Help with diet please

[marvelousmarmaladian]

Hi I will list my diest and if anyone can point out where I am going wrong I would appreciate it as I am not losing any weight. Thanks

Breakfast - coffee with 1 sugar and 1 stevia sachet plus lite milk plus a diet shake.
Lunch - salad and cheese and mayo sandwich on buttered wholemeal bread
Dinner - meat, carb and at least 3 veg. ( stir fry , lasagne, steak and salad, souvlaki, chicken parmigiana with peas and noodles , shepherds pie etc).

Snacks - fruit, yoghurt, cheese and crackers, a couple of chocs
Alcohol - 2 glasses of white wine most nights

I feel like you must be starving. I’d add some food at breakfast (I like fruit and yoghurt so maybe you could just move this snack to breakfast and cut the shake). Lunch could be a lot more nutritious for the calories - salads maybe rather than a sandwich, currently I’m having pasta with salad and chicken, soup is also good as the weather gets cooler.

Cut the wine to a few days a week and same for the chocolate.

Are you actually tracking your calories or just trying to eat sensibly? Depending on the size of your glasses of wine you could be drinking best part of 500 calories a night, chocolates are normally minimum 50 cals each. Some of your meals could be pretty high calorie if you’re not measuring amounts of cheese, oils etc.

It depends on the amount of everything that you are eating, and whether this is really what you eat every day. Are there things like a weekly takeaway night, a Macdonalds on the way back from swimming with the kids, Sunday roast with all the trimmings etc that you haven't taken account of?

Is this serious?

Drop the alcohol.
Eat food for breakfast which includes protein and fibre. Poached eggs on toast with tomato, Greek yogurt with fruit and seeds or overnight oats
The same with lunch more protein and veg.
Dinner seems OK.

If you increase the protein you may not need the snacks.

Yes it is serious. I was slim for most of my life but have packed on the weight after menopause. I thought this was an ok effort.

I’m also surprised at the question, you eat a lot and it’s a lot of calorific stuff, that’s why you’re not losing weight, you can’t possibly think you’re dieting,

Why on earth would she be starving?

The alcohol alone could easily be 700 cals.
The cheese and mayo sandwich will be a lot of calories for very low volume of food.

1. wine
2. no quantities or idea of calories

That’s a huuuuuge anount of food. And alcoholnis wasted calories.

Measure everything for a week and log calories, it won’t take long before you stop buttering the bread or reduce your mayo etc. Be brutal with it, weigh your butter, your mayo, your cheese, so you don’t miss any calories. You’ll be shocked

I think people are being quite harsh here, I wouldn’t say it’s an obscene amount of food tbh.

however, as some have pointed out, you’re probably filling up on the wrong things.

Ideally have something to eat at breakfast so you don’t need the snack - some fruit, Greek yogurt and granola maybe?

Lunch - lots of people on here seem to view bread as the enemy but I get it, a sandwich is easy and quick and fills you up. Not everyone wants a salad for lunch etc. However, can you change it up a bit a few days a week? So have a sandwich, say, twice a week for lunch? The other days (depending if you can cook at that time) maybe scrambled eggs or something similar? Eggs are good protein and fill you up a lot

Dinners sound good to me, I’d perhaps focus on portion sizes rather than the contents as in principle they sound healthy but it can be easy to overload a plate and not realise how many cals you’ve given yourself!

As others have said, the alcohol will be your real downfall here. Wine has a surprising amount of cals for what it is. I’d try and cut down anyway (as 2 glasses of wine per night is over weekly units) but if you do fancy drinks would you consider a spirit and slimline mixer (eg diet tonic or sugar free lemonade), this would massively help cals.

otherwise I’d say you may need to start accurately tracking calories if nothing seems to be working and you’ve made all those small changes

Because she’s not eating breakfast and just having a sandwich for lunch. I’d be miserable! And presumably she is indeed hungry because she’s reaching for a lot of snacks.

Only on Mumsnet would that be considered a huge amount of food, although absolutely the calories could be really high in what is being eaten depending on portion sizes.

I would try remiving the sugar and stevie from your coffee and having a proper breakfast- Greek yogurt with fruit, over night oats, omelette, beans on toast.

For lunch, add lots of vegetables. A side salad, some crudites, home made soup.

And your tea sounds fine.

I would drop the daily wine and all snacks.

All the health gurus I food on Instagram talk about getting the right amount kf protein and volume eating. So they eat lots of veg to feel full. They also dont drink alcohol or snack.

I'm having to lose weight for surgery and I've found cutting my daily wine habit to zero has made a difference. All the 'bloat weight' (the weight that rapidly changes daily) has gone and I'm now steadily dropping.

Good luck!

It’s the snacks that make it a huge amount of food. There will be 500+ calories coming from snacks, then all of the wine calories.

Hi OP, this isn’t enough information to check your diet.

What are the diet shakes, how much mayonnaise do you use, what size portion is your dinner, how much cheese do you have with your snack? The amounts of these things = the calories.

Also, What is your height, weight and waist circumference and your physical activity level?

However on a general level this is too much food. If you are having a large dinner which has lots of carbs, cheese and fats then adding chocolates or cheese or alcohol on top will mean you are ingesting too many calories.

Wine every night is not advisable for health or weight loss. That plus snacks like cheese and chocolate could easily take you over your maintenance calories and into gain.

I don’t know your specific anthropometric data to say absolutely but what you have described isn’t generally a weight loss diet for the majority of people.

You need to consider your calorie intake. I’m not doing that for you. It’s minimal effort giving zero results. You need to be in control, not make a guess at what might be good to eat and then ask people to do the legwork on why it’s not working.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with the amount you’re eating however the things you are eating are pretty calorific. Cheese, wine, chocolates, parmigiana are all high calorie. The only way to really change your eating is to log it so you get an idea of how many calories is in your food. You can eat an awful lot and loose weight if your choosing the right things.

Track your calories. Calculate how many you need a day. Load an app on your phone, my fitness pal or similar and record everything you eat and drink a day.
I think you're eating more calories than you realise. You maybe maintaining your weight but unless you're very overweight I wouldn't think you'd be losing eating that. Alcohol are easy calories to give up. Good luck.

It's hard because you don't talk about portion size, OP. What you're eating could be fine or not depending on how much of it there is.

I would consider swapping the diet shake at breakfast for either a small bowl of porridge or some protein such as scrambled, boiled or poached eggs. That will be more filling than a shake.

Lunchtime sandwich - you only really need butter or mayo, not both. Measure out your cheese so you're not unknowingly having an entire day's TDEE worth in one sandwich. Grating it makes it go further in smaller amounts.

Evening - portions, portions, portions! Again, what you're eating could be fine or it could be causing weight gain depending on how much lasagne, noodles, cottage pie etc. Lasagne tends to be quite high in calories, you are better having something without loads of cheese and sauce, such as spag bol or a pasta bake with tomato/veg sauce rather than cheese.

Snacks - get rid of the daily chocolates, and the cheese and crackers. Again, with the yoghurt, if it's one small pot, fine, if you're decanting a bowl from a big pot, that probably isn't.

Wine - 2 glasses daily is a lot if you're trying to lose weight. I think once or twice a week at most, and if you're having it, cut out one of your snacks - say the yoghurt - and just have fruit that day.

What you really need to do is work out your TDEE and weigh/measure your portions so you can be sure you are in deficit. If you weigh then measure you should only have to weigh once, e.g. you will know that you can have a mug's worth of pasta per portion, 3 cm cut piece of cheese grated etc.

Sugar, mayo, wine. Quite a lot of food too when you add in the snacks.

If you can bear it, I would recommend keeping an honest food diary in one of the apps, my fitness pal or nutracheck, with portion control /weighing where you can (not obsessively but an honest estimate). This will give you a guide to whether you are reliably in a calorie deficit or not and also your macros (how much of each food group you're eating). As a guess, if you're not losing weight you are probably not in a deficit (you may have converted yourself from a surplus to maintenance though which is still to be applauded). On the macros, while there's no need technically to eat to a fixed proportion, you can lose weight on high fat/low fat, high carb/low carb, so long as you are in a calorie deficit, the trouble is most people tend to feel more hungry if their diet is higher in carb and fat and more full if they have more protein and fibre. You don't have to go extreme with it but understanding where you are as a first step is good.

In terms of easy swaps, I would definitely look at the alcohol and reduce the amount and/or have a few alcohol free nights a week, aside from the extra calories in wine (and that alone could be taking you out of your deficit) it could be making you bloated and also thirsty/dehydrated which if you find yourself reaching for salty snacks in the evening could also be a culprit.

I'd also look at your snacks, personally I aim for three good meals a day and no snacks (although I eat my breakfast mid morning and my lunch sometimes mid afternoon as I hate eating first thing), but there's nothing wrong with snacks per se, you just have to be careful with quantities because unlike with a proper meal often we don't portion control snacks properly, if it's something like fruit that's ok because you're unlikely to overeat it (although if you're genuinely starving a piece of fruit isn't going to satisfy you the way a proper meal would). But things like cheese and crackers are dangerous IME, the old carb/fat/salt combination, so delicious but so easy to eat loads, I reckon I could trough 500 cals of cheese and biscuits in 15 mins no bother , that's only about 4 medium bits of cheese on a cracker, but that's a third of my daily calories to lose weight right there, if I'm having that as a snack the rest of the day is going to be a challenge... When you do you find yourself hungry for snacks usually, daytime or evening?

No one said it was an obscene amount of food, but it is a large quantity of food and calorific stuff, cheese, chocolate, mayo, lasagne, then wine daily

unkess she’s having tiny portions, which I doubt, she’s eating a high fat, high carb, high calorie diet with a hefty amount of alcohol thrown in for good measure,

I can’t fathom how anyone would think they would lose weight on this,

In terms of a of a daily menu that isn't too different from your current, how would the below sound?

Breakfast: coffee with sweetener as currently, a protein shake instead of the diet shake (or if you can manage it, maybe a later morning breakfast of something like overnight oats or yoghurt and fruit?)

Lunch: sandwich as currently but chicken or prawns instead of cheese, add some salad veg to your sandwich or have it on the side, or a cup of veggie soup (I home make mine which is easy and I add extra beans or pulses for protein and fibre boost). Some fruit for afters?

Dinner: as currently but be mindful of cheesy/creamy sauces and oils in dressings, increase your protein and veg portion and reduce the carb/fat elements?

Snacks: fruit, yoghurt, veggie sticks with dip, rice cakes (sorry I think the cheese and chocolates have to go as a daily thing, you can still have a few times a week)

Alcohol: 2 x glasses 2-3 days a week, on the other days experiment with different 0 alcohol and diet/ zero sugar soft drinks until you find something that feels like a treat?

Well she has a diet shake for breakfast,

then she has a calorific fatty sandwich for lunch

then she has a calorific dinner of things like lasagna.

then she eats, yoghurt, fruit, cheese and crackers and chocolate,

she’s not said what time of day she eats all that, but I’d suspect the yoghurt and fruit is during the day, possibly some before lunch, and the cheese and crackers is evening, to go with her glasses of wine. And the chocolates when ever.

how anyone can think that’s a diet that would leave you starving and miserable is beyond me

“Calorific fatty sandwich” is an insane way to describe a very normal lunch. It’s not the absolute healthiest thing in the world but also there’s nothing wrong with it, especially in moderation and if using things like wholemeal bread and not much butter etc etc.

Its so odd to demonise such a normal food in this way. People want to diet and lose weight but they also don’t want to be exceedingly miserable and counting and judging everything either