Where to start???

Yes, I am a newbie and I am starting MFP for the first time. This will sound ridiculous, but where do I start? I have done WW, Naturally Slim and many other "lifestyle changes" that never seem to stick, however, I have never counted calories.

I currently do NOT eat breakfast, but I try to eat a good lunch. I usually don't snack, but then after work I am crazy hungry and tend to eat whatever which in turn usually screws up dinner which in turn leads me to eat late in the evening...very vicious cycle! :(

I am really curious to see how people break-up their calorie intake according to snacks and meals. Any suggestions on meal plans or an initial "plan" to help me get my bearings would be awesome!!! Excited to give it a try and I hope I will finally be successful on my journey towards a healthy life. :)

Replies

  • DancingMoosie
    DancingMoosie Posts: 8,619 Member
    Well, your diary is locked, so it is hard to say....
    My advice would be to eat a snack in the afternoon to keep you from going crazy on dinner and late night snacks. Try something with protein and carbs, like fruit and nuts or fruit and cheese or yogurt with fruit. Even a snack bar, like the south beach diet snack bars with protein are good in a pinch. Eat reasonable meals with protein and lots of veggies.

    Open your diary so we can help more:)

    What I do:
    workout
    250-300 cal breakfast, including coffee
    100-200 cal mid-morning snack
    300 cal lunch
    100-150 cal afternoon snack, diet soda
    workout
    500-700 cal dinner
    200 cal evening snack
    Lots of water throughout the day:)
  • ajstaudt
    ajstaudt Posts: 28 Member
    First off, you NEED to eat a regular breakfast. I know its a cliche, but it really is the most important meal of the day;. Breakfast stimulates your body's metabolism, giving you more energy to be active and kick-starting the fat burning process, the lack of which can cause your body to go into fat-storing mode. This may be why you find yourself becoming so hungry and sluggish later in the day, causing you to bing eat and further exasperate the process.
  • fietsvrouw
    fietsvrouw Posts: 50 Member
    I imagine it varies from person to person. For me, if I don't eat a breakfast high in protein, I end up hungry later in the day and I eat a lot more, especially later in the evening. If I eat a good protein-rich breakfast, I don't have any problem not eating in the evening. (I am an evening snacker so I may still contemplate it, but I don't feel hungry and can change the subject with myself.)

    At the moment, I usually eat 2 scrambled eggs and 6 oz of good greek yogurt with some fruit (some are actually regular yogurt with gelatin or pectin to thicken them and are more carb, than protein).

    I do eat snacks. I juice every day - generally I make a "green" juice with 80% vegetable juices and 20% fruit juice (or less). Supposedly 8 oz. of this kind of green juice is equivalent to 5 veggies and 3 fruits - the daily recommended. I also eat a 1/4 cup of almonds. I I feel good about those snacks and if I don't eat meals when I am famished, I also don't tend to over eat. I rely on soups (often I make creamed veggie soup like potato spinach, pumpkin etc.) and salads for volume.

    i know that some people do fine without breakfast and they can eat more carbs than I do and it works for them. For me, my net calories (what you eat minus exercise) tend to come out low, and that deficit is always in carbs. I generally eat the recommended amount of protein and maybe a little less fat than I would if I hit my target calories. That's just what works for me. I also rend to consciously "save" some calories for the evening and have a little yogurt in the evening if I am hungry.

    The one thing that I found confusing on this site was the net carbs. I didn't know what that was at first - be sure that your net carbs are coming out at adequate levels (1200 or above). It is really the number you want to be looking at to tell if you are eating enough. I made the mistake this week of going on a long hike in the mountains where I burned over 1300 calories. I then ate a couple of hundred calories under my recommended amount of calories for the day, but it turns out that my net calories were about 200. Needless to say, I was ravenous the next day and because I hadn't worked out the net calorie thing, I couldn't understand why. When you burn calories in significant numbers and then try to slip by without eating some back, it sets you up to have trouble for the next couple of days.
  • cjcmrn
    cjcmrn Posts: 134 Member
    When I first started (Feb 2013) I would enter my food and alter it so that I found out what would work in a day.
    Still do that in the morning so that I know how many calories I am allowed in the evening (or if I need to exercise)