You have to do what works for you. Ignore anyone else. If it works for them fine, but what works for them may not work for you.
I for instance, eat one HUGE meal a day and do great with it. But that started out, because when I started out in life, I was poor and worked at hotels where they give you one free meal a day. So I made the most of it.
Meal replacement diets are effective, because they are easy to follow.
For instance, I struggle with food. When I say this, people say “You’re crazy you have a great body.” Well just because I’m winning the struggle and you’re losing doesn’t mean I don’t have issues with my weight.
But I found ways around it.
For instance, I don’t keep a lot of food in the house. If I do I’ll eat it. I’m lazy by nature and if it mean I get out of bed, go into the cold and spend an hour on public transit to get food, I won’t do that. But if I have to walk two feet to get a box of Twinkies, I’ll eat the whole thing.
This is why meal replacement diets work. They are easy to follow and involve no decisions. It’s easy to have your self control.
Food is no great mystery, it’s fuel. Oh it’s delicious by sure, but it’s really just fuel for your body. If you think of putting food in your mouth like filling up your car’s gas tank, it’s easy to see, you don’t need to do it any special way.
Eat your meals what way works best for you. If it’s one big meal or ten small ones, nothing right and nothing is wrong. What works for you is the correct thing.
Spark is a neat place. It’s a diet, with the calorie tracker and fitness stuff, but it’s also a community with message boards and tons of articles on nutrition and exercise. Spark focuses on healthy living rather than just dieting.
Marxxx is right that you need to find the system that works for you but I’m guessing that you won’t want to eat $5 cookies for the rest of your life. Sparkpeople helps set up a system that you can use long term.
Not a diet expert here. But diet is abou portion control mostly. If you dont want to think about it every day you need CONTROLED portions more than anything.
You’ll have to do some research at first to figure out a diet that has the calorie range for you. Maybe its a pack of instant oatmeal or an apple/fruite for breakfast. Lunch might be a fast food salad or one of the healthier subwaylike sandwiches. Dinner, one of those prepackaged frozen/microwaveable “diet” meals.
I’d think if you did the math, you could come up with a routine you didnt have to think about, was reasonably healty, and had the kind of intake you want and need.
Obviously a total DIY plan with custom made stuff is optimum and probably the cheapest, but it sounds to me like controled portions and convience for you are bigger factors than cost or maximum optimization.
I would certainly think you could easily come up with something better and cheaper than expensive cookies twice a day.
Yes, $5 cookies are definitely out. I did find out that there is a way to eat healthfully on campus. Across from the building I work in is a student dining hall that everyone can use. They have a stir-fry place that will cook two cups of vegetables in water, with your choice of sauce and white rice, for $2.50. Not a bad deal. I could do that a few times a week, but where would I get protein?
My old college cafeteria had a vegetarian flatbread station where you got a piece of flatbread and a filling, usually bean or lentil derived. Or whip out your almost-free beans that you made from dried in your crockpot.
I’m sorry you’re having trouble right now. I think that if you cool down a little, you’ll see a lot of the suggestions made are really no more difficult than ordering expensive mail-order cookies.
If nothing else, go to Sam’s or Costco – if that’s not feasible, Target or Wal-Mart will do – and load up on boxes of protein bars and/or shakes, or some of the other stuff I or others recommended, and at least don’t get take advantage by a gimmicky cookie diet.