Dieting/Exercising and Putting ON Weight

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  • pcastagner
    pcastagner Posts: 1,606 Member
    this link should help you clear up any barriers to measuring a great deal of the food in the catered environment.

    http://bit.ly/Kq3VCo

    It's not self-served, you're served by someone else in a queue of people, kind of like in school.

    you'll have to get crazy strategic then. maybe ask for ingredient lists, or for all you know they may even have ready made calorie estimates AND macros. then you just use your nifty scale to correct their portions.
  • glreim21
    glreim21 Posts: 206 Member
    Ask the cooks/chefs, they should be able to provide you with a nutritional breakdown.
  • twixlepennie
    twixlepennie Posts: 1,074 Member
    Completely understand where you guys are coming from about counting calories BUT I basically eat the same, or very similar things everyday and I used to count them all the time for months on end so I know I'm not going over and basically know the calories in everything I'm eating. I'd say I eat a maximum of 1500 calories a day and I burn off at least 320 on the running machine.

    To answer some of your questions:
    - Always use skimmed milk
    - Slim fast shakes are 230 calories
    - Medium sliced wholegrain bread (but if I'm honest hardly eat bread anyway, tend to go for salads or slimfast, if I buy a sandwich I tend to go for wraps as these usually have less calories)
    - Nope I don't add a load of mayonnaise or lards of butter to anything, promise! - Sometime I might add a cheese slice or something but again, nothing overly unhealthy

    The weirdest thing is about a year ago I had pretty much exactly the same diet and was constantly losing the weight. My diet changed when I went to university which is when I put on weight (about 7lbs altogether), I think the main culprit for this was large portion sizes in catered accommodation (impossible to count calories) and the amount of alcohol I drank as a student, although I did still exercise daily.

    Now I'm BACK to being healthy and the old diet isn't working in the same way even though I know it used to (of course it's only been 2 weeks, just really surprised I've gained)

    Until you're accurately measuring out portion sizes and keeping an accurate food diary then you do not in fact know how many calories you're consuming. Keep a food diary for a couple weeks and then you'll have something to go off of. Also, you can gain weight eating 'healthy' foods, if you're over on calories. One slice of cheese is 80+ calories. I can easily make a 500 calorie salad. My bowl of oats can easily hit 500+ calories depending how many almonds and raisins I add. Keeping a food diary is really the first place to start.
  • elyelyse
    elyelyse Posts: 1,454 Member
    Ask the cooks/chefs, they should be able to provide you with a nutritional breakdown.
    I don't know about where the OP is, but in the US I think it's actually required that school cafeterias be able to provide nutritional info. Also, they may have lower calorie, or "without sauce" or other options on the menu for people with medical issues. (Ie: diabetics may need lower carb options) it's worth checking into for sure.

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