Healthier eating advice - Is this too much food per day

[paranoidpammywhammy2]

I'm 5 foot 8 and wear size 18. I'd always been very slim and verging on underweight until about 5 years ago. I wore size 10/12 before. I've always had a huge appetite. People wondered how I stayed slim.

I was happy at size 14. I felt I had a bit of flesh on my bones. My parents made unflattering comments but I ignored them. They have weird food issues and I felt starved by them as a child.

Now at a size 18, I am determined to lose weight as I feel insecure about the size of my belly. I've cut down on unhealthy food, more fruit and veg, drink plenty of water and reduced snacking. I already get plenty of exercise.

I still have a huge appetite but munch on carrots, cucumber, oranges etc. to fill me up. I drink as well if I'm hungry. I took 5 years to gain the weight so plan to lose it gradually.

This is a general typical day's food.

Breakfast - 2 small slices of toast with thin layer peanut butter or bowl of all bran.

Lunch - tin of mushroom soup, 2 low fat cheese slices on 2 small slices of toast

Dinner - large salad with feta, peppers, red onion, cucumber, tomatoes, olives, lettuce and low fat dressing or walnut and feta salad.

Snacks are oranges, cucumber, carrots etc.

I am happy with my diet. I am seeing a small decrease in my belly and feel healthier. I still have a huge appetite and my family still say I'm overeating. I struggle to eat less. Are they right to criticise?

I also plan on baking with almond flour instead of wheat flour . Well eventually

Have a look at Michael Moselyes diets, he is a qualified Dr, so its not faddy stuff, just good foof, have you kept a food diary, its surprising how it mounts up. Unfortunately, as you get older you do need a lot less calories. You have to really up your heart rate to get good cal burning.Nothing processed, nothing refined, ie, rice, pasta bread, wholemeal wholegrain.

good food, I have just remembered what folks call a "foof" on here, apologies!

Against the grain here, but I think low carb is too restrictive and that's never good for will power. You will lose weight if you eat less calories then you burn. The calories you eat can come from anything and you will still lose weight as long as you're in a deficit. There is no need to complicate things further than that, I lost 6 stone and I've kept it off because it's easy. You don't need any plans or books and you can find out roughly what your BMR is online.

Sorry @nancy91. I respectfully disagree. Calories are not all equal. A calorie from a Coke is dealt with differently than a calorie from a piece of chicken.

Attached graph show weight loss in 2 groups:

1. group 1 was on low fat and calorie restricted

2. group 2 was on low carb with no calorie restriction - ie ate until 'full'.

Here's where this came from and explains it well and is scientifically sound.

Calories could matter if you need a fast result but otherwise the type of food you eat - high carb vs low carb mainly - keeps you in check

sorry link:

www.healthline.com/nutrition/debunking-the-calorie-myth#section6

But doesn't that chart just compare low fat versus low carb or am I reading it wrong? Nancy91 isn't advocating low fat, she's just not supporting low carb in her post and saying there is a middle ground and there is.

This is not just weight loss but healthy eating. unless your daughter is into anaerobic sports she does not need carbs even if she can process them fine as she's young. Problem is you are forming an addiction of your daughter to carbs and sugar - setting up for problems in the future.

Personally I think it is unwise to be advising cutting an entire food group in growing children and would urge anyone thinking of doing this to get medical advice before doing so.

Olivia, there are random studies all over the internet, many agree with me. You can find a study to agree with pretty much any claim!

I compete and have a low body fat percentage. I only ever cut carbs when I'm desperate to lose water retention before a competition. Other than that all that is needed is a caloric deficit. Sometimes people think the weight loss from low carb diets is faster, but that is only because water is lost with the fat.

If the group that ate low carb diets ate a surplus of calories they would definitely gain weight. They must have been eating at a deficit though and "eating until full" is completely relative and not scientifically sound at all. The calories and carbs of both groups should have been recorded.

I am not promoting a low fat or low carb diet, only a low calorie one until OP hits a weight that she can maintain. Cutting things out isn't the way to go and things don't need to be difficult and over complicated.

I don’t understand. If the science is showing that carbohydrates are unhealthy why would you want anyone to eat them?

Since the 1980s the UK population has become increasingly fat. This coincides with a change in the average diet. Carbohydrates were introduced on an unprecedented scale to modern diets. This is obviously not working out very well. Today, 70% of the UK population is a overweight and 28% are obese. I don’t remember this being a problem when I was a child.

I'd be bloody starving on that.

I eat like a fat horse though.

I am totally with you Nancy91 and am losing weight effectively doing this but more importantly feel it is a way of eating that I can sustain long term, which is where things have gone wrong in the past. To be fair only time will tell with me but very encouraging to hear of your success. Just worked out that between us we have lost over 11.5 stones !

Low carb dieters don't gain weight because it is a different sort of calories and fat. It is healthy calories and natural animal fats as opposed to man made and high sugar low fat calories.
Low fat calories as I said is high in processed sugar which is a fact , and that sugar is toxic to our system. Because we can't get rid of it easily the body protects itself from the toxins by wrapping it in fat. The more low fat high sugar you add the more toxins and more fat

Wheras low carb and animal fats are easily digested and as a result , the fat or calories aren't toxic or stored in the body. Also think of all the other toxins in low fat and processed food that aren't present in food on a low carb diet

Low carb dieters are generally a bit less hungry because of the lack of insulin spikes. So they are more likely to eat at a deficit of calories. They also carry less water weight generally.

If they ate a surplus of calories then they would gain weight.

It's all to do with calories when it comes to fat loss.

I don't want to start using the term pseudoscience but when I hear the word "toxin" being used I immediately discredit the person saying it. I'm sorry but your body doesn't protect you from "toxins" by creating more fat - that is one of the silliest things I've heard, whoever told you that needs to stop giving advice on this.

I think carbs can be good because your body uses the glycogen stores in your muscles for high impact exercise. I'm all about bodybuilding and gaining muscle, and without carbs I would struggle at the gym and at my sport. Many athletes and marathon runners carb-load for the extra energy.

I never said low fat was good, I don't eat low fat things generally but I guess I don't avoid them either.

Well done on your weight loss PostNotInHaste!!

www.healthline.com/nutrition/why-do-low-carb-diets-work#section7

Nancy I agree with you on the toxin Point. I disagree with you on your view of calories. A calorie from a Coca-Cola is completely different than a calorie from chicken breast. Your body Will process these differently. Look at the Healthline link I pasted below. It will explain it better.

I agree with you but you probably need some carbs. Anyone who does a lot of high-intensity training needs cards to replenish glycogen stores. But it’s doubtful that anyone else does

Your body always works within the framework of trying to preserve health, so its first defense against toxins is to eliminate them through one of your main eliminative channels - these are your urinary tract, colon, lungs, skin, and mucosal linings in your nose and ears.

So your body may create symptoms like diarrhea, a persistent cough, a skin rash, nasal discharge/congestion, and even chronic recurrent ear discharge/infections, all with the intent of protecting your cells against toxins.

By recognizing these processes as being helpful and allowing them to take their course, and working to identify and eliminate their root cause(s), you can support your body's self-preserving mechanisms to keep you well over the long term.

Let's continue to assume that you're not aware of toxins that you're steadily being exposed to, and that toxins continue to roll in. Eventually, the pace of incoming toxins may overtake the pace at which you can eliminate them.

If you reach this point, your body will have no choice but to store some of these toxins.

Keeping in line with its desire to preserve its health, your body will first store "excess" toxins in your fat tissues. This is because your fat tissues are less vital to your immediate survival than other tissues like your ligaments, muscles, and nerves. This is not to say that fat tissue that's found throughout your body isn't important. It's to say that your body instinctively seeks to preserve more important tissues whenever possible.

Accumulation of toxins in your fat tissues is what can lead to so-called harmless conditions like cysts, lipomas, and other benign tumors. These are conditions that conventional medicine typically cite as having no known cause, but they most certainly have a number of causes, with a major one being steady exposure to endogenous and exogenous toxins.

Myelin - the fatty sheath of insulation that lines all of your nerves - is also a target site for toxin accumulation. And whenever your body has the energy to cleanse such accumulations of toxins, the nerve(s) in the area being cleansed may get irritated, which is one potential cause of chronic, intermittent headaches. This is why some people experience headaches when they get more sleep than usual. Getting more sleep allows the body to use its resources to stir up stored toxins - good for long term health, but uncomfortable in the short term.

Getting back on course, let's assume that your body continues to be exposed to a steady diet of exogenous and endogenous toxins. At some point, your body may need to start storing these toxins outside of your fat tissues.

OP I've lost over 6.5 stone in the last few years and the best advice I can give is do what works for you. If what you're doing is working for you, then stick with it. If it's not working fast enough, make some small tweaks, or add in some more brisk exercise a few times a week to burn off more calories. If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you need to make changes that you can stick with, what you're doing needs to be sustainable for the long term. There have been some great suggestions on here already for swapping out your snacks to cut down some calories. I introduced my own version of IF after I'd lost a couple of stone, but it's not everyone's cup of tea. I also cut out snacking other than a bit of fruit if I was really hungry. Before, when I was at my biggest, I would snack constantly on nuts, oatcakes etc, but I really didn't need all of that plus 3 meals a day.

I didn't say anyone needs carbs. I just said the lack of them doesn't make you lose weight, the caloric deficit does. As I said my sport involves me manipulating my fat and muscle, so I know a thing or two about this and I also know that you can find thousands of studies supporting my views (and anyone else's views on anything as this is the internet...) I just opened one of those healthline posts and the guy that wrote it said low carb diets working is "pretty much" a fact scientific stuff there!

Blah, I know you want to believe the toxin thing but it's making me cringe that you think the body creates fat to wrap itself up in, to protect against these very evil "toxins". I really won't be listening to any of that!

Wow can't believe how hard core since of you are! Parsnips and apples are bad for you now?!

Some not since!