So I’ve decided to get back in shape and need to start eating right and shave off about 25 pounds. I have a good exercise routine (50-75 miles per week biking; weight routine every other day; kayaking; and walking) but I eat like crap.
Help? I am a very bad cook and HATE to cook, so something like cereal for breakfast, a Lean Cuisine and fruit for lunch and something easy to make/buy for dinner would be ideal. I don’t want any fad diets . . .
I’m 42, female.
Jennshark, I used the Simply Delicious Flexpoints Cookbook by Weight Watchers. Most of the recipes in there are very simple to make and are actually pretty tasty. I dropped 45 pounds using this cookbook for my dinner meals and working out.
Really, the recipes are very simple and don’t take much time to prepare at all. I’m an extremely busy person, so it was important that I didn’t have to take a lot of time cooking.
Does it have meal plans? I am really clueless about eating healthy and need a good guide.
I don’t know what kinds of foods you enjoy, or what your particular issues are, AND I’m not one to talk right now, but when I am doing the right thing, this is what works for me:
Eat small amounts throughout the day; whenever you think you’re hungry, have a healthful snack and don’t let cravings build up.
Keep yourself hydrated. I don’t like water so for me this means Crystal Light. It’s more hydrating than diet soda.
Snacks I keep in the office: Almonds, FiberOne or similar bars, hard-boiled eggs, cups of fruit.
Things I eat at home: Any cereal with two or fewer grams of sugar per serving, preferably whole grains. Tuna sandwich with low-fat cheese melt. Low-fat brakfast sandwich (Whole grain English muffin, egg fried in olive oil, Canadian Bacon (look for 1.5 grams of fat per slice or two, some is higher in fat), low-fat cheese). Egg salad sandiwch with low-fat mayo, mustard, honey mustard.
I’ve tried Lean Cuisine but it’s just not much food, and it’s a lot of sodium. Is there any kind of pasta you are comfortable making? I make a pot or pan of whole wheat pasta with vegetables and ground turkey or low-fat hamburger, and I can eat more for the same amount of fat. It gets a little boring but it means lunch is made for the week. I divvy up the portions and freeze them in individual containers.
Fry up chicken cutlet with jarred garlic in olive oil–simple and flavorful for dinner, and pair it with a steam-in-a-bag frozen veggies. Or bake some potatoes and keep them in the fridge to slice up with mushrooms and onions and fry in olive oil (sensing a theme? 
) for yummy low-fat, easy hashbrowns for dinner.
Toasted English muffin with low-fat cream cheese and green olives.
Grill up a bunch of chicken and vegetables and keep them on hand to put in tortillas and melt some low-fat cheese over them.
If you have a sweet tooth, Jello nonfat sugar-free puddings are good. And weight Watchers makes a whole line of frozen treats that actually are reasonable sizes and yummy.
All this talk is making me psyched up to go grocery shopping for all these options myself!
WW tends to be about not exceeding your points, and meeting good health guidelines each day. These include certain numbers of dairy, healthful oil, fruits and vegetables. They don’t really plan out the day because they leave it up to the person’s schedule and personal taste.
When do you get hungriest? How do your job and other activities affect when you eat or when you have time to eat? Some people just aren’t hungry in the morning and others need breakfast first thing. WW helps you be aware of your own patterns and planning ahead.
Not really “meal plans” per se, **Jennshark. **Each main course recipe, however, provides suggestions for sides. Of course, each recipes give you all the nutritional content as well.
This book has a section for appetiziers, tapas and light bites, salads and soups, brunch and lunch, poultry, meats, fish and shellfish, vegetarian, sides and desserts and baked goods.
Even my husband, who really, really likes his food, was impressed by the recipes and happily ate what I put in front of him.
Thanks for the input. My situation is that I really am the worst cook ever, even the thought of broiling a chicken breast makes me flinch.
Look at as a way to improve your cooking skills. Really, do you always want to eat Lean Cuisine for dinner? They’re good in a pinch, but I burn out on them.
For instance, this is a really simple recipe from the book.
Take boneless skinless chicken breasts, salt and pepper them, brush them with a mixture of dijon and fat free or low fat mayo, dredge them in cornflake crumbs that have a little grated lemon zest in them, a tablespoon of parmesan cheese, and a tablespoon of minced parsely; spray a baking sheet with Pam, put the breaded breasts on the sheet and lightly spray them with Pam, bake at 425 for 20 to 25 minutes.
Easy-peasy, no muss, no fuss. Make a salad to go with and maybe some cous-cous.
I hope I’m not coming across as pushy; I’m just trying to illustrate how simple it really is. Good luck whatever you decide!
No, you’re coming across as helpful I ordered the book!
One of your big enemies is bread. Hunt down some Mission Carb Balance tortillas to substitute. One particular size/style has 200 cal, 4.5 g fat, 21 g fiber.
We now do the bulk of our shopping in the produce aisle.
Make colorful salads. The more colorful the salad, the more variety of vitamins you’ll have.
The same with fruits. Lots of color, lots of vitamins. If you’re eating as much fruit and vegetables as you’re supposed to, you’re not going to be all that hungry.
Avoid anything frozen – too much sodium – any premade sauces and “chemically altered high-fat to become low-fat” stuff.
Ideally, you would learn how to cook. Don’t be afraid of the kitchen. Find a friend who really knows how to cook and have that person show you a simple, basic couple things.
Make colorful stir-fry. Red pepper, purple cabbage, snow peas and carrots is my favorite. Add some chicken and maybe even some rice and it’s a meal! Some oil in the pan, turn it on medium, add anything frozen first, then anything fresh a little later and voila! it’s done.
Pasta is easy, too, and can be a nice change of pace in moderation.
Here’s a very simply diet. You need on average about 11 calories per pound to maintain your current weight, that is just doing normal stuff.
So let’s say you weigh 200 pounds. You need about 2,200 calories per day to maintain that 200 pounds if you’re not doing anything special.
So first figure out the weight you want to be. Let’s say you want to weight 175, you need about 11 X 175 = 1925 calories a day to live at that weight. So reduce your calories to that amount per day. Eventually, slowly, you’ll lose weight and settle in from 200 pounds to 175 pounds.
This is an easy way to do it.
Second of all you need about 1 gram of protein per KILOGRAM of weight. So if you weigh 200 pounds, convert that to kilograms and that’s about 90.71 kilograms. So if you want to weigh 175 pounds as your goal 79.37 kilograms. We’ll round up and say 80 grams of protein per day.
Now we all know protein and carbs have 4 calories per gram. Fats have 9 calories per gram.
So if you should be getting 80 grams of protein that is 80 X 4 or 240 calories from protein.
Now your goal, if you wanted to reach 175 pounds is 1925 calories per day. So subtract 240 calories for protein from 1925 and you get 1685 left.
So if you weigh 200 pounds and want to weigh 175 reduce your calories to 1925 per day and make sure about 240 calories of those 1925 are from proteins. The rest of the calories, which amount to 1685 can be divided between fats and carbs depending on what works best for you.
Sound complicated but it’s not. I eat what ever I like and I’m an old 45 year old guy with a kick ass body.
Finally remember the one thing Americans really lack more than anything is fiber. We are all so lacking in fiber in our diets. If you must take a glass or two or three of Metamucil (or it’s generic). The more fibre you get the better off you’ll be. And it may shock your system at first, but you do get used to it in time
Excellent recipe. The only thing I would change is the corn flake crumbs. Remember, you want to avoid starches as much as possible, so instead, substitute it for whole wheat bread crumbs.
If you don’t find any pre-made whole wheat bread crumbs at the market (they’re hard to find sometimes, even in a health food store), you can make them yourself. Just toast a few slices of whole wheat bread, throw them in the blender, and now you have whole wheat bread crumbs.
Better yet, if you want to go even more healthy, throw some fiber one cereal into the blender, and now you have some fiber one crumbs to use. You’ll sacrifice some taste, but you’ll absolutely love the pay off.
Hi Jennshark. I’ve struggled with many of the same challenges in recent years. Tried a lot of things, read a lot of books, had my ups and downs, successes and relapses… I bet you can relate to this! I know you didn’t ask for this kind of recommendation, but can I please recommend one book, The Gabriel Method. It’s not about diets or recipes, but I think it will help you greatly. It costs less than $12 on Amazon. If you get it, and can tell me in six months that it really didn’t help at all, I’ll send you $12. So it’s risk-free to you. (I have no involvement with the book or the author; I’m enthusing about it just because I think it’s the best book I’ve ever seen on how to change your attitude to food.)
Sensible diet… the trouble is not that there is any shortage of advice, either here or elsewhere, but that there’s just too much of it… and a lot of it is inconsistent. Some of the advice is great, some is mis-guided, some is ‘faddy’ and some is just nonsense from people who want to make money from you. Even ‘professionally-qualified’ nutritionists can in some cases turn out to be the equivalent of quacks or snake-oil merchants. (If you’re up for more fun reading, try Bad Science by Ben Goldacre and read the eye-opening sections on nutrition!)
Having struggled with the same problem for ten years, on and off, here’s my 2 cents.
The ‘right answer’ is going to be different for everyone. What works for A won’t necessarily work for B, because there are so many differences between one person and another, one body and another, one life and another. All you can do is try whatever seems to be the best plan for you, and then see what happens after 4 weeks or 8 weeks. If it’s working, stick with it. If not, change it. Always be ready to review and revise, and even if a plan is working see if you can tinker with it and improve it.
There’s no point making any changes that you can’t stick with for the rest of your life. Going on a diet for a year, doing everything perfectly and losing every spare ounce of fat, is all for nothing if you’re just going to revert to the way things were before. So when you are considering what changes to make in your life, only make changes you can live with (or even enjoy) forever. Short-term diets and exercise regimes just don’t work - afterwards, you’ll regain all the weight and more.
It really is more of a mind game than a body game. You need to get the mind right before the body can be right. You need to address why the over-eating is happening, and ask your mind to devise a different way of dealing with the same issue that doesn’t involve over-eating. This is why I so strongly recommend the Gabriel book.
Enjoy and embrace how quickly you can change, how adaptable the human body is, and how powerful this can be. Let’s say someone has always taken sugar in his coffee. If he tries to drink just three cups of coffee without sugar, that’s all it takes… from then on, he’ll never add sugar to his coffee again. The first time won’t be nice, because his brain starts to scream ‘This isn’t right! Where’s the sugar?!’, but after three cups the coffee-without-sugar is regarded as normal, so there’s no more mental protest.
Water and hydration. A few other Dopers have emphasised this, but it really is vital to any changes you make to your diet. It’s almost like magic. Make sure your body always has all the fresh, clean water that it wants, and this alone will end some of your hunger pangs. Someone once wrote an entire book to the effect that many times, over-eaters (like you and me) are simply mis-understanding one of the body’s signals. The body is trying to say, ‘More water please’ and we go and eat something instead. So, when the hunger pangs come, see if a glass of water will do.
Michael Pollan wrote a great book called ‘In defense of food’ which also really helped me. He has this great seven word summary of a good attitude to food: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. It’s worth a read.
Try to find fruit and vegetables, especially green veg, that you actually like and enjoy eating. It’s worth making this a major search, and supermarkets these days offer more choice than ever. This stuff is very inexpensive, and you can more or less eat all the fresh fruit and veg you want, any time, and you won’t have a problem. But this will only work if you find fruit and veg you really like eating. I hear that a lot of people hate broccoli. Good - more for me! Up until two years ago, I’d never eaten any. I tried it and found I really like it. I get through a lot of it every week.
When I got a hunger pang, I used to eat a chocolate bar. Or two. Or three (know the feeling?). Now I reach for an apple, because I found a particular type that I really like, or a stick of carrot - cut, washed and chilled in my refrigerator. This has made a huge difference to me. See if it works for you.
When you find yourself going to the cupboard or the fridge to reach for some snack or whatever, stop and ask yourself, ‘What do I really want?’. Try to understand your own emotions and what your mind is trying to achieve by this behaviour. It’s not ‘I am hungry, I need food’. There’s something else going on. The next stage is to devise strategies that deal with the same needs, but don’t involve reaching for the candy, the snack foods and the ice-cream bucket.
Exercise. Find some form of exercise that’s right for you, that you can do regularly every day or at least 3 times a week, and that you enjoy. For many, the ideal solution is just to go for a walk. I try to go for a walk, for one hour a day, every day. Find the solution that’s right for you. Swimming? Joining a gym? Going to a dance class? Joining in some sort of team sports? Getting a Wii Fitness routine and actually using it? Lots of extra sex? It’s whatever works for you. Just find some way of using your body, enjoying your body and getting used to movement, action and energy. Anything that gives your heart and lungs a little extra to do and lets you enjoy feeling active is fine. Even gardening will do. A friend I know who was in the same position went and took up sword-fencing! We’re all different… find what’s right for you. But remember… it’s forever.
Sorry if some of this seems ‘off topic’. Didn’t mean to hijack. And good luck.
Here’s a great diet tip that I found immensely useful: canned and frozen vegetables.
Instead of stuffing my face with Cheez-Its or something, now when I want a big snack I open a can of mixed veg, dump them in a bowl with a tiny bit of water and margerine, plastic wrap it, and steam it in the microwave for five minutes. Delicious, filling, and less than 200 calories in the whole thing.
You can get two-pound bags of frozen peas, broccoli, spinach, green beans, etc., dirt cheap, and they last pretty much forever in the freezer, and can be easily steamed the same way.
But honestly, you don’t eat whatever you like. You eat the number of calories allotted to you, and including the protein allotment you say you need.
Actually, the recipe in the book does call for whole wheat bread crumbs, but I substituted them with the cornflake crumbs, because they are used in another recipe in this book. The breasts are good prepared both ways, but my kids and husband liked the cornflake crumbs better.
Seeing as how this was really my only bread type of food of the day, it wasn’t an issue for me. My meals consisted of a banana in the morning, a salad for lunch (I love salad), and then a meal from this book for dinner.
Yes, I know it’s better to eat many small meals, but this worked for me. I had my “cheat” days where I allowed myself a cheeseburger from our local hamburger joint too, so I didn’t always feel deprived. I also snacked on lots of raw veggies, like celery, bell peppers, and the like.
I know this sounds kind of weird, but after 5 years of changing my life and losing 70+ lbs - I am eating exactly what I want. When I ate a lot of muffins and scones and nachos, I thought that was what I wanted. Now that I’ve had a chance to eat better, feel better, enjoy my closet of beautiful size 6 clothes, now I want different things.
I had to give up sugar to get my tastebuds to snap back. I’m surprised by how good a roasted cherry tomato tastes or a baked sweet potato or steamed sugar snap peas with a little garlic salt. I look forward to my fat free Greek yogurt and fresh berry breakfast. I had a huge pile of roasted brussel sprouts last night and thought they were awesome. I love string cheese and mangos and salads with pomegranate seeds - I don’t eat anything I DON’T like.
I do absolutely love food and eating, so it was really important for me to find new foods I liked and looked forward to eating, as much as I looked forward to my old foods. I did that and my plan isn’t hard to follow at all.
Back to the op, my best advice to eating better - think of your plate as divided into four equal portions. Fill 1/2 with vegetables, 1/4 with lean protein, 1/4 with a complex carbohydrate. Don’t neglect healthy fats - but use them sparingly. Saute or roast with a little olive oil, sprinkle a few nuts on your salad, etc.
But he’s trained himself to want those amounts, and so long as he doesn’t break the amounts, he can choose a large variety of dishes.
Sort of like when I went to college I got used to eating less than I’d been eating at home: I still ate the same things, I still ate what I wanted - and having getting used to smaller amounts, I ate as much of it as I wanted (despite my mother’s refusal to believe it)
IMO if you want to eat well you have to learn to cook. You can’t buy anything in a packet as healthy as what you make for yourself, plus it’s expensive as hell to be constantly buying meals rather than raw ingredients. But with that said I find a lot of cookbook recipes are over-complicated and call for like 10 ingredients, half of which you don’t actually have in your house. I think a better way to approach the matter is to just go to the supermarket, check out what vegetables are on special and think “what do I want to eat this week?” and buying those, then coming home and tossing them in a pot with a little oil and salt. I think recipes mystify cooking a bit since they’re all “tarragon!” and “brown sugar!” when really you can make a ton of tasty food just using vegetables, oil and salt.
Also, I recommend buying a wok and stir-frying. It’s one step up from microwaving in terms of skill required but produces real food. Cut up some vegetables, add (you guessed it) oil and salt, maybe some slivers of meat, throw it in the wok and stir. There are infinite combinations and you don’t have to remember a recipe or go shopping for herbs you’ve never heard of. You’ll improve at it pretty fast since there’s only two variables (salt levels and cooking time) to mess with.