Confused, Help needed

ldruss1546

Hello everyone,
I'm so confused on what to do, any and all guidance is greatly appreciated.With that said let me tell you a little bit about me... I'm a 48yrs old my current weight is 307lbs my goal is to be back down to 200 or a little less. My current excuses are these 2 things...1st is my work schedule I work 4pm to 4am mon\fri so I don't have a normal eating schedule like most do. I did figure out lastnight my times should be the following... breakfast@12:30pm,lunch@5:30pm dinner@10:30pm(that is my set lunch break at work so I worked with every 5hrs off of that). And my 2nd excuse that I use is I just don't know what to fix or eat for each meal ,chicken breast and salad get pretty old after 5days of eating the same thing over and over. I hear so much about no bread,no carbs so does that mean for breakfasts it's just scrambled eggs no toast?, Lunch just a package of budding lunch meat no bread? And dinner chicken breast and salad?. If you would like to help me please contact me and I can go a little deeper in to explaining my eating\sleeping habits and such.good luck to everyone hope you have a great day and God help me!

Keladelphia

You can eat anything as long as it fits your calories to lose weight including bread. Don't get caught up in all of the diet hype. Select the amount of weight you want to lose here on MFP, eat the calorie goal myfitness pal gives you and track what you are eating in your diary here. It doesn't have to be complicated.

malibu927

Eat whatever you want whenever you want as long as it fits into your calorie goal. Focus on nutrition primarily, but there is nothing wrong with carbs if you don't have a medical reason to watch them.

quiksylver296

Both of those^^

Eat what you like/want. Make it fit within your calorie goals for the day.

mysteps2beauty

It just helps if the items in your calorie range are filling. Sugary processed foods high in calories, low in fiber will satisfy taste but will quickly lead you to crash and make you very hungry.

Just make sensible choices within your calorie range. Eggs and high fibre toast is a tasty filling choice. Add veggies and fruits to each meal to get more fibre at few calories. As your taste buds become more refined and your body adjusts to the lower calories, it will become less of a chore to eat and loose wait. I no longer add cream nor sugar in my coffee. Took little over a week for my taste buds to adjust. I took a sip of my daughter's latte one day and I about gagged at the taste of all that sugar.

smh_cliff

Most of what I eat is carb so I can't help you there!

But to stop it getting boring try different marinades for your chicken, or different salad dressing if that's the sort of meal you find easiest.
Can you heat food? If so I'd be taking chilli and microwave rice, Bolognese, soup... I find that sort of consistency heats through well.

Ready2Rock206

malibu927 wrote: »

Eat whatever you want whenever you want as long as it fits into your calorie goal. Focus on nutrition primarily, but there is nothing wrong with carbs if you don't have a medical reason to watch them.

Totally this. Making it overly complicated is just giving yourself an excuse to fail.

Maxxitt

Your work schedule is hard - I used to work roughly those hours and I know. As a male weighing 307 you have a lot of calories to work with to be able to lose a pound or two a week especially at the beginning. Getting your sleep schedule solid is the first order of business. After that, how you divide calories up is really personal preference. Mine would be to have the first meal of the day be substantial & probably on the later side, and think the same for the 10:30 "lunch break." I would be arriving at work in a more or less sated state, planning a snack for a few hours in, and for a few hours after the 10:30 meal, and probably another, light snack before sleeping.

In terms of contents, my own personal preference is "real" food (i.e. something that would be recognizable as food 100 years ago) but to the extent you use pre-packaged options, check the salt and added sugar part of the food labels and try to minimize both. You didn't mention if you are needing to bring all your food in, or whether there are other options available. Thermoses and insulated bags are helpful, and if you have access to microwave and fridge, all the better. My other personal preference would be to try to achieve a good balance of carbohydrate, fiber, fat & protein with each snack and full meal. That just works best for how I function -

geltner1

Hi, This journey is one meal at a time. You've already gotten some good answers. I would add that some good quality food containers that you can bring to work would help you eat healthful meals and you would know the quantity. You can eat tasty food with variety. The beginning will require more thought and planning. When you get into the swing of MFP, it will take less time to meal-plan. Start logging your meals! Good luck!

Rickster1967

A really big help to me has been batch cooking in the slow cooker

I've been making chilli, stew, curry etc in there. Using the Recipe Builder you count the total calories added to the pot, the divide it up when cooked into even portions of the correct number of calories

If you can heat stuff at work then you can take a measured out portion of whatever you like

If you can't heat up, then making hot soup and putting it in a vacuum flask to keep hot is a solution.
Soup is easy to make and you can eat plenty for not many calories. Add some bread / crackers