To ask how diet can be improved?

[ChicRaven]

My friend is 40 and complaining she can't lose weight. Yet her diet is as follows (She told me as was looking for advice )

Breakfast- A few squares of chocolate or a low fat breakfast bar with a cup of tea.

Lunch- A few pieces of toast with spread, crisps and a chocolate bar.

Snacks- Usually a bit more chocolate

Dinner- Fish, chips and peas

Evening- more chocolate, another packet of crisps and a snack size cheese

She has irritable bowel syndrome so this explains the lack of fibre.
Just trying to help add in suggestions for her. She is 5'3 and 9 stone but used to be a stone lighter.

Track calories and she will soon see that her diet is terrible. No wonder she can’t lose weight if she’s having chocolate for breakfast.

I mean like... There is pretty obvious solution...
Swap chocolate and crisps for something actually healthy?

She has IBS so has to limit fruit and vegetables.
Can anyone who has IBS advise on healthier options ?

It may explain lack of fiber but doesn't explain lack of protein.
Healthier options for breakfast may include eggs and/or yoghurt, tuna sandwich for lunch, nuts and seeds instead of crisps, if she can tolerate chips with her fish then she can probably tolerate boiled potatoes, sweet potatoes or rice.

This can’t be serious?

If it is and she has IBS, her medical practice will advise.

Without quantities it’s hard to speak for actual calories, but surely you can look at this and see it’s not a good diet and there’s essentially zero protein in her diet other than her fish for dinner.

Chocolate for breakfast? No. Swap that for toast if she enjoys toast, or some cereal, some fruit, porridge, bacon/chicken sausage bagel.

Lunch needs to be an actual meal, not a few slices of bread. Chicken & rice, tuna pasta, a sandwich with some meat in, a salad, a pasta bake, a wrap. Drop the crisps, have an actual meal.

Evening meal is not necessarily awful, but depends what fish. Fried, battered, fresh? Chips could be 200 calories or 600 calories depending on the portion.

Snacks she needs to vary. Rather than always chocolate or crisps, try some fruit, some nuts, cheese & crackers, protein bar etc

Thank you @Mrsttcno1 .To be fair to her, the quantities she eats are never large portions but I will show her your post and see if any of this helps

To add, there are certain fruit & veg that are better for IBS.

So fruit wise she could eat banana, orange, grapes, kiwi, strawberrys, they are lower in fructose so better if you have IBS. Veg wise options like carrot, sweet potato, green beans and spinach are much better if you have IBS, they don’t cause the gas and bloating that brocolli/cauliflower do.

She has zero protein in her diet. So protein with every meal especially breakfast. And less chocolate, obviously....

Ditch stuff like the likely UPF breakfast bar and all the chocolate. Several slices of toast for lunch with just spread is not good either.

If she doesn't know what that kinds of food are nutritious and filling, she needs to do some research on it herself first. The NHS website is a good place to start.

She's not losing weight cos she's eating predominantly shite and too many calories.

How can anyone be surprised that they are not losing weight when the bulk of their food intake is chocolate? 🙄

I mean, there are hundreds of healthy options that don't involve loads of fruit and vegetables.

She's going to give herself diabetes if she carries on the way she is.

Nutritionally her diet is terrible but she also doesn’t need to be losing weight and certainly not a stone. She bang in normal weight territory for her height at 9 stone

just lol up a low fodmap diet and you’ll be told what she can eat. Chocolate isn’t on the list.

She's making excuses in regard to her diet. She could follow a low FODMAP diet which is recommended for some with severe IBS which includes quite a lot of veg still! It avoids trigger foods such as onions, some can't tolerate nightshade vegetables so aubergines or peppers etc but there is still a good long list! I say this as someone with multiple years of tummy problems and having followed exclusion diets and low FODMAP in the past. I now have to be gluten free (and many with IBS do so the bread and fish and chips won't be helping her!)

She's using sugar and carbs (so sugar) as a crutch and will be in a cycle of glucose crashes rather then having good protein sources which will keep her full for longer and help regulate her blood sugar better. She's better going to a dietician and actually talking through her stomach issues and trying undertaking proper exclusion diets to get that under control before she tries to lose weight. On the flip side I lost 2 stone pretty rapidly on a low FODMAP diet!

I hope she takes vitamin supplements. Can she try and eat more protein? Does she eat meat/dairy? Omelette or scrambled egg with smoked salmon for brunch? It seems like she prefers to eat her largest meal in the evening, which in theory is fine. The chocolate and snacks could do with being reduced. Like one small chocolate bar a day maybe?

There is no helping some who complains they can’t lose weight then goes on to list that as their daily diet.

This sounds to me like some strange kind of attention-seeking behaviour.

I didn't want to be rude about your friend but to be honest, she sounds rather dim if she can't see what needs to change.

I don’t understand this. Can your friend not access the internet, just to find out for herself? Or even just go into a library and get books out that would give her the information that she needs? Everything single that she is eating now is junk food and is not only fuelling her IBS, it’s providing almost zero nutrients.

Agreed, plus she knows how to get medical advice about her diet.

If she was serious, she'd speak to her doctor's surgery.

I have ibs and don’t eat like this.
breakfast I have a swede and carrot omelette and a banana
lunch I have chicken potato, some popcorn and a banana and orange.
dinner I have vegetables and potato and meat.

she needs to re check her fodmaps. There are loads of vegetables and fruit she can she just needs to find out which ones. And get her to look into stacking them

Ag the weekend I have oats and fruit and a bowl of fruit with yogurt. Having chocolate for breakfast is baffling and has nothing to do with having ibs.

I’d be wondering if her diet was causing the IBS rather than a result of it - low residue diet provides plenty of healthy options for IBS

Sounds more like ARFID than IBS, or yes, I’m sure she would have thought of having eggs, yoghurt, meat, potatoes etc.

I have IBS (occasional flare up not constant tbf) and if I ate all that sugar I would be very ill. Do you think eating disorder?

Terrible diet aside, her BMI bang on surely? Even low side of healthy so why desire to lose weight?

Surely the responses here should only be to improve diet quality.

Um. Less chocolate? No fish and chips?