Complete diet overhaul! (Long)

Tayla

Hey everyone, i'm planning on completely changing my (terrible) diet and i'm looking for some advice.

I don't need to lose weight and I don't necessarily want to gain weight so I mainly want to change my diet to give myself more energy.

My eating habits lately have been atrocious, I have no appetite whatsoever most of the time, I can manage on 1 meal a day or even just a small snack and a chocolate bar and then other days I can completely pig out all day. I am aware of how damaging it can be to go into starvation mode and as I don't really have any muscle to lose in the first place and i'm not losing weight I'm pretty worried about the kind of damage I could be doing to myself. I've always been able to eat whatever I wanted and never gained a pound but likewise if I don't eat I don't lose weight either!

I am considering going on a high fat/high protein/medium carb diet, I'm not really a believer in the Lipid theory and as i'm already quite skinny and am slightly below the normal body fat ranges for a woman of my age I don't see what harm this diet could do (at least short term anyway until I see how i'm doing)

First things first is breakfast, I'm planning on having full fat milk with flaked almonds, sunflower seeds and coconut chips.

I don't really use much oil to cook with as I grill most things but for things that I use oil for I am planning on replacing that with real butter or coconut oil, If I don't use coconut oil in my cooking that day then I am planning on just eating a couple of spoonfuls of it.

(I had a really bad allergic reaction to crocs shoes a few years ago and coconut oil taken internally and used externally was the only thing that worked so since then i've been slightly obsessed with the benefits of coconut oil but haven't actually been ingesting it since then)

I want to buy coconut flour which I am going to use to make snacks, muffins/pancakes etc.

Dinners will stay the same as I already make very balanced main dinners for my family so this will be the meal where I have most of my carbs I guess.

I won't be switching from white pasta or white rice as I don't really like the other ones but I don't eat white sliced bread, I would rather pitta bread.

I plan on drinking a lot of full fat milk aswell, I always did but lately with no appetite I have some in tea and that's it.

I eat pretty much any vegetable that I can get but I would struggle to include fruit into my diet as I just don't really like it, maybe a banana or a mandarin or something but that's about my limit.

I also am planning on drinking an apple cider vinegar/honey tonic each day to aid digestion.

As I mentioned, I mainly want to change my diet to get some energy, my eating habits have varied a bit throughout the years but even on a very high carb/ high fat diet my weight stays the same.

I'm mid 20's, with 2 kids and stayed in my size 6 clothes throughout my pregancies and had 2 healthy weight newborns so I don't really know what's going on with my body.....I always thought to myself how lucky I was that I had such a fast metabolism but I am a bit worried about the potential damage I could be doing to my body when my appetite goes.....in particular now because if I'm not eating very much food but i'm not losing weight then what the hell is my body eating up to get me through the day??

I'm very keen to establish normal eating habits and as I can be eating relatively normally (but with probably too much chocolate etc) to eating well below my recommended daily calories (I am someone who can't really eat at the first sign of stress) so I really feel like a complete overhaul is needed, something that will preferably boost my energy/mood etc so much that hopefully I won't slip back into this pattern.

What do you think? Any suggestions or opinions welcome!!

EileenG

Improving the quality of your diet is always a good idea.

Try not to get too worked up about eating a lot one day and very little the next. Humans are adaptable, and can cope with this. Some people find their appetite varies directly according to their work load, so the more active they are, the more they eat. On days without much exercise, they don't get hungry. Just make sure that what you do is is nutritionally dense.

Some of the changes you are proposing (like your breakfast) are very dense, both in calories and nutrients, so you will probably find you don't get hungry for a long time after this.

When you say "crocs shoes" do you mean make from crocodiles, or those rubbery things?

You can get coconut flour in the health food shop in Wicklow street, the one opposite BT.

If you are eating vegetables, don't worry about fruit. Veg provides more nutrition per calorie anyway.

Tayla

Thank you for replying

Today is the first day and i'm going well so far, I ate a lot more food than I have been eating lately so it's a good start!

I bought the coconut flour so I'm going to start baking with it tomorrow when I get a chance.

Yes it was the Crocs rubber shoes, It was the only thing I've ever been allergic to, It was almost like a chemical burn and I couldn't walk, it was so painful :mad:

EileenG

You can get blisters in Crocs, especially if you walk a lot without socks.

Tayla

It wasn't a blister, it was like this but it was all over the bottom and side of my feet, It came up within a couple of days of wearing them!

EileenG

Yikes! No, those are not blisters.

Tayla

Haha no definitely not

It was very random because i'd never had an allergic reaction to anything before in my life, I shiver when I see people wearing crocs now!