Ok mums. I want this year to be my year.. i am 27, had it fairly tough since childhood and i want to take control of my life. I feel so lost as an individual.
Firstly after 2 kids and many loses , 1 still birth my body has taken a beating. I am not happy with my body. I have been trying to lose weight and i see so many of my friends succeeding and i just can't get the results i want. I've found it hard to find the right professional help as we live quite rural. I'd like to gain muscle, and lose 10 to 15 kg. Within around 12 months is my goal for now.
I need help with food...
Where to start, what to change, how to adapt a meal plan, thats holistic to my needs but adaptable to our budget and our family. I work and i really don't have the time to make 3 different meals for my kids and husband and myself.
How much should i eat every one says portion size well what does that mean to me... how much should i be aiming for, how do i easily calorie count if necessary. It is causing me great distress not knowing where to start. Money is tight, we just try to eat fruit vege and we do like meat :/
Ive tried eating multigrain bread, limiting carbs etc.
We really like cheese :/ i try to swap yogurt for healthy options and we are all a little milk intolerant only not to all dairy.
What protein powders can you recommend, i am conscious of sugar and marketing gimics and find this all confusing.
Help me help me. Please.
6 Replies
I would say the best thing that has helped me reach my goals is to count macros.
It can be confusing at first but is quite easy once you get the hang of it. You head to an online site and enter your body weight etc and it will calculate your calories, protein, carbs and fats.
You can then use My Fitness Pal to enter the food you eat for the day to track this (make sure not to add back exercise calories).
There’s lots of information on the internet which will explain in more detail. But you can pretty much eat whatever you want to/feel like as long as it fits those macros. Which makes it easy when cooking for a family.
If this sounds quite confusing to start with then I would suggest still using the calculator but only eating to your calories, after all a calorie deficit is all that is needed to lose weight, macros just helps with body composition.
Thank you
Here’s what I recommend for you...
Fasting - eating after 10am and last meal by 6.30.
Eat breakfast, snack,lunch, snack, dinner.
Aim for 30mins exercise a day minimum. Try and go for a face paced walk, play soccer with the kids etc.
Make 1 meal for the family as you normally would...serve HALF of what you’d normally eat, then fill your plate with healthy salads. Lettuce, carrots, cucumber,reduced fat feta cheese, tomatoes, onion, lentils (if your main meal doesn’t include protein) and top with a dressing of olive oil.
Don’t count calories.
You KNOW what healthy is... read ingredients - if it’s processed and contains sugar - DONT EAT IT.
Have a piece of fruit or a handful or nuts
Thank you. Great advice.
Obv You don’t HAVE to count calories if you don’t want to but it’s simple science, calories in vs calories out will equal weight loss.
I've been replacing my old go-to's (pastas, breads, sweets) with keto friendly versions.
Not keto as such, I have to speak to my doctor first to see if it's suitable for my medical conditions but pasta is out and Slendia konjac "pasta" is in. Sure it's dearer but one pack is two meals and "pasta" twice a week is enough. Normal bread is out and the Aldi 85% less carbs bread is in. Again, it's 5 bucks but I buy a loaf and freeze it. Lasts me at least a week (everyone else has normal multigrain bread), or if I can't get to Aldi (we're some distance away too and I don't always go to town on a day they're open) I make a quick flat bread. Even sweets can be keto friendly, the less sugar sweet stuff I eat the less I find I need it so my "sweets" this week is coffee jellies (just coffee, gelatine and water, I'll add a few drops of vanilla or stevia next time though) and I make a daily chia seed pudding rotating between vanilla/macadamia, sugar free maple/walnut, and my fave - double chocolate (avalanche sugar free choc powder and a small bar of coles no added sugar dark chocolate roughly chopped).
Portions, most of the recipes I've found say how many portions so my chia pudding says 2 tbsp chia seeds, 1 cup almond milk, 30g walnuts is a serve. I reduce the almond milk by a quarter to make it thicker and I add my tbsp sugar free maple syrup and still class it as a serve.
Most mains I've cooked when I weight the whole batch and portion it out comes to 250g (so curries, meaty soups, stroganoff type all-in-one meals).
Rather than find it a massive pain in the ass for everyone else make 2 freezer meals in big batches. Most of the time when you're all eating a healthy meat and veg meal that's fine but if you're making pasta, pizza or something else carb heavy for the fam get one of your freezer meals out for you :)
The hardest part for me has absolutely been booze. Bonafide bourbon and cola drinker my whole life, after finding a thermomix recipe for turkish delight vodka I've now started experimenting with making my own no/low sugar variations. I subbed sugar for Nativa up until now but I don't like the residue so will try with liquid stevia. Todays batch will be dark chocolate and cherry - Cherry Ripe vodka!!! Drink with soda water so no nasties in the mixer and no additives or unnatural flavours in the booze.
I hope this helps. I've joined a few of the keto FB pages for free recipes, there's more online on individual web pages and many offer substitutes if you can't get an ingredient - or other members of the page will say that they have subbed stuff or just left it out and it's still worked.