Eating in a calorie deficit

[PinkMoscatoLover]

Right guys, help me out.

I weigh nearly 22 stone (I wear a size 18-20). I’m only 24 years old so I’m massively overweight. I have binge eating disorder and two little ones with health conditions/disabilities so stressful periods make me binge more. I’m finally on the waiting list to get help for my eating disorder and should be starting this before the end of the year.

This is the first time I’ve felt in control with my life and with eating. I’ve recently joined Fitness First and the classes I go too are really good. I’ve been trying my best to eat three meals a day which seems to be working out quite well for me. Now I know to lose a substantial amount of weight, you’ll need to eat in a calorie deficit.

My question is, how do I go about doing this? How do I know how many calories my home cooked meals add up too? How/where do I track my calories and how much calories should I aim to eat in a day? If anyone has any articles that explain all of this clearly or if people would like to share their own experiences, that’d be really helpful.

I’ve posted on AIBU for traffic so I’ve got my hard hat on as no doubt a few posters may fat shame me🫣

My Fitness Pal has a tracker and a barcode scanner, it tells you exactly the calorie content of foods. Weigh everything!

Plug your stats into MFP and see what it gives you. Maybe just set it to a small amount to lose each week and see how you get on for a few weeks. Eat that much and don't starve yourself.

My Fitness Pal all the way. It'll help you work out what you need to be in deficit, and you can get the calorie content of basically everything.

For home cooked meals you only need to weigh and log the ingredients once and then you can save it as a meal, so as long as you use roughly the same measurements for everything whenever you make it, you won't have to work out the calories every time.

Another for My Fitness Pal. You need a decent pair of scales too. Weigh everything. Portion it all out. Use the barcode scanner within the app. You can log meals so that you can just add them again another time. You can also log recipes. It's a faff to start with but once you get into the swing it's fine!

One way is to weigh everything and record it all into a good phone app. I like Nutracheck but My Fitness Pal is popular too; I never took to it and found it very hard to use.

It's easiest if you keep it simple (as in a salmon fillet with new potatoes and broccoli is easier to track than a complicated recipe), but it's all doable with patience. I wouldn't track exercise calories at all as it just encourages going over but it's up to you

Agree with not tracking exercise calories.

I use up a lot of calories doing exercise and I always eat a fourth of the calories back, it makes exercise even more worth it.

I use the app MyNetDiary, it works well, but I’m religious about logging in all the calories.

well done you for starting, as some say, the goal is not perfection but dedication.

Have a read of this. There’s a couple of methods - some easier than others! Or you could create a menu of fairly low cal breakfasts and lunches then relax a bit over dinner. Aim for as many cals as you can whilst still losing. That way you’re more likely to keep at it and you’ve got room to go lower when you start losing.

Well done you. Keep it up! My fitness pal app, all the way.

Do you think that tracking, weighing and measuring is sensible if you have binge eating disorder? I would be concerned that this would trigger you to binge more. And there is lots of research out there which suggests the same.

In your position, I would focus on eating three meals and no snacking.

For cooking and portioning, it's worth yo pay my fitness pal premium . I did. It allows you to count everything what goes in and then you set how many portions is it.
If kelids eat let's say half portion compared to you and you make just for you 3, count it as 2 portions.

Calorie calculator TDEE
https://tdeecalculator.net/

Just always double check if the scan codes logs as what you scanned. Some codes were obviously used previously or something so my veg logged as meat😂

I recommend following Richie Howey and TeamRH on Facebook. They will work out calories for you and you won’t feel restricted either

Didn't think of that

I use Noom (the free version) it works well for me.

With regards to calorie counting home cooked meals, last night I made pumpkin soup, the ingredients were:

15g of butter
15g plain flour
1/3 of an onion (I didn’t weigh it but you could)
2 carrots (again not weighed)
1 1/2 medium size potatoes
1 small pumpkin approx. 200g
4 portions worth of veg stock

This made 3 portions so dividing each ingredient by 3 (if its a weird figure I round up as its better to slightly over calculate) this mean’t each portion was:

5g butter
5g plain flour
1/4 of an onion

3/4 of a carrot
1/2 a medium potato
67g of pumpkin
1 1/2 portions of veg stock

I then put this in my app and it calculates how many calories for each ingredient and then gives you a total amount of calories (289) you can then save that as a specific dish so next time you can just go into your dishes and add it as a meal. Obviously if you weigh each ingredient exactly it’ll be more accurate.

If you’re not sure on things read the bags, for example if the flour says its 125 calories per 100g and you want to use 60g, divided 125 by 10 to give you the number of calories in 10g then x by 6 to get the total calories in 60g then divide that by the number of portions made.

I also had crusty bread, the app said 3 slices of generic crusty bread was just under 500cal but I read the bread packet and it was 273cal per half a stick so I ate half and manually inputted the calories so its sometimes worth checking if unsure. Its not hard to do once you get the hang of it.

Another one who has used my fitness pal and like it.

If anyone fatshames you ignore them. Those people don't deserve your attention. You sound like you are ready to tackle your weight so that will be great for your health. Sorry to hear you have a binge eating disorder. I'm sure that is hard to live with and I hope you overcome it.

I also follow Sean Casey on Facebook. He has a healthy attitude to weightloss and is really good at pitching his advice so you don't go mental dieting! He lives in the real world and is quite funny as well.

I agree with other posters, My Fitness Pal is what I use to track my calories HOWEVER I would not recommend asking My Fitness Pal to calculate your recommended daily calories. It is notorious for low balling it, as an example I’m a size 8-10 and if I put my info in with a goal as weight loss it recommends 1200 cals a day- literally a toddlers calories!

Use My Fitness Pal to track your calories and weigh/scan everything you put in your mouth. To get your daily calories, search on google TDEE Calculator, it’s free to use, pop your info in. This will calculate your basal metabolic rate (basically how many calories you burn just to exist), and you can work out a deficit from there, then just pop that amount into your My Fitness Pal as your goal calories. You will probably find that even on a small deficit, at first you will lose a lot of weight quickly. As well as diet, try and just get 10k steps a day- if you can’t get outside to do this there’s loads of Youtube videos now to get your 10k steps in! X

I recommend this free programme. https://www.nobsweightloss.com/

I have found it relatively straightforward to lose weight without counting anything.

One other thing I do is when I'm hungry choose a healthy but high protein snack - Greek yoghurt with fruit or peanut butter on toast, for example. That fills me up and then the temptation to eat loads of junk is way less. I still do eat cake type things, but I plan it as a treat.

Honestly, I would wait until you're much further into your treatment for BED before you start counting calories. The link between restriction and binging is very strong and you risk setting back any progress you've made. In time, your treatment team can support you with healthy weight loss strategies.

Thank you guys! So many helpful comments. I’ll certainly look into MyFitnessPal, it’s good to hear that these apps can remember the calories of a meal so you don’t have to enter it over and over again.

So with measuring food, how does it work out how many calories is within the grams that you use? I don’t quite get that bit! Also, what scales do people use?

@Hellinthekitchen @mynameiscalypso I find keeping a track of what I’m eating encourages me to actually eat proper meals instead of binging. Thank you though!

Another vote here for MyFitnessPal. I've used it a few times now (failed previously but my own doing, just lost focus and went back to eating badly).

I've been using it again now for 3 months, starting weight just a few pound less than you, and have lost 2.5 stone so far with minimal effort.

Just make sure to change your weight through the goals/settings on the app rather than just adding it to the diary as this will adjust the calorie goal as you lose.

Have a look through the weight loss support section on here too, I've found even just reading peoples journeys helps me along. Particularly one thread of '10st plus to lose', there's posts on there daily.

Good luck! 🩷

So with measuring food, how does it work out how many calories is within the grams that you use? I don’t quite get that bit!

Download it and see. It's probably better than if someone tries to explain on here because it can end up confusing 😁

I use Cronometer and a kitchen scale to get a good sense of what a portion size actually is, and (most importantly for me) to see what nutritional gaps I have.

If it helps at all, for the first couple of months I didn't change my eating habits. I just tracked my normal diet purely for the sake of information/data.

Then I made one small change (I think it was adding leafy greens to 2 meals a day). No other changes at all for 2 weeks.

Bit by bit I created new habits... but I was adamant that I didn't want to feel hungrier than a normal pre-meal hunger. My goal was to change my life-long habits and VERY slowly use up my excess fat, not just lose muscle mass and feel virtuous for it.

Now I still track my daily intake, and probably will for another year or so, but I'm good at eyeballing portion sizes now and don't need to weigh my food.

Tracking your calories is all very well, but I feel you should be equally if not more focused on eating healthily. This will benefit your children as well! And you will be more likely to keep the weight off rather than getting into a spiral of yo-yo dieting.

There are many books and online resources, but basically it boils down to:

• drastically reducing UPF, sugar and refined carbs.
• instead eat LOTS of vegetables, a moderate amount of lean carbs, plus small amounts of complex carbs, healthy fats and dairy.
• for weight loss, try intermittent fasting.

Sugar is the worst and it is in so many foods - so read the labels (or even better, don't buy packaged foods at all). If you can wean yourself off sugar, everything else will be easier.

Have a look at Dr Becky Gillaspy and the Glucose Goddess on YouTube.