what did you eat like before MFP?

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  • DonnieBailey
    DonnieBailey Posts: 17
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    when I worked and weighed 256 pounds (now 198) a usual day would be:
    Special K with berries large bowl with 2% milk 1 cup
    Super supreme sonic breakfast burrito for lunch
    something sweet- 2-3 donuts or cookies or pieces of cake
    Catfish deluxe supper with ff, hushpuppies,
    something ssweet...
    Wow I started eating smart and walking in August of 09 and have enjoyed my journey.....and have lost 58 pounds but now I'm have to restart to break a plateau so I'm doing Visalus shakes and one meal (moderate) per day plus 2 healthy snacks. I want to lose 42 more pounds and I WILL DO IT, with God's help!
  • katemateg
    katemateg Posts: 334 Member
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    I have eaten healthily for a long time now but always thought I needed lots more than I really do as I ran a lot of miles. I have cut the snacks now and realise my body copes just as well with out. My snacks were all healthy but just too many and not needed. Which gains weight as much as anything else. Injuring myself and not being able to run made me really cut back on my food to not gain any weight.
  • redscylla
    redscylla Posts: 211 Member
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    ever see lions catch and eat in the wild .... not far of me with every sort of food , but I ate faster lol

    LOL! Plus, it's easier to catch pizza and hamburgers and mac n cheese.
  • Diary_Queen
    Diary_Queen Posts: 1,314 Member
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    A typical day before MFP would have been:

    Breakfast - Super Sonic Breakfast burrito with 3 packs of salsa, a large chili cheese tater tots with onions and mustard, a route 44 dr pepper with cherry and vanilla, a handful of hersheys kisses and 2 cups of hot chocolate with marshmallows

    Snack - a big grab bag of doritos with spicy bean dip and a slim jim mega beef jerky stick

    Lunch - hunan shrimp (dinner portion) with 3 cups of fried rice, 3 egg rolls and a 20 oz dr pepper

    Snack - a couple of cups of banana pudding with whipped cream and 3 or 4 cups of coffee with cream & sugar

    Dinner - spaghetti with ground beef & tons of sauce (2 huge plates full), salad with ranch dressing (tons of dressing) and so much cheese you could barely see the veg, green peas, 3 or 4 crescent rolls with butter, another 20 oz dr pepper and 2 cups of rainbow sherbert along with 5 or 6 golden oreos for dessert

    Snack - an entire bag of extra butter popcorn, a bag of plain m & ms and some roasted, salted pecans or cashews

    THEN FOOD COMA!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • UncleMac
    UncleMac Posts: 13,158 Member
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    It's funny... Before joining MFP, I didn't really think about what I was eating. I'm one of those types who forgets to eat until I'm ravenous... which means bad food choices and nil portion control...

    The real sticker shock for me came after I changed my eating pattern with the help of a dietician. I was keeping a food journal (paper at first, then MFP) and slowly changing the food choices. I used to do my entries at the end of the day so I rarely checked the foods before I ate. More times than I care to admit, I would eat something, figuring it was a healthy choice... only to discover it wasn't even close!

    I think the worst shock was a nice flat bread chicken wrap and a side salad at a restaurant chain. When I checked while doing my journal, I would have been better off having a Big Mac with fries!

    As a youngster, I used to round my plate and never worried about weight. Those days are gone. I'm okay with that... and I'm learning to enjoy cooking as opposed to looking at it as being an unwelcome chore.
  • DistantJ
    DistantJ Posts: 155 Member
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    This wasn't a real habit of mine, but I LOVED the occasional Big Mac or Quarter Pounder and McD fries with a coke! I know everyone is probably too much of a food snob to indulge in such things, but I LOVED it. I have avoided McD as if it were a deadly plague for a couple of months. While I haven't really lost any weight, I try to tell myself I have to do this to stay healthy. Otherwise it's just torture.
  • ruurik
    ruurik Posts: 143 Member
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    I can't even imagine the many thousands of calories I ate/drank over what's considered normal or healthy.

    I was laughing yesterday, remembering my brother getting mad at me a few years ago at a party "dude, you just drank 6 pints of beer and we only just arrived!" ahahahaha! While he was complaining, I was bulldozing a platter of sandwiches onto my plate LOL!

    When I did night shifts, all the guys would have three of the largest junk food meals we could find throughout the night. Plus 10+ pints of beer and double whiskeys at the pub during our "break" lol.

    Then I'd snack on chocolate and potato chips till morning. And this was a work night! LOL! Then I'd leave work and go for breakfast.

    By comparison I'd really go off the rails at the weekend. ><

    I actually started to eat better before I joined this site so add another 7 pounds lost to my tracker. :)
  • wewon
    wewon Posts: 838 Member
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    Obviously I ate more, but it wasn't so dramatic. I wasn't a couch potato sitting around eating McDonalds and Jelly doughnuts. However, I was a lot less cognizant of what I ate.

    Overall, most people, if seeing me eat at any given meal might say that I ate generally healthy (at that meal). I ate veggies, fruits, lean meats, and I worked out on occasion.

    I drank a lot of juice, would snack and graze on candy, have a bag of chips here or there and eat desserts. Like I said, anyone one of my choices were not horrifying, but MFP showed me the cumulative effect of eating a pastry and coffee and apple, high cal, high carb lunch, followed by a few Hershey kisses, a soda and a sensible dinner, followed by an ice cream. Do that over the day and you can easily run a 100-200 calorie surplus on a regular. I want to emphasize again that these were not 'gorge' sessions, just mindless indiscretions that seemed 'harmless' at the time. The thing about it, I never felt stuffed at any point.

    MFP made me more aware of what a few low profile choices could do over time, it also made me more aware of some of the most calorie dense foods and they were mostly the processed stuff with the fiber stripped out, that could pack 200+ calories per shot and never leave me feeling full. And you only need to do that once or twice per day and you will see the pounds accumulate.
  • bcattoes
    bcattoes Posts: 17,299 Member
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    I didn't change my diet much at all when I decided to lose weight or after joining MFP (after much of the weight was lost). I just started moving more. I began eating healthy decades ago but still have trouble with weight gain if I don't exercise regularly.
  • cfmay
    cfmay Posts: 19
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    Crazy portions and so many carbs!!! I can't believe how much MORE healthy food you can have for fewer calories that to the DEEP FRIED, SUGARY stuff. Crazy.
  • partenopea
    partenopea Posts: 9
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    I actually ate less and was doing rather well. Now that I track calories, I am stressed out all the time and hate it. I am thinking of blowing this off and doing my own thing as it was much easier and less stressful.
  • roguestates
    roguestates Posts: 223
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    I generally eat the same things, but a lot less of it. I didn't eat poorly before MFP. I ate a variety of fruits, veggies, and proteins with the occasional snack foods... but I just didn't realise how much of it I was eating!
  • nicheven
    nicheven Posts: 77 Member
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    I would start the day with a crappy breakfast, something like Del Taco burritos or McDonalds (I still have these once in a blue moon if we are going out early in the morning, but not every day now)

    No snacks, just hungry til lunch, where I would then eat whatever leftovers I had from the night before, or go get a sandwich from my favorite place in the mall, which i now realize is like 1000 calories.

    About 3-4 soda's during the day, 2-3 juices. No water.

    Dinner was somewhat healthier if I was making it, but not much. Stroganoff with sour cream....so yummy, way too big of portions. Or we'd go out to eat. Talking like a 1200 calorie appetizer between the 2 of us, and then a probably 1600 calorie meal to myself.

    Basically I was eating 3x my daily calories every day. I still let myself eat a lot of what I ate before, just in much more managed portions, with the exception of cutting out pretty much all the pasta's I make, because thats all we were living on. Switched from that to chicken and veggies or fish and veggies, lowering down my carb intake a lot.
  • gaylynn35
    gaylynn35 Posts: 854 Member
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    Hamburgers
    Onion rings
    Ice Cream
    Pigs in a blanket
    Steak
    Mac and cheese
    Donuts
    Brownies
    Cakes
    Peanut butter
    Chips
    (all of these in big portions)

    Diet coke or diet pepsi, a lot of it. No water at all.
  • NikkiSixGuns
    NikkiSixGuns Posts: 630 Member
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    Oh, I ate all kinds of yummy things. Many of them I still eat, but in moderation. I had sticker shock when I started journaling (before I joined MFP). It amazed me how ignorant I really was. My husband and I now talk about the times when we used to cook a whole bag of pasta (8 oz), two chicken breasts, and a whole jar of alfredo sauce and polish most of it off in one dinner. It's just the two of us! We thought it was healthy because it was pasta (pasta is good for you, right???) and I threw in some carrots and broccoli. Oh, we were so uninformed. Plus we had no idea how many calories we should have been consuming. Shame on us.

    Fortunately we never got super heavy, but we were well on our way.
  • juncture
    juncture Posts: 129 Member
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    I don't think my diet was really bad for the most part, some days were pretty similar to the days I have now, but sometimes I'd cook two portions of dinner intending to save one for the next day and still be hungry after I ate and go and eat it without thinking about how bad the consequences would be.

    And when I was working I let myself have takeaways just a little too often and then felt guilty, or I'd buy a pack of biscuits on the way home and eat it all.

    So yeah, the trick I think for me has been portion control and moderation and knowing when to stop eating :)
  • Xstitcher74
    Xstitcher74 Posts: 124 Member
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    I'm not really sure. I didn't keep track of anything at all...some days I wouldn't eat anything at all, or I'd refuse to take more than two bites of anything. And then others I'd eat ice cream by the half-gallon. :P And then one day I ate a whole bag of apples...

    Basically, completely unbalanced, and in the wierdest portion sizes you can think of. :P Not healthy.


    This sounds like me. I could go three days just drinking coffee with cream and then sometimes three days just eating everything in sight! Then when I thought I was doing well, I was eating portions that were meant for the Jolly Green Giant even though it was healthier food. I am working on "Everything in Moderation" :drinker:
  • bulbadoof
    bulbadoof Posts: 1,058 Member
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    I was pretty reasonable with my eating habits - my drinking habits were what threw me for a loop. I could drink 6 glasses of juice in a day and think nothing of it! :noway: Now I drink pretty much only water.
  • Sammyjo4486
    Sammyjo4486 Posts: 18
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    I had a really big problem with portion control. It didnt matter that I ate alot of chicken and veggies during the week or salad because i would eat creamy dressings and too much of it. Chocolate was my best friend. It literally felt like detoxing when I went on MFP. I always almost always drank water so that was good but I made up for it in snaking ships, or whatever was around. Or fast fod so i didnt have to cook dinner, I think i was eating around 3000 to 4000 at the end of the day. Since MFP its such a difference. Meausing my food for portion control is making all the difference. I stopped buying chips or cookies as snacks and buy fruit instead. And I am back to exercising on a regular basis. I only cheat at major events like weddings or vacation but i still dont go over board just one of something that I normally would not have anymore, I can't get over how sick I was feeling untll I started paying attention to what I was putting in my body. I don't feel like I am on a diet at all I am still eating foods that I love just tweeking the recipe to lighter versions and eating the right serving amount. I never feel hungry either so it feels like just a lifestyle change. I feel so much better and happier now.
  • heygurlheyyyy
    heygurlheyyyy Posts: 84 Member
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    This thread has officially made me hungry for all the junk I haven't had in a while. LOL

    But, I had a binge week last week and felt like crap for most of this week, so I won't be doing that. It sounds so delicious though....

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