Best diet plans (with pre-made food)?

Rannoch3908

When I try to just eat better, eat less calories, and exercise more - I fail - everytime.

I do a lot better when I follow a plan that says eat this now, eat this then, do this workout.

I also do better when I am NOT cooking my own meals for breakfast and lunch - I do much better with PRE-MADE MEALS whether that be frozen, meal substitutes, fast food, delivery, etc.

WHAT IS A GOOD PLAN TO FOLLOW TILL I CAN BUILD BETTER HABITS?
(atkins, slim fast, etc)

Rannoch3908

...

ExistingFish

Google local meal prep services, I know there are several in my area that provide healthy meals, with precalculated macros. They are not cheap, but if it's what you need.

There are also national services as well, but I haven't looked into those.

ahoy_m8

I don't have suggestions, OP. Your post did make me wonder, however, if the past failures could be attributed to trying to change too many things at once. That's exhausting and not really sustainable for anyone. I get that following a structured plan eliminates the decision making element, but it might still put you in the situation of changing too many behaviors all at once. If you're having a rough day, follow through will be difficult.

It's absolutely possible to change habits, but it is not an overnight process. I'm wondering if you tried to make only one or two small changes at a time -- changes that you consider doable not just on good days but also when you're not having the best day or just don't feel your best, changes small enough you could see yourself doing it forever.... that's a good way to build habits that will last. Either way, good luck to you!

Diatonic12

I threw all of my premade home delivery meals under the house into a crawl space. I'm saving them for the Apocalypse. Every one of them tasted just like a dog's breakfast. They'll be there a 100 years from now and you can find them when I'm long gone.

I threw all of my dieting books into the trash bin. I won't be buying anymore of them. Ever. I mean it.

You've got to learn how to cook some meals for yourself. Learn how to take full accountability for yourself and that begins in the kitchen. You can start over just as many times as you need to but just don't quit!

Weight loss happens in the kitchen but transformation happens in the mind.

Rannoch3908

I am an awesome cook. Make amazing dinners every night for my wife and I.

But I am not going to meal prep and eat homeade lunches and breakfast at work - sorry - if I have to do that then I won't succeed right now. It's an easy excuse -- i don't feel like cooking so I will just eat out.

kshama2001

Rannoch3908 wrote: »

I am an awesome cook. Make amazing dinners every night for my wife and I.

But I am not going to meal prep and eat homeade lunches and breakfast at work - sorry - if I have to do that then I won't succeed right now. It's an easy excuse -- i don't feel like cooking so I will just eat out.

I'm an awesome cook too and loved spending a few hours on Sunday prepping meals for the week.

But I hear that you don't want to do that, so why don't you make extra for dinner that you can have for lunch? You could do something simple for breakfast like a smoothie. Or buy breakfast out - these don't have to be calorie bombs.

ExistingFish

I've just been looking at meal delivery things in my area, it just gives me ideas like "I could just meal-prep that myself"...

I think I may try meal prepping myself next week.

NovusDies

There are no best diets. There is only the best diet for you. If that is premade then just google it and do a trial.

Try to avoid delivered frozen though because you are paying a premium to have the quality of a meal you can pick up in the freezer aisle.

The portion sizes are PAINFULLY tiny. Be prepared to supplement with your own food or eat multiple boxes.

I am not a huge fan of Subway but I would just do that for breakfast and lunch before I would do frozen meals.

L1zardQueen

Overnight oats in mason jar is pretty easy. Last night’s leftovers I sometimes eat for breakfast or lunch. I only eat two meals a day which cuts down on meal prep.

KrissDotCom

Since its calories in and calories out.. just pick a pre-made dinner option that fits your budget. The food offered is going to be different based on the person eating its taste.

Someone could love something to death but I could dislike it due to certain ingredients or textures.. so I wouldn't feel the same about it.

LynnJ9

When my daughter was in college, she came to me and asked to help her lose 30 pounds. She did not have the time or desire to cook. She was convinced that she was not going to be able to lose weight, but wanted to try.
We set up a menu of fresh and premade meals which she followed. The menu totaled 1200 to 1300 calories per day.
She lost the 30 pounds in about 5 months.
Breakfast:
Weight Watchers and Lean Cuisine has some great breakfasts for around 250 calories. There are breakfast sandwiches, egg burritos, eggs and more. There are also prepackaged oatmeal bags you can buy which are 160 calories. Add a 1/2 cup of blueberries to them and 1 hard boiled egg and you have a 250-300 breakfast
Morning snack:
Apple, peach or a cup of strawberries. 100 calories
Lunch: Kroger has prepackaged salads, or WW and Lean Cuisine have many great frozen meals at around 300 calories
Afternoon snack: Most snack companies package their chips, cookies or crackers in 100 calorie bags
Dinner: Again, lots of frozen meal choices around 300 calories
Late snack: 200 calories, you can have fruit and a snack or once again WW and Lean Cuisine (I sure there are more like Healthy Choice, etc) have 200 calorie desserts or small meals such as egg rolls. There is also halo top icecream.
Total: right around 1250 calories
Before you all start hitting disagree, it was a perfect and easy way for my daughter to see she could lose weight by counting calories. She soon became an expert at all the places she could get food in her calorie requirements. She then began making meals herself that gave her more volume and better taste for the same calories.
5 years later she has maintained her weight, now only eats food she prepares herself, loves looking for low calorie recipes and trying them. She constantly sends me pictures of her creations.
Good luck in your diet!

amart4224

Just to share my own experience: the first time I really tried to lose weight was in college, and, like you, I wanted something simple to follow that didn't require a lot of cooking. I did Slimfast. Shakes, prepackaged snacks, and then one meal per day of 500 calories of my choosing. I lost 30 pounds over the course of a few months. The problem for me was that I was not prepared to live on Slimfast for the rest of my life, so I went back to my old eating habits and over the next few years gained back twice what I had lost.

My next attempt at a diet plan was Atkins. I did the shakes and prepackaged snacks and went low carb whenever I ate "normal" food. Atkins didn't work well for me, I tended to binge on their fake candy snacks, and after losing about 15 pounds I gave it up, went back to my old ways, and again gained back more weight than I had lost.

This time around I'm doing simple calorie counting and increased exercise. Yes, it is hard to come up with meals that I like that are decently healthy and easy to prepare, but I decided it's time to teach myself lifelong healthy eating habits. I want to lose weight and keep it off.

If you want to try some of the prepackaged things as a starter for your lifestyle change, I would recommend Atkins over Slimfast only because I know Slimfast has really decreased the variety of their snack options and the shakes get old really fast. Atkins has a larger product line that might give you more time before you burn out on it.

lgfrie

I know more than a few people who've had tremendous weight loss successes doing frozen packaged foods from the grocery store. What they lack a bit of in flavor and gourmet-ness, they sort of make up for in that they give you a label with all the calories, salt, fat, etc., laid out so that you can construct a whole day of food that adds up properly. And truth be told, many of them taste pretty damn good these days.

Being a person who generally prefers lower end food to high cuisine and has eaten plenty of packaged meals myself despite the fact that I now like to cook, I think it's very feasible to diet with that stuff, just keeping an eye on the sodium, which can be absurdly high (like one packaged dinner exceeding the recommended total sodium intake for the day!!) So just keep an eye on that.

Subway is a perfectly valid way to lose weight. I've lost weight eating subway. It isn't all that unhealthy, depending on what you order, and the calories are very easy to track so that you hit your target for the day.

There are several food delivery services that are geared toward dieters and offer "Just eat the food, don't think about it, all the calories are worked out, eat the food, lose the weight". Not just the one you see constantly advertised on TV. If you're looking for that kind of structured dieting, Google can be your friend here. I once was on one of those programs - it delivered 6 days of food per week at 1600 cals/day and I did lose 2 pounds a week until I got incredibly sick of the food after 3 months LOL

yirara

Why do you think you need to cook breakfast and lunch? A substantial part of Europe has uncoocked meals apart from the main meal. Takes 5 minutes to assemble, and it's filling.

jelleigh

Although I'm an advocate for batch cooking at home (cheaper, doesn't have to be hard etc) I get that sometimes we need to do what works for us. Keep in mind that you should concurrently work at building up some of these cooking skills etc, because eventually you will need a different more sustainable habit.
But I'd say just break your meals down into nice round numbers and buy pre-made meals and just mix and match stuff till you hit the numbers.

Ie: lets say you get 1500 calories a day. If you don't care about snacking, then just tell yourself each meal is 500 cal.
Then buy bulk stuff thats pre-packaged. Buy a case of protein drinks (like 160 cals a piece) and have the lean cuisine or frozen dinners handy (they all run like 400 cal?) or whatever works. Buy a box of pre-packaged trail mix or granola bars or whatever it is you like. Buy fruit cups or veggie and dips. Label them all clearly in your fridge/panty adn then in the morning just grab a collection of stuff until it hits 1000 cals (or whatever you've 'budgeted' for during the day). Then when you get home, make yourself your 500 cal dinner. Or have another frozen dinner. whatever.
I find that for breakfast/lunch i dont care what i eat so much. I eat to survive. Today I have an applesauce and two tbsp of flax seed, a chia pudding (i made these but literally it takes me less than a minute to pour it all into tupperware), some sliced deli meat, and half a cucumber with tzatziki. I will have hit my fibre goals by lunch and had a decent amount of protein. It ain't sexy, but its effective!

spiriteagle99

Breakfast of cereal, oatmeal, or a couple of eggs with an English muffin.
Lunch of salad or sandwich.
Snacks of fruit, a cookie, or cheese.
Dinner - either an easy meal (hamburger, pork roast, baked chicken or fish, etc) or frozen dinner supplemented with a large serving of vegetables.
One advantage that eating frozen meals can have is it can help you learn about portion sizes. (I always ate huge portions, so frozen meals helped me get my idea of a serving size down a bit). The disadvantage is you may end up being really hungry. 300 calories for dinner isn't much. Which is why adding a serving or two of vegetables can help a lot.

busyPK

Since you mentioned eating out as an option, search "fast food" in MFP and there are threads of people responding with their go-to fast food meals to stay within your calorie goals that MFP gives you. For breakfast I'd suggest either a protein bar + fresh fruit if needed or overnight oats. Yes, I know you have to assemble the oats, but it can be customized to your tastes and saves in the fridge for days.

whoami67

I liked the food from BistroMD - frozen meals shipped to your home. I've tried their lunches and dinners. I didn't order snacks or breakfasts. I thought the portions were decent sized, the food tasted good, and the ingredients were pretty healthy. And I like that you don't have to order all of your meals for the week. You can get just 5 lunches/dinners and you can skip weeks easily. They would be my best recommendation for prepared diet meals.

Frozen or prepared meals from the grocery store are an option. And it gives you a lot of variety. My stores don't have salad bars or hot bars or cold bars right now, but there's always Lean Cuisine or Amy's or any number of other choices.

I've used ZEN Foods in L.A. It's very expensive and it wasn't nearly enough food. I should have been more assertive and gotten the men's portions instead of the women's. The food and service were excellent.

I've always been pretty happy with Jenny Craig's food since the 1980's. But mostly, I think it's kind of stuck in the 1980's with lots of pasta and desserts. Also, the quality has declined over the years and their consultants are kind of negative and discouraging. However, it's an easy plan to follow. I haven't tried Nutrisystem in a couple decades, but I remember their food was inedible.

Rannoch3908

Thanks for all the feedback.

We started doing a meal delivery service called EveryPlate for dinners - we get five meals a week for 2. No leftovers or extra which is perfect portion control. Love cooking those - delicious, healthy, focused on meat + veggies.

I need to figure out if I need to eat breakfast or not - I am never hungry and feel like it slows down my productivity in the mornings when I get to work. But also don't want to sabotage my metabolism OR be causing double hunger at lunch.

Maybe I just need to get a bunch of fruit for snacks and keep it in the fridge at work. Grab some fruit when hungry - but isn't fruit like natures candy - loaded with sugar? The problem is I always go overboard. I can't have one cookie for lunch - I eat 12. I want 4 bananas - not one.

Then lunches - maybe frozen lunches are best for me. I can make them at work - more filling than a shake or lunch bar. Subway sounds good but I don't really like the subs without mayo, sauces, etc which tend to them make them not that healthy - ha ha.

SELF CONTROL IS THE HARDEST PART.
I brought healthy breakfast, lunch, and snacks to work this week.
Every day I look at them and then say "screw it" and go eat out.

ahoy_m8

Self control is the hardest part for me, too.

Dogmom1978

Without self control, you are destined to fail regardless of what meal plan you go with.

I have self control issues, but I just keep reminding myself that I’ve seen some good progress and I want to keep that going. I want to be healthier and skinnier than I am currently and that needs to be a priority before I get any older and do any more long term damage.

kshama2001

Rannoch3908 wrote: »

Thanks for all the feedback.

We started doing a meal delivery service called EveryPlate for dinners - we get five meals a week for 2. No leftovers or extra which is perfect portion control. Love cooking those - delicious, healthy, focused on meat + veggies.

I need to figure out if I need to eat breakfast or not - I am never hungry and feel like it slows down my productivity in the mornings when I get to work. But also don't want to sabotage my metabolism OR be causing double hunger at lunch.

Maybe I just need to get a bunch of fruit for snacks and keep it in the fridge at work. Grab some fruit when hungry - but isn't fruit like natures candy - loaded with sugar? The problem is I always go overboard. I can't have one cookie for lunch - I eat 12. I want 4 bananas - not one.

Then lunches - maybe frozen lunches are best for me. I can make them at work - more filling than a shake or lunch bar. Subway sounds good but I don't really like the subs without mayo, sauces, etc which tend to them make them not that healthy - ha ha.

SELF CONTROL IS THE HARDEST PART.
I brought healthy breakfast, lunch, and snacks to work this week.
Every day I look at them and then say "screw it" and go eat out.

I don't find just fruit very filling. I'd have a small banana with a half ounce of almonds or a small apple with a slice of cheese and maybe some nuts - I like to pair fruit with something that provides fat and protein.

Oh, I JUST had 4 oz mixed fruit with a half cup of cottage cheese.

MrDracoMalfoy

OMAD👌🍻

durhammfp

amart4224 wrote: »

The problem for me was that I was not prepared to live on Slimfast for the rest of my life, so I went back to my old eating habits and over the next few years gained back twice what I had lost...

This really resonates with me. Not the Slimfast part, since I have never done that, but the part about going back to old eating habits.

What clicked for me was realizing, in my bones, that however I lost weight would probably have to be the same way I maintained that loss. That realization put things in focus in a very meaningful way.

Deviette

Rannoch3908 wrote: »

Thanks for all the feedback.

We started doing a meal delivery service called EveryPlate for dinners - we get five meals a week for 2. No leftovers or extra which is perfect portion control. Love cooking those - delicious, healthy, focused on meat + veggies.

I need to figure out if I need to eat breakfast or not - I am never hungry and feel like it slows down my productivity in the mornings when I get to work. But also don't want to sabotage my metabolism OR be causing double hunger at lunch.

Maybe I just need to get a bunch of fruit for snacks and keep it in the fridge at work. Grab some fruit when hungry - but isn't fruit like natures candy - loaded with sugar? The problem is I always go overboard. I can't have one cookie for lunch - I eat 12. I want 4 bananas - not one.

Then lunches - maybe frozen lunches are best for me. I can make them at work - more filling than a shake or lunch bar. Subway sounds good but I don't really like the subs without mayo, sauces, etc which tend to them make them not that healthy - ha ha.

SELF CONTROL IS THE HARDEST PART.
I brought healthy breakfast, lunch, and snacks to work this week.
Every day I look at them and then say "screw it" and go eat out.

Oh I hear you so hard on the 'screw it' and eat out. What works for me is leaving my purse at home on days I know I'm going to feel like that. If I have no money, I literally can't go out. By removing the option I don't need to exercise that self control when it's hardest (aka, when I'm hungry and colleagues ask if I want to go out), only when it's easier (when I'm at home, motivated for the new day).

That and put something in your lunch that makes you excited to eat it, even if it's only a small part. For me at one point I was putting a single individually wrapped sweet into my lunchbox, they were sweet and full of nostalgia for me so it really worked, but it might just be finding that one thing that really makes you excited about eating your lunch.

There is an eternal debate on whether to eat breakfast or not, but it generally boils down to: If there is a metabolic advantage to eating breakfast (which there isn't any concrete evidence for or against), it probably doesn't make as much difference as having a plan that you're more likely to adhere to. If you want to eat breakfast, eat breakfast. If you find that you're more than happy without, leave it.

And for fruit, again, just bring in the number of fruit you want to eat for that day. Instead of grabbing a bunch of bananas for the week. Leave the bunch at home and bring in only one. And yes, too much fruit isn't great for you, but having two or three portions of fruit a day is fine. They're full of fibre (that help you feel full), vitamins and depending what it is, much less calories than equivalent candies.

Oh and self control gets easier. It's a skill we learn. Like any skill, the more we practice, the easier it gets. But remember you don't need to be perfect, you just need to be better. If 4 out of 5 days you eat your carefully calorie controlled lunches, but on the 5th day you eat a bit over because you've gone out, as long as your total calorie consumption has gone down, it's better. Work at it and build the habits.