Is this a good way to go?

lalalovely

I am a 22 year old female, 5’2" and weight 140lbs. Bang on 10 stone - and trying to loose a stone. My BMI is slightly in the overweight category at 25 and I am trying to get it down to a healthy 22 which would have me at 9 stone.

I am looking for some guidance on what I am eating on a daily basis in relation to my weight loss. This is a typical day for me:

Breakfast: Cheerio’s with Milk, Tea with one sugar

Mid Morning: Tea with one sugar.

Lunch: Bowl of soup, Piece of fruit (Orange/Apple/Pear).

Dinner: Salad with sweet corn, carrot, chick peas and sunflower seeds. Salad Dressing (2/3 Balsamic Vinegar, 1/3 Olive Oil with lemon juice and mustard seeds), Stir fry – Blue Dragon Stir in Sauce with a small chicken breast, carrots, mangetou and baby corn with a half a cup of cooked stir fry noodles.
Tea with one sugar

Snack: Popcorn/A few squares of chocolate, Glass of wine on the weekend.

I am trying to cut the sugar from my tea, but I have already cut it from 2 sugars to one. Working on cutting it out altogether.

I work out 3 times a week: 2 spinning classes and one aerobics class.
I have just started a workout DVD for 20 minutes each morning before I shower, work ect.

I try to keep my calories at 1200 except the days I work out then I eat more to compensate for the exercise.

Any insight into if this is a good plan/eating habits/workout habits would be greatly appreciated.

corkcomp

you really need to read the stickies, come up with a NEW diet plan, starting today and post it up for critique.. that diet isnt good at all tbh. there is no point in me pointing out the bad bits as its mostly bad.. breakfast, try porridge, or scrambled eggs and / or berries + apples + pears. dinner should be a little baked potato or whole wheat pasta / rice and a LOT of green vegetables along with fish or lean meat.. sugar in tea is a no brainer, if you cant cut out the sugar it might be better to drop the tea completely..

lalalovely

Baked potato? Pasta? Rice? I am a girl trying to loose weight - carbs are not my friend! They go straight to my stomach! I have a carb/cereal breckfast to start my day off right, but then I try not to have any - the only time I will have them is a small portion with my dinner straight after a workout.

This IS a revised diet.
I have cut out a mid-morning snack, changed from a sandwich (chicken, cheese, lettuce, tomato) at lunch to soup and apple, and replaced carbs in the evenings with salad. I have cut out almost all junk - but I am human and need something every once in a while.

corkcomp

lalalovely wrote: »

Baked potato? Pasta? Rice? I am a girl trying to loose weight - carbs are not my friend! They go straight to my stomach! I have a carb/cereal breckfast to start my day off right, but then I try not to have any - the only time I will have them is a small portion with my dinner straight after a workout.

This IS a revised diet.
I have cut out a mid-morning snack, changed from a sandwich (chicken, cheese, lettuce, tomato) at lunch to soup and apple, and replaced carbs in the evenings with salad. I have cut out almost all junk - but I am human and need something every once in a while.

let me put it another way then. the carbs I listed will do you a lot more favours than: cheerios, noodles, sugar, chocolate and wine.. if carbs are not your friend you need to eliminate the foods I just mentioned there..

EileenG

lalalovely wrote: »

Baked potato? Pasta? Rice? I am a girl trying to loose weight - carbs are not my friend! They go straight to my stomach! I have a carb/cereal breckfast to start my day off right, but then I try not to have any - the only time I will have them is a small portion with my dinner straight after a workout.

This IS a revised diet.
I have cut out a mid-morning snack, changed from a sandwich (chicken, cheese, lettuce, tomato) at lunch to soup and apple, and replaced carbs in the evenings with salad. I have cut out almost all junk - but I am human and need something every once in a while.

You're kidding! You think Cheerios, sugar, Blue Dragon sauce, popcorn and wine is low carb?

Seriously, whole food is your friend here. Eggs for breakfast (porridge if you can't stand eggs, but no sugar or you send the GI sky high). Make your own stir fry sauce. A few drops of tabasco will give a kick to anything without adding calories.

jam_mac_jam

lalalovely wrote: »

Baked potato? Pasta? Rice? I am a girl trying to loose weight - carbs are not my friend! They go straight to my stomach! I have a carb/cereal breckfast to start my day off right, but then I try not to have any - the only time I will have them is a small portion with my dinner straight after a workout.

This IS a revised diet.
I have cut out a mid-morning snack, changed from a sandwich (chicken, cheese, lettuce, tomato) at lunch to soup and apple, and replaced carbs in the evenings with salad. I have cut out almost all junk - but I am human and need something every once in a while.

Baked potato or rice would be much better than popcorn sugar and chocolate. you cannot expect to eat chocolate every day and expect to loose weight, and then worry about eating rice? You are eating carbs all day and not the good ones. Yes treat yourself but not every day. You badly need to change your breakfast and snacks and eat more for your lunch, if you are only having soup and an apple its likely to be the reason you need to eat popcorn.

colman1212

Is stir fried chicken with vegtables healthy?
I always boil chicken and veg as I thought it was better and then add some pasta sauce. Thought it was bad to fry anything.

Also Eileen any chance of a stir fry sauce receipe?
I always just end up buying stuff like sacla sauce or lloyd gross man sauce or for stirfrys those amoy sauces...

EileenG

If you do it right, stir fry is better than boiled, because you are not losing nutrients in the cooking water.

I just chop whatever meat or veg I'm going to be using, then put some oil into my wok/non-stick pan, throw in the meat and garlic and cook quickly, then add the vegetables, possibly with some sauce/flavouring and give them another few minutes. The smaller you chop, the quicker things will cook.

Lazy satay sauce: get some chicken stock and mix in some natural peanut butter and a few drops of tabasco. Pour into the pan, and stir through.

ApeXaviour

Cheerios are junk food


If eating at a calorie deficit (which is the only way to lose weight) and healthier (which helps a lot by not messing with your hormones) it's absolutely important that you have a serving of protein with every meal. You will still lose weight if you don't, but you will lose muscle. So you'll get weaker and stay around the same % bodyfat (no good!), thus your ability to burn calories will have severely depleted also. Eggs in the morning, or cheese/ham or something, and a good serving of lean meat for both lunch and dinner. A bit of whey supplementation while dieting can also help in this regard.

Darkginger

OK, I eat low carb - and here's the list of stuff you're eating that I wouldn't touch:

Sugar
Cheerios
Milk
Orange
Apple
Pear
Sweetcorn
Carrot
Noodles
Blue Dragon sauce (unless it's black bean, which I use very occasionally, and is fairly low in carbs)
Chocolate
Popcorn

To give you an idea of what a real low carb way of eating looks like - this is a typical day for me:

Breakfast - fried eggs and grilled rashers (or a mushroom omelette), or a piece of crustless quiche if in a hurry (or even a leftover chicken leg or something)
Lunch - tin of tuna (or some smoked salmon and cream cheese) mixed with mayonnaise, lettuce and cucumber, or cooked fish and green salad if I have time
Dinner - roast chicken including skin, homemade ratatouille (courgettes, peppers, half an onion, aubergine, a little tomato, garlic and herbs), or maybe steak, mushrooms and salad - often with a cream, garlic and parmesan sauce, or something like homemade sheehk kebabs (basically mince and Indian seasonings) with cucumber raita made with full fat yoghurt.


I do drink red wine fairly regularly - only a couple of carbs a glass if it's dry wine. I drink black coffee unsweetened (recently gave up the sweeteners). I also drink copious amounts of plain tap water. For nibbles, I have a few nuts, or a little cheese, or radishes with a sour cream and garlic dip, or perhaps a hardboiled egg.

I lose weight eating this stuff - I think it's great OK, the first couple of weeks it is HARD to give up the sugary stuff, but now I really don't find it appealing at all. I previously ate this way for 3 years, lost 5 stone, got complacent, started eating 'just the one' slice of toast etc. and put a lot of the weight back on. Been back at it since January, and am almost where I want to be again, weightwise This time, I'm sticking with it!

I'd recommend getting one of the numerous low carb diet books out there and reading about how this works - it's not just the carbs that count, it's where those carbs come from. Once you understand the science behind this way of eating, it's much easier to make informed choices about your food. Good luck!

corkcomp

I dont want to drag o/t or get into a low carb debate but IMO nobody needs to avoid the following, irrespective of goals
Orange
Apple
Pear
Sweetcorn
Carrot

El_Dangeroso

corkcomp wrote: »

I dont want to drag o/t or get into a low carb debate but IMO nobody needs to avoid the following, irrespective of goals
Orange
Apple
Pear
Sweetcorn
Carrot

If you want to stay in ketosis you would have to avoid the above in induction, but they can be introduced again quite quickly depending on how much you have to lose. Carrots are one of the first things I re-introduced. Mmm carrots..

columok

Orange
Apple
Pear
Sweetcorn
Carrot

Asides from sweet corn all of the above rock! Sweet corn is a grain AFAIK...

Darkginger

At 17.3 g carbs in the average apple, 15g in the average orange - and my daily allowance being a mere 30g carbs (which I get mainly from veggies), I DO have to avoid these in order to lose weight. Instead I eat strawberries, blueberries and raspberries. There's around 7g carbs in a carrot, too - but again, I don't stint on veggies - I eat broccoli, cauliflower, courgettes, mushrooms, cucumber, lettuce, cabbage, peppers, aubergines, some tomatoes, some onions, artichokes, beansprouts and other stuff that's low in carbs. Far more veg than I was eating before low carbing!

Once I'm at the weight maintenance stage, then carrots and parsnips etc will reappear in my diet - in limited quantities. Until then, they're off the menu.

Kimia

I hope it's ok to ask this question on this thread as I don't want to drag off topic, but at typical day for me would be:

Breakfast - youghurt (Muller) & fruit (grapes) or raw carrots
Lunch - stir fry with noodles, chicken, veg, sesame oil/soy sauce
Dinner - Fish pan fried with small amount of baby potatoes and leeks/spinach/salad leaves
Snacks - Tea cake or bag of popcorn

I don't even know where to begin taking carbs out - what can i replace the above with? Thanks

columok

Kimia wrote:

I hope it's ok to ask this question on this thread as I don't want to drag off topic, but at typical day for me would be:

Breakfast - youghurt (Muller) & fruit (grapes) or raw carrots
Lunch - stir fry with noodles, chicken, veg, sesame oil/soy sauce
Dinner - Fish pan fried with small amount of baby potatoes and leeks/spinach/salad leaves
Snacks - Tea cake or bag of popcorn

I don't even know where to begin taking carbs out - what can i replace the above with? Thanks

Breakfast: Chicken breast OR eggs & fruit + veg

Lunch: a lean meat/fish, salad + fruit + nuts

Dinner: An epic feast involving plenty of meat/fish/eggs veggies.
I like steak + eggs with a big side salad. It's nice...

Snack: Veggies, homemade nut flapjacks, tea, some meat...

The key with a lowcarb diet is to be nice and full with the meat/fish/veg and then have a bunch of non-destructive snacks that you can munch on!

EileenG

Overall, it's not too bad. I would try to put some protein into your breakfast. How about cottage cheese instead of yogurt? You can blitz it in the blender if you don't like the texture. I'd go for berries rather than the very high-gi grapes. Raw carrots are fine.

Lunch: just make sure you have plenty of chicken and veg, and a small portion of noodles.

Dinner is fine.

Snacks could be better - how about a handful of raw nuts or seeds?

Darkginger

Collins Gem do a good little carb counter book that's easy to keep in your handbag. The thing with a low carb diet is that it's a whole new way of thinking to those who are more used to the low fat way of eating. It's not necessary to avoid fat, but it is necessary to avoid sugar - even if it's in apparently 'healthy' food like some fruits, and even some vegetables.

The higher carb foods in your example are the grapes, the noodles, the potatoes and the popcorn/teacake. I personally would cut out the carrots - but it all depends on the number of carbs per day you're aiming for - I am particularly sensitive to them, and have to keep them very low in order to lose.

I tend not to 'replace' carby foods, I just avoid them - there's an awful lot of stuff I CAN eat, so it's not really that hard. Pan fried fish with, say, steamed green beans with butter on is a typical lunch. The way I eat is high fat, moderate protein, low carb - so I guess you could say I replace the carbs with fat - which helps with feeling satiated, and leads to a lower level of consumption overall.

As others have said - nuts make a great snack - so do those artichoke hearts in oil (Sacla brand, I think), or slices of salami (watch the sodium levels though. You can make interesting dips with cream cheese ( or a sublime smoked mackerel paté buy mixing in some store bought, flaked smoked mackerel, a dollop of horseradish, and a tablespoonful of butter) - and you can actually make 'crisps' by heating little piles of grated cheese on greaseproof paper n the oven until they maelt and go golden - just cool and peel off the paper.

Have look for a low carb diet book - Atkins, South Beach, Carbohydrate Addicts Diet, Protein Power - it's easy to get confused unless you know why you're eating what you're eating (actually, each of these plans is summarised at the beginning of the Collins Gem carb counter, so that might be a place to start reading).

Hope that helps.