Pre Christmas Diet change..

shimmery

Ok guys, I need your help. I have spent the past few months basically eating what I liked.. when I liked and not counting portions and not exercising. The results are I am up nearly a stone :O I need to get this in check before Christmas. because if I dont start now, I will be facing into the new year with another 1/2 stone on top of that to lose.. whereas I can address this problem now, and get a head start on the new years resolutions.
Added to the fact that everything is tighter on me now and going out over Christmas is not even appealing to me now
So I have 2 weeks to clean up my act and hopefully lose a few pounds..
Would you advise going cold turkey and avoiding carbs.. or is this unrealistic given the time of year? This is what I am thinking for the next 2 weeks?
Breakfast: Bowl of porridge (Hard to give up this weather id imagine)
Tea break: Coffee, Banana
Lunch: Bowl of soup (Cully and sullys or avonmore etc)
Dinner: Large Omlette with chicken and veg or mince and green veg or chicken breast and green veg

Also.. Is this considered low carb if I include veg such as carrots/parsnips/onions/peppers as I know they contain some carbs but not as much as potatoes etc
Any help greatly appreciated!!

Shimmery

Orla K

First off your not going to lose a load of weight between now and christmas, it's only two weeks away.

You don't mention how much you weigh or what your current calorie intake should be.

Breakfast: Bowl of porridge (Hard to give up this weather id imagine)Carbs
Tea break: Coffee, BananaCarbs
Lunch: Bowl of soup (Cully and sullys or avonmore etc)Carbs
Dinner: Large Omlette with chicken and veg or mince and green veg or chicken breast and green veg Protein and vegCarbs

If you do want to go low carb then base your meals around a protein source, not a carbs one. You could go lower carb and change your break and lunch. For lunch it would be much better if you brought in something you made yourself, things from packages have alot of crap in them that won't help.

shimmery

Thanks for the advice Orla.. Do you think it better to totally cut carbs? I thought porridge would be ok as it is only oatmeal.. and then any veg would be ok too. But is it pointless trying to follow a low carb diet only if there are no carbs? I have tried and failed on the induction of atkins..

Also did not know bananas were a carb :O yikes..

Dreading Christmas and the abundance of delicious albeit unhealthy food..

hardCopy

Christmas is a difficult time to start but not impossible (I'm down 2 pounds on last week after a weekend of drinking). If you can break even you'd be off to a good start.

You'll need to eat less calories than you consume.

Have a look at myfitnesspal.com, enter your stats and goals, it'll calculate your required daily calorie intake for weight loss.

Then log everything you eat for a few days or a week. This will help you get some idea of how much you are eating and what's in it.

It's not a perfect app and it can be annoying having to weigh stuff when you're cooking but it'll help train your eye so that you know how much food you really need (or don't need).

I wouldn't say there's any need to cut carbs out altogether but they do make it easy to consume a lot of calories so you'll need to monitor it.

Soup is really easy to make at home and if you make your own you'll know exactly what's in it.

Mr. CooL ICE

As others have said, losing weight in two weeks is not something that can be achieved successfully without some minor detriment to your health.

Have you considered combining whatever exercise you have with 8-16 intermittent fasting? I have never used it, but know a few people who vouch for it and said they lost a lot of weight over the course of a month or two, but they combined it with cycling and weights. Maybe someone here can talk more about it.



edit-> Drink green tea 2-3 times a day. That always helps

danlen

LordChessington wrote: »

Have you considered combining whatever exercise you have with 8-16 intermittent fasting? I have never used it, but know a few people who vouch for it and said they lost a lot of weight over the course of a month or two, but they combined it with cycling and weights.

While IF can be a useful tool, it's probably a bad idea to advise someone who hasn't already got their diet 100% dialled in to start trying to implement it.

Get the basic good nutrition habits down, get stress and sleep in order, be generally active, do all the above consistently for a relatively significant amount of time (i.e. until it stops getting results), and then they can start looking at using more advanced protocols like IF/nutrient cycling/nutritional ketosis/whatever to tweak things to get to their goal.

On a side note: IF is pretty effective and I've found it quite convenient when I've used it.

Orla K

shimmery wrote: »

Thanks for the advice Orla.. Do you think it better to totally cut carbs? I thought porridge would be ok as it is only oatmeal.. and then any veg would be ok too. But is it pointless trying to follow a low carb diet only if there are no carbs? I have tried and failed on the induction of atkins..

Also did not know bananas were a carb :O yikes..

Dreading Christmas and the abundance of delicious albeit unhealthy food..

You can really totally cut carbs.
What I think you should do is
1. Figure out how around many calories you should be eating weight in lb X 10or12
2. Avoid packaged food
3.Base your meals around a protein source
4.Weigh and measure everything and add it into a website like fitday
5.Look at how much protein your getting, around 1g of protein per lb of bodyweight
6.Adjust food intake to meet requirements.
7.Worry about carbs and fat after you have this done.
8.Don't forget to avoid packaged/processed food.
9.Don't worry about the abundance of unhealthy food, it will still be there after christmas it will always be around if you want to have a bit of it. I normally think do I really want it(and think about the reasons I want it) or can I leave it till another day, most of the time I leave it, then forget about it.

vard

You don't NEED to cut carbs, you need to cut calories. It also happens to be the most straight forward and convenient way of doing things.

Calories in / Calories out. The difference between those two end figures = weight loss / maintenance / gain

danlen

vard wrote: »

You don't NEED to cut carbs, you need to cut calories. It also happens to be the most straight forward and convenient way of doing things.

Calories in / Calories out. The difference between those two end figures = weight loss / maintenance / gain

True, there needs to be a calorie deficit, however, the macronutrient make-up of the diet will have a massive effect on metabolism and hormonal processes, thus making it likely that the calorie balance will be different between two diets that are isocaloric.

One of the reasons why people can lose a decent amount of weight by reducing carbs, and so it is generally a useful strategy.

Macha

danlen wrote: »

True, there needs to be a calorie deficit, however, the macronutrient make-up of the diet will have a massive effect on metabolism and hormonal processes, thus making it likely that the calorie balance will be different between two diets that are isocaloric.

One of the reasons why people can lose a decent amount of weight by reducing carbs, and so it is generally a useful strategy.

I would say try to limit your Carbs and try to have them around times that you're exercising but don't forget that it is just a tool to get to the main goal, which is creating a calorie deficit. I went mad on calorie dense foods when I tried a low carb diet and I couldn't understand why I wasn't losing weight. Anyway, that is just a caveat based on my personal experience.

The other related point I'd make is try things out and see what works for you. Eating more regularly works for me, fasting works for others. I have to have breakfast, others are happy without it.

Final comment: people rarely eat enough vegetables so I propose you try to base your meals around veggies, with the addition of protein rather then the other way around.

danlen

Macha wrote: »

The other related point I'd make is try things out and see what works for you.

Agreed.