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-50g of fortified breakfast cereal with 1 glass of soy/rice/almond milk (fewer calories and healthier than animal milk) - 250kcal
-1 apple or banana. - 100kcal
Total : 350 kcal
Lunch:
-50g whole grain pasta/brown rice/couscous/quinoa - 150 kcal
-Green leafy vegetables - 100 kcal (that's a lot). You are going to have to eat broccoli, spinach, or kale unless you want to end with some deficiency.
Total 250 kcal
Dinner:
-1 cup of legumes (canned is fine) - 250 kcal
Total: 850 kcal
That leaves room for smaller salads, and other snacks (a few nuts would be good, but be careful since they're high in calories). Use flaxseed oil as dressing. Tasteless but full of omega-3s.
Vegetables are your best friend (One head of cabbage is just 300 kcal).
Try out mock meat products. Some brands taste great, and they are very low in calories (certainly much lower than real meat).
-50g of fortified breakfast cereal with 1 glass of soy/rice/almond milk (fewer calories and healthier than animal milk) - 250kcal
-1 apple or banana. - 100kcal
Total : 350 kcal
Lunch:
-50g whole grain pasta/brown rice/couscous/quinoa - 150 kcal
-Green leafy vegetables - 100 kcal (that's a lot). You are going to have to eat broccoli, spinach, or kale unless you want to end with some deficiency.
Total 250 kcal
Dinner:
-1 cup of legumes (canned is fine) - 250 kcal
Total: 850 kcal
That leaves room for smaller salads, and other snacks (a few nuts would be good, but be careful since they're high in calories). Use flaxseed oil as dressing. Tasteless but full of omega-3s.
Vegetables are your best friend (One head of cabbage is just 300 kcal).
Try out mock meat products. Some brands taste great, and they are very low in calories (certainly much lower than real meat).
First two replies, not so helpful. Re: the second reply, I'm not making excuses, I wouldn't be here asking for help if I were going to make excuses. What I'm giving is reality. I will NOT eat seafood/fish, that doesn't make it an excuse, it's reality, I won't eat it. I don't want to do Weight Watchers because I don't have that much to lose and WW is expensive. I don't have that kind of money.
The other replies, thank you, helpful.
I don't want to eat salad every day, it's just that it's the easiest to prepare on such short amount of time.
Now, I know this is going to get me a lot of, "you are so WRONG!!!!", I know this....but I eat once a day. That's all I have time for these days and when I get to my 12+ (do not forget the plus, there WILL be plus), hours a day for work, it really will only be time for one because when you add in the commute time, I'm gone for 15 + hours a day. When I get home, I feed the pets, I let my dogs outside to play for a bit and then I go shower and fall in to bed. I have to get up at the crack of dawn, I'm not a morning person at. all. so I get up at the last possible second. I suppose I could do some kind of meal bar while I'm driving to work but there will be no sit down breakfast. And there will be no sit down dinner when I finally get home. Maybe I should do meal replacements if I'm supposed to eat more during the day? I don't know, what do people think of those things?
I always figured if I want to lose weight, eat less. So I eat once a day.
As it stands, I must have been wrong about the calories in that salad because I lost 2 pounds between two days ago and today.
When I start getting paid, (just started this job), I will probably be able to afford chicken breasts, (expensive here...all meat is expensive here...probably expensive where you are, as well), and can do that.
So...let's say I'm tired of eating salad...ok, I'll have a chicken breast...then what? What kind of "steamed veggies"? And, really, that is going to be hard because I really don't like cooked veggies. I don't like my veggies warm unless it's corn or potatoes which I'm going to assume I don't get to eat simply because pretty much anything I find tasty, I'm not allowed to eat.
I can eat carrots, like baby carrots, I can munch on those. Or celery, if I'm allowed peanut butter or cheese on them. I'll eat onions, (and I usually do red onions in my salad, I just had run out yesterday so used yellow...because I LOVE onions), on my salad or with beef. I like garlic, with beef. I'll eat tomatoes on a salad or sandwich...but I'm assuming sandwich is out because that's TWO slices of bread which is a lot of extra carbs I don't need. I'll eat lettuce or spinach...I can do red lettuce as well...kind of bitter but I can get used to it. I'll eat green peppers in a salad, if I'm allowed. Other than that, I'm just really not a veggie person...eating tomatoes is like a huge step for me.
Fruits...I love. Bananas I will eat, apples, oranges, cantaloupe, honeydew, I'll eat those. I'm sure someone will tell me that they are no good because most of those are sweet and that means I can't have them. I'll eat peaches and pears, too.
But, let's say I did a breakfast bar or whatever and a bar or something for dinner, if everyone insists I have to eat more meals a day...wouldn't that pretty much take up all my cals for the day?
Like I said, I've done the low carb thing before and it worked well, and I got to eat a lot but I've read a ton of posts on this forum and in the end, most people say you have to eat more meals a day and it's all about cals, not carbs...so I was willing to try it your way. Just...seems I don't get to eat much at all that way.
The reason I ate that much lettuce was because that was the meal of the day. That was it. Truthfully, I didn't need that last cup because I couldn't finish, I was way too full and threw it away. But still, it's all I ate.
So, if I walk in to the store today...what can I get that will be interesting, will keep me satisfied, can last for a week, maybe have some variety instead of 'chicken salad' every single day? What else can I have? Doesn't seem like there is a lot to have. Also, keep in mind, whatever I have, it has to be eaten cold, I only get 20 minutes for lunch. (So if it's a meal, it has to be something that even if I made it the night before, I could eat cold.)
Edit: Oh! It's Thanksgiving time! That means I can buy a turkey! Those are going to be cheap now so I can get a couple of them and have lots of turkey, too, instead of just chicken. Or is turkey not "low cal"? I suppose I won't get to eat a Thanksgiving dinner this year since that consists of turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, cranberry sauce, dressing, yams, gravy, pumpkin pie, etc. I'm ok with that. I can go without Thanksgiving dinner this year...I'll have turkey if you all say I can have that. I just have NO clue how many cals turkey has in it.
Edit again: Forgot to answer a question: Soups. I like them ok, but they are really salty to me so I don't eat a lot of them. Plus, they are almost $3 and that is a lot of money for one meal.
Last edited by Three Wolves In Snow; 11-18-2012 at 08:21 AM..
Breakfast bars typically have less than 250 calories in them. The ones I eat are only 100 calorie snack bars, and I only eat them as snacks.
You can get Campbell's low-sodium chicken soup for only $1/can. Combine it with a fistful of greens in a bowl with a drizzle of olive oil and vinegar and you have a soup and salad lunch. It's not the healthiest thing in the world, but it's quick and easy, has more nutrition per calorie than a twinkie and will work once a week.
As for foods - it's not that you "can't" eat certain things. You can eat whatever you want. You just have to be aware of both portion AND proportion. You can have a banana. Every morning in fact! But you probably wouldn't lose much weight if you have a banana AND half a melon for breakfast, along with the breakfast bar, plus an orange and an apple as snacks before lunch, and another apple and a peach after supper. Instead, have half a banana in the morning, maybe with a scoop of cottage cheese (low fat or full fat - definitely not that "no-fat" crap, it's horrible). Zero prep time on that and you can put the cottage cheese in a dixie cup and eat it while you walk to your car/the bus stop/school/the subway station.
Have the other half banana as a mid-morning snack.
Have a peach that day as a mid-afternoon snack. Have a pear the NEXT day for THAT mid-afternoon snack. Have an orange one morning instead of half a banana. Or better yet, try two tangerines; one for breakfast, one for mid-morning.
Add berries to your fruit menu: strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, boysenberries, mulberries. Feel free to have half a cup of -any- of those, or mixed together, as long as it's just a half-cup, every single day if it suits you. In addition to whatever else you're eating. A half cup of strawberries would be like - 4 jumbo strawberries, sliced. Or 6 medium-sized strawberries. So a mixed berry cup would be 5-10 blueberries, 2 medium sized strawberries, 4 blackberries, 4 mulberries. That's a LOT of berries. You can even stir it all into a little 4-ounce cup of low-fat (not fat free - again - fat free is nasty tasting) plain or vanilla yogurt.
You need to really just expand your perception of food options and see that you are limiting yourself by eating only once a day, by insisting that you don't have time to eat more often. You do have time. You can even cook on your day off, enough for leftovers, and freeze individual-sized portions to nuke in the morning while you're brushing your teeth.
I love to nuke frozen berries and add them to full-fat Greek yogurt for breakfast. Sometimes I add a tiny bit of granola -- but be very careful on the granola, as most of it has tons of sugar. Go for the least number of ingredients and the least amount of sugar.
I also love apple or banana slices with almond butter. Very filling and nutritious.
Breakfast bars typically have less than 250 calories in them. The ones I eat are only 100 calorie snack bars, and I only eat them as snacks.
You can get Campbell's low-sodium chicken soup for only $1/can. Combine it with a fistful of greens in a bowl with a drizzle of olive oil and vinegar and you have a soup and salad lunch. It's not the healthiest thing in the world, but it's quick and easy, has more nutrition per calorie than a twinkie and will work once a week.
As for foods - it's not that you "can't" eat certain things. You can eat whatever you want. You just have to be aware of both portion AND proportion. You can have a banana. Every morning in fact! But you probably wouldn't lose much weight if you have a banana AND half a melon for breakfast, along with the breakfast bar, plus an orange and an apple as snacks before lunch, and another apple and a peach after supper. Instead, have half a banana in the morning, maybe with a scoop of cottage cheese (low fat or full fat - definitely not that "no-fat" crap, it's horrible). Zero prep time on that and you can put the cottage cheese in a dixie cup and eat it while you walk to your car/the bus stop/school/the subway station.
Have the other half banana as a mid-morning snack.
Have a peach that day as a mid-afternoon snack. Have a pear the NEXT day for THAT mid-afternoon snack. Have an orange one morning instead of half a banana. Or better yet, try two tangerines; one for breakfast, one for mid-morning.
Add berries to your fruit menu: strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, boysenberries, mulberries. Feel free to have half a cup of -any- of those, or mixed together, as long as it's just a half-cup, every single day if it suits you. In addition to whatever else you're eating. A half cup of strawberries would be like - 4 jumbo strawberries, sliced. Or 6 medium-sized strawberries. So a mixed berry cup would be 5-10 blueberries, 2 medium sized strawberries, 4 blackberries, 4 mulberries. That's a LOT of berries. You can even stir it all into a little 4-ounce cup of low-fat (not fat free - again - fat free is nasty tasting) plain or vanilla yogurt.
You need to really just expand your perception of food options and see that you are limiting yourself by eating only once a day, by insisting that you don't have time to eat more often. You do have time. You can even cook on your day off, enough for leftovers, and freeze individual-sized portions to nuke in the morning while you're brushing your teeth.
Thank you!!!
I'm going to the store right now. I will get some spinach, red lettuce, red onions, croutons, (and I will minimize the amount...or maybe bacon bits? Those might work as well? Or are those no good?), and the ceasar dressing that I get is less than a carb...I never looked at the cals...I'll take some time today and look at cals in the dressing. I guess I could do oil and vinegar...do I make it myself or do I buy something like that already mixed, in a bottle? I'll find out, I'll look.
I love the berry idea with the plain yogurt. That might be good. I can have that AS WELL as a chicken breast and a teensy salad? REALLY? That will be good enough, that's a lot of food in the end. (Compared to what I've been doing.)
And the turkey...I'll get some anyway. If you all say I can't have much of it or that it's no good, it's ok because I was going to get some for the pets anyway, (I feed them raw).
Bananas for breakfast...I can dig that. I can easily eat that while driving, I can peel it on my way to the car and eat it as I pull out of my driveway and for less than a mile down the road. Doable. Not sure how I can eat cottage cheese while I'm driving...
I'm with you on the non fat stuff. Tasteless and usually has way more carbs than regular so I'm down with that.
Ok, see, now I'm excited. I am off to the store. I'll be back to let you know the inventory and maybe we can come up with meals for Monday through Wednesday. I'm off Thursday through Sunday because of Turkey day...so I have more time to make real food AND I can actually get out my WiiFit+ and do some massive working out which means I get to eat a little more.
Also....spaghetti...I already have the beef in the fridge thawing...so I need to use it, otherwise I just threw $10 down the toilet. Any clues as to how much of that I can eat? I suppose you need cal count on the noodles and sauce I get so I will come back with that, as well.
Thanks Anon! For the first time in forever, I'm actually looking forward to going to the store!
OH and I will look for low sodium soup...it really is the main reason I don't eat soup. I don't like salt..and almost everything pre packaged is way too salty for my tastes.
I love to nuke frozen berries and add them to full-fat Greek yogurt for breakfast. Sometimes I add a tiny bit of granola -- but be very careful on the granola, as most of it has tons of sugar. Go for the least number of ingredients and the least amount of sugar.
I also love apple or banana slices with almond butter. Very filling and nutritious.
Just saw this after I wrote the other one...yes, frozen berries. It is what I'm going to have to do so they last and don't go bad in the fridge. This is a reason I don't buy a lot of fruit. By the time I get to eating it all, it's bad and I wasted so much money. And canned, of course that is out because it's swimming in syrup which is no good, I know that. So I'm going to look in the frozen section for the berries!
Not a clue what almond butter is but I'll look for it!
Oil and vinegar: you make it yourself, you don't make it in advance. You just sprinkle a little red wine vinegar (dirt cheap, less than $2 for a bottle that will last you 2 months) over the salad. Then fill the cap from the olive oil with oil - that's JUST about 1.5 teaspoons. A tablespoon = 3 teaspoons. You want to use less than a tablespoon. Drizzle that over the top of the salad.
Now here's the "big trick" with salad dressings - shhhh it's a huge secret all the cool cats use
Put the salad fixings in a BIG serving bowl. You want the contents to be significantly less than what the bowl will hold! Pour the tiny bit of dressing on top (or dump the contents of the skillet if you're making chicken). Now, cover the bowl with saran wrap. Lift the bowl, holding tight to the wrap-covered edges, and SHAKE IT UP!
Now every tiny morsel, every molecule of salad is coated with dressing, and you only used a tablespoon total between the oil and vinegar!
You put the croutons on top of THAT if you want them crunchy, or include them when you shake the dressing if you want them to slide down easier in your throat.
Also use the cap trick for bottled dressing. With bottled dressings, 1 capful = 1 teaspoon. Never use more than 2 capsfull.
If you shake it all up, you'll never notice that you didn't drown the lettuce. This works especially well for caesar and bleu cheese dressing.
Spaghetti's easy - the serving for an un-adorned plain spaghetti should be enough to fill, but not OVERfill, a kid's cereal bowl. So, a cup, at the most.
The sauce, not including the meat, can be as much as half a cup, but it depends really on what it's made out of. If there's oil in it, less. If there's corn syrup in it, also less.
The meat's pretty simple too. Most people buy a 1-pound package, give or take a few ounces. One quarter of one of those packages, before cooking, will give you a 4-5-ounce portion of meat, and that's a perfectly reasonable sized portion to include. If that was the -only- thing you were eating - just meat with nothing else, you'd probably not feel full after that. But combined with the sketties and sauce and a little cereal-bowl of salad, that should be more than enough for dinner.
If you want a chunk of bread with those sketties, eat less sketties. Keep the sauce and the meat, just cut the pasta in half. Then you can have the chunk of garlic bread too.
You never have to have a teensy salad, unless you just don't think you can eat all that food and want to have SOME greens with your meal. Personally, I prefer my salads to be the biggest part of the meal, and the rest of the stuff to be the smallest. But I really love salad, and your tastes won't match mine
Last edited by AnonChick; 11-18-2012 at 10:44 AM..
Reason: misspelled sketties, oh noes! sketties = spaghetti
You have gotten lots of great tips here, especially from AnonChick. I buy bags of mixed frozen berries and keep them in the fridge to have a small cup with breakfast every day. I don't remember if you like boiled eggs or not, but my hubs boils up a bunch at the beginning of the week and has one or two for breakfast every day. They are complete protein and have lots of vitamin and minerals and only 77 calories. Easy to add to salads, too.
Like AnonChick, I too love salads and make big ones to go with my evening meal. You can put almost anything in a salad if you just want it for a meal, I use a lot of mixed greens (especially romaine and spinach), you can add chicken or beef strips, almonds, all kinds of veggies and even fruits.
Yes, definitely eat full-fat natural foods - it is far more nutritious and satisfying. I keep a lot of different cheeses in the fridge, great protein, fat and calcium, and can be added to many things. I make my own salad dressing in a cruet using vinegar, olive oil and packets of Italian seasonings that I buy from ALDI. This lasts all week for salads that my husband and I eat every day, and far more nutritious than bottled dressings that contain that high fructose corn syrup. For my salad "crunchies" I have switched from croutons to those French fried onions - they are lower in calories and carbs and I only add a few.
Anyway, lastly, my dad who lived alone on a tight budget use to cook up a lot of food at once and freeze in portions then microwave when he needed one. You can do this to save time, and pre-calculate the calories/carbs, then add a nice salad (which you can pre-mix to last a few days if you want, just leave off the dressing). Also if you have a crock-pot, buy a large roast, a whole chicken, a pork butt, etc. and cook it and you can have days worth of good eating by just adding a salad and veggies, etc. And make soup from the broth.
I am a Type 2 diabetic and I have learned that the WORST foods to eat, that spike insulin and therefore cause people to become fat are the starches - wheat, rice (and other grains) corn and potatoes. While you are on your diet you should avoid these foods and anything made from them as much as possible. Once you get to where you want to be, add them back in small amounts.
Hope some of this helps!
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and will work once a week.
