Absutely starving all the time, where am I going wrong??

[WhatWouldYouDoWhatWouldJesusDo]

So I've finally decided to do something about my weight, it's spiralled out of control. I've done this before through SW but put it all back on.

I'm following basic, healthy eating and I am ravenous.

Here's what I've had over the last couple of days.

Friday

Large fruit salad (( melon, strawberry, banana, apple)) couple of spoons of full fat Greek yogurt. Flax seed and a drizzle of honey.

Lunch was home made carrot, and lentil soup. With 4 nairns oat cakes.

Dinner

Lentil mousakka (( I make the topping using a tub of philedelphia, splash of milk and handful of chedder)) with a large, green salad, olives etc and cherry tomatoes

Saturday

Two scrambled eggs on wholemeal toast

Lunch

Huge Greek salad with chicken breast

Dinner

Homemade beef and chorizo burgers topped with cheese. Potato wedges and salad

Today I've had

Breakfast

2 egg mushroom and spinach omelet with a sprinkle of cheese. Handful of spinach and cherry tomatoes on the side.

Lunch was homemade leek and potato soup with around a 1/4 bag of kale shoved in for good measure (( 1 large leek, 2 medium potatoes and an onion between me and my partner)) Around 4 oat cakes.

Snacks I'm just having fruit, I darent buy nuts as I end up necking the whole bag. I have around 4 cups of tea a day and plenty of water. (( at least 4 pints a day as I make a point of having one with each meal))

What the hell am I doing wrong? Portions are good, I'm not one for going hungry is it my body rebelling at not getting a packet of yum yum a few times a week as a scooby snack?

@lovelymm

I'm sick of people in general saying they had 'huge' salads. They still contain calories and keep you used to eating portions that are too big.

There is nothing wrong with eating a huge portion of food if the majority of it is leafy greens! I eat a huge salad for lunch some days and I love it - takes me ages to eat and makes me feel really satiated, contains tons of fibre and comes in under 600 calories. Perfect. Stop with the arbitrary rules for people! There is nothing wrong with a huge portion of low calorie, very healthy food, as long as it's weighed and counted!

They don’t burn that many more calories! And 800 calories burnt by walking 10000 steps- really?! It only takes over eating by a few hundred calories a day to gradually put on weight. If you weigh 20 stone you can’t magically lose weight on 2700calories a day!

Of course she can, if she burns 3200 a day, which if she is active, she easily can!!

This hypothetical woman burns 3000 a day. 2500 or even 2700 would lead to weight loss.

@CodenameVillanelle

They don’t burn that many more calories! And 800 calories burnt by walking 10000 steps- really?! It only takes over eating by a few hundred calories a day to gradually put on weight. If you weigh 20 stone you can’t magically lose weight on 2700calories a day!

Of course she can, if she burns 3200 a day, which if she is active, she easily can!!

I think you’re massively over estimating how many calories exercise burns.

OP you may need to eat more than you think.

I’m a similar height and weight and just started using my fitness pal yesterday. It calculated I am allowed 1800 calories a day for a loss of 2lbs a week.

That’s a lot!!! But I believe it is accurate.

So try using MFP and see what calories it allocates you. It won’t be very sustainable if you are hungry all the time.

I think you’re massively over estimating how many calories exercise burns.

I think you're underestimating how much energy it takes to maintain a big body.
I burn 2500 a day average - 2700 on an exercise day, 2400 on a regular day as long as I hit 10000 steps. I eat 2000 a day and am losing steadily. I don't weigh 20 stone, I weigh a lot less. Are you telling me I'm wrong about how much I burn and how much I eat?

@Ilovesausages

OP you may need to eat more than you think.

I’m a similar height and weight and just started using my fitness pal yesterday. It calculated I am allowed 1800 calories a day for a loss of 2lbs a week.

That’s a lot!!! But I believe it is accurate.

So try using MFP and see what calories it allocates you. It won’t be very sustainable if you are hungry all the time.

1800 is not a lot if your maintenance is 2800 a day. Why do you think it's a lot when you must have been eating significantly more than 2800 for a long time to have gained weight?

@CodenameVillanelle

This hypothetical woman burns 3000 a day. 2500 or even 2700 would lead to weight loss.

From op’s description she’s doing light exercise not moderate. Telling someone they can eat over 3000 calories a day and lose weight is giving them false hope.

@CodenameVillanelle

I think you’re massively over estimating how many calories exercise burns.

I think you're underestimating how much energy it takes to maintain a big body.
I burn 2500 a day average - 2700 on an exercise day, 2400 on a regular day as long as I hit 10000 steps. I eat 2000 a day and am losing steadily. I don't weigh 20 stone, I weigh a lot less. Are you telling me I'm wrong about how much I burn and how much I eat?

Of course I’m not telling you you’re wrong but you are very very lucky. If I ate 2000 calories a day I’d put weight on and I’m 5’7” and weigh 13 stone and I’m active. Maybe there’s something wrong with my metabolism?

100g of chicken👀 Is that even worth cooking?
I would normally cook a few chicken breasts to feed 2 DC, DH and dog, so I just cut off 100g for me.
A typical main meal would be 100g chicken (150 cals) cooked in 1tsp olive oil (40 cals), 100g rice (140 cals), a handful of broccoli (30 cals), curry sauce (60 cals), side salad of lettuce/ cucumber/ tomato/ pepper (80 cals), and a yogurt (100 cals). Total 600 calories. That’s a pretty big meal - it’s more than a third of my daily maintenance calories. If I added more chicken it would be a ridiculous number of calories for one meal.

glamazoni that's interesting because there's around 60g of rice in that bowl.

Its a 22cm pasta bowl, it isn't a plate.

Thanks for the helpful advice from some posters, I've downloaded my fitness pal and I'm digging into that. I've input today's food and I've 200 spare according to MFP.

Sadly I think @Izzy30 is right. I am over 20 stones, different tdee calculators showed me to eat 2000-2300 cal to lose a kilo a week. I won't on that. It's at least 300 cal higher a day than what I actually need to lose the kilo a week. It took me few weeks to figure that out. I have sedentary job and exercise 6x a week, but shorter (hiit and weights) workouts because, well, I have to build up the workouts slowly. Probably when I get to longer workouts, I might need more cal?

The calculators are not 100% accurate. They may be good to give general idea though.

@Glamazoni

100g of chicken👀 Is that even worth cooking? I would normally cook a few chicken breasts to feed 2 DC, DH and dog, so I just cut off 100g for me. A typical main meal would be 100g chicken (150 cals) cooked in 1tsp olive oil (40 cals), 100g rice (140 cals), a handful of broccoli (30 cals), curry sauce (60 cals), side salad of lettuce/ cucumber/ tomato/ pepper (80 cals), and a yogurt (100 cals). Total 600 calories. That’s a pretty big meal - it’s more than a third of my daily maintenance calories. If I added more chicken it would be a ridiculous number of calories for one meal.

Ah! It sounds lovely!

It's about 350 calories. With a tomato based sauce and a little cheese that's a 600 calorie dinner. That's not ' A LOT ' as you put it. Why do people do this??

Yeah it’s ridiculous. If you go to a restaurant, the portions of pasta are quite a bit larger than 100g too. 100g is absolutely fine as a serving size. Nor is eating a large portion of salad bad in any way.

If you only started your diet a couple of days ago you may just need to tough it out and get comfortable with hunger. After a week or two you'll be used to the smaller quantities. That's how it works for me, anyway!

This is probably not a popular opinion but I think exercise makes you hungry. The calories I burn from exercising are outweighed by the hunger it generates. If I’m trying to lose weight I cut back on high intensity exercise, so I don’t feel hungry and I can stick to my diet.

OP I know everyone hates me in these parts as I’m a low carb advocate and that seems to upset 98% of Mumsnet. However if you try all of the above advice and still can’t shift the weight then wander over to the fast800 thread in weight loss and we’ll try and help you by throwing lots of science based advice your way.

@Glamazoni

This is probably not a popular opinion but I think exercise makes you hungry. The calories I burn from exercising are outweighed by the hunger it generates. If I’m trying to lose weight I cut back on high intensity exercise, so I don’t feel hungry and I can stick to my diet.

Try doing exercise at a different time of the day. I work our early morning now before breakfast and it helps me eat less. I eat a regular breakfast after which I'm hungry for but I don't feel the need to eat an extra snack, which I do if I exercise in between a meal time.

Also @Glamazoni if you do HIIT and burn 400 calories that allows you to eat an extra snack and still be in calorie deficit

If you don’t do exercise you’re likely to lose muscle mass on your diet and are more likely to regain any weight you lose. People aren’t designed to be sedentary. You don’t need to be in the gym every day but you should be doing a substantial amount of walking.

In the past, obesity was rare but people weren’t eating loads less on average than we do now. They ate diets quite high in carbs and fats too. The key difference was their level of activity which far exceeded what people do these days.

Shed I think a lot of the weight has come from being so sedentary.

I'd gone from being big but very active and always on the go to hitting a big wall of depression and only leaving the house when I absolutely need to. Sometimes that would be for an hour max, sometimes not at all and in between doing the bare minimum at home. But food wise I've always eaten healthyish meals....... If Jamie Oliver came round and expected to find a load of readymeals and junk he'd leave disappointed.

I think in my case the weight really piled on massively when my activity stopped so drastically. I'm shocked at how I'm struggling now I'm actually leaving the house.

I’m eating 2900 calories a day and losing lots of weight because a) I’m fat and b) I exercise.

Op, take yourself off to the Team RH Facebook page. Lots of free content there that will explain it and help.

@Glamazoni

This is probably not a popular opinion but I think exercise makes you hungry. The calories I burn from exercising are outweighed by the hunger it generates. If I’m trying to lose weight I cut back on high intensity exercise, so I don’t feel hungry and I can stick to my diet.

You aren't wrong at all.

Exercise definitely does this, which is why there's the saying 'you can't outrun your fork'

It's all about homeostasis - the body's desire to keep things in equilibrium. You burn calories, it wants to consume more.

And add in the whole psychology - 'I've been to the gym/been good so I can have that extra biscuit'.

On top of that, there's the expectation that exercise burns a lot more calories than it actually does.

A 30 minute run, depending on how fast you run, burns around 250-350 calories max. So you have to be doing a lot of running, regularly, to see a real difference.

@CodenameVillanelle

Also *@Glamazoni* if you do HIIT and burn 400 calories that allows you to eat an extra snack and still be in calorie deficit

You have to work really hard to burn that many calories!

Hi, what you are struggling here with is your blood glucose. You are eating shit loads of fruit which is full of sugar (and no it's not 'healthy' sugar- people who watch their health don't eat fruit) which is giving you an insulin spike and then crash which makes you starving. You need to drastically get rid of the carbs and up the protein and fat. This will prevent your glucose spikes and fill you up and you should not feel hungry after an initial 3 days doing this. Hope that helps you x