Can you eat 'normal' food and lose weight??

[WipsGlitter]

Can you, for example, have something like cereal / toast for breakfast, sandwich for lunch and something like spag bol for dinner and still lose weight?

I joined a gym and there was an induction session and they suggested a diet but it was full of stuff I don't like (nuts, avocado) and all sounded a right faff.

Of course. You lose weight if you eat fewer calories than you are burning.

So move around more and eat a bit less - 3 meals a day, no snacking. Don't overeat at mealtimes - keep portions reasonable and don't eat more at each meal than your body needs.

Yes you can eat anything you want as long as your in a calorie deficit. If your wondering about how many calories you can have for you weight and heigh MyFitnessPal is a free app that's helpful 😊

Yes of course you can. I always just eat normal food as you describe and I’ve lost baby weight 3 times like that.

Just watch the portion sizes & no snacks
I would say always add a bowl of whatever veg you like to the side of your dinner.

What about something like this:
Breakfast= weetabix/porridge/ shreddies/ toast or eggs
Lunch= sandwich ( add whatever salad bits you like to sandwich) yoghurt, piece of fruit
Dinner= Normal dinner (ie. spag Bol, cottage pie) but always with extra veg

Yes of course, as the others have said: just eat less. I eat my favourite things only smaller portions.

My breakfast is 20g porridge with 10g chia seeds, 1 teasp cocoa powder and one of Nesquik chocolate with almond milk. A large glass if water and a cup of tea made with skimmed milk. Lunch would be a couple of boiled eggs with toast or a ham sandwich with lettuce but no mayo, just Dijon mustard and made with 60kcal per slice bread. But sometimes I have toast with butter and marmite. Two slices with an adequate scraping of butter though, not slabs! Dinner is whatever my family are having but without the pasta or potatoes. Sometimes I will have cooked spinach and a plain chicken breast and sliced raw pepper. As snacks I will have Apple or a yoghurt but equally I will have a biscuit or piece of chocolate if I feel like it. I will also have wine and crisps when I want them too but I weight or measure most things (like a small bowl of crisps rather than eating from the bag).

I lost two stone (from 12 stone to 10 stone) in the first 5 months of the year and have kept it off since by roughing following that plan. I aim for 1200 cals a day but usually go over, averaging about 1500 a day I think. I'm not so rigid these days but my weight stays the same.

You can even eat five doughnuts and lose weight

Using My Fittness Pal really brought it home to me how the Darby , boring part of a meal is often the most calorific part. So if I want to drop a few pounds I cut down on the bread and the potatoes and the pasta as well as the obvious junky offenders. I never eat any special foods.

Go direct to Slimming World, do not pass go, do not collect £200.

Nuts and avocados contain healthy fats which your body needs to be productive and efficient.

I used to think I didn't like these things but when I began clean eating I discovered nuts are my favourite things in the world! Along with goats cheese which I used to think was vile and blueberries which I used to think were tasteless!

Eggs and porridge are great, avoid cereals which are full of sugar even Weetabix!

Avoid bread daily or try to have rye rather than wheat. Instead omelettes, salads, soups etc

You can eat whatever foods you want as long as there Is a daily calorie deficit. I still have chocolate, pasta and crisps most days but I weight my portions out and I put everything I eat into MFP to make sure I always stick to the same amount of calories every day. I can’t sit and scoff huge bars of chocolate like I used to but I can still have a Freddo or two for example. Better than not being able to have it at all.
My pasta portions used to be mountains on my plate but I now only have 75g of it with a homemade sauce and 30g of cheese. The only exercise I do is walking quite a lot and I’m losing weight

Aaarghh carby not Darby!

Yes. I do slimming world without signing up the obsession over the yoghurt and hifi bar nonsense. I stick to home cooked foods.

If you look at their recipes online you do at least get good ideas for how to cook healthy versions of spag bol etc if you're not familiar with alternative recipes.

You can. But reducing the amount of carbohydrate in your diet with more protein and veg works faster in my experience. When you digest carbs, they turn into sugar and you produce a spike of insulin to move that sugar into cells to burn as fuel. If you don't burn it by being very physically active, the remainder becomes fat. The up and down in our blood sugar level can also make us want to eat more carbs!

For most of us our physical activity doesn't burn a lot of carbs. Protein and fat makes us feel full up for longer, so reduces snacking and carb craving.

Of course you can. Portion size is the key thing. If you are eating enough to feed 3 people then unless you are extremely active you aren’t going to burn it all off.
If you couldn’t eat normal food and be slim then everyone wouldn’t be slim.
I lost 6st from portion control. No weight watchers, slimming world etc. And I just went about my daily live as normal.
I didn’t view it was a diet or anything else and still had treats and drunk. I think this was the key as I didn’t stop anything so there was no cravings etc. Previously I had done diets, had the cravings and lacked motivation and subsequently the weight returned with interest. This time however the weight has stayed off and it’s now an automatic thing to do the correct portion size.

Of course. You could eat McDonald's for breakfast lunch and dinner if it put you in a calorie deficit.

Look at your portion sizes first. It's alarming how much people put on their plate

For me personally I stop eating when I'm not feeling hungry anymore rather until I'm full.

Agree with many pp, it's the calorie deficit you need but you don't need to actually count them. Just keep portion sizes low, reduce carbs, don't snack. And if you do eat 5 doughnuts that's your lunch. But boy does it taste good once in a while!

Definitely. If you’re used to large (‘normal’) portions it can be hard though as you won’t get much volume for your calories.

The trouble is though that the size of the portions of ‘normal food’ you have to have to keep the calories down isn’t very filling. Plus the insulin spike or whatever it is you get from eating carbs makes you hungry quicker.
So you need a lot of willpower to lose weight by just eating smaller portions, especially at first until your body gets used to it.
Avocados and nuts etc do a much better job of keeping you satisfied for longer.
That said, when I looked at my eating closely it was the snacks that we’re providing the bulk of the calories-often more than the actual meals. So removing these went a long way to helping lose weight

I find that avocados and nuts do nothing to fill me up (and I love avocados). The best for filling up is meat and dairy. Won't be popular here though!
My lunch and dinner when I'm in a dieting phase as opposed to a maintaining phase would be a meat or cheese/eggs dish with lots of veg/salad. No potatoes/rice/pasta.

I agree with @Quickerthanavicar

Slimming world is the only way I can do it because it's not an actual 'diet'
You can have normal food but just need to tweak how you cook it.

Spag bol made the SW way is delish. Even if I wasn't following it I'd still cook it that way, the same with lots of their meals.

I don't get the avocado obsession. You can get healthy fats from elsewhere. I hate avocado's. I like mackerel and salmon. So I eat that, and reduce the environmental damage caused by hundreds of uneaten avocado's being chucked in landfill