Food before MFP....

No breakfast (just coffee)....

Chiptole Burrito Bowl for lunch (or other fast food)....

Chips and salsa (until I was stuffed) for snack....

White rice and some sort of chicken or a mexican style dinner....

On a bad lunch day I would go to Jack In The Box and have a Sourdough Jack - 680 calories.
On a good lunch day I would go to Subway and have a footlong Meatball Marinara....drumroll.....1,120 calories!!!!:mad:

It's amazing when we look back isn't it!

For me it would be

Breakfast: Nothing

Lunch: Nothing

Dinner: Huge portions of my mums cooking (and seconds) or take away food like a chicken burger, large chips, apple tango or any other sugary fizzy drink.

Snacks: chocolate or heap loads of bread.

I guess I didn't know what starvation mode was years ago :P

Okay...so I just added this all into a day to see what an average day was like for me!!!

Breakfast
1 plain bagel = 260
Jiff Creamy PB = 190
Coffee with cream & sugar = 150
TOTAL of 600

Lunch
Subway - Chicken Bacon Ranch Sub 6 = 570
Baked Cheddar Chips = 210
Mountain Dew = 170
TOTAL OF 950

Dinner
Chicken and Rice Casserole, 2 cups = 628
100% Whole Wheat Bread, 1 slice = 100
Banana = 105
Water = 0
TOTAL OF 833

Snacks for the day
Hot Tamales: Cinnamon Candy, 40 pieces = 300

DAILY TOTAL OF::::
CALORIES = 2,683
FAT = 62grams
Carbs = 386!!!
Protein = 111
Sodium = 4,274!!!

YIKES! YIKES! YIKES!!! I was more than double my recommended calories & WAY over on everything else too :frown: No wonder I was gaining so much weight! Thank God that I found MFP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I usually had:

Breakfast: granola cereal with 2% milk. ~450 calories
Lunch: Fast food with large fries and large coke ~1,500 calories
Dinner: Varied, but heavy... ~1,000 calories
Snacks: A half a sleeve of fig newtons, cookies, or other treats... ~who knows?

If you add beer and wine to this, I think I was ~3,500 - 4,500 calories a day. The funny part is that I thought I was eating "pretty well" with having chicken sandwiches rather than hamburgers at fast food restaurants and eating a sleeve of fig newtons rather than cookies. But, the numbers were terrible just the same once I started to look at them.

Carter
SW: 225 / CW: 194
Goal: 180

I don't even want to know what mine was. I really didn't eat the same things every day, so I can't say for sure, especially since we ate out a lot. But I did just go back to my first day here. I only logged dinner that day, and I tried to make healthy choices without sacrificing too much of what I wanted. We went to Friday's.

I split an appetizer with my husband. Got a cup of soup and a salad for me (no big meal) and had a little bit of his dessert.

HALF of the appetizer, pot stickers, was almost a day's worth of food and fat- 1500 cals, 30g of fat
French Onion soup- 219, 10
House salad- 240 (for some reason, I didn't log the dressing)
Quarter of the Brownie Sundae- 375 (which also does not have any other amounts listed for some strange reason)

Grand total for the meal? 2334 cals. Which is literally two day's worth of food! And that was just for dinner! AND that was me thinking I was eating HEALTHY! Normally, we'd get fried mac and cheese or mozzarella sticks (or something cheesy and fatty and fried) for an appetizer, I'd get a whole meal of my own and eat the whole thing, and eat at least half of the dessert, plus, sometimes, get a drink (or at least steal some of my husband's soda)... eeeeek!!!!

I just hit the "complete" button to see what it said... it said that if I ate like that every day, in 5 weeks, I would have gained over 5 pounds!... and that was just dinner one day!! I can't get over it. Like you said, I'm surprised I didn't weigh MORE than I did to start out with!

Ugh god:

Hot Chocolate- 50
250ml full fat milk- 165
Wheatabix Minis Chocolate 100g- 369
Slice of white bread- 90

2 slices of white bread- 180
Ham slice- 46
Butter, 1/2 tbsp- 51
Cheddar Cheese, 50g- 202
Hula Hoops- 141
Tunnocks biscuit- 106

Dinner- At least 400- 500 calories
Desert- 100-250
Hot Chocolate- 50

TOTAL: 2,150

OMG! No wonder I was gaining like crazy!

I can't even begin to imagine, especially since earlier this year I was in college and I felt like I ate 24/7. The cafeteria was buffet style and had several stations (home cooked/classic section, sandwich bar, pasta bar, stir fry bar, international bar, pizza bar, a grill that had burgers, hot dogs, fries etc). I would eat there at least 2 meals a day and since I socialized there as well, my friends and I would sit in there for hours talking and going back for 2nds, 3rds, 5ths including dessert buffet and ice cream machine.

I had a meal plan and basically with one card swipe you could get food from any food place on campus, and there was a food court, restaurants, a restaurant in my apartment complex that the school owned, and our card even worked at Dominos (which delivered to the campus until 3am!!) and some other outside restaurants. Needless to say, because it was so convenient and was prepaid (so you weren't spending your own money, so it felt free) I was always ordering chicken wings late at night, chinese, cheesy bread.

I did cook sometimes, but for sheer convenience I would just order in, or grab something from the grill (fries and chicken fingers or a bacon cheeseburger were my usuals) and soda, and it came with a cookie. The library was 24/7 and had a coffee shop inside it, during late night studying, I'd get pastries and coffee drinks or run to some other late-night place on campus and get food. Most events and meetings also gave away food to lure us, and if I went to that, more food.

Literally, it was food 24/7!! Not to mention going out on the weekends involved food, coming back from clubbing involved IHOP or McDonalds visits and celebrating someone's birthday, break up, whatever the cause food was involved as well as those alcohol calories.

Even saying this just sounds insane...I can't even begin to imagine the amount of calories I ate daily or weekly. :embarassed: The ONLY saving grace why I am surprisingly not waaay waay more, is that you had to walk on campus and walk to classes etc so that perhaps gave me exercise and sometimes I did go to the gym.

Without looking at the calorie content...here's some of what I used to eat.

Back when I was in high school (my getting faaaaat days) I started the day with at least 2 pop-tarts covered in cheese and butter (sounds gross, but it was good, lol). Then I had school lunch...then came home and made at least (usually more) 3 cheese filled hotdogs, some Cheetos, and Mello Yello. Then mom would could dinner, which I always had to plates of...then there was some dessert afterwards, usually some pudding (not the fat free/sugar free kind!), pie, or cake. We ALWAYS had something for dessert. And if I was still hungry, I had more chips or Cheetos before bed. No wonder I was 191 pounds at 5'2" tall before leaving high school!!! Not to mention all the times a week I ate out, either with my family or friends...and I am NOT a "order the salad" kind of person...

I really ought to find out just how many calories I was eating back then. Or even later when I was "trying" to lose weight...cause I didn't change my diet that much, I just exercised my brains out and couldn't understand why I wasn't changing. Sure, my cardio was improving, but I was still a size 18. :embarassed:

I bet once I add up everything it will be at least 2500 calories if not more on average. And goodness, when my family ordered pizza, they ordered 2 large...1 for THEM (mom, dad, brother), 1 for ME. OUCH!!!

Breakfast
- Nothing -

Yeah, I remember going YEARS without touching breakfast. Going to IHOP was special for me cause I never ate breakfast. That was in college, and I seriously thought going without food was going to help me lose weight. Gosh was I ever a dumb college kid!

But yet even though I skipped meals, I still managed to scarf down 2500+ calories a day. Sheesh!

Oh man, that little "if every day were like today" button was the alarm clock!!!

Breakfast was coffee, loads of creamer, and whatever sweet roll, honey bun, etc. laying around.

A fast food lunch.

Dinner was two or three helpings of whatever was cooked. It was usually a very heavy casserole, pizza, or spaghetti. OR, it was a fast food dinner.

Snacks were candy, half a jar of peanut butter, a row of chocolate chip cookies AND some sort of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream.

Never drank water but I think I had more Diet Coke than blood in my body. Then, I would sit and watch The Biggest Loser and make up excuses as to why I couldn't lose any weight.