What were you eating habits before MFP?

gp79

I wouldn't put alot of thought into what I ate. I simply ate until I was not hungry. That being said, I'm a fast eater and had a tendency to make poor choices out of convenience more frequently than I should have. I remember a night after a stressful day away from my family I went to Wendy's and ordered 2 single cheeseburgers w/ mayo. It wasn't enough so I stopped at McDonalds on the way to the hotel and bought 2 more...and a giant chocolate shake. I slept well. It tasted great but we all know the affects of eating that way.

One significant change was stopping consumption of juices. I would kill cartons of OJ...not any more though. Water, black coffee, crystal light, unsweet tea. All things I've always liked, I just drink more of them now.

I have a much more thought out approach now and take more interest into what I'm feeding myself. It has it's pros and cons but I'm happier now, especially with my appearance and health.

bonnynblithe04

I have been on a plan for several years now, so I will discuss my really bad days here:

Breakfast -- McDonald's Big Breakfast, complete with second hash brown and orange juice, OR huge bowl of Cheerios with added sugar, OR *two* Dunkin Donuts Banana Nut Muffins (when I joined WW and found out the point value I was horrified!)

Lunch -- three slices of pizza, or the Double Quarter Pounder meal and Hi-C orange drink from McDonalds, or a huge burrito AND side order of chili AND Mexican rice (as if the burrito didn't have enough rice!) with a 24-oz C&C fruit punch soda cola from the local restaurant, or foot long cheeseburger from Blimpies

Dinner -- USD 5.00 regular crust medium pizza from Dominos with sausage and half a container of chicken bites and dressing, or four-piece KFC meal with baked beans and mashed potatoes, or corned beef with Goya yellow rice (can you say sodium attack, boys and girls?); or would split a 20-cheeseburger pack from White Castle

Snacks -- I would open a box of crackers around 11 a.m. at work, eat lunch at 1, and go back to the box between 2 and 3, usually finishing it in one day. In my early 20s I would spend the afternoon at the movies -- the Pretzel Time at the mall sold four pretzels for the price of three so I would get that and sneak them into the movie, then pick up a four-piece from Popeyes to have later. Salty stuff, sweet stuff -- I ate it all, and I sure looked like it!

After years of that, I had the nerve to be shocked to find out I weighed 320 pounds. :ohwell: :girlbye:

Scorpioangel

I thought I was eating a lot less calories than I was!

psmd

Wow, tough question only because it's awful to think about old eating habits. But....I would eat out at least once, sometimes twice a day. I used to go to Dunkin donuts and get a medium coffee with cream and light sugar, with 2 donuts, usually a chocolate long john and maple brown sugar. Lunch, if I was at work would usually be a turkey sandwich with cheese and sometimes mayo, diet soda, and chips, regular or sometimes light. I would sometimes buy one or two candy bars from the vending machine, like a snickers and peanut m&ms for afternoon snack at work. Then I would head home and pick up something: either pad thai with tofu (which soaks up a lot of oil and probably is not as healthy as chicken would have been), and sometimes would add an order of crab rangoons. A few times I had a 2-piece chicken and side from Popeyes, or a couple years ago I would have a double cheeseburger and small fries from McDonalds, along with hot fudge sundae. Or my favorite was a cheeseburger sometimes with bacon, onion rings, and strawberry shake from Portillo's, a local fast food chain. Sometimes after dinner I would have multiple bowls of cereal, always with skim milk. And if I didn't have ice cream out, I would eat either an entire pint of Haagen Daaz, or sometimes eat half a jar of Nutella, along with bread, I could finish one in 2 nights usually. Along with some potato chips to round things out for salt.

Ugh.....:sick: ......sickening to even think about, even though it was only 8 months ago I was eating like that...started MFP 2 months ago and I eat even better than I was before. Now I still need to have something sweet each day but I generally can control how much I have, only one or two days recently were not "good" days but they were still better than before!

Cait_Sidhe

I ate pretty much the same as I do now, in the same portions. I probably ate less.

My downfall was the lack of exercise, ever.

claire_xox

BEFORE MFP AVERAGE DAY

Vegemite toast

---

134 cals
4 x fun sized mars bars --- 348 cals
3 litres diet coke

---

20 cals
grain waves

---

955 cals
chicken salad

---

400 cals
chicken casserole

---

800 cals
tim tams

---

280 cals
= 2937 cals daily, predominantly sugar and fat

GOOD MFP GOAL DAY
Milo Oats

---

115 cals
Minestrone Soup

---

110 cals
Quiche

---

291 cals
Diet Coke

---

8 cals
= 524 cals

BINGE MFP DAY (at least one a week)
Box of cereal
Pack of tim tams
litre of milk
Family blocks of chocolate
And meals
= between 4000 and 6000 calories

These binge days never occured before MFP, my goal days usually don't stay that low, average mfp day is around 900 calories

engineman312

i drank a little too much, which as we all know is full of empty calories. late night eating, binge eating, eating cuz i was bored. made bad choices. my 3pm snack was a diet coke and two bags of peanut m&m's. i'd forget my lunch at home, or decide i didn't want it, and buy a giant hero from some place near work.

EvelynForsyth

I didn't eat badly generally, i ate well but too much of it i.e. big jacket potato with full can of tuna, huge salad and cheese and salad dressing. Lots of vegetables and fruit, low fat yoghurt and diet drinks, i didn't eat full fat anything but i overate when i did eat. I also tended to eat the same portion sizes as my boyfriend and if he had pizza with his friends i had some. I did exercise but not everyday and also nothing that got me out of breath, i walked alot!
I also drank more as i went on nights out with uni friends and had takeaway on the way home. So although i only went on one night a week i might have had a bottle of cider (not a 2 litre bottle of white lightening though, a kopperberg bottle!) and thwn 10 vodka red bulls and THEN a kebab on the wya home. So thats about 2000 extra calories every friday. No wonder i put weight on!

asyouseefit

I ate larger portions of everything plus a few bad choices.

Breakfast:
4 pieces of toast with butter and nutella

Lunch:
Bread with lunch meat and veggies

Snacks (when coming home from work)
Saucisson, chips or cheese

Dinner
Meat, veggies and starchs
Chocolate for dessert

healthieramanda

Usually skipped breakfast - or just had a large coffee for breakfast instead. On regular occasions skipping lunch as well. Drinking sodas instead of water. Pizza - ALL the time (since I work at a pizza store), McDonalds 1-3 times a week, sometimes 2 times a day! HUGE dinners. Lots and lots of meet, lots of pasta, rice and hardly any veggies. Huge servings of pasta and rice. Too much sodium.

Going from eating too much to not eating at all, for 3-4 days at a time and this would last for months, where i'd drop 30kg in 2 months and then put it back on when I started eating again. Used to survive off diet drinks, milk and coffee.

KokomoJoe

I would eat pretty much the same things when I cooked for myself. The biggest change is lunch because I now make my own lunch and do run to the pizza place or the sandwich shop or whatever. Also portion control on the stuff I make myself, instead of 2 huge pork chops I now eat one smaller one, with loads of steamed kale and a baked sweet potato.

RuchikaPal

oh my god...even thinking about it makes me sad.... :P

it was baaaddd...reallyy badd....i'd eat an entires pizza along with pasta n god knows wat all...drink sodas all day long..... it was bad bad!!!!!!!!!!

plus i hardly ever drank water...... may be just 2-3 glasses per day...... it was bad :P

MFP has changed my life...... n i have such amazing people here to share my journey with!!!!! :drinker:

topaz23

I work at a cupcake shop so alot of sweets.. and also huge portions of everything. i can eat like a 300lb man!

djenna8girl

Average day: 10 cups of coffee w/ 2 sugars and full cream milk. 800 cals. Toasted ham, cheese and tomato sandwich 400 cals. Large serving of curry and rice or big Mac and large fries 800+ calories. Chocolate bar 200 cals. Pretzel or cheese burger 300-400 cals. Steak & veggies/ chicken & veggies on a 'healthy day' (500-600 cals) pizza or a kebab on a not so healthy day (800-1000 cals) grand total: 3200-4000 cals per day (not that I had any idea at the time!)

lolainlondon

Cheese became a problem...

srr728

I loved stopping on my way home from work in the am ( work nights at hospital) and getting 2 sausage biscuits and hashbrowns and prob a cinnamon raisin biscuit. Yumm until i looked at that was the calories I should have eaten for the WHOLE day, not after a fast food dinner and everything else.

kbcara

I'm stunned by some of these responses.. it always used to bug me when you'd buy a magazine because it said 'I lost a stone in a month' or similar and I'd buy it, thinking, 'I'll do what they did'...well no wonder they lost so much weight when they ate such utter rubbish in the first place! I have always been frustrated by the belief that I didn't know what I was doing wrong as I never ate the crap everyone else did... BUT then I found MFP and discovered portion control.

So daytime (work lunch) I have swapped shop-bought sandwiches (even thought they were from low fat range - who knew they were so high calorie !!)... for larger and more filling shop-bought salads or 'lighter' microwave meals (in effect portion-controlled), or chunky canned soup with brown roll. If I feel the need to be naughty, what was previously a cake or pastry snack is now a freddo chocolate bar or jelly tots (low kcal treats), and what was previously crisps is now different crisps or popcorn or rice cakes! So my daytime habits have been about dumping shop-bought sandwiches and changing my snack choices.

I always and still do eat a lot of fruit as a snack and on intensive exercise days I now graze on nuts, granola, dried fruit rather than eat massively larger carb portions for lunch or dinner. Particularly important as I train late at night, straight from work, so my larger carb dinner was very late at night before bedtime...

And at home I have reduced the meat/carb portion on my plate (not significantly as wasn't that bad) and increased the vegetables on my plate. Or in a salad I chose a carb OR protein side or a little of both, previously I had a lot of both. So my evening habits have been about portion control.

PennyNickel14

i was out of control on coca cola and fast food. A bunch of processed food... and in complete denial

TODJ06

How did you eat before? What was your downfall? Did you even look at calorie content in things?

I work at a major grocery store, and while doing price change overs I was looking at calorie content of things I used to eat. NO WONDER I gained so much weight so quickly - 490 calories for a french bread pizza and I would eat two in a sitting, as well as a "snack" size bag of chips, and a full calorie pop or two. Multiple Hot Pockets as a snack. I also used to make something to eat while cooking. Making a pizza? Chips and salsa while waiting. Somethings in the oven or being delivered? I'll make a sandwich.

Same here!
I used to eat SO MUCH and never really thought about calorie intake.

Breakfast (if I was at work) 2 toasted bagels with LOTS of butter and strawberry jam
Breakfast (if I was at home) 4x toast with marmite and margarine, + a bowl of toasted muesli, milk and yoghurt. (sometimes with canned peaches/apricots)

Lunch (work) - 1 mince pie or filled roll, + sultana cake + hot chocolate
Lunch (home) - 2 ham/salad sandwiches [nothing has changed here... I still have ham or chicken + salad sandwiches most days]

Dinner - Much the same as now, although my portion sizes were considerably larger before MFP

Snacks - and THIS IS WHERE I WENT WRONG..........
Snacks - up to 9 hot chocolates per day, usually about 2 most days
- up to 20 cookies per day
- up to 200gm chocolate
- up to 1 bag of crisps (potato chips)
- chocolate muesli bars
- 100gm of crackers, then margarine, tomato and cheese added

Overall, my snacks really let me down.
I ate way too much sugary and fatty foods and way too much of them.

I have always struggled to control HOW MUCH I ate.... I find it much easier to say NO and not start, not have any, than have 1 or 2,... then TRY and stop.
So saying NO is easiest for me.

Portion sizes are also a biggie.. not so big now!

Since starting MFP I have learnt, real fast, where all the calories are hiding... and why I got so big!
But now I know whats'what, I can manage my eating better.

Hope this helps someone else out there.

Add me to your friends list if you like
Cheers

FairyMiss

i actually lost more weight in the 6 months before joining mfp.
then i watch my carbs, kept them to a minimum , at small amounts
and didnt worry about reaching someones elses preset notion of how much
calories i need.

still logging here but going back to THAT way of eatting and i am losing again

Dtho5159

I found I either ate wayyyyyyy too little or wayyyyyyyyy too much. Some days would be 800-900 calories, others 3000+. I used to drink nearly my whole days worth in soda.

brookepenni

I dont normally have a problem in winter because I love soups and veggies... I just used to eat too much. Summer though, 4 - 6 beers a day, weekends would be spent sitting on our deck consuming olives, cheese, bread, chips, shapes, salami, cabanossi, more bread, oils, dips and more beer.... We'd do that Fri night, Saturday and Sunday afternoon... Too much! We also used to eat 250g of meat each, seriously, the size of our steak now feeds us both. I also used to have banana bread 2-3 times a week and hardly ever ate enough fruit. Oh and 2 or more large full milk coffees (now I have 4 maybe a week - skim!).... I think though, my biggest problem was just eating too much. Oh and beer!

DrG3n3

I ate anything within reach that tasted good. Breakfast would be cereal or something quick but there would be a bag of chips and a footlong sandwich for lunch, or mcdonalds, or a pizza or hotpockets, and BAGS of chips daily. I mean whole huge bags, with loads of dip. Cheese on everything, tons of mayo and ranch. I literally would just eat because the food was there. Probably tons of calories and tons of sodium.

I didn't know ANYTHING about sodium or even what a proper serving size was for pretty much everything I ate.

Getting into a serious car accident last year really pushed me over. I was bedridden and in PT for months and couldn't really move, not to mention tired all the time and feeling bad and with the meds...I just ate McDonalds almost every day. I gained probably a good 20 of the lbs just in that year alone.

Laces_0ut

i pretty much ate every meal out. bagel in the morning. fast food lunch. fast food or restaurant for dinner. add in lots of beer on friday and saturday.

ChristineandRoxy

Pizza pop and tacos.....everyday