Stuck at size 12-14 despite daily exercise, are my meals healthy?

[ForNavyPoet]

I am quite short at about 5ft tall and a bit chubby. I am a few sizes over weight. I should probably be a size 8 or 10 for my height but I am a 12-14 yes I know it could be worse. I exercise daily. I don't cook the most I will do is put a pizza in the oven for example. Are tesco branded vegetable pizzas for 1.75 and tesco cheese and onion quiche's healthy. I have a feeling I am doing something wrong as I am staying the same size. I also treat myself to something chocolatey and icecream once or twice a week.

You need to count calories and be in a calorie deficit to lose weight.

Use the free my fitness pal and track reality for a while. You need to see what you’re really eating vs calories out

If you go on www.tdeecalculator.net to work out your tdee and deficit and then log food on myfitnesspal app which is free. Try increasing protein and limiting carbs. Pizza is a lot of carbs and fat, should be more of a treat. Stick to protein and veg with healthy fats like avocado and protein like yoghurt or cottage cheese etc

Cut what you eat in half for a week or two. You will see a difference.

No neither of those foods are healthy. Healthy foods are unprocessed. Cook from scratch with fresh ingredients. Prioritise protein over carbs. Eat real vegetables and whole fruits. And yes, track honestly.. if you want to lose weight you need to eat around 500 calories less than you need, weekly. It’s very boring!!!

What are you eating if you don’t cook?

Yes, the only way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you eat (calorie deficit). I’m currently trying (and failing) to do so. It’s not easy, but what helps is eating loads of low calorie food (volume eating- veggies and salads etc) and protein to keep you full for longer.

good luck!

On foods being "healthy". It's really down to your biology, age etc but most of all your overall diet.

I'm not personally a fan of pizza (a lot of fat and carbs) but if you're going to eat pizza, look at quantity (it's easy to overeat) and what you have with it.

I think this is the pizza you're having:

Tesco Stonebaked Vegetable Pizza 380g - Tesco Groceries

So the portion size is half a pizza. If you're having it all, that will be too many calories for most women. If you still want to have it, also eat half a plate of vegetables with it. E.g. salad without dressing or cooked green veg.

I'm not sure which cheese and onion quiche you mean, I can't find a healthy one online but if it's this one:

Tesco Cheddar & Onion Quiche 160G - Tesco Groceries

It's pretty high in fat.

An alternative might be to cook yourself a frittata (which are pretty easy to do) and then you'd miss off the pastry. It still wouldn't be low calorie but lower. I'm not as much of a stickler on "ultra processed foods" as some here and I've worked in pizza and quiche factories. The ingredients are pretty basic and no different to what you'd use at home. But by cooking yourself you can make changes, e.g. add vegetables in, cook without the pastry etc.

But centring both of your liked meals about both these foods it's worth pointing out both are quite carb heavy as well as fatty even if you only have the suggested portion. I will defend the food industry most of the time as a lot of the criticism is unjustified BUT they will design food to a calorie count which looks good and not assess that the portion you are suggested to eat in any way fills you up. This is my problem in a way with calorie counting as people can obsess about the number then wonder why they still feel hungry when what they ate was not satiating. It's also fair to point out both will be low on fibre.

If you prioritise protein and fibre, you are more likely to feel full. An alternative could be some cooked chicken in a marinade or fish, this would be higher in protein (and fill you up) and lower fat and carbs. If you then fill your plate with green vegetables, that introduces healthy carbs which take longer to reach your blood stream and fibre you will be so full you might not reach for the ice cream.

Its not healthy, no - as an occasional treat, half a pizza is ok. By occasional thats not every Friday because you deserve it.

I've lost weight and the only successful way I've managed it is calorie tracking. And jeal planning. Even if you don't cook very much you can still meal prep and make easy dinners.

Wgat foods do you like? How comfortable are you cooking?

For example,I cook a bean chili from.scratch and freeze portions because I often can't be bothered to cook after a busy day at work, but still need to eat well to stay on track.

I would call them a some times food - low protein, high fat and high carb. You need to make sure you’re getting enough protein - if you’re not then your body will send hunger signals even if you’ve had more calories then you need. To lose weight you will need to decrease your calories.

Are pizza and quiche healthy? Look at the calories and the saturated fat on the box. Part of a balanced diet they would be ok now and then but if you don’t cook then I can’t imagine the rest of your diet is any good either

Eat salads and low calories. Under 1000 and you will lose weight.

You can eat really unhealthy food and lose weight if you eat small enough amounts, and you can eat the healthiest diet going and gain weight if your portion sizes are too big.

To lose weight and eat healthily you really need to learn to cook. Otherwise you'll be relying on a lot of processed food.

If you go too low you will damage yourself. Your metabolism shuts down. While some do need to eat that little, I am in calorie deficit and lose weight at 1900 calories a day.

I'm 5ft 7 and cycle an hour commuting every day and on my feet all the time at work and home.

OP needs to use the proper tools to work out the calories she currently eats and what would put her in deficit. Not crash to a ridiculously low number of calories that isn't sustainable long term or good for her.

You don't need to eat healthy food to lose weight but you do need a calorie deficit. Which unfortunately for a short person means you can't eat many calories.

But your post reads like you're being deliberately goady as surely no-one thinks the types of food you are talking about are healthy and you don't need to spend long on here to see what MN says about processed food?

Why don't you cook? If you ate simple meals like omelettes or beans on toast it would be an improvement on what you're eating now both in terms of health and calorie reduction.

This. You can eat nothing but McDonald’s and lose weight.

You need more protein to fill you up not processed foods like others have said.

Greek yogurt for breakfast, lean meats and salad and veg. Try to aim for 30g protein per meal.

Also start strength training. Muscle burns more calories than fat.

Ready-made supermarket food is rarely healthy. The pizza and quiche will be high in saturated fat, low in fibre, probably high in salt, low in vitamins and minerals, full of ‘chemicals’ like emulsifiers and preservatives, very calorie dense (so you can eat too many calories without feeling full).

Something like whole grain rice with daal (made of veg and lentils) will cost about the same as the pizza and is much less calorie dense and is full of nutrients and fibre.

Chicken stew would be another good one - make with lots of veg and a few potatoes.

Both of the above can be made in large quantities and stored.

A quick and easy meal - scrambled egg on wholemeal toast with parsley on top and tomatoes on the side.

You need to count calories. I lost 3 stone quite quickly by eating less than 1500 calories a day.

Some of my easy lower calorie meals:
Veg stir fry with rice or noodles - you can buy stir fry veg ready chopped
jacket potato with tuna, broccoli & spinach
Jacket potato with beans & cheese
Tomato, pepper & onion omelette

Soup for lunch most days

Reduce carbs, don’t eat after a certain time, up the exercise

All true. But if you eat the high fat, high carb foods, those are the foods that we're wired to overeat because they contain all of the lovely nutrients our bodies want if they didn't know where the next foods were coming from. Also as well when you get those foods inside you, you can often feel hungry quickly afterwards. This might be because of sugar highs and lows or it might also be because of attempts to lower calories in a given food, manufacturers will often add in more air. You see this a lot with snacks where manufacturers try and hit that "around 100 calorie" limit but if you ground all the food down and squashed it up, that 100 calories would be really small in volume. So it doesn't seem like much but there's not much in your gut once you've consumed it. So you eat more.

If half of your diet is fruit and vegetables, especially green vegetables, it's just harder to overeat because there's so much bulk with less calories.

I don't personally calorie count, I am not prepared to do anything I'm not thinking about being a lifelong change and that's not going to be something I could sustain but by changing what I eat and also really tuning into whether or not I'm hungry, I find that's helpful. But I have lost weight successfully by calorie counting in the past. Just be aware though that industrially made foods only need to be accurate on nutrition quantities to +/- 20% and the average doesn't have to be near the on pack declaration. Several things can go wrong and are just inaccurate anyway. The main issues are natural variation and weight control (all plants operate to average weights in the UK so you might have one heavier than the on pack weight which matters if it's single serve). But also mistakes happen. An operator adds too much of an ingredient or if it's say a single chicken breast in a ready meal, the size tolerance from the supplier is sometimes a bit out. That happens.

I’m 5ft. I maintain at 1200 calories, lose at 800-900 and gain at 1400. I weight train and walk 20,000 steps a day.

You need a tracker until you can work out what’s in your portions. Weigh things, you’ll be surprised how much you’re having.

And whilst it is mostly about the calories, packing in those kinds of foods every day will make your body cling to water, and have you looking bloated all the time.

An average day for me is:
Breakfast: egg muffin (just egg and cottage cheese baked)
Lunch: chicken wrap or meats and salad
Dinner: meat and veg or a rice/pasta dish
Will have a couple of snacks, their healthiness depends on the time of the month 🙃

Have dedicated days to “treats” like pizza to look forward to, rather than it being the standard. Regardless of calories, eating more processed food has me gaining weight.

You might lose weight if you eat nothing but MacDonalds but you won't be healthy! There was a guy who did that for a month as an experiment and he felt really ill. So not a great thing to say to an OP who says she doesn't cook!

You don’t cook so no you almost certainly are not eating healthy. Unless you are having pizza and then mostly just salads. Most frozen pizzas are UPF though so not good food, encourages you to overeat

and at your height you will need far fewer calories than “standard portions”

jackets are really easy to cook - just like pizza but longer ( or microwave to soften and then pop in the over for ten mins if you are worried about cooking costs )

serve with tin tuna and tomatoes, cucumber and bags of salad - so not hard cooking

or half a tin of baked beans ( you don’t need to add the cheese as that’s extra calories ) . The beans keep to the next day for beans on toast edit whole meal bread

simple soup - peel 2 large carrots and rough chop, peel and rough chop an onion, add a large handful of lentils cover with water and bring to a boil for 20 mins and then use a baby food blender stick or food processor to smooth to a soup. If you don’t have the gadgets , you need to grate the veggies which is harder longer work but does burn more calories . Add salt and pepper once cooked

Seriously , get lost with this attitude. Pisses me off the amount of times I see this on mumsnet.

You will not be fuelling your body properly eating less than 1000 calories, especially if you’re exercising everyday. You will just be grumpy , tired and more likely to binge .

You need to figure out how many calories you’re burning in a day roughly (there are calculators online) and then set a calorie deficit . For example, my total calorie burn in a day is around 2200 cals so I aim to eat 1700 calories for a deficit of 500cals. I’m losing weight steadily.

I prioritise protein and fibre but don’t think carbs are the devil like some people do on here .

My fitness pal is a good place to start to see what you’re eating . You can’t out exercise a bad diet. It’s 80% diet , 20% exercise.

To add , I’ve lost 6 stone. MJ helped me last year but I’m on my own now and using the same principles (calorie deficit, prioritising protein) and still losing steadily . I workout 4 times a week and do 10k steps a day.

@ExplodingCarrots most people are sedentary unfortunately so have lower TDEE and for OP at 5ft, will have a lower tdee than a standard height person. But I also agree that too low calories is also not good for health.

At 5ft 3 and 44 with an office job my tdee was only 1800 when I started losing weight at 13st, its now less 1495 at 8st 11lbs! Which means my deficit is less than 1000 to lose 1lbs a week but I'm exhausted on that and lost hair, so now I'm lower weight I've reduced my deficit down eating around 1200-1300 a day. Would love to exercise but I work and commute 11-12hrs a day 5 days a week and also work 1 in 4 Saturdays as contracted overtime as well as study on evenings and weekends so I just don't have time to exercise.