Come forward EatBetterers and unite - it's the second happy healthy eating thread!

[fuzzpig]

Here's the previous thread where it all began!

EatBetterers are trying to improve the diets of ourselves and our families. No weighing, restricting, calorie counting etc - just finding joy in nourishing ourselves by making positive changes one step at a time. All welcome! :)

Salad dressing - it's been a while since I've made one but the one my parents taught me was a bit of oil, balsamic vinegar, grainy mustard. Shake to blend (that was my favourite bit :o). Can add lemon juice too :)

Anyone got any inspiration for a healthy chilli con carne recipe? We were out to dinner yesterday and I chose a five bean chilli which was nice although it did contain quorn which I don't really want to buy as it's processed. I was thinking of doing it with a little mince but more beans. Would have to be mild if the DCs were eating it. I have no idea what seasoning goes into it!

You need sweetness on a salad stressing too to balance it out,I use a spot of honey.

Hello - room for another newbie? Like many of you, I have had enough of the diet treadmill. Had a go at low carb recently. It was great for losing weight, but too extreme to stick to long-term. Also I have a bit of an acid reflux issue, which seems to get worse when I eat very fatty things.
Anyway, what I want is to eat mindfully and eat 'clean' - minimal sugar and processed food, plenty of lean meat, fish, eggs, fruit and veg and some healthy oils. Looks like you lot are doing well at that!

So far today I've had:

2 hard-boiled eggs, a slice of brown toast and a cup of tea
Avocado and hummus with bulghar wheat salad and a slice of ham (going to try to avoid processed meat, but it needed using up), a pear, a cup of jasmine green tea

Dinner will be chicken with more bulghar wheat salad and some fruit.

I'm really bad at remembering to drink enough water - must make an effort!

Incidentally, I'm 5'6" and weigh 11st atm. Got down to 10.5 on low carb but I want to stop focussing on weight and just eat naturally and healthily. Hopefully a little weight-loss will happen along the way...

Can I join as well.

My eating habits have got really bad. I need to start eating better and more often.

For the last month or so I have only been having 1 meal a day, mainly because my allergies have been bad and I can not taste or smell anything so I can not be bothered to eat.

So I will read and try to follow some new eating patterns.

I've had one peri-peri mackerel fillet so far today and if I didn't need to set an example to my lives-on-nesquik teenager/be so obsessed with running I could quite happily smoke a cigarette for supper and go to bed

but instead I will make some beef and bean burritos, don't know if anyone remembers the dodginess that was the Little Juan range of burritos but am aiming to recreate that experience

clutter I'm a bit 'one meal a day' too, I do get all the calories I need but am not sure if it's a bad way to eat or not

Mitchy it's not always once a day sometimes I don't eat for a couple of days. I have dinner at 7.30pm one day then I eat nothing the next day and the day after that I might eat at about 2pmish . Then I'm not hungry at dinner time so I don't eat. Then I might binge.

sounds like you are not happy in that cycle, what can you change do you think? I set My Fitness Pal to 3 meals plus 2 snacks a day and to prompt me if I haven't logged anything within an hour or two (don't always respond but it's still a good reminder) - it's good because there is the accountability factor of real life and virtual contacts noticing and commenting. Could something like that encourage you?

Not happy. I'm putting on too much weight.

I was doing MFP last year and lost 32lb (probably put back on ). Need to start doing it again.

haven't had that exact problem but did go through phases where I was sort of hooked on feeling hungry, it's a bit addictive in itself but I was struggling in general with other stuff in those days - anyway do you have people around who can support you in real life too? it's hard to do it on your own I think

Definitely harder to go it alone!

That is pretty disordered eating :( I wonder if making only a tiny change at a time would be better? Going from one extreme to the other (ie attempting to go straight back into a 'normal' structured eating pattern) might be unsustainable and end up making you more demotivated. Could you start by setting yourself one little rule and just focusing on that for a couple of weeks? Literally one thing like "eat something by 11am every day" or something? And don't worry about the rest of it. Just achieve that one thing and let it become a comfortable habit before you decide on the next thing.

Michty no I don't have much real life support

Fizzpig. I think I'm planning/try to eat 3 meals a day. I've planned yoghurt and granola which I will eat when dc have theirs. Set a alarm on my phone to go off at 12pm to trigger me to have lunch at a sensible time. Then cook dinner for me and dh.

Then slowly incorporate better food into my diet I want to eat better and lose weight but I don't want to go on a diet plan IYKWM

Clutters in my work I place quite a lot of importance on eating regularly - I should add that not everyone needs to, if a certain schedule/diet/WOE is working perfectly well for someone (sounds like maybe it does for you Mitchy?), then that's great, but if they have challenges with weight/bingeing/health/disordered eating then it's one of the first places I'd look. Working with our natural biorhythms can make a big difference. If you are skipping meals then it will lead to binges but also contribute to weight gain . As Fuzz asks, what do you think is a realistic first step to getting back to regular meals?

X post, that sounds great clutters

Hello, can I join? Really need to sort out our eating habits, both mine and DCs. I have very little energy, am on meds which make me even more dozy at certain times of the day and I eat way too much sugar/processed food. I get bad PMT and also migraines (which follow the pattern of my cycle) and I really want to try and see if eating better/more healthily will help with these.

Have 2 DC (2 and 6) and am a SAHM. In my fantasy life I bake/cook everything from scratch and the family awakes to the smell of home-baked bread every morning while I leap out of bed, full of energy for the day ahead. Unfortunately we are a long way off that. (Don't even own a bread maker for a start).

There's so much that I want to change in our diets but I aim to be sensible and start small.

Stage one is to swap our usual tea time pudding of shop bought cake/ tarts/ pies for something more healthy but which the DCs and DH will still accept as 'sweet'. Oh, and not too expensive as we are on a relatively tight budget.

All ideas/suggestions gratefully received!

Hi Teacake, welcome . What kind of things do your DCs like? Would they eat homemade flapjacks? Make up their own fruit kebabs/fruity ice lollies? Greek yoghurt with berries/banana and a bit of honey?

Hi all, thanks for the moral support re fussy children! I do always make sure they have some vegetables with their meal, even if just some cucumber/carrot sticks/tomatoes. But I find myself racking my brains to come up with a healthy meal that everyone will eat and I really don't want to be cooking different meals for everyone! I lost it a bit with 8 year old DD1 on Friday when I cooked spaghetti bolognese from scratch, she sat picking out the tiny pieces of carrot, then 2 year old DD2 completely refused the sauce.... It does make me think 'why do I bother?' but I know I have to keep trying and not to get stressed but it's hard especially at the end of the week.
I have asked DD1 if she wants to come up with some meal ideas, have shown her cookbooks, suggested we could cook a meal together, but the only meal she ever suggests is mussels which is weirdly one of her favourite foods ...

The other thing is breakfast. I have switched to a granola (naturally sweetened) with yoghurt, which I find keeps me going longer that the Special K I used to have before. The DCs are hooked on sugary cereal though. At weekends we do porridge or waffles which are healthier, but don't have time for that in the week. So that will be a challenge to change.

There are some successes though.... smoothies made with full-fat milk and lots of fruit always go down well, I was a bit worried DD1 wasn't getting much dairy but she loved this.

We did fishcakes at the weekend made with mackerel and salmon, which everybody really liked, we kept the DCs ones simple, but added extra flavours to ours like spring onions and a bit of chilli.

Oh, and DH thinks he has lost weight on our new healthy eating regime! Which is annoying for me as he wasn't even trying to ... humph!

Keep up the good work everyone

donteattheplaydough

I don't know how to get children to eat dinners, as they have school dinners I've stopped cooking for them. Now they have sandwiches, something on toast. May something and chips once a week.

Today I have had (sorry going to use this a diary if that's ok).

Breakfast - some fat free yogurt and cranola.

Lunch - ham salad sandwich on wholemeal.

Dinner - Baked Chicken Parmesan with pasta with marinara sauce. I made add some steam Broccoli.

I have about to add but the chances of getting a laptop ate slim in this house! I suppos just want to encourage everyone and I want to respond to sleep but it'll have wait! With dc's maybe keep it simple, mine have massively lowered their expectations of dinner time!!! With dessert a v small bar of choc grated over yog and fruit will easily do 4.

Oh look at my phone typos!! You see my problem here!!!

I have to admit I have managed lots of changes to DC's diets just by developing a very bad memory when it comes to buying the stuff I'm trying to cut out...'every time I do a shop kids, my mind just goes blank!' [innocent look]. Occasionally I give them the honest answer - there's nothing good for your bodies in that stuff so it's not very healthy to have it all the time (they still get things like juice, squash and crap cereal and ice cream when out or at friends, no issue there). They give up asking for it after a while . I let them have a few sweets on the weekend and now they are a bit older they are better at self-regulating but sugar really is like crack for kids, it's scary.

A couple of tastes sensations to share from my day...watermelon with feta as a snack this afternoon, OMG, so good...and my new favourite dark choc, Montezumas orange and geranium 73%, not as flowery tasting as it sounds . So happy to get back to delicious Burford brown eggs too! as DH said, I never thought I'd turn into an egg snob but looks like it's happened .

How is everyone doing?

That's what I meant with dc's - it may or may not be something you like tonight!! The kids and sugar thing is really scary. My ds is off the scale when he gets going. My dd had such a yoghurt addiction I had to stop buying multipacks. She now prefers natural yogurts. In fact, her sweet tooth appears quite minimal now. She also says she must eat 3 good meals or she will snack and not stop. She's still bigger than most her friends but I really hope her experiences will do her eating habits good later on.

You are all doing really well. It's so much easier to keep it up when you know any slip ups are easily put right

Hello

Food today was banana,yog and ground almonds and linseed.

2 boiled eggs and a slice of Bergen bread.

Cod in lemon juice and stir fry. Peaches, and strawberries.

Snacks-apple, oat cake, grapes

Good day today.

Hi all. Sounds like we are all heading down the right path.
I understand that low fat flavoured yoghurt is bad due to the sugars but what about natural. I've been buying low fat Greek yoghurt. Is full fat better for you? Can someone please explain?

The evidence is showing that full fat is better Neeko, even though it is counterintuitive if you believe all the negative associations we have been taught about saturated fat . The exact reasons why are still not clear but people who consume full fat dairy have a lower incidence of obesity than those choosing low fat. One reason is likely to be satiety, if we feel properly satisfied by the ff food then it reduces the likelihood of overeating other food. Other possible factors seem to be the higher level of omega 3 fat in ff products that benefit our bodies, also there is a theory that there are properties in ff that are metabolised better than more processed low fat products with possibly lots of good stuff removed along with the fat.