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Too Much Food

  • 08-01-2010 10:01PM
    #1
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 163 ✭✭


    Hello, all,

    I am a little concerned about the quantity of food I ate today. I know the variety is awful and unbalance, that it really needs more protein, less carbs and sugars etc. But I am wondering, just in terms of sheer quantity, if this is toom much to eat in a day. I was working in a coffee shop (on my feet) for eight hours today.

    Breakfast: 40g porridge made with 200ml skim milk + 1 medium banana

    Lunch: 60g granola + natural low-fat yoghurt + 1 tbsp fruit spread + 1 small apple

    Snack: 1 medium banana

    Snack: 4 tbsp chicken curry with 1/4 bread-roll (or half a small soup roll_

    Supper: 1 slice brown bread + 1 1/2 tbsp peanut butter + natural low-fat yoghturt + 1 tbsp fruit spread + 1 medium banana

    Sounds like an awful lot to me...


Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,775 ✭✭✭EileenG


    Totally depends on your lifestyle and metabolism. If you were out skiing all day (or shovelling snow) then it's fine. If you are sitting in watching tv all day, it might be more than you need.

    One day here or day won't make a big difference. It's what you do everyday that counts.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,114 ✭✭✭corkcomp


    Hello, all,

    I am a little concerned about the quantity of food I ate today. I know the variety is awful and unbalance, that it really needs more protein, less carbs and sugars etc. But I am wondering, just in terms of sheer quantity, if this is toom much to eat in a day. I was working in a coffee shop (on my feet) for eight hours today.

    Breakfast: 40g porridge made with 200ml skim milk + 1 medium banana

    Lunch: 60g granola + natural low-fat yoghurt + 1 tbsp fruit spread + 1 small apple

    Snack: 1 medium banana

    Snack: 4 tbsp chicken curry with 1/4 bread-roll (or half a small soup roll_

    Supper: 1 slice brown bread + 1 1/2 tbsp peanut butter + natural low-fat yoghturt + 1 tbsp fruit spread + 1 medium banana

    Sounds like an awful lot to me...

    id guess 1500 cals approx, and no its not too much if your on your feet all day. if we knew your stats and goals it might be easier to answer fully but I wouldnt worry, there is nothing very bad in there, but major lack of vegetables thou


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 163 ✭✭morningpeasant


    corkcomp wrote: »
    id guess 1500 cals approx, and no its not too much if your on your feet all day. if we knew your stats and goals it might be easier to answer fully but I wouldnt worry, there is nothing very bad in there, but major lack of vegetables thou

    1500? I was guessing it at around

    Porridge + milk + 1tbsp golden syrup (forgot to mention) = 400kal
    Banana = 100kal
    Granola + yoghurt + fruit spread - 450
    Apple = 50kal
    1/2 granola bar (forgot to mention) - 100 kal
    Banana = 100kal
    Curry + bread - 300kal
    Bread + pb = 350kal
    Yogurt + spread = 150kal
    Banana = 100kal

    Total = 2100kal

    My worry wasn't so much about the calories, but about the sheer quantity of food.

    I'm 5'8' and currently weigh between 9.1-9.4 stone (scales are varying at the moment). I have put on a bit of weight over the last three months and want to get back down to around 8 stone 10 pounds, meaning I need to loose around six or seven pounds. Not looking to loose it rapidly or anything, just want to make sure I'm keeping track of my eating. I'm usually good at avoiding crap, but as I've said, things haven't been so good for the last few months. I did very badly on the eating front today, but it has been going okay for the last week or so.
    A typical day is (ideally)

    Breakfast: 40gs porridge made with 200ml skim milk + raisins/fruit spread
    A banana
    Lunch: 2 slices wholegrain bread with low-fat butter + baked beans/2 scrambled eggs/soup/ham sandwich.
    Piece of fruit

    Snack: Varies. Low-fat natural yogurt + fruit spread + 1/2 a granola bar/ granola bar/ banana + 1/2 granola bar/ 1 slice wholegrain bread + 1 tbsp natural peanut butter (my weakness)

    Dinner: Chicken + veg + potato/wholegrain pasta/rice with sauce (usually tomato)
    Fruit, usually satsuma


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,772 ✭✭✭Jwacqui



    I'm 5'8' and currently weigh between 9.1-9.4 stone (scales are varying at the moment). I have put on a bit of weight over the last three months and want to get back down to around 8 stone 10 pounds, meaning I need to loose around six or seven pounds.

    For your height your BMI is between 19.2 - 19.8

    If you lose half a stone your BMI will be 18.5 which is on the cusp of being underweight. So if you lose 1lb more you will in the underweight category.

    You seem to be obsessing a tad over the quantity of food, it does not seem much to me. Even if it was 2100 it's just one day.

    You say you normally eat healthy and avoid crap so what is the exact problem if it was one day? By the sounds of it you do not need to lose weight.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 163 ✭✭morningpeasant


    Jwacqui wrote: »
    For your height your BMI is between 19.2 - 19.8

    If you lose half a stone your BMI will be 18.5 which is on the cusp of being underweight. So if you lose 1lb more you will in the underweight category.

    You seem to be obsessing a tad over the quantity of food, it does not seem much to me. Even if it was 2100 it's just one day.

    You say you normally eat healthy and avoid crap so what is the exact problem if it was one day? By the sounds of it you do not need to lose weight.

    Normally I eat healthily, but in the last three months, due to huge changes in my life, I've been eating badly and have noticed that my belly is now sticking out and my hips are wider. I want to get back to eating good food and feeling comfortable in myself. I'm also worried that my weight gain is going to continue if I don't start eating properly again. Also, my hight is between 5'7 and 5'8, not exactly 5'8.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,114 ✭✭✭corkcomp


    Normally I eat healthily, but in the last three months, due to huge changes in my life, I've been eating badly and have noticed that my belly is now sticking out and my hips are wider. I want to get back to eating good food and feeling comfortable in myself. I'm also worried that my weight gain is going to continue if I don't start eating properly again. Also, my hight is between 5'7 and 5'8, not exactly 5'8.

    as mentioned your BMI is quite low already so your not over weight! Maybe just cut back a LITTLE on portion sizes and see how you get on .. 2100 calories isnt exactly a major binge


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 163 ✭✭morningpeasant


    corkcomp wrote: »
    as mentioned your BMI is quite low already so your not over weight! Maybe just cut back a LITTLE on portion sizes and see how you get on .. 2100 calories isnt exactly a major binge


    Yeah, I suppose cutting back on the size of my meals may help. I just feel like I'm eating too much too often. Yesterday, for example
    Breakfast: Dried fruit porridge made with milk + 1 medium banana
    Snack: Small clemintine
    Lunch: Ham sandwich on brown bread, with salad on the side + 1 small apple
    Snack: 1 banana, 1 small square dark chococlate, 1 tbsp peanut butter
    Dinner: Mushroom rissoto with chicken + natural yogurt with fruit spread stirred in

    Still sounds like a lot. Before I would only have one thing for breakfast, but now it's usually porridge with fruit (often a banana!) or yogurt. Same goes for snacks, used to only be one item...


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 163 ✭✭morningpeasant


    Today:

    Porridge made with skim milk + raisins
    1 medium banana
    1 pot yogurt with fruit spread
    1 slice brown bread with peanut butter
    1 slice ham
    2 satsumas
    1 slice brown bread with butter
    1 large potato, ham, peas, lots of cabbage
    1 small apple
    2 roses
    1 bowl cereal with natural yogurt and a banana

    This sounds like an abnormally large amount to me. I'm worried that it might count as binge eating as I was thinking about food a lot today...


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,112 ✭✭✭Blowfish


    Here's an example of actual binge eating (from here):
    Binge beginning at 3.00 p.m. ending at 4.15 p.m.
    Food eaten: 6 bars of chocolate, a packet of bread-sticks, a packet of snacks, a 250 gr. milk chocolate bar, two ice-cream cornets, a jam croissant. Afterwards half a litre of Coca Cola to help vomiting.
    You'd need to be cramming the above into you on a regular basis to be classed as binge eating, so no, you aren't even remotely near it.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,770 ✭✭✭Bottle_of_Smoke


    My worry wasn't so much about the calories, but about the sheer quantity of food.

    What is your fear here? I mean if you're not concerned about the calories the only thing to worry about with quantity of food is erm.... exploding?


    It you're being honest abotu the diet it sounds to me like your belly is down to lack of excercise. Also, bear in mind it always looks bigger to the person attached to it.

    I'd always recommend weights to lose fat. So much handier than cardio if you ask me.

    This is worth a read:

    Why women should lift weights

    Recently, we built a mini gym in a new room at the end of our garden, I was down there with my mum helping her do some weights a few weeks ago where she was doing everything with 2.5kg dumbbells. When I asked her why she was sticking with that weight when it was obviously too easy for her, she told me ‘You’ll bulk up if you use anything over 3kg’, apparantly ‘loads of people have said it’ so it must be true. Then I was in the hairdressers last week and was flicking through the glossy magazines when I saw an article on women and weights. Fantastic, I thought, finally, an article that will show women that they’re not going to look in the mirror the day after a heavy training session and see a mass of bulging muscles. Alas, I was to be disappointed. After I saw the line ‘don’t bother lifting anything over 5lbs because it’ll only make you muscley’, I gave up reading it.

    I really don’t know where the idea that by lifting weights all women are suddenly going to end up looking like this lady came from because in reality we should be thinking of a woman more along the lines of Jessice Biel.


    The main reasons I’ve heard as to why women don’t want to start lifting weights are:

    (a) They don’t want to look like a man
    (b) They don’t want big muscles
    (c) They’re only looking to tone up

    There are so many other myths surrounding the idea of women and heavy lifting, those two incidences above really got me thinking about these mis-conceptions and so I decided to write out some reasons why women SHOULD be lifting weights:

    Lifting wights will NOT make you look like a man - women were never meant to look like men, the chemistry of each gender's respective bodies is different - women simply don’t have enough of the hormones that allow for increased muscle mass, we actually have ten to thirty times less of those essential hormones than males. This means that it doesn’t matter how much you train or how much you eat, you're not going to even come close to the big, bulky physique of a female bodybuilder. For those women who are looking to gain muscle mass, like the lady in the picture above, they have a pretty tough time accomplishing this goal. It takes serious dedication, a super clean diet, a perfectly designed weight-training program, plenty of dietary supplementation, and for most, steroids.


    Lifting weights will actually help you to lose weight – Your diet, will of course be key when it comes to losing weight, however, lifting weights, will, believe it or not also help you a great deal in your quest to shed those unwanted pounds. The beauty of resistance training is that you actually continue to burn calories in the 24-48 hour period AFTER you’ve been in the gym too. This is due to the fact that resistance training elevates EPOC (Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption) which basically means that not only are you going to be burning calories while you’re training but will also burn more calories even when you’re not in the gym. More calories burned means more bodyfat lost which can only be a good thing!!

    Lifting heavy is more effective at burning calories then cardio - I know when we think of loosing weight most peoples first thought is of jumping on the nearest treadmill for an hour, now admittedly you’re probably going to burn more calories during that hour but (and its pretty big but), cardio isn’t like resistance training in that it doesn’t raise your EPOC levels all that much which effectively means that when you’ve finished walking/running/rowing you’ve finished burning calories. More muscle also leads to an increased metabolism and a high basal metabolic rate (BMR). The net result of this is that even when you're not exercising your body is consuming calories. Leading to potentially MORE fat loss and generally an easier time of it when it comes to dieting and losing weight.

    Heavy weights are what make you toned - Contrary to what many believe, endless repititions with that 2kg dumbbell is not going to make you toned. If you don’t ditch the pink dumbbells and the high rep workouts, chances are when you loose weight you’re going to end up with that ‘skinny-fat’ look, I’m sure you know the kind of look I’m on about – the person looks quite slim but are generally very ‘soft’ looking. In other words, you won’t get that muscle hardness most people associate with being toned. It’s important to note though, that lifting heavy will never completely "tone" up a girl who's carrying a lot of bodyfat, so to that end diet is important too.

    It won’t turn fat into muscle - Many people believe that when they start weight training, any fat they already have will turn into muscle and they’ll end up HUGE! This just cannot happen, it is absolutely impossible to turn fat into muscle, or muscle into fat, as each cell is unique from the other. This also disproves the popular myth that once you stop training, all your muscle will turn to fat. IT JUST DOESN"T HAPPEN. What DOES happen is that as your stop training, your muscle atrophy (ie get smaller), your BMR decreases and you need less calories to maintain your weight. Most people miss this point and continue to eat as if they were still training. Of course these excess calories most go somewhere, and they will generally end up on your waist!! It's not muscle turning to fat, it's just plain and simple eating too much food.

    Every day tasks become easier - This one’s pretty obvious, the stronger you get, every day tasks such as carrying the shopping in from the car will become easier to do. (Just make sure you don’t go buying extra to compensate )

    Muscle is more dense than fat – People often say that muscle is heavier than fat, this is obviously not the case as a kilo of muscles weighs the exact same as a kilo of fat but a kilo of muscle takes up less room in your body than fat does.

    Weight training enhances your body type – It can help thin women gain curves while curvier women can lose bodyfat and tone up.

    You’ll age better Over time, your body slowly loses muscle at a rate of five to ten pounds a decade. This is the main reason why people tend to gain weight as they age. Less lean muscle means a slower metabolism, so you don’t need as many calories at the age 50 than you did at 40. The only way to reverse this process is to get into the gym and get lifting!

    Reduces your risk of osteoporosis – Strength training has been shown to increase bone density thus reducing the risk of osteoporosis.

    You will reduce your risk of injury - Strength training not only builds stronger muscles, but also builds stronger connective tissues and increases joint stability. This acts as reinforcement for the joints and helps prevent injury.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 163 ✭✭morningpeasant


    I'm worried because the quantity of food I want to eat seems to be getting larger and larger, and I'm afraid that I won't be able to control myself and I'm going to keep gaining weight. Usually I would just ignore cravings, but I find myself giving into them a lot lately. For example, this morning I had a bowl of porridge with dried fruit for breakfast and a clementine and was quite full. Even though I was full I ate a banana an hour later, then a slice of bread with peanut-butter, and a pot of natural yogurt with fruit spread stirred in. I was feeling a bit down so I went to bed for a couple of hours, and had a large piece of chicken breast, two small potatoes, and peas for dinner. Then I had a clemintine and a banana. For someone who didn't leave the house all day that's an awful lot of food. I'm eating not because I'm hungry, but because I'd like food.


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