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.

[quirkychick]

Wow, thanks for this! I am just recovering from a chest infection & loads of antibiotics- so my eating is a bit all over the place. My eating really needs resetting.

Upset stomach meant I ate loads of natural yoghurt and wasn't hungry till later. So I have eaten more in snacks than meals . But not a typical day!

Maryz we could swap, my carbs are low but my fat/protein is high! I will fiddle with the settings.

[quirkychick]

70% dark choc e.g. lindt or Green & Black's, aldi's is good too.

I like greek yoghurt with ground almonds mixed in. An mner suggested it as a for dcs on another thread (with fruit).

Dp has just bought almond milk and rice milk. I love almonds and rice milk is lovely.

[quirkychick]

No I haven't managed to change settings yet! I have eaten loads of yoghurt/drunk loads of milk. Hence high fat/protein. I will try to customise but am on phone.

[quirkychick]

Lindt mint intense and orange intense is lovely. Orange has almond slivers in too. You only need a little too.

I am going to try to customise mfp.

[ShirleyKnot]

Bloody hell! 700 left?

Right, don't fiddle with your totals. Tomorrow is another day! (although I would prefer you tried to get your totals up a little bit today - how about a round of cheese on toast?)

The not hungry thing WILL change, once your metabolism starts firing on all cylinders, you will be hungry!

Food to get your totals up:- avocado - you can have one with some mozzarella, tomato and olive oil, or with crab sticks, or with actual crab (I see you're trying to lower your cholesterol - I would suggest prawns but they're weirdly high!). Unsalted nuts - try walnuts, brazil nuts, cashews, pecans and my favourite macadamia nuts. TRY them again, I really believe that you can train your palate. Get full fat yogurts (Pearle du lait are fabulous) Greek yoghurt with a drizzle of honey and some berries is LOVELY.

Chocolate. Get the dark stuff 70% at least. Lindt to a lovely range with mint or chilli or orange. They're nice. But for a real good for you one try Lindt 90%. It's amazing, definitely an acquired taste and you can't plough your way through a whole bar as you need to let it just melt in your mouth.

Really though you need to try and section your meals off so...breakfast will be 300 cals. Lunch - 900, dinner - 500 ish and then you work your snacks in (obviously, you can have this any way round you like, 900 cal breakfast, 500 cal lunch, 400 cal dinner or whatever!)

[ShirleyKnot]

X posted with quirky's fab suggestions!

Oh and quirky - nobody has to eat three main meals a day - they can be broken into 6 meals, or 8 little meals or 4 meals or whatever!

Studies suggest that the time you eat has no impact on the laying down of fats - so much for the not eating late at night thing. It's ALL MAD!!

[ShirleyKnot]

I've HATED dark chocolate all of my life - I swear to God. Since cutting back on sugar for a month, my tastes have changed completely and I utterly adore it now!

I ate some M&M's last week and they were TOO sweet. Honestly.

[ShirleyKnot]

Ok I've got the answer to the breastfeeding thing. My sources tell me that:

The general rule of thumb is, you add 500 0-6 months and 300 from 7 months and older

This is added to your TDEE (whichever you're using, the one to keep at maintenance or the one with the 15% deficit).

Hope this helps a bit.

[grumpleteaser]

Hiya, I lurked on old thread after my helpful suggestion of anti chafing undershorts and I'd like to try this too.
I've just started on MFP and crunched my numbers. Add me - grumpleteaser.

My daily calories that I need to eat is 2100. Today I seem to have struggled with eating enough protein but I think the calorie counter thing is a bit messed up as it said the chicken salad I ate for dinner had 212 calories but 0 fat, 0 carbs and 0 protein.

[knitknack]

This thread is so brilliant - real, empowering information, and hope! What's not to love? Thank you

[ledkr]

shirl I was on the low carb with you and gave up at around the same time.
It didnt suit me but made me appreciate how good it is to have freedom to eat everything and therefore enjoy all food without guilt but in smaller portions and more whole foods.
I have slowly begun to lose weight and look and feel better,im doing c25k and loving it.
This is the best my thinking around food has ever been,if i want something i just have a small amount of itnot eat it untill its all gone or i feel sick.
I will read the links with interest,thanks.

[ElvisJesusAndCocaCola]

I'm definitely in - not much more to lose, but have always, of course, struggled to sustain weight loss. Need something sustainable for life and want to get it properly established.

One thing that seems to be happening with me is that I keep to my cals, come in on or just under my fat allowance but go wildly over on sugar. I mean double or triple the recommended amount.

I eat prob 3-4 portions of fruit daily. Not sure where else it is coming from - yoghurt? (fat free Greek) milk? It's confusing me a bit - should I be worried?

[ShirleyKnot]

Good morning munchers!





See what all this healthy living does for you? It actually gives you more hours in the day!
I can see some people are worrying about their macros...

Please don't. I think the most important thing in the first week of changing the way you eat is to get used to the calorie load. If you've been starving on 1200 calories or less, then an extra 500 (or even more!) is going to seem like hard work. Reading some threads on MFP, I see that lots of people complain about feeling 'overfull' and some find it hard to cram the calories in HEALTHILY. Which is our aim of course...

So what I want you to do is FORGET the macros this week. Just forget it and focus on getting your calories right.

I'm thinking about hitting the gym today, I'm a bit worried that the weird valiumy stuff my dentist used on Thursday is still coursing through my veins but I'm starting to feel twitchy and I think I need to go and have a good sweat!

It looks like its going to be a glorious day!

Happy eating everyone!

[ledkr]

Ive been up since 6 with a whingey baby as usual. I am also off to the gym today and cooking a heathy curry for dinner spoiled by popadoms. I stil havent got my head totally around the figures and science but im reading through it between being hit on the head and having my lap top sabotaged. Sounds similar to what I have been doing since BWIW'S bootcamp failure.

shirl is it beast not to have milk then?I dont drink it but do use it in my copious cups of tea and coffee each day.

[ledkr]

HAHA i mean best not beast-im not that fat

[ShirleyKnot]

Milk is fine! I only use almond milk because:

A) I like it, I like the flavour in coffee!
B) it has marginally less calories than normal milk
C) I'm asthmatic and I have read that cutting back on dairy can be beneficial (I spoil this by eating shed loads of yoghurt!)

[BIWItheBold]

Shirl - according to Briffa, yoghurt is better tolerated than other dairy, so hopefully you will be fine with it

[ledkr]

Almond sounds lovely in coffee though yum.

Im loving the way BIWI is overseeing events as chief diet guru for mumsnet

[BIWItheBold]

Oh no! .

I'm just nosey, ledkr!