Not losing weight despite massively cutting back

[Morgun]

Can anyone analyse what I’m eating and tell me where I’m going wrong? I’ve cut back so much yet the scales are not shifting. I’m 5ft 8 and 16st

breakfast - porridge oats, 2 slices of wholemeal toast with low fat spread, a fat free yogurt and a banana

lunch - pasta salad with a wholemeal roll and a packet of low calorie crisps.

Aftetnoon snack - apple, nuts and sometimes a fat free yogurt but not always

dinner - homemade spaghetti bolognese (wholemeal spaghetti), 2 small slices of garlic baguette, a weight watchers mouse and a piece of fruit

evening snack - a couple of biscuits

this is far less than I used to eat yet the scales are not budging. I’m being told to cut down further but I can’t see what else I can do, I’m struggling as it is.

The recommended serving size for the porridge though assumes that this is all you are having for breakfast (maybe with a little honey or fruit but not with toast and also yoghurt)

Are you having dry toast? If not you need to include the calories in the spread and any jam or toppings you are using.

Why not try dropping one of the three elements tomorrow and see how you feel?

You are objecting to people saying you are eating more than your body needs but also say that you are not losing weight. Can you not see if you are not losing weight you must be eating too much and preventing the body from accessing your fat stores for energy?

Has any of the advice been useful for you?

That's still too much food though. If it's helpful, this is what I eat when I'm dieting

Breakfast - I skip it. OR if I'm hungry I have 100 cals of plain greek yogurt (weighed) or one slice of toast with some butter (120 cals)

Lunch - cheese on toast. Two slices of bread, some cheddar cheese in the middle, under the grill, no butter (300 cals)

Dinner - salmon and vegetables, a LOT of vegetables (350 cals)

So that's just under 800 cals on my three meals. I then like to pig out in the evening with some crisps (100 cals) and I make cookie dough, my treat for the day (200-300 cals). Sometimes I swap the crisps for a small glass of wine

It comes in around 1200 cals, which is what I need to eat to lose weight based on my short height.

Also 'low fat spread'. Ditch the low fat crap, increase the quality of your food and reduce the quantity. Some pp have massively overcomplicated it so I hope some advice is useful. You don't need 'egg white omlettes', just some eggs on toast would improve your breakfast massively. Most people don't eat a roll on the side of pasta salad. Plenty of people eat garlic bread with pasta but not those on diets.

You’ be made a great start at making swaps. Be really proud of that. Now as lots of people here say it is a case of reducing what you are eating.

Have you tried the NHS weight loss app? It is a 12 week program for calorie counting plus trying to increase exercise gradually. It works out how many calories you need and had a calorie tracker and food diary for you to log what you are eating and progress made. I’ve lost over half a stone in 12 weeks and am much more aware of intake!

After the initial depression at how few calories I needed and how soon calories add up I got used to it and stopped feeling hungry.

I completely agree to more protein, particularly for breakfast: I have 1 egg and wholemeal toast or Greek yogurt with fruit, nuts and seeds. I feel much fuller. And might have a banana mid morning.

It might be hard for first couple of weeks. But you’ve got this!

What you're eating is quite balanced and healthy, which is good. But you started this thread because you weren't losing weight, and the responses have been pretty much unilateral - the reason is that you're still eating too much.

Even supposing posters have overestimated what you're eating from your description of your day, the facts are as you state - you are not losing weight, so you need to create more of a calorie deficit than you are currently in - or accept your weight and simply focus on continuing to eat healthy foods, which will benefit you in other ways.

In fairness op, I would have a slice of wholegrain toast and also a yoghurt, and I think the protein in the yoghurt is useful with the carb of the bread. So I think those two are ok together. I'm not currently dieting but that combination I think could be ok.

There is a good yoghurt called Fage. Might take a bit of getting used to if you are used to sugar added, but it's very nice and even the 5 percent fat version would be better than a low-fat with sweetener. It's about 150 calories for a small pot.

Can you not see that you are eating too much?

You haven’t mentioned exercise and how many cals you are burning a day?

thanks everyone but people keep dating I’m eating 3 breakfasts etc, I’m not.
Breakfast is 40g porridge oats which is the recommended serving size on the box. When cooked (semi skimmed) it barely fills 1/4 of the bowl. The toast is wholemeal from a 400g loaf, 64 calories a slice. The yogurt is fat free

40g of oats and a banana is a complete meal op. The toast and yoghurt is a second complete meal.

You're overeating and that's why you're overweight and will remain so unless you open your eyes.

I think you’re eating both too much and not enough @Morgun

Not enough protein and vegetables and too many high calorie but blood sugar spiking “white” carbs.

You need to eat far more protein and far less simple carbohydrates. Substitute pasta salad for a huge lot of steamed or roasted vegetables with olive oil dressing just to give it a bit of nice “mouth feel.”

With the bolognaise, have the bolognaise sauce over courgettes or squash or even sweet potato.

Cut the low fat UPF yoghurts. Eat Greek yoghurt which just contains milk and yoghurt culture. Add a tablespoon of honey or a banana for sweetness.

Crisps are a luxury. They’re empty calories. If you like the salt try a bowl of steamed broccoli with soy sauce.

You don’t have to starve yourself - you can eat a huge amount of green and leafy and orange/red/ yellow vegetables. A grilled pepper will make anything taste good to me!

1700-1800kcals is well below maintenance for a person of OP’s height and weight who does light exercise.

I like your food swaps though!

For breakfast I have porridge made from 30g of oats with some frozen fruit and a spoon of honey and that’s all. It fills me up for the morning, it’s all I need. And I’m 5 foot 10! And I’m not trying to lose weight. I wouldn’t have bread with pasta salad, and I wouldn’t have bread with spaghetti bolognese. Too many carbs OP!

Oh dear, you took it literally...🤦🏼‍♀️

Though even literally wouldn't 3000 be ok per individual player?

Yes a 40g serving of porridge OR two slices of toast. The banana would be a snack, although apples are lower calorie and would be more normal

pasta salad or a roll not and a roll even with no filling

88 calories for crisps is a lot of your like total recommended allowance

50g spaghetti and no garlic bread and 80g mince

it’s just way more than women of normal weight would eat .

Calorie count at a glance:

Breakfast:
Porridge Oats (how many grams? Made with what? Full fat milk, semi-skim milk, skim milk, water? All makes a difference!) = approx 150 - 350 calories depending on what you make it with
2 x slices wholemeal toast + spread = approx 110cals per slice = 220 total
Fat free yoghurt = 50 - 100 calories
Banana (depending on size) = 80 - 120 calories
Total = 500 cals (low estimate), 790 cals (high estimate)

Lunch:
Pasta salad (made with mayonnaise? Homemade? How many grams of pasta? Approximate portion?) = approx 400 - 600 cals (depending on mayonnaise content!)
Wholemeal roll = approx 100 calories
Low calorie crisps (I'm assuming rice cakes or something like snack a jacks) = approx 89 cals
Total: 589 (low estimate), 789 (high estimate)

Afternoon snack:
Apple = approx 40 calories
Nuts = these vary HUGELY, are we talking a handful of cashews or peanuts? Or more than a handful? You could accidentally be consuming 600+ calories in the nuts alone! 150 - 600 cals
Low fat yoghurt = 50 - 100 calories
Total: 240 cals (low estimate), 740 cals (high estimate)

Dinner:
Homemade spaghetti bolognaise = hard to estimate (do you use lean beef? How much oil? Do you add bacon etc) but giving the benefit of the doubt I'll estimate approx 600 cals
2 x slices garlic baguette = 60 cals per slice = 120 cals
Weight watchers mousse = assuming 50 cals
Fruit = anywhere from 30 - 100 cals depending on the fruit
Total: 800 (low estimate), 870 (high estimate)

Evening snack: 2 x biscuits (again, are we talking digestives, hobnob, chocolate?) = approx 90cals each = 180 cals

So running total assuming all your drinks are zero calorie (black coffee, water, diet fizzy pop etc):
Low estimate: 2309 cals
High estimate: 3369 cals

The second you factor in your drinks you can see how the calorie intake gets well out of hand:
Cup of tea with milk: 30 cals
Fancy coffee with milk: 100 cals
Full sugar fizzy pop: 120 cals
Gin and tonic: 150 cals
Glass of wine: 100 - 250 cals
Pint of beer: can be as much as 350 cals a pint!

My recommendation would be to aim to eat high satiety foods - porridge is great for example. Low fat anything (spread, yoghurts) are low satiety foods as the fat they take out of them they usually replace with sugar which will have you feeling hungrier quicker. As sad as it is to say, pasta is a low satiety food and won't be keeping you full for longer. Temporarily ditch it for lunch and pick higher fat foods like avocados, chicken and up your protein for more fulfilling meals.

Ditch the nuts as a snack, I find they are more calories than they're worth.

Drink water over anything else. If you have anything non zero calorie drink-wise absolutely count the calories, it's so easy to forget what you're consuming which leads to this sort of confusion when it feels like you're being good and seeing no progress.

And finally, up your activity level if you can, a 30 mins walk at lunchtime will help keep your energy levels up and stop you from staying sedentary most of the day.

I know it feels pretty hopeless when you've been working hard to try to lose weight and nothing seems to be happening, but it's so easy to accidentally lose sight of your consumption. Getting honest with the calories and what you're actually eating and drinking is the first step.

Good luck! Hope this helps.

No, I took it to be a nasty sarcastic comment designed to take the piss out of how much OP is eating when she is clearly in a bad place with her relationship with food, and when I called you out on it you doubled down. There was simply no purpose to your initial comment other than to be rude to someone.

I've just added everything you said, with these adjustments, to a kcal counting app. Total comes at 2238. Unless you are doing lots of exercise, you should aim to be at least at 1850 and ideally 1750 to start seeing a slow but steady loss. I'll try and upload the screenshots but I truly believe you need to track for a week or two so you can see where you are going wrong. Your main issue is the bread on the side, to be honest. That morning toast with low fat spread comes at 160kcal, plus wholemeal bread roll at 159kcal, plus 2 slices of garlic bread at 181kcal is 500kcal extra. Without those, you would be losing weight because you'd be in the 1700s range. The nuts can also be problematic, as just a handful (40g) are 232kcal. Two handfuls in the day and you've already added over a quarter of kcal for the day.

Screenshots of totals. I put low kcal spread and home made bolognaise with extra lean mince. I would reduce that extra bread or balance the meals more. Aim for 500kcal per main mail and snacks up to 300kcal, or something like 400-500-600 for meals then 200-300 for snacks. See where you are hungry the most and make that your most calorific meal, etc.
Ignore the red -629kcal, I had to add it in my tracker and I'm working with 1609/day at the moment but you wouldn't need to go that low at this stage. Something like 1850kcal could work.

(Images are currently under review by MN)

I think what you are not seeing is that that serving of oats (with possibly a banana) is a complete meal. The two slices of toast would be a different breakfast option and not part of the same meal.

A good portion of your spaghetti bolognaise - if its filled with vegetables - does not require a baguette. Again - the baguette (with something on it) could be a separate meal on its own.

You've made so much progress - you just need to make this mindset shift.

Swap the low fat yoghurt for full fat, swap the spread for real grass fed butter. What porridge do you have? The more processed it is the higher the blood sugar, low fat yoghurts will also spike your blood sugar leaving you feeling hungry. Nuts are good, try to fill up with lots and lots of different vegetables. You’re not consuming a wide variety of nutrients which can lead to cravings but the brain will also process this as anything with glucose? Because that’s what the brain likes to run on. Try also supporting the liver, often fat cells can become difficult to break down, and liver support can help this. Have you tried fasting? (Not recommended if you are pregnant or any history of disordered eating, or around your period).

l just did the same on my app and it came out similar. Tracking is so important @Morgun
work out your TDEE and download a good tracking app.

I don't think you realise that most people WOULD just have that small amount of porridge OR toast and absolutely not chase it with a yoghurt, be it fat free or not.

Most people wouldn't have a roll with pasta salad, either - they'd have a leafy salad, veggie or protein.

Get yourself a calorie tracker and start weighing/measuring and logging your food. A fitbit or similar will tell you how many calories you're actually burning on your average day.

In order to lose a pound you need to be in a calorie deficit of 3,500 across a week, so 500 a day, minimum.

re the porridge: whether it fills the bowl or not, that is still a whole breakfast,

as is 2 slices of toast.
even without the yoghurt, you are eating more than 1 'meal' for breakfast.

people have given you some great advice about simply cutting down on the amount of food, and carbs.
you may have made some changes, but its still too many calories, else you would be loosing weight.

@Morgun how many calories do you need to maintain (based on a tdee calculator not a normal guesstimate) and how many calories do you think are in the food?