A question about fiber and diet balance

kallen771991

I am wanting to know if eating high fiber, high protein foods for lunch can help curb the impact of the lesser healthy meals i make for dinner?

I am trying to stay on a specific diet during the week (monday - friday) to help me loose weight. My journey began November 2019 after i had labs come back. I try to check my hormone levels, thyroid, cholesterol, and other levels in my blood that could indicate anything is off. this particular test came back bad in the cholesterol side of things on many levels and showed my liver was having issues or was damaged. We did find out my liver showing what it did was a result of me passing a gall stone that previous april, it was just healing, its all good now. But the cholesterol coming back just under what they would normally start a person on medication for scared me... i was only 29... and then after i got the news i realized what my chart said my weight was and i decided to weigh myself early in the morning, after first potty break and completely nude to get a more accurate weight, and i was sitting at 303.8 lbs.... i cried.

So sense i've been trying to loose to get to my goal of 190 lbs. right now i am weighing in at 252.1 but before the holidays i got down to 246.4 lbs. I have a pretty good regiment down for my meals too. I stay at home with my children so we eat breakfast and lunch while my husband is at work. I found out fast after looking into my PCOS that dairy could be doing more damage and after a few months of not doing cereal and trying to do eggs or oats instead. I found out after eating dairy rich cheesecake that i can't do too much more than cheese anymore. The pain was so horrible, i had gas, i threw up from the pain of bloating and i spent the night in the bathroom... i almost went to the er. Then a friend of my sister explained how she responds to ANY dairy and i was like... well crap lol.

So here is what i eat during the day currently.

Breakfast:
Garden of life chocolate meal replacement shake
Sports research collegen peptides
Ovasitol

Lunch (at high noon or within the hour)
Garden of life Raw Fit meal shake
A granny smith apple
and a perfectly measured 32g of smuckers all natural peanut butter. (very good!)
I also add almonds or if i'm out i eat 2 eggs. I don't add any oils to it.

Dinner:
just about anything. Its my only "junk" meal of the day, but i tend to eat a lot of whatever veggie i make for it and eat less of whatever it is that isn't as good as it could be. I also try to sub for healthy alternatives. So zoodles in place of noodles in spaghetti is one that i do (and love). I measure everything out when i intake too.

That's another thing i need to say is i track on myfitnesspal absolutely all my intake. I measure everything out so i get proper portion sizes and to make sure i can adjust and stay within my calorie range the app provides for me (1680 cal). I never cheat on logging even if i cave with sweets too. so my log is as genuine as humanly possible. lol

I allow myself saturday and sunday to be free with eating mainly because its the only time my husband is home full days or day depending on if he works saturday but its nice to have a special two days, the kids love getting something different for breakfast and its not like i go hog wild. The only time i go over 2k cal is when we are out to the city and end up getting something on our trip and dinner too... eating out adds up fast. but during the week i avoid added sugars as best as i can and i do my best to get 30 min of exercise in too.

But i found out fast that eating a little more at lunch after i introduced the lunch meal shakes, that i ate less at dinner and felt a lot better about it all plus not waking up starving was brilliant!

I have my days where i cave so i struggle like anyone but with the warmer weather, its so much easier for me to go out and get some exercise in and i really want to make it down to 230 or less by summer, that is a huge goal for me so i didn't know if what i'm doing is actually helping me the way i think or not so i figured i'd ask. and please, if you have any other advice let me know!

Thanks for reading! i know its long!

pridesabtch

There is always the 80/20 rule. Saying that if you are on plan 80% of the time, you are doing good. The other side to that is just how far over you go on your off days. If your goal is 1680 and you rarely go over 2000, chances are you are still within your maintenance range assuming you are going for a 1 lb a week loss rate. So though it will take a tad longer to hit your goal, if it's maintainable and works for you. Go with it.

I don't know how you do shakes for more than one meal. I'd be gnawing my arm off. To each their own. Stay with calories 5 days and within maintenance on the weekends and you will lose.

ahoy_m8

Have to agree with everything @pridesabtch said above (ha! love the username!). I would eat my own arm by dinner, too, if all my meals had been shakes up to that point.

To respond to the question in your thread title, yes. For me, fiber really helps with fullness and hunger (along with healthy amounts fat and protein). I eat legumes every day, usually at lunch and if not I have some beans with breakfast or dinner. I would not reach the recommended 25g minimum for women without that. Shakes generally don't have a lot of fiber, and I find eating real food a lot more satisfying that liquid meals.

AnnPT77

Addressing your title and first-paragraph question head on:

Nutrition is IMO a matter of getting the right nutrients, overall, on average, ideally over small time periods (i.e., over a day or few).

Your dinners have nutrition (protein, fats, you mention veggies which will have fiber and micronutrients, etc.). If those, plus your lunch/breakfast (which also bring nutrients) add up to the necessary minimums of proteins, healthy fats, fiber, micronutrients (broadly interpreted), then you're golden. If you're a little over on one thing one day, a little under the next, averaging out to roughly the right level, you're still golden. Humans are adaptive omnivores.

In the context of weight loss, it's primarily an matter of individual sustainability when during the day you eat particular nutrients, with a couple of quibble-y exceptions**. If your eating schedule makes it easy for you to stick with your calorie goal, that supports weight loss. If it doesn't do that, a change would be a good experiment.

There's some research, most of it not ideal quality, suggesting that eating timing may have some minor impact on people's weight loss rate, and there's other research reaching the opposite conclusion. Even in the studies I've seen finding a benefit from one timing scheme vs. another, the difference is so small that I'm personally convinced it pales in comparison to the impact on whether a person can stick to their calorie goal happily for long enough to achieve their weight-management goals.

** Example of quibble-y exception: There's some research consensus now that aging people, say age 50-60 and up, benefit from spreading protein through the day, rather than concentrating it mostly in one meal, because we metabolize protein less effectively as we age. During weight loss, and in general, spreading out protein can help li'l ol' ladies like me keep muscle mass while we lose fat.

Here's where I get really opinionated and subjective: I'm curious, now, about what your dinners consist of, that you consider "lesser healthy" or "junk".

Personally, I have some skepticism about meal replacement shakes. I'm old (66). Over my lifespan, science has "discovered" many essential and beneficial nutrients - vitamins, minerals, other useful phytonutrients. Once those are discovered, they tend to be formulated into supplements and meal replacement shakes, usually with much marketing fanfare. The thing is, they were in regular foods - foods humans have eaten for centuries and millennia - all along.

I'm doubtful that we've reached a magical point now, where science actually tells us everything we need to know about nutrition. Therefore, personally, I consider it a good bet-hedge to get most of my nutrition from regular traditional foods, and a well-rounded range of those.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with using meal replacement shakes, if they help you personally reach (known) nutritional goals, and achieve a healthy body weight. Those things are more important, I think, than undiscovered nutrients, in an individual case.

Why I'm saying all this is that we see some people defining foods as "unhealthy" or "junk" using criteria other than nutritional content and calorie density. There are people criticizing "highly processed foods" but relying on protein powder for a big chunk of their protein intake, when many protein powders are objectively "highly processed foods" by any sensible definition. We see people thinking that plain potatoes are unhealthy, because they're white, or "a carb", when a potato (like a baked potato) is quite nutrient-dense for its calories, and survey research has found it to be one of the most commonly filling foods. And so forth.

Categorizing foods as "healthy" vs. "junk", "clean" or "whole" vs. "highly processed", "good" or "bad" for nutrition and health . . . that can distract from what I think ought to be the main goal, getting good overall nutrition and appropriate calories from foods an individual finds filling, practical, and tasty (so that they can stick with their routine long term). That latter, nutrition at appropriate calories, is the key thing for nutrition, weight management, health.

Sorry, long-winded rant! Bottom line: If changing what you eat and when you eat it helps you get nutrition, so stick with your calorie goal happily, that's a good thing. That kind of personalization, IMO, is a key success factor, and details will differ individually.

Bridgie3

I am also fascinated about the meaning of the word junk. There's so much competing information out there.

All the science is up in the air, cholesterol is good or bad depending on who you talk to, nutritionists don't have science degrees and everything out there is up for grabs in terms of what the best way forward is.

I do know tho, that my brother went on a carnivore diet and ate nothing but bacon for a month, and his cholesterol dropped, and he lost 10kg. Not recommending that, I don't like bacon well enough to do it myself either, but it's a point to ponder. No exercise, no fruit, no vege, just bacon. And his lipids went down, and his cholesterol.

I was told when I got gallstones it was from being fat. I investigated university articles online and found out it was from not eating fat and so creating supersaturated solutions in my gall bladder. Who do I believe? The one that sounds most logical based on the science.

I am getting a LOT out of low carb, high fat at the moment, in terms of not being hungry and having reasonable digestion. Fat aids peristalsis a lot.

My daughter is PCOS and also lactose intolerant. Don't tell anybody but she finds the inhalation of a certain plant matter cures it. She says it stops the allergic reaction although it doesn't do anything helpful with the inability to absorb it. So she doesn't get misery and screaming trots. She calculates what she will make sacrifices for and has the pizza she wants to see in this world.

Be free with eating for a couple of weeks: and log everything even on your days off. It's either going to shock you enormously - or set your mind at ease. But also watch this video and anything else by this guy. He's not a tinfoil hat, he's an ex athlete and a doctor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swc4ps4iPXs&t=44s