Is this too much lunch for a diet?

[Hatehooveringsomuch]

Trying to shift a couple of stone.
I eat v healthily, but probably too much, I don’t work out normally, but have started again.
I’m a person who has to cut back a lot and not eat much/work out daily to stay slim.
In the past when I was v slim, I went to the gym and had less carbs & smaller portions. I’m trying fasting also.
I’ve had no breakfast, just got in from school run, morning work and walking the dog.
Is this too much?
There’s two tins of tuna and two crackers, the rest is just salad? Assuming that’s okay?
Dinner is broccoli, cauliflower, carrots & chicken, piece of fruit afterwards.
I’m attempting to cut right back on carbs, my portions seem big though 😂but I’m hungry
Desperate to lose weight

You disagreed with me that cooking from scratch means its harder to calculate calories, and I agreed, it isn't if you know what the basic ingredients contain but the OP doesn't as she's not calorie counting.

I find it hard as I don't actually do the cooking, so I have to trust my DP is not wanging extra butter and oil into things or copious amounts of cheese! Bloody hard to calculate then...

Ah OK sorry, I didn't get that :) I agree if you're not cooking your own food it's hard to estimate.

Do carbohydrates not do what we always learned they did-being converted to give us energy? Does dairy not support healthy bones and teeth? Honestly just wonder about people cutting out entire food groups because I do know that science and nutrition change rapidly and maybe we did learn incorrectly about them. Genuinely intrigued that if you compare two people in older age in the future which will end up being the healthier method of living. The one thing I will say is that the body we all strive for-my dad, healthy weight, salad for lunch walked daily but balanced with wine, crackers and cheese most nights and a healthy dinner plate, was told he was lucky he had a slight amount of weight on him when he had cancer, whereas another man, top top shape wasted so quickly because he had nothing to lose and that stays with me if I ever get carried away thinking about weight x (Once cut carbs and was feeling lighthearted after my lovely salad and my manager gave out to me saying when you're on your feet all day you need that energy)

Woe betide anyone who posts pictures of their meals on MN!

TBH my main issue with Spector is that he completely ignores those of us who got fat on non processed, home cooked meals. I was one of them. The actual food I ate was extremely "healthy" - vegetables, whole grains, healthy fats like avocados, olive oil, Greek yoghurt. Cooking from scratch. But I was still fat. You know why? Because I had a terrible psychological relationship with food and I ate too much.

If you eat too much of most foods (apart from fruit and non-starchy veg) then you will possibly put weight on @Pollis

As you have said.

That's not Spector's issue- it was yours.

It was an emotional and psychological issue not one about nutrition.

You're talking about two very different things.

Emotional eating is not in the same camp as processed foods and gut health/ microbiome/metabolism.

And for many (I would argue - most) overweight people the overriding issue is going to be emotional/psychological, which is why all approaches to tackle the obesity crisis have failed miserably, because they don't address this.

But I don't think you can divorce emotional eating/the psychological side of eating from the food itself. Many (most?) of us have an emotional connection to food, some good, some not, and we don't eat in a vacuum. Surely the research on the mind/gut connection demonstrates that if nothing else? Most nutritionists I know spend far more time dealing with the psychological aspects of our diets than the food itself.

All good nutritionists should!! If you have one who just tells you to cut out sugar or white carbs or what have you they are doing a shit, half arsed job.

Oh totally @Pollis! (I also know some terrible nutritionists who do not consider that side of it at all)

The hysterical responses are getting irritating now. Oh it’s all batshit, crazy MN advice!!!!

Hardly anyone is suggesting they are full after a lettuce leaf. Most suggestions here will not cause an eating disorder.

Yes a couple of posters have been rude/strange but there have been loads of good advice and helpful suggestions.

And I think two normal tins can be ok for sandwiches for four people. So it’s not that hilarious. Tuna is expensive too.

Good luck OP. Some good tips here. I enjoy omelettes so maybe those are worth a try.

@pollis I don't disagree with you about emotional eating, at all.
But I think there are several issues here, all of which are slightly different.

I don't know what work you did in the NHS but at 35 and qualified for 2 years, you can't have stayed in the NHS for long. (That's an observation.)

IME as as onlooker, the people I know of who see an NHS nutritionist (they are usually called dieticians) are there because of health issues like diabetes or other chronic disease and they need help. I'm not sure how much the NHS supports the obese or those with ED.

What do you do now? Private practice?

Where I disagree(d) with you was your statement earlier about T Spector and the research about how everyone is different. (It wasn't me you disagreed with but another poster) and you said it had been debunked, when in fact it's very recent research.

It's also been supported by the work of Dr Chris van Tulleken- same amount of calories, different foods- weight difference over a few weeks.

His research is into the microbiome and how it affects health. He isn't saying he is an ED expert. However, I am sure he would agree that if someone eats a gallon of full fat Greek yoghurt a day, a kilo of brown rice, 3 avocados, etc etc, they will put on weight.

It would be foolish to say 'eat only 'healthy food' and you will stay slim' but not take quantity into account.

Emotional eating is yes, behind a lot of obesity but it's more complex than just that.

Some of it lack of education, promotion of foods that are addictive (you will know they are lab-engineered to become more-ish), the cheapness of foods that have little nutritional value, society's acceptance of fatness (compared to Japan where it's socially unacceptable and there are punitive measures taken by employers) and modern lifestyles.

Here is a very sensible summary (not written by me) on what I think about Tim Spector:

Like most very vocal, visible gurus, there are grains of truth to what Tim Spector says about weight loss. But calories do matter. Dismissing calories and calorie balance completely is like telling people they can save money and get out of debt without ever once looking at what they spend or how much they earn.

However, some of his advice is common sense in terms of health. It’s a good idea to eat more plant foods, for fibre (and – guess what – low calorie ways to fill up). It’s also a good idea to eat some fermented foods for the natural probiotics. None of us should be snacking all day long – it’s not good for the digestion. And why not discover the meal timings that work best for you. It all makes sense.
But telling people calories are a lie seems provocative at best… and completely wrong at worst.

People screech on here about competitive undereaters. But they are always far far outnumbered by people who think eating whatever you want is fine because of new clever science and BMI being rubbish, and if it wasn’t for processed food they would all be tiny and slim.

But they are always far far outnumbered by people who think eating whatever you want is fine because of new clever science and BMI being rubbish, and if it wasn’t for processed food they would all be tiny and slim.

Yes this is exactly my point.

You've got two people who both live largely off ultraprocessed food. Terrible diets. One has a BMI of 40. One has a BMI of 21.

Why is that? Why is it that the person with the BMI of 21 consumes nothing but ultraprocessed foods and remains slim and the person with the BMI of 40 does the same and is morbidly obese?

It is nowhere near as simple as ultraprocessed food being to blame, because there are plenty of people, like person B in my example, who eat this way and yet remain consistently slim - they don't overeat. This is almost always because person B does not have unhealthy psychological attachments to food that person A in my example almost certainly does barring a medical issue.

The psychological elements have got to be tackled first. Otherwise it all comes crashing down again in a few years.

What people do on here is attack other people's arguments with words "screeching". Do better!

I really hope you’re exaggerating unless you’re saying people on here are eating 10,000 calories plus a day!!!

Cut it back to half a tin of tuna, not in oil, in springwater, lose the mayo, lose the cracker, no dressing on the salad. Add salt and pepper or lemon juice if you need some seasoning, and you would be good to go. As it is it is nowhere near adequate for weight loss. I would also suggest that if you think this quantity/ type of food is good for weightloss, be open to the fact that your approach most likely needs a huge overhaul , and you should sense check all your other meals too

If you don’t understand my point and want to focus on that word, then be my guest.

@Hatehooveringsomuch what tins of tuna are you eating?
The smallest I could find are these and the come in a bit over the 80odd calories you state.
https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/sainsburys-tuna-steaks-in-olive-oil-3x80g
Would probably solve most the arguments on here if people actually knew what size the tins were.

Frosties taste super sweet, rice Krispies taste sweet, objectively (to me)

Ok I am an absolutely stable 55kg at 5’5” and have been for years.
I would eat that salad for lunch no problem. Definitely with a blob of mayo. I’d probably add an half an avocado or a boiled egg and some nuts and seeds.
It is a relatively small and perfectly healthy plate of food. Anyone who sees something different has an issue with food.

Kallo puffed rice "breakfast puffs" (just rice, nothing else) are less than 1 per cent sugar, while Rice Krispies are about 8 per cent sugar (which I guess is part of why Rice Krispies taste like breakfast cereal rather than clean rodent bedding substrate). For comparison, Tesco sugared ring doughnuts are about 8½ per cent sugar. You might notice the sugar more with the doughnuts than with the Rice Krispies because it's on the outside, and you don't drench them in milk (which has its own sweetness). I bloody love Rice Krispies though. There's nothing quite like a big bowl of Rice Krispies from a new box, with milk straight from the fridge.

Exactly this! Obviously there is such a thing as too many calories, even eating healthy food, but this lunch isn't one of them. I am reminded of a family member who constantly tells me that avocados are fattening and similar nonsense, eats tiny amounts at meals but then downs half a chocolate cake as a snack - but somehow that bit gets missed out in the mental accounting of what's been eaten that day. I suspect some of the people on this thread who say they'd be monstrously overweight if they ate this for lunch have similarly 'creative' stories they tell themselves about how much and what they eat.

The salad is almost certainly less than 600kcal. You cannot possibly say it's "nowhere near adequate for weight loss" because that depends upon what else she eats. If this is all she eats in the day, she'd absolutely lose weight. And actually, she said what she had planned for dinner and that was only around another 300-400kcal, so around 1000kcal total for the day.

"Nowhere near adequate for weight loss". Absolute rubbish.

I'm really interested in what work you do now @Pollis

Nutritionist or psychotherapist?

Because there are people who become overweight not because of emotional eating but because they eat too much of the wrong food (using that term loosely) often through ignorance about food values.

If therapy worked for everyone no one would need gastric bands.