Anyone care to share a meal diary ? HELP I'M ONLY 19

The kinds of foods: You need to eat protein, fat, carbohydrate, vitamins, minerals and fibre to keep your body healthy and functioning right. You also need to drink water.

Protein foods: meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, beans, lentils

Fat foods: nuts, avocado, vegetable oils (cold pressed is best), eggs, meat, oily fish

Carbohydrate foods: fruit, bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, grains

vitamins and minerals: fruit, vegetables, bread, dairy, eggs, most fresh foods

fibre: fruit, vegetables, wholegrains (e.g. wholewheat bread, pasta, brown rice, etc)

water: you don't have to drink plain water, but log the calories carefully on drinks that contain a lot of sugar'


the amount you should eat

This depends on your size and activity levels. If you use the MFP calorie goal (i.e. the default one) you eat that number of calories daily, and if you do exercise, you log it and eat back the exercise calories. There are other ways to calculate your calorie goals, but if you're just starting out, see how it goes with the MFP default calorie goal. You can always adjust it if you're not seeing results.

In terms of how much of each nutrient: each meal should contain protein. Try to get around 5 servings of fruit or veg each day. Try to eat from all the above food groups each day. Fat is an essential nutrient, don't cut it out like some people do. Fat doesn't make you fat, eating more calories than you burn off makes you fat. If you have calories left over after eating all of what your body needs, then eat whatever you want to get you to your calorie goal.

Don't try to make things too difficult or restrictive - see this as a long term lifestyle change, because if you only think short term, i.e. restrictive diet then going back to your old lifestyle, you'll just get fat again. Success is long term maintenance of your goal weight, so make sure you enjoy your new lifestyle and that it's something you can stick to. You could set your goal to lose 1lb a week rather than 2lb if this will make it easier for you to stick to in the long term. It doesn't matter if you lose weight more slowly, what matters is staying there for life. The easier the lifestyle changes are to stick to the more likely you are to stick to them and maintain your goal weight for life.

Hey there Don't be embarrassed, you have at least made an effort unlike a lot of people. That is something you should be proud of!! We are all on this site for pretty much the same reasons, to lose weight, keep fit and get healthy for life. I am 18, 169cm (About 5'5") and 79kg (174 pounds). I have started working out and eating healthier over the past week and lost 2.3kg already.

I did this by completely cutting out all junk food, cutting back my sugar intake (still having sugar just not as much as I used to) and doing some moderate cardio and a little strength training.

The foods I eat not consist mainly of fruit and fresh veggies. I have been trying to cut my bread intake in half and this has probably been helping too. If you don't want to drastically change your diet at this stage, possibly you could try to cut down portion sizes? I drink heaps of water which makes me feel full all the time.


My usual food diary:

Breakfast - muesli and yogurt with either a banana or kiwifruit OR Porridge with kiwifruit if it is cold

Lunch - Carrot, muesli bar (a nutty type one) and an apple or orange

Dinner - Packet soup mix OR brown rice stir fry OR tuna wrap

Snacks - any type of fruit or veggie, roast broccoli is my favourite at the moment!


While food is important, in my opinion exercise is equally important. I came across this website https://activesmart.co.nz/

They create free workout plans based on what you want to achieve, eg fitness, weight loss, training for an event etc and you select the time frame. It is New Zealand based, so if you live in a hilly area select Wellington, or a flat area select Christchurch (because it will base your workouts around this as to where you train hill/flat)

Good luck for your journey, feel free to keep in contact and we can motivate each other

You can add me and check out my diary But first you should figure out your total daily energy expenditure and use that to figure out how much you should eat to lose a safe amount of weight a week.