Your daily menu when you were fat (or b4 changing)

JustSomeEm

I shudder at my typical menu when I was over-weight. It wasn't uncommon for me to have:

Breakfast - extra large coffee with cream and sugar AND a bacon egg and cheese croissant OR two donuts from Dunkin donuts (800+ calories)
Lunch - 2 beef and cheddars, a LARGE curly fry, a chocolate dessert pastry thingy (and a DIET coke - LOL) from Arby's (I have no idea how many calories this is, but probably well over 1000)
Dinner - I cooked, so mostly healthy fare - but I had multiple servings, so again, probably well over 1000 calories for a meal.
Snacks were any sort of candy or chips I could get my hands on, and I ate ALL the time - just because it tasted good. I was well over 200 pounds (at 5'4), but I have no idea how I wasn't bigger. I'm so grateful that I found MFP and started realizing what I was doing to myself with these foods... and remembered how delicious real fruits and veggies are.

bodyrollin

I can't even begin to tell you how much I ate...the sheer quantity of food I would have to consume to be the size I was (323 lbs) was staggering, and honestly I'd have probably just kept getting bigger...my problem has always been that I never really feel full until I have eaten a ridiculous quantity of food...I still feel this way, I have just figured out how to control it...so as an example after I reached my first goal (down to 220 lbs) I rewarded myself by eating a meal the way I used to eat, and it was as follows:

Went to cheeburger cheeburger and got
1/2 loaf of onion rings (serves 3-4)
A group therapy burger (full pound burger on a giant bun with all the fixins)
A chocolate malt (with the mixing tin half full too, so it's more like 2 shakes)
Ate it all, and honestly could have eaten the whole meal again, my appetite is just obsurd lol.

fourfiftythree

Gosh I don't even want to think about what I used to eat in an entire day.... but I know I used to consider a "light" lunch about half a sleeve of Ritz crackers and 1/4 cup of peanut butter. Easily 600 calories. And that was a LIGHT lunch. Most days, in addition to that I would either have leftovers from dinner the night before (probably to the tune of 800 calories), or a sandwich with lots of mayo and cheese (probably 500 calories). And I always wondered why I was overweight............

EDIT: Oh yeah, I can't forget my morning coffee ritual - 4 tbsp International delight creamer, 4 tbsp half and half, 2 tbsp sugar. SERIOUSLY. I drank that. Every. Single. Morning. That was the first thing I cut. I am now a happy black coffee drinker and don't care for anything added.

Meerataila

These are all great. Or well, not great, but really interesting.

One more, from my fat vegetarian days. I hate to pick on Sonic, but here goes, with calorie count. Sometimes this was all I'd eat that day, but sometimes I would get a bit peckish later and eat even more:

Two grilled cheese sandwiches from the kiddie menu: 820 cals
Ched R Bites: 330
Onion Rings: 440
Mozzarella sticks: 440
Cookie Dough Malt (large): 1290

Total: 3,320 (almost a pound's worth of calories in one sitting)

Edit: Oh how did I forget the two ranch dressings? 300 calories.

Grand Total: 3620

seltzermint555

As a 257 lb vegetarian - this was just 2 months ago, lordy!

Breakfast:
2 eggs, 2 big slices sourdough, giant globs of mayo or butter, tons of cheese, glass of milk

Lunch:
Fried bean & cheese burrito(s)...tons cheese, mayo and salsa.

Dinner:
Over half a box of pasta, endless bread and cheeeeeese. With lots of oil on top of everything.
-OR-
Veggie stir fry with at least 2 cups rice, a cup of veggies, and loads of oil and sauces. And globs of mayo of course!

Dessert:
Big bowl ice cream with PB, milk, sometimes fudge or nutella

Snacks:
My bf's endless vault of chips, glasses of milk, granola bars (the sugary ones), cheese & mayo sandwiches (yes, I'd eat a cheese sandwich as a snack between meals if I was home alone!)

THIS is how I gained 20 lbs in 3 months this year, ya'll. I was slightly more conservative before, maintaining at around 230lbs for quite some time.

Your mayo & cheese love in the past reminds me of how liberally I used both of those, too. I really had NO concept of the calories/fat I was consuming, I thought of both as being pretty much the same as ketchup or mustard.

I used to dump AT LEAST 1/2 cup of shredded cheddar and/or mozzarella cheese in practically everything I cooked. I thought nothing of eating 2 frozen bean burritos with almost a cup of shredded cheese on top. If I made a large homemade pizza I would use 3/4 of a BIG bag of shredded cheese on that one pizza. Now my husband makes homemade pizza for us using 1/2 cup of cheese on the entire thing, and it's plenty!

As for mayo, I swear I used to eat practically a meal's worth of calories in mayo when I ate at Chick Fil A. I didn't even realize it. I would get the original chicken sandwich with waffle fries, and eat a packet of mayo on the sandwich AND 2 packets of mayo mixed with 2 packets of ketchup for my fries. If there was some left I would dip my sandwich in it, too.

zenalasca

Typical meals when I was living with my dad before I lost weight the old fashioned way (for me, starvation and exercise LOL). We didn't eat very consistently and tended to "graze" throughout the day and continued to take helpings of meals until all the food was gone.

My diet was full of healthy foods but I ate way too many sweets and had no understanding of portion size. I'd always scoff at the portion guidelines on packages, thinking the people who wrote them must have no clue about how much of something it takes for food to taste good.

Meals
Usually for breakfast
- Big bowl of stewed quince with icecream. Quince actually very healthy but not so much the mountains of craisins and brown sugar we added to that.
- Big bowl of cinnamon and allspice stewed apple prepared in similar fashion
- Big bowl of fruit salad that included fresh seasonal fruits, craisins, canned fruit, jam and frozen berries. It became a bit soggy though, and I was grossed out by it. I eventually persuaded my dad to stop forcing me to eat it LOL
- Big as bowl of homemade porridge or polenta with tons of brown sugar dumped on it, no milk. It's still a favourite of mine, but just as filling in probably a third of the portion size.
- Big bowl of icecream (noticing a trend here? all the bowls I used to use were twice the size as the ones I use now!! probably 4 cups volume!!!). We bought 3 litres a week and sometimes had multiple bowls a day
- Fruit smoothie made using similar ingredients to the salad, just more frozen berries, more natural fruit juice and also hazelnut flour. No dairy ever added btw. Also grossed me out with its overly sweet taste. Now, if I must have a smoothie I prefer to blend a bunch of raspberries by themselves and add water.

Other meals
- Trips to the Thai restaurant to have my favourite Pad Thai (gigantic serving that would leave me feeling stuffed not once but twice now) or anything else on the menu, followed by something sweet, or maybe several sweet things, then some fruit cause I should be more healthy...LOL
- 4th or 8th serving of a massive 12 egg veggie and salmon fritatta (400 g salmon). Looking back it wasn't too bad! But the addition of cheese definitely made it worse
- 6th of a quince or apple "crumble" I enjoyed making that had hazelnut flour, jam and oats as a crust. Very yummy and probably also very healthy without the excess added sugar I added. OMG I LOOOVE quince. I made it again recently with sugar free maple syrup instead of brown sugar, SO FREAKING GOOD
- Mushrooms that were fried to a crisp with lots of butter.
- Stewed tomatoes that had lots of sugar added to them, usually on 2 slices of thickly buttered toast.
- Baked beans on toast. Probs about a 6th of a 400 g can can each. We liked adding lots of herbs, spices and ketchup to the baked beans too. Sometimes we had grilled cheese instead of butter on our toast.
- Huge servings of roast chicken and roast veg, all soaked in spices and extra virgin olive oil, because "as long as it's healthy, good quality oil won't make you fat. you know, because of the Mediterranean diet?" Oh, and "tumeric has fat loss properties" or some such thing. All the oiliness made everything nice and crispy but actually made me want to throw up. But roast pumpkin, carrot and parsnip? sooooo yumminess. A lemon in the chicken made everything moist and flavourful/flavoursome too!!! Ah... anyway
- Reasonable sized serving of homemade bolognese sauce which I made cause my dad always insisted on adding way too much water. This accompanied by bean vermicelli noodles and steamed vegetables including potato but generally broccoli and carrot. Usually some grated cheese on top too. Actually quite a reasonable meal!
- "Pizza roll" I made using tons of cheese, pasta sauce and chopped salami laid out on puff pastry, rolled up, sliced and baked in the oven until light and fluffy. I EVENTUALLY found out without MFP that I didn't need 500 g of cheese to make it tasty haha
- Half a jar of unhulled tahini mixed with lots of honey
- 125 g butter, lots of brown sugar and hazelnut flour, mixed, heated and consumed over two periods
- Big serving of vegetable soup that had caramelized onions and canned soup in it, plus many slices of buttered toast. Madam, would you like some soup with your toast?
- 3rd of a large serving of chips and gravy with a ratatoille pie, vegetable quiche or pumpkin and pinenut pastry roll from the bakery on the way to the snow for skiing or lake for sailing.
- 3rd of a family sized supreme pizza from a local place on the way home from a long trip from Sydney, Always wanted to try the gelato and pasta dishes there lol
- No biscuits, pasta, nutella or generic peanut butter, ever. (except when I snuck some of my grandfather's bikkies!! shh don't tell anyone!!). No baking except when I stayed at my mother's and ate "normal food."
- Craved cookies, so invented a recipe consisting of besan flour folded into a ton of treacle and other sugars. Turned out cakelike and slightly nutty.

Quite a lot of variety! Note many of these things I cooked by myself when I was in my teens!

Snacks included handfuls of macadamias, natural confectionary co. lollies, craisins, raisins, Slices of bread thickly spread with unsalted butter (correction, it was real butter so I sliced it haha), jam, natural nut spreads etc. Lots of fresh fruit as well but I preferred to cut it up with a knife while eating it to retain all possible freshness. My appetite, once I ate something, seemed to be uncontrollable.

I only stopped when I weighed myself at 75 KG, the highest weight I've ever been, and continued eating what I wanted but only 1 small bowl of it (generally a sixth of a pack of instant noodles fried with a third of a tin of smoked salmon with all the oil and frozen peas) when I was at home or a single serving of Thai or a 2 items from the bakery (1 sweet, 1 savoury). I lay on my belly, playing my DS or using my computer or reading or writing, to put pressure on my whinging stomach and conserve energy. If I felt desperate I had a snack. But I learned to recognize all the stages of hunger this way. I learned not only how to not eat for 2 days straight, but also the long term and short term consequences of that (loss of metabolism, lightheadedness, lethargy, overly low blood pressure, dizziness when standing up, easy nosebleeds, poorly healing wounds....)

ironanimal

Pretty much the same as now, but more chocolate and crisps (american: chips), and 3-4 500ml bottles of Dr. Pepper a day.

loribethrice

I never ate a lot. I usually had a cup of cereal and ultra skim milk for breakfast and nothing before bed, but the issue was that when I got to work we didn't have a cafeteria so I would order a small pizza or pepperoni rolls every single night and some nights I would also get breadsticks with it. Ordering that nightly pizza really screwed me up because I never sat down and thought about how many calories it was. I just assumed it was ok since all I drink is water and all I had for breakfast was some cereal.

sarahmoo12

breakfast pretty much same as now or none at all (not a morning person or eater)

Lunch I go to my mums so normally a big portion of left over dinner to use it up then whatever sweet food was within sight

dinner - lots of pasta or massive dinners with far to much mash, meat (before I became veggie) etc and maybe 4 nights out of the week take away food like McDonalds or pizza followed by lots of junk food
Ugh I ate so much cheese too.

I snacked on so much junk food during that day it was unreal I was so shocked by the amount of food and cals I was putting away when I started on here logging. I was hitting around 3500 + cals on an average day

sarahmoo12

breakfast pretty much same as now or none at all (not a morning person or eater)

Lunch I go to my mums so normally a big portion of left over dinner to use it up then whatever sweet food was within sight

dinner - lots of pasta or massive dinners with far to much mash, meat (before I became veggie) etc and maybe 4 nights out of the week take away food like McDonalds or pizza followed by lots of junk food
Ugh I ate so much cheese too.

I snacked on so much junk food during that day it was unreal I was so shocked by the amount of food and cals I was putting away when I started on here logging. I was hitting around 3500 + cals on an average day

Oh plus a pretty bad energy drink addiction lol

lamps1303

At my VERY worst a typical weekday consisted of:
Breakfast - large bowl of cereal or sausage sandwich with ketchup
Lunch - baguette or jacket potato with cheese and beans
Dinner - pizza, prepacked tortellini pasta (one pack is 2 servings - I had it all), loads of pasta
Snacks - everything - ice cream, chocolate, crisps, sweets, toast with lashings of butter/peanut butter

I was fairly slim during school and ate all sorts of cr*p, so I continued this way at uni and then some! The weight piled on.

ETA: you're probably thinking a baguette or jacket potato isn't particularly unhealthy but my portion sizes were out of control. I was also my snacking and dinners that caused me to gain weight

prism1968

If I tried to calculate all that I used to eat when I binged, my calculator would explode.

This!

sweet2def

Breakfast: Nothing

Lunch: Cheese and Onion Crisps, 1 and 1/2 prawn and mayo sandwiches, 8 piece bar of galaxy chocolate, 500ml diet cola

Dinner: 1 HUGE plate of spaghetti Bolognaise with (500ml of) a sugary ''fruit'' juice of some kind

Snacks: M&M's, coffee and fullfat milk with 2 sugars




If I could eat more then I would, when I got home after work after eating all of the above during my day. Getting home, I'd eat everything in sight. Crisps (at least two bags, more if they were smaller bags of crisps like Frazzles), half the bar of share bars of chocolate, calorie and salt laden sandwiches (I specifically remember a period of about 6 months where I would eat until my stomach was in agony and it hurt to just be able to lay flat on my bed - DISGUSTING!)

williams969

My typical menu varied between high and low:

High days (5 days/wk, which outnumbered the lows, hence the gain, lol):

Breakfast: Drive thru breakfast sandwich, potato, and coffee or omelet w/ cheese and buttered toast(~600 cals)

Lunch: Soup w/ bagel or sandwich(~500 cals)

Dinner: Pasta w/ meat sauce or pizza or burgers or takeouts (~1,000 cals+)

Evening snacks: Soda or chips or leftovers (~400 cals)

Plus juices or energy drinks throughout the day (~400 cals)

Total: 2,900+ cals

Low days (2 days/wk), I skipped breakfast and the bagel at lunch, and switched to water, so probably 1500-1800cals.

Probably not overly indulgent, but just enough for 20lbs to creep up on me over 2 years (with a sedentary lifestyle w/ zero exercise).

ETA: THANK YOU for starting this thread. I never really put it down into words what my prior eating habits were like. It's sickening to know how "bad" it really was. My weight gain was so slow. Outside of my pregnancies, I was always a slender 135-140lbs my entire adult life, except for the last 2 years. It's eye opening to see how just a little "extra" (i.e. takeouts too often, juice instead of water, second plate of dinner) slowly snowballs into extra poundage.

maryjay52

i never ate breakfast unless i was out to a meeting where i would order a big fattening breakfast of eggs over easy that were fried in butter , homefries , sausage and bacon and buttered toast .... lunch and dinner always something fattening ..fried food, pizza , big wegman's subs, chicken fingers, spagetti and meatballs ( not bad for you unless you eat enough for three people) .. i was a huge sweets eater and could down a half gallon of ice cream with caramel topping in two days .. buttered everything ..just gobs of it on toast ..chips galore with french onion dip ... and to think i was saying back in those days i hardly ate anything