Lost on Diet

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ashleys_aya
ashleys_aya Posts: 5 Member
in Food and Nutrition
I've got the working out part down just fine....But the diet part is where I'm lost. Making meals for the family leaves me little to no options of changing my diet as I would have to 1) tease myself with the awesome food the family is getting and 2) make two meals, one for me, one for the family. And I just can't do this....What can I do about this? I'm at a complete loss when it comes to the diet part of things.

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  • shovav91
    shovav91 Posts: 2,335 Member
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    First of all, it's not a diet. It's a lifestyle.
    Second of all, why not make healthier options for the whole family? Teach healthy habits at a young age; it does a lot of good!
  • ashleys_aya
    ashleys_aya Posts: 5 Member
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    It's not that it's not healthy choices of meals. We have our meat and veggies every day for dinner. Lunch is a well balanced meal for the most part....And yet, I haven't lost a single pound in a year of trying to lose it!!!!!!!!!! Even after a tummy tuck I haven't lost anything. I'm feeling so stuck and can't go anywhere with my weight. feels like a lost cause and I should just stop stressing over it cause it's getting me no where.
  • SteveHunt113
    SteveHunt113 Posts: 648 Member
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    We are sort of going through the same thing. My wife is a school teacher, and she is on Nutrisystems. She's so busy when she gets home from work, I've offered to cook Sun, Wed, and Thurs. She cooks Mon and Tues. We eat out Fri and Sat ... at least we use to. I started dieting in mid December, and she in mid January.

    Our cooking arrangements haven't changed, but the biggest difference is that we try to plan low cal and nutritious meals. I enter the ingredients into MFP and then we can see how many calories per serving. We've found that once my wife gets off Nutrisystems, we'll have all our recipes in MFP and she will be able to carry on her diet replacing Nutrisystems with MFP.

    But for right now, she cooks for the rest of us on Mon and Tues, but eats her Nutrisystems. Like shovav91 said, it's a lifestyle change that we are working on. MFP will play a big role in it.
  • manasunshine
    manasunshine Posts: 130
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    conrol portion size. and drink water while eating. i couldnt do that either. cooking separate is difficult for me to follow. i do it a few days and then when im short on time i eat whatever there is for the rest of the family. i just control my portion sizes to make sure i dont cross my calorie limit
  • Moonbyebye
    Moonbyebye Posts: 180 Member
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    Yes, what others have said: Try not to think of it as a temporary diet. Try to adapt it as a lifestyle change. Otherwise, when you complete the short term diet and get to the weight you want and go back to eating how you used to, you will inevitably gain the weight back.

    Also, introduce new/healthier recipes of the foods your family loves to them! There are plenty of modified/healthier recipes on this website and the internet! You can find a healthier recipe for everything. The other day I found one for Alfredo using laughing cow cheese! I was so thrilled because its one of my favorite dinners and I have neglected eating it for so long. It was delicious to.
  • mackemdan
    mackemdan Posts: 2
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    My girlfriend and I have been keeping an eye out for cookbooks with the calories in... Here in the UK, there is a series of books by the BBC called "Good Food" - not sure if they publish them internationally. They are only £3-4 (so say US$5-6), but they offer a whole range of really good meals without the pain of working out the calories.

    These have given us some meals that we wouldn't have even thought about having while on a diet... As long as you keep on top of the calories, it should be fine :)
  • Karmynzahringer
    Karmynzahringer Posts: 192 Member
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    I agree with the above posters. I do not make anything for my family that I can not eat and stay at my calorie goal. My kids complained at first, but are learning to love lots of the really healthy foods. Do they get ice cream or sweets once in awhile? Of course, but it's not served as dessert, it's given to them on special occasions and what not. For dessert, we now do some fat free yogurt with a tub of the Cool Whip 0 fat 0 calorie mixed together and frozen then topped with fresh fruit, or some fresh fruit with a little bit of stevia sprinkled on it. They are becoming healthier along with me, and they are getting better nutrition than ever. Some big things we have done are switching over to ground turkey in place of beef, switching to coconut or 100%pure olive oil, keeping nuts and fruits around the house for snacks instead of processed packaged junk, switched to romaine and spinach for salads most of the time, switched to Kashi go lean for breakfast cereal over frosted flakes, switched to green tea with stevia instead of black tea with sugar, free range brown eggs over the white ones, spelt bread over wheat and so on. My kids are aware of these changes and they dont mind them. We have less rolls/pasta/breads with dinner, and more lean meats and veggies.
  • KLK1986
    KLK1986 Posts: 89
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    Make meals for the whole family that you can eat. If you feel you need to eat a smaller portion of it, go for it. But you don't need to make two meals. That seems like it would just suck up way too much time.

    Whatever is healthy for you to eat is going to be healthy for your family to eat.
  • yoouperh
    yoouperh Posts: 68 Member
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    I agree, use MFP as your tool to help you get where you want to go and stay there. I never feel stressed out because I know whatever I eat is going to be logged on here somewhere! For example, my parents are making a turkey today with all the fixings, and I'm making a lemon cake with cool whip(it's the WW one where the whole cake is 12 points) so I will weight my turkey meat and measure out the potatoes, put in my mom's stuffing recipe, all so I can enjoy in moderation. Finally I'll be hitting the gym to burn about 1000 calories so I can simply enjoy and know I've got it covered! I think planning is a big thing, if you can plan it, you lose it!
  • TexNut
    TexNut Posts: 53
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    I used to worry about making two separate meals, too! But I'd make dinner for my husband and swap out some of the sides for ones that I preferred. So if I made him steak, potatoes and steamed broccoli; I'd have a huge salad with some steak strips and would eat my broccoli raw (or might eat a boiled egg instead of steak on the salad). It's such little work, it was easy to do...and of course, I eventually stopped making anything differently and hubby has been eating super healthy for years now!
  • annabellj
    annabellj Posts: 1,337 Member
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    I used to worry about making two separate meals, too! But I'd make dinner for my husband and swap out some of the sides for ones that I preferred. So if I made him steak, potatoes and steamed broccoli; I'd have a huge salad with some steak strips and would eat my broccoli raw (or might eat a boiled egg instead of steak on the salad). It's such little work, it was easy to do...and of course, I eventually stopped making anything differently and hubby has been eating super healthy for years now!
    this, i never make two meals but instead skip the mashed potatoes if we have them and eat more veggies

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