Anyone want a weight loss buddy to obsess with?

[GreatBritishBeakOff]

I need to lose a stone. I can’t be stout any more. I tend to do well with a bit of daily accountability so anyone up for a weight loss buddy to commiserate, support and obsess with?! Starting Monday obvs. 😬

I’m the interest of transparency am also just having a few skittles now so am at 1700 😬

I ended up on 1450 cals today.

• overnight oats/protein powder/yoghurt/berries
• lunch was a veg salad, 30g cheese, ham and 1 tbsp dressing.
• had to have a cupcake, it was my colleagues birthday and I baked them so I had to eat one really. I counted 250 cals for it.
• dinner was a frozen portion of dhansak, I was starving after work so I didn’t even have a plate I just ate it out of the Tupperware 🤦‍♀️
• a bag of pop chips and a yoghurt.

as a result, I’ve been REALLY hungry this evening and have had to really wrestle with my cravings.

I’m all planned for tomorrow, I want a really light day, I weigh in on Thursday and I want a loss. I am running tomorrow morning and may try to squeeze in a workout after work as well.

Hi all, although i have been within my calorie intake I don't feel ate well due to being busy and not planning. Also, didn't get round to food shopping.
had 2 cups of coffee with milk
dates, 2 easy peelers, pack of walkers baked crisps. Then for dinner had homemade chicken curry with dhal and okra.

I was starving by evening. Tomorrow should be better as i will go food shopping and won't have a busy day

does anyone have any easy nice soup recipes they can share. I have never made soup and always bought ready made

Broccoli and bacon soup is lovely , and really easy too! Just boil the broccoli (I ad chicken stock to the water) fry up some bacon medallions , add together once cooked and blend! It’s actually really nice and super easy!

I’m just under 1700 today too , going to try get back down tomorrow to around 1400

thpught I’d have a protien bake as a snack didn’t realise it was 270 calories or I wouldn’t have bothered lol!

still we are still in deficit 👏👏👏

i’m sure this has been asked already, but what’s your tdee and what calculator do you use to work it out?

I’m going off my Garmin which gives me a daily, weekly, 4wk and annual average ‘expenditure’, but while the exercise add on is calculated by the watch, the base metabolic rate still comes from a formula. Mine gives me 1680 as my standard tdee (based on my weight/ sedentary/ age etc) and then adds exercise on top. My average over the last weeks is around 2100 a day but some days much less. I try not to eat the exercise calories if I can, so stick to around 1500 a day, but if I ate 1700 a day I’d not lose anything (or lose very little) - I already lose very slowly as it is!

I did well yesterday

Breakfast was a collagen coffee followed by protein porridge made with almond and oat milk with strawberries, pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, dried apricot and a drizzle of honey.

Walked the kids the mile to school then back down to go to work.

Lunch was a tortilla quiche which had tomatoes, cheese and spinach in it

Walked back to go get the kids making it 4 miles total.

Snack was half a protein bagel with 2 slices of prosciutto ham, a slice of chicken and 18g of fat free chive cottage cheese.

Went for a 34 minute run/walk session (and got rained on)

Dinner was tagliatelle bolognese with a bit of cheese on too.

Total 1327, under my goal of 1500.

Got to try and avoid eating the chocolate today at work, a customer brings us in a bag of chocolate so we choose what we want. I usually try and pick something I don't like and give it away but sometimes my willpower fails and I get something I like and eat it!

Another successful OMAD yesterday!

I just go by what MFP has worked out for me, which is 1293 but it adds calories with exercise, I may or may not eat the extra. I just did a calculation using a tdee calculator online and it worked out amount for maintenance as 1723. 1473 for mild weight loss 0.5lb per week and 1223 for 1lb per week, so not too different to MFP suggests for me .

Today is going to be a challenge for me as WFH, I'm in a meeting first thing so will hold off having breakfast until 11. I have plenty of fruit so will try snacking on that if needed until dinner.

Good luck everyone.

I'd a good day yesterday, stuck to 1500 calories and because of the gym yesterday, I had over 1000 cals spare 😀

Did an hours weights this morning. I'm using today as an active rest day, as I did a lot yesterday.

As I'm following 16:8, I'll have my usual salad for lunch (approx 180cals)
DH is cooking dinner, which will be chicken breast stuffed with red pesto, chorizo and mozzarella in the Airfryer, so that could well be over 700 cals if not more 🙈 😂 but I should keep to my allowance.

Can I join in please? I really need to lose 1.5 stones. But my problem is night time snacking.

CW 65 kg
TW 55kg

@Ch4ng3dn4m3 thank you, that’s interesting. I just used a tdee calc and it said 1680 for maintenance with activity as sedentary, so pretty much exactly what Garmin uses as my baseline. Exercise on top, but sedentary must assume some movement mustn’t it? Very few people are completely sedentary. My BMR on there is around 1450.

so if the wisdom is to not assume/eat any exercise calories, should I be cutting 500 calories from 1680 to achieve a loss? On days I don’t exercise, I just pretty much break even. I’m only getting any kind of deficit if I exercise.

Thanks for replying Aileen1992 and Ch4ng3dn4m3, it's a relief to know I'm not alone. I've also had success with ready meals and batch cooking - what I've discovered is that hunger causes a deep panic in me (long story, childhood stuff) so I just grab whatever's available immediately.

Rather than try to willpower this out, and failing, for the time being I'm just making sure I have decent food that can be ready in about 5 minutes. Otherwise I'll snack, then not be properly hungry for a meal, eat just a small thing, then be hungry later, and on and on...

I'm up for a separate thread about emotional eating if anyone's keen?

It's not that I eat too much in a day, it's just so disorganised. Am currently planning to try 2:5 fasting, a keto ish version, aiming to get things under control.

Yes. I am guilty of emotional as well as boredom eating.

@Redpaisley do you think it's worth exploring? I'm at a bit of a dead end with mine, I've spent quite a while figuring out how it originated, but that hasn't fixed it.

Maybe the key is to share our experiences with other people in the same boat. I've tried with counsellors but they've had nothing to say, like they hadn't encountered it before, though it can't be that rare.

@Scallops I think it is. So many people struggle with it. I think mine came from a very deprived childhood. So food has become a source of comfort. That's my assessment.

@Redpaisley I'm sorry to hear that. I can easily see how it became a source of comfort to you. I think I'll start a new thread on emotional/disorganised eating so I don't derail this one.

I'm just making sure I have decent food that can be ready in about 5 minutes

This is a really good tactic! I'm currently restricting calories to go back to only eating 2 meals per day, I lost 7.5 stone with it before and kept it off for a long time, but a DH who constantly snacks and eating the toddlers leftovers rather than waste them, being tired and only sleeping 6 hours a night has got me way too heavy for my liking.

When I did it before, my only two meals a day were lunch at 12/1pm, and tea around 6/7pm, but it was SO important that I had something easily available and ready to eat otherwise at tea time I felt like I would eat my own arm off, outside of mealtimes I weirdly didn't feel hungry at all, any cravings I had were purely emotional and I had a few tactics in place to deal with them!

I also had a councillor who said “just let yourself have it” like seriously what help is that 🤣 said the same thing about my d fee face picking habit (I do when I’m anxious) “just let yourself do it!
would be up to join a seperate thread too x

I can't speak for anyone else here but it wouldn't bother me personally for people to talk about emotional/disorganised eating, and their experience of it on here, it's all linked at the end of the day isn't it? I would imagine a lot of people who struggle to lose weight may be affecting by it in one degree or another, even if they don't fully realise, so you never know, just talking about it may be able to help someone who hasn't had the confidence to give it a name before.

I've just been reading about disordered eating and it's definitely something I'm affected by, getting my hunger under control is the only thing that ever frees me from it, that's why I don't find slimming world particularly helpful for me, as it doesn't seem to tackle the amount you eat, it just wants you to swap to healthier food in the same amounts, but when faced with hunger/emotional/disordered eating it becomes too hard to make the right choices, the hunger never seems to go away.

Do you think the ‘just let yourself have it’ was more like just allow yourself to have it, rather than beat yourself up about it? I think with emotional eating the big thing is the guilt and the remorse and the wishing you’d not done it, so allowing it and being ok with it is actually probably a fair suggestion, although maybe not delivered with any finesse.

one of the biggest things I have done is sort of the flipside of that but it’s still a form of emotional eating. Just giving myself permission to say no to things I actually don’t want: alcohol just because it’s someone’s birthday, or dessert at a meal out because if you don’t have one your friend won’t have one, or birthday cake at work or basically anything that I know I’m only having out of obligation and that afterwards I’m going to regret. It’s totally ok, and no one cares, if I say no thank you. If it makes other people feel bad or feel like they can’t have it, then it’s their problem.

This is so true, when I go to my MIL she is always getting biscuits and cakes out etc, I do say no when I'm actively dieting or not snacking, but she sometimes looks disappointed and I feel bad for the effort she has gone to.

I think this is similar to the 'you must finish everything on your plate' mantra that a lot of us have drummed into us as children, it lingers and feels like you're doing something wrong if you leave something or say no to something when offered. It is such a hard habit to break!

That's a really good idea to get to the place where you feel ok with saying no. I'm fairly good at that as I've had to be gluten free for a long time - although that's different as it doesn't risk hurting people's feelings.

I can't say no to myself though! Hence the snacking a lot/having to eat immediately when I feel hunger. It panics me I think, I'm reminded of being hungry as a child and helpless about it, so feeding myself feels like self care, whereas waiting feels like I'm being cruel to myself/doing what was done to me as a child. I think that's it anyway. I just know that it's a really loud feeling in my head that drowns out anything else.

I guess I need to feel safe and know that there will always be enough now.

Please can I join??

last time I weighed myself in December I was 75kg. I suspect I’m getting close to 80kg now.

would like to get back down to 60kg but would settle on 65kg I guess!