Advice Pls!

Okies. Thanks. I suspect I might be making several mistakes. Firstly, I'm not eating enough protein. Secondly, I've been trying to eat 3 meals a day (in order to follow the received wisdom that you need to eat more earlier in the day to prevent being hungry and gorging later) and it just doesn't work for me. Regardless of what I eat, I am STARVING at 2pm, and again at about 8pm. I think I just need to eat at these times and stop eating breakfast (except for maybe some green tea, or half an unsweetened grapefruit). I'm never hungry in the mornings anyway.

I'm also one of life's grazers, but I think I need to limit my mini meals at 100 calories a pop (I eat a lot of salmon and olives, for example, and it's so easy to just nom your way over, especially on the salmon). I also need to stop eating those weightwatchers ready meals. I started eating them when my other half would make himself junk food, and he wanted company eating. He'd complain if I joined him and ate rabbit food, so those meals were great because they looked like proper meals, but were only 250 calories. It's too much food in one go for me though, plus it's probably full of additives. I had the lasagne last night for dinner and felt sick afterwards. Then at 8pm I was hungry again (naturally). The question is how to balance my actual hunger with the social side of eating.

I also have a choice of two paths. I find that when I'm hungry, the best way to fight that is to either eat 200-300 g of raspberries (raspberries seem to work better than other berries... I don't know why), or to eat a crumpet with butter. I try to avoid processed carbs usually, but I confess that I usually give into the temptation of either one slice of bread with nutella (a whopping 180 calories) or one crumpet with butter (113 calories) every day. I can either accept this, or try a new diet approach. The paleo diet was suggested to me by a few people. However, I love dairy (tea with milk, and cauliflower/broccoli cheese, are real weaknesses of mine), and I'm not sure how I'd cope without bread/crumpets/fruit during my hungry periods. That said, I would only have to cut fruit for the first two weeks...

I think people are probably right that I need to look at what I'm eating and at what times I'm eating it. However, this still won't solve the problem of creating enough of a calorie deficit. It won't really solve the long term exercise problems either. In the longest term, I would love to get a cross trainer, but I live in an absolutely minute cottage, so it would have to wait until I lived somewhere it would actually fit without blocking a door (!). This was the problem when I got an exercise ball to do my spinal exercises on. Every time I wanted to use it, I had to move some of the furniture out of the room to create enough space, and it was a pain in the backside. I do think a lot of people struggle to go to the gym though.... it's not just me. For example, my total commute to and from work is a little over 3 hours a day. I tried to go to the gym near where I work, but like I said, once you've changed twice, showered, and left to go home, you're not getting home until after 9pm and it's just too much for me (this is considered an above average, but not excessive, commute where I am). Hopefully I can change jobs after 18 months to make life easier.

People are dead wrong when they say 1,200 is always too few calories, or 1,400 is not enough maintenance calories. You only need to be around the 5 foot tall mark and have a BMI of around 20 (my goal) to hit the types of figures I mentioned in my last post. Just do the maths yourself using the same equations you use for your own weight, and you'll see for yourself. Now, my weight did used to be stable for many years. I did this by eating no bread, potatoes, rice, pasta, crisps, chocolate, sweets etc etc, eating two meals a day of fish and vegetables, and working out for two hours every day. I also had the occasional piece of meat and fruit. I don't want to be that obsessive again though (I used to weigh my protein in order to make sure I was getting enough grams to maintain my muscle mass... can you believe it?), and I realise that this means I won't be as slim. C'est la vie. I miss being really hot though... I used to have a four pack and everything. But those days are gone...

It all went wrong when I got a boyfriend and started cooking for him and being tempted by some of his food... a bit of broccoli with stilton here... a teaspoon of mashed potato there. Then, after I fractured my spine (it took me two years to recover), it all spiraled out of control. I kept trying to get back into exercise by running, and the impact eventually caused fractures to my shins, and split the backs of both kneecaps. I was lucky enough to avoid surgery... however, these problems have accelerated my arthritis. No problems when it's warm, but I've been suffering during the cold weather. I suppose PPs are right when they suggest swimming, although I'm a bit worried about the damage to my hair (I dye my hair brown, because I have quite a lot of white hair, and the chlorine turns it green).

... I'll try and eat cleaner for a month to see if that makes a difference. Who knows? Maybe I'll feel so full if I only eat fish, lean meat, veg, and a bit of fruit that I'll cut back to 1,000 calories automatically. It'll be the death of my social life, though! In the UK, your social life revolves around eating out and going to the pub...