Introduction to community

byob6898

Community

Hello,
My name is Barbara. I am new to the community. There’s several questions I have so I can benefit from the app.
The most pressing question for me is how can I balance meals each day, not gain weight or drive my blood sugar levels up.
Any suggestions are welcome.

cmriverside

Log your food...whatever food you like to eat. Try to get in some whole fruit and/or vegetables in every meal.

Try to stay away from sweets if you're watching your blood sugar. Get sufficient fat and protein. Stay close to your suggested calorie level.

When you log your food, study your FOOD page (diary.) Learn from it. It's what we all have to do.

I had no clue when I started logging food. There's a learning curve...study articles on nutrition, try to make positive changes as you can. It's often two steps forward, one step back.

It will take about a month to six weeks to establish a good trending data set of numbers. Then you'll know how much to eat.

Ask specific questions.

It's worth the work. Keep at it.

nossmf

Welcome, Barbara!

There are some great threads created by our members, bookmarked to the top of each category that may be helpful. Just look for "Most Helpful Posts - whatever the category name is”.

For example:

• Most Helpful Posts - Getting Started (Must Reads)
• Most Helpful Posts - Health and Weight Loss (Must Reads)
  
• Most Helpful Posts - Success Stories (Must Reads)
  

You can also ask your questions in any category that interests you, read posts or questions made by other members, join a group, or add some friends.

Here are some frequently asked questions that may also be helpful: FAQ's

springlering62

It’s like learning to walk. You’re gonna stumble, bang yourself up a little, before you learn to walk and then run.

Instead of trying to corral all the horses at once, focus on one or two.

I found that simply learning to weigh and log accurately, before I started working on changes, well, that alone worked a change.

Seeing it laid out in black and white, although I was pretty uninformed nutritionally, I knew enough to look at an item in my diary and say, “oh, that was too many of that thing. This thing took up too much of my calorie allotment. What if I stopped eating such and so and substituted something healthier and lower cal?”

Even now, I can review my diary and say, “ya know, this might be a better choice next time. “

Right now I’m tinkering with plans for French Onion soup next week. My plan is to brown and then roast a lean pot roast in the crockpot with beef broth and onions.

Pot roast for dinner, beef wraps for lunches a couple days.

But all that leftover lovely broth and onions? I’ll save and reheat with a little red wine (we don’t drink but once a year my volunteer gig gives us a bottle of wine that’s got to be used!) and Worcestershire, and we’ll have a flipping feast. I’m looking forward to that one, and because I’ve thought it out ahead, it’s several very different and low calorie meals.

You start thinking creatively when you see it there in front of you.

AnnPT77

Hello, Barbara, and welcome!

Good advice from others above.

I'd add a couple of things:

It isn't necessary to balance meals exactly each day, from the standpoint of body weight OR nutrition.

MFP resets at midnight, but our bodies don't. With either nutrition or calories, some variation from day to day is fine.

In general, it's the averages over a small number of days, maybe a week, that matter. I'm not advocating huge, wild swings in key nutrients as a habit, just saying that if (for example) calories are 50 or 60 over one day, and 25-30 under on another couple of days, we're going to end up in the same spot overall. (In fact, the swings can even be bigger than that for calories, and end up with the same bodyweight trend, but I wouldn't necessarily start with big swings unless/until a person knows how their energy level and appetite respond to such swings. But a bit up/down at first isn't going to be a big deal.)

Same deal with nutrients, up a little one day on a thing, down a little on another on the same thing . . . meh, it's OK, short run averages matter more. Even with the averages, close is good enough. Exactly perfect isn't necessary. For sure, with some of the essential nutrients (protein or fats especially) it's fine to be consistently over, as long as something else important isn't getting short-changed to stay close to calorie goal, and as long as the person doesn't have a pre-existing health condition that requires limiting one of those.

Sometimes people who are new to tracking these things seem to feel as if the calories and nutrients need to be exactly exact every single day (or even every single meal, sometimes) . . . as if it were like a magic spell in which terrible things happen if one syllable is mis-pronounced.

It absolutely doesn't work that way. Humans are adaptive omnivores. Think about it: Since we're here today, many, many generations of ancestors must've lived at least long enough to breed, and very few of them even knew about calories or nutrients at all. Now, we know more, and it's good to act on that, sure. But theoretical perfection isn't necessary.

Best wishes - give yourself some grace, allow for a learning curve . . . you'll do fine.

springlering62

Sometimes people who are new to tracking these things seem to feel as if the calories and nutrients need to be exactly exact every single day (or even every single meal, sometimes) . . . as if it were like a magic spell in which terrible things happen if one syllable is mis-pronounced.

Barbara, last night I singlehandedly demolished a Milka Maxx bar that’s been in the freezer since April. Well over 1600 calories for one giant chocolate bar.

Am I panicked? Freaking out? Nope. As @AnnPT77 says above, I am not “exactly exact” every single day.

I still have a nice calorie deficit my 7-day average, and I enjoyed it. I might have even licked the wrapper to get the last few crumbs.

It’s what Old Me would have done on a daily basis-very likely more than once in a day. Only now, I can look at those numbers, see that I had almost a 4,000 calorie day (see? I told you you were an amateur! 🤣), acknowledge the choice (it was not a “mistake”, it was a choice) and move on.

I am back to plan today.

I’ve pre-logged thru Sunday, and even factored in for a holiday party this evening. They always serve the exact same thing, so I’m going for the shrimp, a slice of pork loin, crudités, and hoping the local pie shop provided some of those mini-mini pies that were so awesome last year.

You’re going to have those days when a giant chocolate bar or a peice of pie or Christmas cookies or that Starbucks drink slathered in cream and calories sneaks up behind and karate chops you into submission.

Expecting exactly exact is why people quit. Are you exactly exact in any other aspect of your life? I’m a Type AAAAA control freak. I can only hope for exactly exact in a tiny percent of my life. Even when I crochet or do needlepoint, and make a mistake, I sigh at my occasional incompetence, incorporate it into the design and carry on with the project.

That’s how you have to treat your food diary and weight loss efforts. You’re gonna have a slipped stitch in a giant project, you’ll have forgotten about it by the end, and it will still look fabulous.