New but not a Rookie

AimeeLord9053

Hey y'all. Decided to join this platform to keep up with my recent weight loss. Since 2022 I have struggled after a horrible case of the Vid as well has being post menopausal. 2 years ago I used Semaglutide to help me lose 50lbs and now I want to be able to keep that off and lose about 12 more lbs. I still struggle with my energy levels and enjoy walking as my main form of exercise. I'd like t get back to that. I'm also a Weight Watchers flunky. Before my bout with the Vid I'd lost 40lbs and was walking on average 8-10 miles a day along with some short 20 min HIIT workouts.
The thing I had a hard time wrapping my head around was the "0" point foods. We all know those have calories. So I'm interested to see how keeping up with the calories legitimately, works out. The app set me at 1200 Cals based on my goals, I'm using that as a suggestion for now, if I go over a couple 100 I'm ok with that.
I do have a digital scale I use and that has always been helpful to get the foods I love in a caloric range that works witj my budget, because we all need treats every now and again, right.
So far I'm liking what I see. It's definitely going to take some planning and prepping to make this work, but I'm down for it.
I'd love to hear some of your suggestions for how you manage logging and prepping foods.

nossmf

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AnnPT77

Welcome!

Calorie counting was a real eye-opener for me. I've never done WW. My diet, even when I was fat (class 1 obese), included large amounts of what articles say are zero-point foods in WW . . . like really, really large amounts . . . too large!

Consequently, I don't think the WW approach would've been ideal for me.

But calorie counting has been a success, so far. (Currently in year 8 of maintaining, after about a year of loss, and roughly 30 years prior of overweight/obesity.)

No one method is perfect for everyone, I believe, but I hope that MFP will be helpful for you, too, in reaching your goals.

As far as logging/prepping: I'm not a big prepper, other than sometimes cooking up big batches of long-cooking ingredients to freeze. (I'm talking things like dried beans, Winter squash. I have a big freezer, which is helpful.) I do use frozen veggies quite a lot, because I eat So. Many. Veggies. that it can be hard to keep fresh ones around in the quantities I need, so I use a mix of fresh and frozen.

Many people here swear by pre-logging their day, but I'm an impulsive kind of person who can change her mind in the middle of cooking, so that's not my jam. I've been doing this a while, and am old (68) so used to cooking from scratch without recipes. It took a bit at first to work out, but I've learned some general patterns for meals I like that I can fit together as I go through my day, and know I'll be in pretty good shape by the end of the day.

(Example of patterns: I have a rotation of breakfasts that depend on how much time I have that AM, some light lunch patterns I can use if going out for a higher calorie dinner that night, etc.).

I usually jot down what I'm cooking as I cook it, on the back of a piece of junk mail or some such, and log later online when I have time. Sometimes I need to pre-log dinner to see where I stand calorically, but mostly the patterns work out. But that's just me.

Best wishes!