Your 'must have' diet shopping item please..

[DareIask]

I have a Tesco delivery booked for the morning and this just might be THE Monday 🙄

What do you have to have to get through a week of being 'good'.

You can do this! I kept saying 'next week' for years but I finally buckled down in Jan last year and now I've lost 5 stone and gone from obese to normal weight, and my relationship with food and alcohol is finally healthy.

Here are some of my staples:

• Cauliflower rice (mine comes frozen in steam bags, super easy) to use with stews, chilis, etc.
• 0% fat greek yoghurt - I make low cal salad dressings by mixing it with wasabi, or herbs, or spices. You can also make low cal tuna salads or sandwich fillings using this plus a spoon or two of light mayo (so it's not all mayo)
• Feta cheese
• Fage Trublend yoghurts for breakfast - high in protein so will keep you full for longer
• Eggs. For breakfast, for omelettes, etc
• Birds Eye Steamfresh bags - quick and easy way to get veggies into a dinner
• Herta's chicken sausages - I fry these in a non-stick pan without oil/butter, mix with cauli rice, lots of veggies, and have with a wasabi mustard
• Frozen jacket potatoes - quick and easy, just mind your fillings (make them with the 0% yoghurt)
• Bags of stir fry veggies to have with 5% beef strips/cubes

Hope that helps, happy to share any other tips if useful.

Fry Light spray!

Courgettes and aubergines! Can fit into most dishes, are easy to work with and tasty.
Full fat yogurt. It's nicely filling and perfect with some frozen-defrosted fruit
Eggs.
White fish fillets (plain)

Crapload of spices and herbs

@Nevth

You can do this! I kept saying 'next week' for years but I finally buckled down in Jan last year and now I've lost 5 stone and gone from obese to normal weight, and my relationship with food and alcohol is finally healthy.

Here are some of my staples:

• Cauliflower rice (mine comes frozen in steam bags, super easy) to use with stews, chilis, etc.
• 0% fat greek yoghurt - I make low cal salad dressings by mixing it with wasabi, or herbs, or spices. You can also make low cal tuna salads or sandwich fillings using this plus a spoon or two of light mayo (so it's not all mayo)
• Feta cheese
• Fage Trublend yoghurts for breakfast - high in protein so will keep you full for longer
• Eggs. For breakfast, for omelettes, etc
• Birds Eye Steamfresh bags - quick and easy way to get veggies into a dinner
• Herta's chicken sausages - I fry these in a non-stick pan without oil/butter, mix with cauli rice, lots of veggies, and have with a wasabi mustard
• Frozen jacket potatoes - quick and easy, just mind your fillings (make them with the 0% yoghurt)
• Bags of stir fry veggies to have with 5% beef strips/cubes

Hope that helps, happy to share any other tips if useful.

That's just what I need!

Thank you, and well done... you've done amazingly well

Porridge has been my revelation. Never ate it before last year (presumed i didn’t like it). However, it’s quick and easy to cook in the microwave, and I have it with (de-frosted) frozen fruit, or a chopped apple. Gets rid of my 11am hungrier pangs and I can last until lunch (most days).

Cauliflower rice - also used microwaveable ones in place of rice.

Buy decent quality fruit - you’re more likely to eat it.

May sound simple, but don’t buy sweets and biscuits, if you don’t have them in the house, you can’t eat them.

Peppermint tea - sometimes I drink this when I feel like a naughty snack. Just the process of making and drinking it distracts from wanting the chocolate.

Fry light spray
Sweeteners instead of sugar in drinks
Tonnes of berries!
Eggs
Salady bits to bulk out meals
Low cal drinks

Frozen cherries. Tesco’s do big bags. Sweet and delicious defrosted with yoghurt (or ice cream).

@Egghead68

Frozen cherries. Tesco’s do big bags. Sweet and delicious defrosted with yoghurt (or ice cream).

Farmfoods has sour cherries and they are to die for😁

I’ve learned so much from this thread!

My suggestions:

• ryvita (the seed one)
• Philadelphia light to go on top
• gluten free wraps (massively lower calorie vs normal ones or bread) - scrambled egg is a great filling
• pouches of instant bean chilli (I like the Jamie Oliver one) for a quick meal/wrap or potato filling or topper

• loads of peppers/ mushrooms/broccoli to bulk out meals nutritiously
• fizzy water with limes/lemon for a treat
• lots of veggie burgers/sausages are low cal vs meat
• almond milk is v v low calorie (much less than skimmed) and great for porridge
• berries, apples, almonds, walnuts, flax, chia : for breakfast or snacks

Very tiny portions of your favourite sweets/snacks: put them somewhere hugely inconvenient or in the freezer.... you will get the urge, and better to defrost/get up a ladder to get the thing you want than eat 1000 cals of other things while craving

If you have to have treats in for kids/partner: get ones that you’d never touch

@Nevth: please could you share your other tips? You sound v knowledgeable and whatever you are doing is clearly working

Carrots and nice close-cup mushrooms for virtually calorie-free snacking

Ryvita (I like the dark rye)

Eggs

Fruit and veg that you will actually eat

Fry lite.

Just don't buy the sugary fatty things at all.

Grapes. Sweet, crunchy, can have a big handful as a snack. V low calorie

Jamie Oliver’s lentils in the packet.

Totally yummy and 2 servings is something like 250calories. I guess they are meant as a side dish but they make a really deli SH and filling lunch.

I can highly recommend quark instead of Philadelphia. Mix in herbs, salt and pepper. So good. Also great as a dip if you add some sriracha

Watching!

Kimchi! I find spicy foods give you more bang for your buck, so to speak, and the one I buy is only 15 calories per 100g. It’s beautiful with a little bit of cheese or a couple of fishfingers.

Hungry now...

This one, from Waitrose (but probably plenty of other places too)

Low fat baby bels
Fat free set yogurt
Frozen cherries and blue berries
Porridge (I like the texture of readybrek, I know I'm an overgrown kid!)
Root veg for a filling soup or stew
A few low cal ready meals to help you get through the first few days (I find this helps me adjust)
Frozen peas and broccoli to go with meals
Frozen spinach to bulk out sauces and curries for next to no cals and add nutrients
Cacao powder to go with yogurt and fruit for a chocolate fix

[quote 10kaDay]@Nevth: please could you share your other tips? You sound v knowledgeable and whatever you are doing is clearly working[/quote]
Here are a few more (not all of them are strictly shopping list items!):

• Weigh everything - invest in a decent food scale and use it religiously. I know it's boring and time consuming, but my biggest problem was that I had no idea about portion sizes. Meat and carbs, sure! But olive oil for example? It's almost impossible eyeball 100kcal vs 200kcal of olive oil. Same with butter and other fats.
• Kind of similar to the above, but even small amounts of calories matter. Not on any one day, but over time. If you eat 200 calories above maintenance every day (an extra splash or two of olive oil plus a biscuit), then in a year you will gain 1 stone and 7 pounds (3,500kcals = one pound). It's so easy to do!
• Use a good website (I like www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/) to work out your BMR and TDEE. Your BMR is the amount of calories you need to stay alive if you were in a coma, completely bedbound. TDEE accounts for your activity rate which you can adjust (as obviously serious athletes need a lot more calories than when you're WFH and not moving much!). Do not eat below your BMR! In the long run you're likely to be tired and may have side effects if you do. Go for a safe deficit of 250-500kcal below TDEE to start with, which is also more sustainable and less likely to seem a like a 'diet'. I'm not a doctor so please do take care of yourselves with this and consult one if necessary.
• Focus on protein heavy foods, as they will keep you fuller for longer. Chicken breast, tuna, salmon, lean red meat, certain yoghurts, etc.
• Finally - I know the above sounds like a lot to take in, and cumbersome. But I promise, after a few months it was second nature and I could stop being quite so meticulous about weighing known foods. I kept losing at a healthy rate and also learned more about nutrition - as a result I feel so much more energetic.

Sainsbury's Dark Chocolate corn thins (sorry, not Tesco). 150 calories per pack of two and they really hit the sweet spot so I don't feel deprived

@Nevth: thank you for your tips. My takeaways are:

• protein
• watch those portions
• honesty re actual calorie intake over time & consequences of

I can be guilty of getting impatient and really slashing my calories, but I can never keep it up for long so good to think it’s not wise really!