ready meals v home cooked for weight loss

[ibangthedrums]

I am making a concerted effort to lose weight but really struggling.

Mum is also on diet and lives on weight watchers ready meals and says I should do the same. I don't see the point in making eg a cottage pie for the family and the microwaving a weight watchers one for me. I use skimmed milk, drain off the fat etc but do sometimes use stock cubes, gravy granules type of thing.

From a weight loss point of view (apart from controlled portion size) is it better to have ready meals or home cooked? If home is better what can I tell my Mum who keeps nagging me

definately home. i done the slimming world diet and lost 1 stone. all it was was just no ready meals and home cooked food. lean meat as much as you want, potatoes limited and vegatable unlimited.

I think it depends on your cooking style and also your ability to control your portions! For me the ready meals win hnds down because I find it very hard to count the clories of things I have made and end up guessing which is not accurate at all. The WW mels are delicious (especially the lemon chicken risotto which is my favourite meal whether I am dieting or not!!) I live on a combination of both home cooked and ready meals but do always feel more confident ith the ready meals that I am within the points. calorie range I wanted to stick to!

I also think it depends on the diet and food etc. I don't know much about the WW meals but generally speaking I would imagine with a ready meal that it depends what hidden ingredients it has in it but then again if they are WW ones the points will be worked out for you so I suppose that is not an issue.

I am doing a low carb diet called Go Lower where they supply all your meals to you so they are ready meals but they are also nutritious and help keep you within the guidelines of the diet so I would say in that case it would be better than cooking myself.

Losing weight is relatively easy. Maintaining the weight-loss is much more difficult. If you lose weight by eating special meals you will only maintain the loss if you carry on eating the special meals. Stands to reason. Whereas if you do develop your cooking skills, weigh out your portions (at least initiall) and rebalance meals so that they are more nutritious but less calorific etc. then you are changing the way you eat for the better.... and then you are significantly more likely to lose weight and keep it off.

If you're cooking for a family it's impractical to make 2 separate meals. Diets fail all the time when people try to do this. WW meals cost a packet and are pretty awful so you'd be spending extra money just to eat badly. And there's also the matter of 'parental responsibility'. If you make your family meals more healthy and nutritious (such as adding more vegetables and taking out a lot of the fat as you're doing) then your children will learn to appreciate good food and are less likely to be overweight or unhealthy themselves in the future. They'll learn from mum's good example.

You're doing the right thing