HELP: living with a family of big eaters...

katenmills

So, I come from a European family of big eaters. Although I live in Australia, we still eat traditional Croatian meals for dinner. It's for this reason that when I try and search for the calorie content of our meals on the MFP database, I usually get no results! This makes logging very difficult. I know I could try take a guess at the calorie content but I am a TERRIBLE judge for this! I sometimes ask my mum what/how much she puts of everything in our meals so that I can run it through the recipe analyzer, but even that is pointless because she does not use recipes and says she 'eyeballs' almost all ingredients - especially oil, butter, etc. which are the things that count for a lot. Ugh, so far while using MFP I have just been logging our dinners as quick-add calories of about 800-900cal because one thing I CAN gauge from our dinners is that they would be calorie heavy! Being on a 1200cal a day plan, this leaves veryyy little calories for my other meals! I cannot prepare my own seperate dinners as I would get nagged about it by my family and it would start a fight - they think it's strange that I am even trying to lose weight because they believe anything thinner than chubby is too thin! It's like living with two stereotypical Croatian grandmothers or something... "You're a growing girl (21), take 3rd helpings!" "You hungry? No? I'll make you something to eat anyway."

Anyone else having similar troubles? I'd love to know what you put your dinner cals as! Thanks in advance

susannamarie

Help your mother in the kitchen so that you can also eyeball? :P

Other than that, no real suggestions. However, since you're not that heavy (you posted your weight on another thread), you could probably reduce gradually by making the portions of dinner somewhat smaller than you are used to eating.

nebulinda

You need to be firm with your family and ask them to support you in your weight loss. Tell them that you are taking it seriously, and you'd appreciate it if they didn't nag you. As for your dinners, try helping your mother prepare dinner. This way you can monitor what is being put into recipes, and compare to volumes and weights that you know, such as a cup, teaspoon, 100g, etc. When you eat this food, take smaller portions! Alternately, you could offer to prepare dinner yourself. I'm sure your mother would appreciate the break, and then you could make whatever you want and know exactly what goes into it.

But really, I think it's most important that you get your family to support you. You can't go on forever eating high calorie dinner just to appease them. Well, you can, but your weight loss might run into trouble. If they won't support you, you might just have to buckle down and deal with the nagging and fights.

katenmills

Thanks for your advice guys, I think you're right that, in the end, family support is crucial. Going to toughen up and explain to them that I'm serious about losing weight and brave whatever confrontation it causes !