Don't Starve! The Eat More to Weigh Less Group

[ShirleyKnot]

Hello!

OK, stemming from this thread I promised to start a thread to explain a little bit more about eating well and still losing weight.

I'll start by telling you about me because I love to talk about me


About 5 years ago (when I was 34) I went back to work full time, this time locally, in a sedentiary desk job. I drive to work everyday and was often far too busy lazy to do any exercise at all. My weight remained fairly static (At about 11 stones, I'm 5ft 7.5 and fairly chunky) for a good couple of years and then it started creeping up.

For the past two years I have skipped on and off WW, SW and I have tried low calorie diets, the lot. My weight has gone up to 12 stone 11 lbs at it's highest and I'm carrying it pretty much all over. My gut though TERRIBLE - It hangs over my knickers and in January my size 16 clothes were starting to strain.

Miserable ain't the word. It has affected my confidence (yes, honestly) and I know that at my age (39) it is only going to get harder to lose.

So, in January I started back on WW. I watched everything I ate, I thought about food compulsively, I went for walks in my lunch hour, and every weekend I fell off the wagon and stuffed my face. WHY? It makes no sense! I gobbled bread and cakes and biscuits and sweets like mad.

In April, after having lost and gained the same 7lbs over and over again I joined BIWI's Low Carb Bootcamp, and started upping my exercise at the gym (Doing classes mainly and swimming and I also started the Couch 2 5K) this is where it got weird...I stuck to the diet, it was pretty easy! I loved the food and didn't feel hungry at all - my endurance during exercise was affected but I thought I'd break through that barrier sooner or later. I watched as people on the thread lost masses of weight and I was completely stalled out. What? WHY IS THIS HAPPENING? I believe that during this time I was eating a good couple of thousand calories per day, plus exercising almost every day.

I left the group as I felt so fed up with not losing and limped back to my fitness pal, but decided to stick with the no crap (no white bread/pasta/rice, easy on the white potatoes, easy on the fruit) WOE. MFP gave me a calorie limit of 1,200 cals per day and I did this for a a few days before starting to feel rotten. I started looking around the MFP community pages and found the Eat More To Weigh Less Group and read every link, and lots of the discussion boards.

It was a lightbulb moment - WHY was I expecting my body to cope on less calories than it needs just to exist? WHYYYYY?

I started EMTWL on 16th May and have lost 1 lb. That doesn't really mean very much though, as the scales are FILTHY liars - but I have eaten very well and am losing inches consistently. Since I started eating more calories (I include BIWI's brilliant Bootcamp in this calculation) I have lost 4.5 inches from my waist and a good couple of inches from my hips, arse and bust. I have dropped a dress size.

OK. I'm going to post this essay and then I'm going to talk a bit about metabolic rate calculations and the sciency bits.

[ShirleyKnot]

Nope. Change your macros to:

40% carb
30% protein
30% fat.

[ViviPru]

I've been steadily losing about 1-2 lb a week, and lost 3 last week. I've lost 3cm off my waist in 2 weeks. I need to lose 2st/get into a small sz12 by May 2013.

Aside from eating my exercise calories, here's what seems to work for me:

FOOD

Home made granola every weekday morning - can give details if anyone would like
Eggs for weekend breakfasts
Skimmed milk
Lurpak lightest
No bread except Hovis Nimble (I know home made is best but it's not sustainable for me)
Loads of oily fish - Salmon, mackerel, tuna
Loads of salad
Muller light Greek Style yoghurts
Slimline tonic (mainline anyone?)
Avoid pasta/rice/too much potato, maybe once a week.
NO CHEESE (except a bit of low fat cheddar now & then)

EXERCISE

30 min walk EVERY DAY (sadly quite a hard one for me given recent events but I'm working on it)
Hi impact exercise class 3 times a week
Cycling at least an hour a week

I know I've included some dreaded diet foods, but I don't think of them as exclusively for 'this diet' they are more like healthier alternatives for the rest of my life. The cheese thing is a bit of an issue for me - I am like a crack addict with it. I'd boil it up and inject given half the chance.

I'm hoping to add to the above when I hear what works for you lot.

[knitknack]

Shirly can you tell us a little more about what you actually eat? Or where you went to find that information? Sorry to bombard you with questions.

[ViviPru]

So when you drink alcohol your body seizes upon it and instead of using stored fat and the carbs that you have eaten to function it will use the alcohol first.

Interesting.

I'm REALLY missing my friday night cider, but I just don't think I can incorporate it.

I think the drink of choice for our little collective here is inevitably going to have to be gin&slim...

[ShirleyKnot]

Knitknack.

Of course! I gave an example on Buppy's thread. Yesterday I was under calories because I had some maddrugz at the dentist and so I am eating soup (and will be again today) but I can give you another example of a typical weekday if you like and a typical weekend?

WEEKDAY: (Last Thursday, a rest day so no exercise))

Breakfast - Before leaving for work
1 x pint of water before eating anything. Vitamin B complex, multivit without iron, co-enzyme Q10, Chromium polynicotinate (These are my supplements, they're not really necessary - I just like them)
1 x cup of coffee with 100ml almond milk
1 x banana, 30g x flaxseed, 200ml x almond milk, 1 x protein shake - blended into a smoothie.

Mid Morning Snack - Usually at about 10.30-11ish.
2 x hard boiled eggs.
pinch of salt (NORTY)
1 x cup of super matcha green tea

Lunch
1 x chicken breast (cooked the night before)
2 x tomatoes
Celery
Cucumber
Spring onion
1/2 bag of Watercress/spinach/rocket salad leaves
Homemade herby olive oil dressing (3x tbsp good olive oil, 1 tbsp white wine vinegar or lemon, fresh basil, 1/2 tsp dijon mustard - stuck in jam jar, shaken. 1 jam jar does 2 servings)
1 x tbsp FULL FAT helman's mayo
Artichokes in Sunflower oil (about 5) from Sainsbury's deli.

Mid Afternoon Snack - usually about 3.30-4ish. This staves off that horrible NEED BREAD thing I get when I come in from work!
Full fat probiotic yoghurt
4 x squares Lindt intense dark mint chocolate

Dinner - I try to eat earlyish, before 7pm unless I'm at the gym.
Brown rice
Slimming World recipe for Beef Madras
2 x squares Lindt dark intense Orange chocolate.

This is what 2026 calories looks like. I was STARVING when I woke up which is a terrific sign that my metabolism is starting to recover, but not starving all day - when I'm hungry I eat a little chocolate something.

(On a low calorie diet not feeling hungry EVER is a BAD sign - your body is adjusting to the smaller amount of calories and in order to keep the loss going you will have to DROP calories again. BOOO!)

Do you want to see a weekend day? Or am I boring the tits off you all?

[ShirleyKnot]

Ignore the BMR on MFP - It's nonsense. Use the BMR you got from the calculator.

It's still only 45 calories out though, wich is nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Now, your TDEE of 2379 is AFTER your 15% cut? Then this is what you should be aiming to eat...I'd round it down to 2,300 just to make life easy.

Eat 2,300 calories EVERYDAY regardless of exercise, unless you burn enough calories to take you under your BMR of 1,500 (let's call it 1,500 for an esier life)

Say for example you ate 2,300 calories yesterday, but you also went and did a step class AND a 40 minute swim and you burned 1,000 calories - then you need to eat an additional 200 calories to bring your NET calories up to your BMR.

I'll talk a bit about exercise in a while!

[ShirleyKnot]

Oh and yes, you can input meal that you eat regularly. You can also input your favourite recipes and it will calculate the calorie total for you. HOW SWISH!

[TobyLerone]

I'm not bored of the 'what I eat in a day' posts, Shirl. I love them!

[amalur]

Shirley, I pm'd you. You got me inspired! I have signed up for mfp.

I actually had been thinking along these lines for a bit but everytime I try to eat more and see the scales going even further up I freak out!

[SweetTheSting]

Ooh!

I am excited by this!I am always 'failing' my MFP calorie allowance. Off to read the rest of thread.

[RighteousDude]

Lurk

I'm the fattest I've ever been. Must lose weight

[ShirleyKnot]

Amalur - STAY OFF THE SCALES...

That's a good tip for everyone actually, BUT I am an addicted weigher...I weigh every day

Something that has really helped me has been this site You sign up and if you're a dreadful weigher you can enter your weight and also what you've eaten everyday - I'm not sure why this gives me a feeling of control but it does - I think because I know the following facts:

You have to eat 3,500 (approx) calories OVER your TDEE to gain 1 x pound of fat. Well, I know FO SHIZZLE that I'm not doing that so the gains and losses I'm looking at are almost certainly water fluctuations.

To find out more about why the scales are weird Have a read of this

I know I'm blinding you all with shedloads of information and links, but please take your time, read through them and decide if this is something for you or not - this will take patience and understanding of the basic principles in order to get over a few hurdles

[BonkeyMollocks]

Marking place to read through later :)

[ShirleyKnot]

You're so welcome Mary. Enjoy the sunshine.

OK, Toby. Here is my diary for last Saturday. I went to the cinema with my boys and ate some sweets and shit while there - have a look:

Breakfast
Banana, protein shake, flaxseed, almond milk smoothie. Coffee with almond milk (see a theme developing?)

Mid Morning Snack
After my protein shake I went to the gym for an hour and a half and burned 835 calories. (I know this because I have a heart rate monitor which allows me to more easily judge the calories I am burning from my work outs - it's GREAT! I love mine.) so I had another shake when I'd finished working out - this time made with water.


Lunch
200g x cous cous (bloody loads)
1/2 courgette fried in 1 x tablespoon of olive oil with sun dried tomatoes and 65g of ready to eat spicy chicken breasts. All jumbled up with the cous-cous
1 x activia yoghurt (the "luscious" creamy ones)

Mid Afternoon Snack
1 x wholemeal bagel
Philadelphia light cream cheese (not super extra mental light, just the light one)
3 x slices of pastrami
1/2 tomato

Then we went to the cinema and I ate:

10 x wine gums
4 x handfuls of popcorn
1 x small bag of M&M crispy.

Dinner
Salmon fillet cooked with pak-choi and shitake mushrooms in 1 x tbsp groundnut oil and 1 x tbsp reduced salt soy sauce and 1 tsp sesame oil.
1 x small glass red wine

This little lot came to a NET total of 2,300 calories. So I went over - I didn't feel guilty or ashamed or HARD DONE BY at all. I know that those extra 300 calories are outside of my usual norm and will not result in me putting on extra fat cells...

See? It's about sustainability and being KIND to ourselves.

[oliviafrombolivia]

Delurking to say THANK YOU, this is AMAZING, am inspired.

MaryZ, scuse me for butting in, but your net carb intake won't be 2300 it will be the figure under it, at whatever you have set (-15%, -20%)... mine is one point out to yours and my net intake is 2021 at -15%..

[TobyLerone]

That sounds fab, Shirley.

What were you doing at the gym to burn 835 calories?

[Pinot]