Food Is My Problem!

futuremanda wrote: »

beautyzlight wrote: »

bigres20 wrote: »

Hi there how you doing? So yea food is 80% of the battle, don't feel alone in this part of it, we all face the same struggle. Some way shape or form. Good work on hitting the workouts consistently! You've got that part down it sounds like. Couple questions, do you hit the 1550 cals/day consistently? And what are those cals made of?

Also, when the food cravings hit, do you track those cals as well?

Glad to support you here, I definitely can relate in a similar way. Let me know how I can help

Hello, and thank you!! Actually I've just started this journey/app today so I'm pretty excited about it... becAuse of the fact I have to many.cravings and snacks throughout the day lol!! But, yes 1,550 cals are the required amount to lose the 2 lbs a week on this app I guess. Yo me, it seems a bit much. My calories are mainly veggies, not starchy ones, fruits not to sweet, and lean protein. I try to stay away from rice, bread, pasta and some potatoes, and of course candies and chips and fried foods and.fatty foods. Just sometimes once in.a.while I.am go back to eat fatty for a few days and.then I regret it and.gain

You can eat candies and chips, fried foods, fatty foods, rice, bread, pasta, whatever. Just log them accurately, every time. Stick to your calorie target, so you have to work them in. Portion control is important -- so if your old bowl of pasta was actually 4 portions of pasta, you'll need to knock it down to work it in.

The reasons you may have gained in the past from eating the foods you try to stay away from. Either a) you just went over calories or b) because you were lower carb and lower salt, suddenly bumping up to higher carb and higher salt can cause your body to retain a few pounds of water. (Which is temporary, and just water. Nothing to be afraid of.)

And get yourself a kitchen scale. Otherwise, yes, your calorie counts probably are off, maybe even significantly (by many hundreds over the course of a day).

Be careful when choosing entries from the database. It's tricky and there's a lot to learn, so ask questions if you need to. But as a general rundown -- entries with no asterisk are more official, while asterisks come from users. Asterisked entries can be confirmed by other users, so you can look for the confirmations. If you can check the info, you can also correct or confirm an asterisked entry. Use info from the packaging you have if you ate packaged food -- but actually weigh the packaged food too, you'll be surprised. Log what you weighed -- if you weighed your chicken before you cooked it, look for the raw entry. Use the recipe builder to enter your recipes, never use a user created recipe (since you don't know what's in it) unless you're desperate. If you eat out and that item isn't available in the database or on the web (most chains have their info available!) then look for other restaurant items and try to pick something on the high end of calories, for good measure.

And I second the suggestion to set your goal to 1 lb or 1.5 lbs a week, to get more calories to eat.

You should also log your exercise. MFP will give you those calories back to eat! (Eat maybe 50-75%, as they can be overestimations.)

Sometimes you'll go over target. We all do. Log it and enjoy the food and you'll do better another day. It's not about being perfect, it's about the trend. If you hit more often than not, and if you're not eating a week's worth of deficit in a binge, you'll lose weight.