target you can work out your maintenance calorie intake and then just eat healthily and normally.

The human body is incredibly resilient. It’s really difficult to “bugger up” your metabolism, it’s old science which has now been debunked, and you certainly don’t do it through a couple of weeks of crash dieting.

Not reading everything but I disagree about some comments. One cookie and two slices of choc everyday plus the cheese is loads of bad calories. Eat small and regularly. You have to drop a few hundred calories per day to lose a pound.