New Year, New Wagon: the Slenderistas Resolve to Lose 7lbs in January

[BitOutOfPractice]

Sorry about the crap thread title. I’m afraid my head hurts rather a lot!

Welcome to the best™️ Thread on MN where the Slenderistas help and support each other in their weight loss goals (and other stuff as well). Join in and lose the Lindas.

Link to the December thread here

(Comes to 1329 cals, but I only do about 3000 steps a day)

KOKO it's bloody confusing isn't it? I'm feeling that way as well tbh. The thought of going into kitchen is filling me with dread not least because its needing gutted

I've been having a good think today and I've had enough of all the "diet" advice now tbh. It's confusing me and bringing me down to the point of just grabbing junk food because it's easy.

I'm going to start from basic premise of having breakfast lunch dinner. Eat 5 portions of veg and a couple of fruit/day. Drink more water, less juice (fizzy pop).
Less red meat and more fish.

I also have a toddler but we started going with the one meal for everyone. And saying "you dont have to eat it but theres nothing else". Just keep repeating it. It's slowly starting to work. Dd ate a bit of everything last night.

I'm sick to the back teeth of thinking about it though so going to do a meal plan with all meals planned for the week. We shall see how that all pans out.

sorry that ended up more about me than I intended. Chin up! Not a broken record merely a work of art in progress

Have you tried a few tricks for avoiding the leftovers? eg

• chewing gum
• squirting washing up liquid in their plates before you even get them off the table

I struggle what to think to have low carb for lunch. especially avoiding bread. Soup? Leftovers? Big salad with protein of choice plus a small spoon of coleslaw?

For reference, today I've had:

B: egg, beans, small toast with butter
L: salad with feta and roast chicken and a sweet chilli dressing, plus a small (tiny 85cal block of green and blacks choc)
D: squash and halloumi tamarind skewers with cous cous

Two coffees, lots of water (my NYR)

FYI

B: 353 cals
L: 306 cals
D: 498 cals

Total: 1158 cals

One of the big "things" with low carb is rewriting the idea of "breakfast food" for breakfast... So if taking soup to work is a problem, how about having soup for breakfast and taking something like frittata for lunch? (Make a big one at the beginning of the week that's packed with veg)

Are the kids okay with things like shepherds pie for dinner?

Oh koko I'm sorry to hear you are down. It's easy to get confused by all the conflicting diet advice!

Fussy children (I have three myself) make things so much worse!!! I do exactly what another poster said, I cook one thing and tell my children to take it or leave it. They don't have to eat it but they are not getting anything else!

As for your own diet... it's hard to advice as different things work for different people, and ultimately you have to discover what works for you, but...

At the end of the day it's not magic. You need to consume fewer calories than you burn. So if you log everything you eat and stick to a daily calory allowance (like 1500 calories) then you cannot go wrong! If having to count all your calories makes your head spin, why not try healthy ready meals for a bit? It's not the cheapest (or most nutritious) option but there are healthy ones out there and it says how many calories there are on the pack!

Whether you are sedentary or probably won't matter that much. You shouldn't subtract calories spent exercises anyway because we tend to overestimate those (and then overeat as a result).

I'm sorry if it seems like I'm oversimplifying things (by telling you to eat fewer calories than you burn) but ultimately that is the key to weight loss. Not fancy shakes or the odd afternoon in the gym or meal replacements. "Just" (I know it's hard!) eat fewer calories.

And. BE KIND TO YOURSELF. No one has ever made significant life changes & become happier through berating themselves constantly.

Good luck

First day went really well. Really nice bunch of people which makes such a difference (my last boss was a dick)

B: egg, beans, small toast with butter
L: salad with feta and roast chicken and a sweet chilli dressing, plus a small (tiny 85cal) block of green and blacks choc
D: squash and halloumi tamarind skewers with cous cous

Sorry, wrong thread!

Oh that's good news Lasty

Hey KOKO. Said we'd all be here to help in 2018.

I'm not quite back in the wagon yet so I will post what I've had honestly:

Red grapefruit mid morning with half a banana

Lettuce, cucumber, beetroot prawns and one Desert spoon of sauce bag of walkers baked.

Throughout the day choc topped rice cakes and one Jaffa cake

Lentil and bacon homemade soup, bread roll with butter.

Little cube of cheese whilst cooking.

The little double decker out of my Christmas selection box

Four cups of tea and lots of water.

So you see I have to improve lots too. I am exercising. Is there anyway you could be more active? What about getting a skipping rope?

I will add my calories up now. I did do a circuits class this morning.

I weighed in last Thurs 1.9kg over my goal weight, but I was already at least a kilo over before Christmas properly started so I'm quite pleased with that! That was after just 2 golden days too, so I'm hoping for a good result on Friday after an Angel Week I'll be really chuffed if I can be back at target by the 26th, or at least by the 2nd - have a fairly quiet social month lined up so fingers crossed!

koko so sorry you're struggling again. I never normally say this but your idea of signing up to SW or similar might actually be a good idea for you - it sounds like something with clear and strictish rules will take the stress out of it for you, and if you get confused or lost there'll be loads of other people doing the same plan to bounce things off.

I wouldn't worry about TDEE and all those technical terms - you just need to focus on stabilising your calorie intake by the sound of it, and get into the swing of it. Once you're feeling more in control and positive and really embedded in a routine it'll be so much easier to make little adjustments to get optimal weight loss.

KOKO sorry you're struggling. Even my fussy DH (I'm also fussy tbf) makes healthy dinners difficult so fussy kids must be even harder. I can see why you don't want to encourage different meals but would you be happy to do for example same main but kids have potatoes or rice and you just have veg?

So far I've only just started to get hungry, think I'm going to have some cheesy scrambled eggs and toast when I get home. Although last night I made some amazing oat pancake/fritter things so I'm tempted to make the same again.

I spoke to a PT at the gym.today.

He said I have lost enough weight & to stop weighing as it and bmi ate meaningless.

He wants me to now focus on building more lean muscle.

He said that 1200 cals on mfp isnt enough with all the the exercise. He also said that I probably didnt get weight over Christmas despite eating tonnes of chocolate because the exercise and muscle I built will have improved metabolism.

Hmm. Not sure how I feel about this.

Feel like I still want to be lighter .

I think that's really positive Niki! And a real achievement. Well done!!!

for you keepon. You sound so fed up. I agree, maybe joining a group would help give you focus and guidance? You can do online packages these days I am sure where you have a forum like this one for support as well as an online group leader. And I definitely agree with being kind to yourself.

KOKO I know that feeling too well!
How about oat so simple for breakfast as it's filling and all measured out for you?

My menu today

Oatso and skimmed
Ham salad
Dinner was a small bowl of chicken curry and 3 poppodoms
Snacked on some choc at work that someone had brought in

I got it wrong, I'm weighing tomorrow morning! Wish me luck 😁

nailed it today and crawled my ass out for a run.

Well done KOKO and last.

Everyone is doing so well :) Me, not so much I was so looking forward to getting back to some sort of normal routine now I'm back at work, but got in today to discover that EVERYONE had brought in their leftover Christmas crap, and of course I couldn't resist.

Did try a new gym class tonight though and really liked it, so will go again next week.

Pondering the 5:2...my digestive system feels overloaded.

koko sounds like you're doing all the right things i.e. being kind to yourself, taking a step back and seeing what you are doing. I was going to suggest choosing a few things to focus on rather than trying to do everything all at once, but you've beaten me to it. KOKO!