wth do people eat on 1500 calories?

CkepiJinx

I have few different breakfast options I go with:
Dannon light & fit Greek yogurt ( 80 calorie cup) mixed with, go lean crisp cereal and no sugar added peaches, and one or two cups of coffee with stevia and sugar free creamer. 323 calories.

2 egg whites , one whole egg omelet with 1/2 c low fat cottage cheese and 1/2 c turkey sausage crumbles plus my above mentioned coffee 349 calories you can add an English muffin with 1/2 tbsp butter which makes the calories 504 calories

1 cup or 3/4 cup depending on the particular cereal of go lean crisp with unsweetened vanilla almond milk also a cup or 3/4 c I like the same ratio cereal to milk and my coffee 335-352 calories

If I am running short on time a jimmy dean delight breakfast sandwich they range in calories from 230-250 calories

For lunch I like about 3 oz tilapia with a big garden salad only about 200 calories. I use Pam cooking spray and low calories dressings on my salad, I love Maple Grove Brand, you could easily add some rice and still have plenty of calories and more fish 3.5oz only has 112 calories. Skinless boneless chicken breast is great if you dislike fish. Ham and pork are also low cal options.

Dinner is sometimes steak, a burger, pork loin, chicken my dinners vary a lot. But are usually not a huge meal but I have plenty of calories for a big dinner if I want one.

I am a snacker and this allows me plenty of snacks throughout the day.

Good luck

Confuzzled4ever

my goal is 1570.. i do end up around 1700-1800 often.. but just as often i end up under.

Open diary if you wanna see.

CookNLift

what kind of turkey sandwich and a banana equals 200 calories? lol

I eat bacon.

anemoneprose

Hi new everyone who chimed in, thank YOU now!

Excuses? No. I did really well maintaining on 2200 for a long time, and I lost my weight (55 pounds) on 2000, including all kinds of foods. I always had a big appetite, growing up, and was always within normal weight range. (The gain was in adulthood, from depression & related meds.) Ordinarily I move around a lot & am kind of fidgety, & burn lots of non-exercise cals.

The headache from not eating enough is lifelong, and predictable within 99% accuracy. It happens on days I am not psychologically food-focused (eg, too busy to eat breakfast). Btw I am not, actually, "food-focused", I'm not like an emotional binger or anything.

I'm trying to cut to 1500 because all at once, I got both upper and lower MSK problems that make many movements painful, & there's about 10 pounds I'd like to lose. I don't want to push it on my own this time, I have a few hypermobile joints & think there's stuff going on with my stabilizers that's wonky & I'd be compensating in funny ways, so, am waiting for a physio program to properly rehab first.

Re beans and meat: I did try with just the beans, but was hungry, so added meat. Re rice: another reason I had it with beans was to max protein synthesis. BUT I hadn't considered that fruit might help with headache just as well as starches, that's something I could try if I'm having like a steak and broccoli.

Suggestions *really* appreciated, all, thanks muchly! Please be kind to each other, everyone is just offering experiences, and I sincerely appreciate them all, as I do the critiques

caseythirteen

This might have already been said, but that's a pretty big jump all at once. No wonder it didn't work well! You should slowly take them down a hundred or so at a time. After a few weeks your body will likely adjust and you won't be as hungry. A few months ago I had to do the same thing due to an injury and by the 3rd week I was down a few hundred calories a day and it was tolerable because my body had also adjusted to the lack of exercise. If this is something you are going to need to do for a while than I would definitely recommend taking it a bit slower. And the working in all the recommendations you think you can do from this post.

jonnythan

Re rice: another reason I had it with beans was to max protein synthesis.

..What?

KristyAnn81

It's called portion control and eating more filling things.
I'm on 1500 a day and I don't really ever find myself hungry, wishing I had more.

cadaverousbones

I eat around 1600 calories, more if I exercise.

I usually have eggs/toast for breakfasts on weekends and on weekdays I'll have yogurt & coffee and sometimes a breakfast sandwich if I am really hungry

Lunch is usually sandwich or something to that effect. usually without mayo or light mayo, spicy mustard, veggies, turkey, 1 slice of cheese because I LOVE CHEESE

nuts are good snacks, string cheese, granola bars etc.

dinner is usually some kind of meat like chicken or fish, dont eat beef very often, veggies and salad as side dishes, sometimes brown or wild rice

Maybe you need to just find "healthier" versions of the foods you are already eating that have more nutritional value in them to keep you fuller for longer.. have little snacks in between your three main meals

instead of white rice have brown rice or wild rice

instead of regular pasta get whole grain pasta, etc

cook using olive oil or coconut oil, they are healthier for you

try fat free cream instead of whole fat for your coffee. maybe switch to a natural sweetener like stevia to cut out some extra calories

DRINK LOTS OF WATER 8 + OZ. if you are hungry feeling/headache maybe you are not hydrated enough

Add extra veggies to everything, even things like mac & cheese! I like to add tuna and other stuff.

also cutting your calories down slower might help your body adjust faster

if you are used to 2000+ dont cut them by 1000 all at once.

message me if you want any more advice

challenger9509

I dunno but I had Wendy's pretzel burger today and had around 1500 for today.

Not to be off topic..but those things are really awesome

challenger9509

I think it would be hard to drop so quickly to 1500 for you. I agree with some of the others and reduce it down by 100 calories at a time if you are able to do that and it will get easier as you do it. Best of luck and I know those headaches are tough..but usually if you get through the first few initial days of that it gets a little bit better for most.

anemoneprose

Re rice: another reason I had it with beans was to max protein synthesis.

..What?

as far as i understand, with beans, you need to add a bit of rice to complete the protein. i could be wrong? or maybe i misspoke

kdub67

I get by pretty well on 1500...I have a protein shake after working out (with just water, so less cals), greek yogurt for breakfast, usually a pb&j for lunch, a snack of around 220 cals, and dinner is usually something I make from Cooking Light, sparkpeople, etc...dinner is well rounded: protein, starch, plenty of veg. I still have a couple hundred cals left over for a bit of chocolate in the evening. I've maintained for 8 months doing this and am not hungry:)

xampx

I eat 1600ish and most days look like this.

Breakfast, mug cake made with whey powder, an egg & almond milk

Snack - coffee with almond milk (I can't drink proper milk but admit almond milk isn't that great tasting)

Lunch - a bag of salad greens, 150g cooked chicken or ham, 150g cottage cheese, sometimes some seafood sticks & dressing

Snack - greek yoghurt such as chobani or danio

Dinner could be anything, I usually have about 700-900 cals left by this point. Tonight I am throwing a load of stuff in a 3 egg omelette.

jonnythan

Re rice: another reason I had it with beans was to max protein synthesis.

..What?

as far as i understand, with beans, you need to add a bit of rice to compete the protein. i could be wrong?

Not sure what you're getting at. There's no such thing as "completing the protein." Proteins are strings of amino acids. Your body breaks down any protein you eat into individual amino acids and uses those to create its own proteins.

Protein quality is sometimes rated based on the amino acid content. There are certain "essential" amino acids you must get in your diet. Some sources, particularly plant sources, don't necessarily have all of them. However, there's no need to "complete the protein" (ie, to get all of the essential amino acids at the same time). On top of that, rice is a very, very poor source of protein. It hardly has any at all.

So, in other words, there's no reason to add rice to your beans to "complete the protein." Just focus on getting enough grams of protein by the end of the day.

tburkett1915

Maybe you can try picking foods depending on their glycemic Index number. Foods over 50 will raise your blood sugar level and can cause weight gain. You have many options and there's not much you'll need to do to cut calories. It will take some getting use to (i.e. headaches) eating less, but your body will adjust.

Good Luck

Carmella9

I stick to 1,200 a day but im only 5 ft 4 and eat a lot of fruit and veg!

What id cut from that is
1 egg
Sugars and cream in coffee= substitute splenda and skimmed milk/coffee mate if you like it creamy (sugar and cream are not needed)
Lunch is fine! but if you are frying then use fry light instead of olive oil (you can get your fats from fish)
Dinner substitute veal for fish

I would also go for something like baked potatoe in the evening as its lower cal or something like sweet potatoe, just because you are having rice twice a day.

This is only based on what I would do in order to lower calorie intake, not everyone would like to do the same

Carmella9

Also it takes a while to get used to lowering calories, id say most people dont get on with it the first day but your body needs time to adjust to eating less.

xxghost

I dunno but I had Wendy's pretzel burger today and had around 1500 for today.

So delicious.

smelons

I eat around 1350 a day, but used to eat 1500. I like to fill up on vegetables. I'm usually satisfied on that, but have a handful of nuts, or some protein wrapped in nori as a quick snack if I'm starving. My diary's open if you want to look.

I'm 5 inches shorter than you though and don't do much exercise, so don't need so many calories. Do you need to cut them so drastically?

marthahorn

Reading up on the South Beach Diet helped me a lot - im not diabetic but sensitive to carbs. there are good ones and bad ones (glycemic index) and it made a WORLD of difference for me. Good luck!