I'm starting my diet tomorrow, from scratch. Never done this before, can anyone help me by advising 1 days times for each meal or and snacks. I know it seems a silly question but at the moment I eat breakfast anytime between 10 am and 2 pm, I need a plan to start on. Sensible eating times to stick to. Any help will be welcome.
maggie
Hi,
Is there a reason you have your breakfast so late, shifts or something?
I'd suggest breakfast at 8am then small meals at 11am and 2pm and dinner/tea at 5pm. If you save some calories from these meals you could have supper at 8pm.
Early breakfast should kick start your metabolism and regular meals should keep you going through the day.
Whatever you do per-plan your meals. You'll stick to the plan bette
Happy healthy eating
Agree with you innerslim, exactly the same advice my dietician gave me 14 months ago, along with recommending i tried to eat carbohydrates and protein with every meal.
pre-planning my meals, meant creating a shopping list and sticking to it, which saved money in the long term (and not shopping when i was hungry)
I have read some of your comments, you have given some great advise, I can see you have done very well and I congratulate you, well done you. when I started to read some of your stuff I thought oh my god I'm never going to do this, but as I read on you some how changed my mind, so I thank you for that.
Is there any where on this site that explains what carbohydrates are? I need to understand what are proteins too, the quicker I learn what they are the quicker I can get started proper, I've never been to a dietitian or been on a diet, so all the calorie counting and knowledge of such things as the above mentioned are all new and are taking a little time to understand. My head is saying this is too much for my old brain to take in, but my heart is saying come on girl you can do this. I'm not going to give in, take care Maggie
Hi
understand totally, all the time i slept in biology classes has caught me up. personally i took a sports nutrition course, and read alot. But i found this website, hope it helps. cotains alot of info, including carbs and protien.
No reason for eating late, just got lazy and used to eating when ever I felt hungry, so now is great chance for me to change my eating habits, 1 or 2 more questions hope you don't mind, as you can see I'm starting this weight loss with no knowledge about how to diet, food portions or what you call a small meals between 11 am and 2 pm. what would you call a small meal? I'm making some fresh fruit salad to pick at between meals, is this the right thing to do, do I need portion sizes, as fruit is has natural sugar content, you'd think at my age I would know, in my 60's I'm 5 feet tall and weight 12 and a half stone and my BMI is 32 I think. I will work your advise Thank you innerslim.
Maggie
Hi Maggie 123,
It's time to wake up and smell the coffee, isn't it?
It doesn't matter very much when your day starts, but you really want to try to structure 3 meals a 'day' - by that I mean reasonably sized, sensible meals - with small, low calorie snacks in between to tide you over to the next meal. That end result is that you don't go without food for more than about 3 or 4 hours. That helps to prevent your blood sugar going too low which prompts you body into fat storage mode.
A snack might be just 100 Kcal or so. Some fruit, something on a rice cake, My mid-morning snack at work is one scone from the canteen (about 170 Kcal). In the afternoon, it's fruit.
All the Twix, KitKat and other such stuff that I used to do are history.
Oh and I'm NOT talking six meals a day, here!
Loads more advice about this sort of thing - diet, portion sizes, balanced meals, etc., etc. - on the NHSChoices live well lose weight pages. It's good advice and it's free.
wow thanks all, great advise. I've got to a point now I'm not going to weight myself each weeks, got rid of my scales, think once a month is ideal. All I got to do is understand the calories and take things slow and easy, going swimming tomorrow for first time in 20 years, so looking forward to that. I'm not looking for big changes over night, that's never going to happen, if I can loss about 1 lb a week that will do me, that's progress , lol and yes I smelt the coffee Doikosp, got the shock of my life when I looked at a photo of myself on Wednesday. OK so now I say goodbye to the fat me and looking forward to seeing the real slimmer me in the near future. Thanks each and everyone who left advise it really is great stuff and helps so much. xxx Maggie
Hi maggie123
Funny you should mention that - I was just thinking the other day about swimming being such a good all-round exercise and that I really should get back into that again.
I'll put it on my list. It won't be immediate as it wouldn't fit in all that well at the moment - but perhaps in a couple of months time.
Oh, personally, I weigh daily, every morning before eating and before exercise (after my first 'pee'), but it's not how often you weigh that matters, it's more a case of whether you take it all too seriously and start fretting about every pound here and half a kilo there.
As I keep saying - don't worry about the blip, focus on the trend.
If you're losing weight at about the right pace (averaging out roughly 1 Kg per week, though a bit faster for the first couple of weeks) then fine, if not, then fine tune your regime with more/less calories and more/less exercise/activity as necessary.
Oh and my wake up call was probably watching the Hairy Dieters and realising that, in fact, I was not very far short of being that shape and size too!
Good luck.
Hi Maggie
One silly piece of advice, which i wish i had done.. take a photo of yourself on the day you start, as you travel of this new sized you life, hopefully will help you keep on track but as you approach the end it will drive you on i believe, as i approach the end of my weight loss, i wish i had. Just as a reminder of what i will never return too if nothing else.
BKKbull, Your so right, I went to a party on Wednesday night, many photo's taken, when I got home to look at photo's on computer I had the shock of my life, I asked my husband who was standing next to him in one of the photo's, and he laughed and said it was me.
Inside I could have curled up and died, such a shock truly was, I have added my photo on my fridge, believe me it really helps, I feel sick ever time I look at it.
hi i was just wondering im starting dieting and i work all day so what im doing is going home straight doing my dvd or swimming and then having dinner. is it best to have dinner after work then exercise or just to excercise straight after work then dinner ?
Have a look at myfitnesspal.com, it helps you set your daily calorie level and recommended levels for carbs/sugar/protein/fat/salt etc, there is a huge data base of food which has all these levels worked out for you and there is a food diary to enter everything you eat during the day. It's free and all the hard work of looking for carb content etc is done for you.
In actual fact it makes no difference whatsoever what time of day you eat. Some people like to eat three set meals while others like to 'graze'. I know people on shift work who have successfully lost weight despite their eating being turned upside down. The main thing is that you stay within your calorie allowance with a good balance of nutritional healthy foods. Exercise can also be fitted in to suit your lifestyle, there is no 'best' time to exercise. It's never really a good idea to exercise immediately after eating whether you are trying to lose weight or not. Indigestion is not pleasant.
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