Do you need a nutritionist to write your own meal plan?
alexandravictoria88
Posts: 138 Member
Is it easy enough for us who are not qualified to write our own meal plans to suit our needs? Does anyone do this? I get so confused with all the numbers and grams, bmi , tdee etc.. could be the fact i have dyscalculia and i struggle but wow its confusing. Id love to be able to do it myself without paying someone to do it for me lol
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Replies
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Unless you have very specific dietary needs due to multiple allergies or medical conditions you really don’t need to pay someone to tell you what to eat! Basic adult function for most! 😉
Use the MyFitnessPal set-up to input your stats and goals and it will come up with a daily calorie target based on the information you provide,
Once you have that, it’s basically all you need to get started, especially if you’re feeling overwhelmed, don’t complicate things by worrying too much about the macro splits. Stick with the defaults until you’re comfortable and feel you understand well enough to tweak things if necessary.
Eat the food you like and weigh and log everything into the diary function. That’s really all there is to it!
If you’re unsure or have questions then come back to the forums - there’s always help if you feel you need it! 😊9 -
It's not really all that important to be all perfect in the numbers.
I had a lot of problems early in my use of this site for the same reasons, and it was more tied to my inner need to, "Do it right." Turns out, that's not necessary, so relax.
A couple things that may help you: first, just focus on getting enough protein. That was the hard part for me. I also needed to really watch my vegetables and fruits, to make sure I got enough of them. I did that by adding a vegetable or fruit to every meal and snack. I shoot for 4-6 servings of fruit and vegetables per day. That's easier to track than grams and ounces.
The other thing is maybe try to pre-log your day for a while. Play with the macros if you want, but the easiest thing for me was to get a good amount of protein and plants. Simple.8 -
I think it's pretty easy for a person who just wants to lose weight and eat a healthful diet to create a meal plan. Do you have specific needs that would make it harder?0
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Hey! I get where you're at with the dyscalcula. I don't have it, but I struggle with a mild form of dylexia.
MFP and a wide variety of other calculators can do the math for you, and if you're physically pretty normal, you should do fine.
Start with the basic calculations as done by MFP and get started.
Nobody here learned all of this in a day. We picked up little pieces of the puzzle day in and day out by reviewing our logs and numbers and considering what was working for us and what wasn't. As we learned more about ourselves and how WE specifically related to the numbers calculated by MFP or whatever calculator we used, more puzzle pieces fit together and made sense.
If there's one thing in particular you just don't get, you can ask here for a variety of explanations, or you can just kind of let it percolate for a while and come back at it with more personal data/examples to apply.
Nobody that does this for a long time is using the same plan they started with. We've all upgraded, tweaked, and worked things out for ourselves at our own pace. Just remember to come back and review where you're going and whether it matches up with where you want to go. Once a month is probably sufficient, unless you find all of this really interesting.
This is all very much "slow and steady" habit changes and understanding upgrades. Start where you can and keep at it, a little bit at a time.3 -
The first question to ask is do you need a meal plan? Some people find that the structure of a meal plan helps them succeed. I personally find meal plans restrictive and prefer to have a more flexible way of eating. Right now I focus on staying within my calorie goal and upping my protein because I don't naturally eat enough of it.5
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The first question to ask is do you need a meal plan? Some people find that the structure of a meal plan helps them succeed. I personally find meal plans restrictive and prefer to have a more flexible way of eating. Right now I focus on staying within my calorie goal and upping my protein because I don't naturally eat enough of it.
Same here. I figure out what I'm in the mood for and then work that into my calorie goal. I get tired of meals very easily, and I'm way more likely to get off track if I'm bored of the food I have.3 -
The first question to ask is do you need a meal plan? Some people find that the structure of a meal plan helps them succeed. I personally find meal plans restrictive and prefer to have a more flexible way of eating. Right now I focus on staying within my calorie goal and upping my protein because I don't naturally eat enough of it.
Same for me. I have general guidelines that structure how I eat (most of them just ones that are how I've always eaten, like protein, starch, and veg at dinner), but no specific meal plan. I tend to plan what I'm going to eat in my head.
But if one is new to calorie control or healthful eating, putting together a plan to help decide what to buy and just give a general sense of what and how much to eat would likely be helpful, even if it were really flexible.
Something like:
Typical breakfast -- estimated protein, cal (to make sure the numbers will be on target at the end of the day)
Typical lunches or dinner leftovers -- estimated protein, cal
Dinner pattern -- something like meal made up of protein, starch, veg -- estimated protein, cal
If not used to eating sufficient veg or fruit, maybe get a sense of what a serving looks like and plan to have a serving of veg and fruit at breakfast, a couple servings (at least) of veg at lunch, same at dinner.
Still lots of flexibility, but some structure that could be helpful.
Having a meal plan with actual meals written down tends to result in me feeling like I don't want to eat them and like it's too complicated, but having a general structure like this to work with was helpful at the beginning (it's just second nature now).6 -
I eat the foods I love. I stay in a calorie deficit. I lose weight. It really is that simple.2
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alexandravictoria88 wrote: »Is it really? If i ate the way i wanted and everything i loved..i would not be in a calorie deficit lol
The trick is to control the *quantity* of whatever it is that you love. That can be tricky for calorie dense options, and a little weird with pre packaged items like ramen where 1 serving is 1/2 a pack. (Who even eats like that? How do you even USE half a flavor packet of the soup mix?)
There are some good little habit changes to make to improve satisfaction/fullness without having to give up everything all together. If you make those substitutions gradually, they can become new habits, and eventually you'll find that you're doing much better day to day without feeling like you're giving up everything you love.
Just start out by tracking everything you're eating and look for your big problem areas. Then brainstorm solutions for those problems and try out a few alternatives. These forums are great for getting suggestions and options on substitutions/alternatives.
Like, if we go back to the ramen exemple, because I freaking love Ramen... 1 PACKAGE of Nissin or Maruchan ramen is typically about 400 calories. I could *easily* eat 2 in one go for 800 calories.
My friend clued me into Mama's brand noodles, which are 250 calories per pack and have MUCH BETTER flavor (Admittedly subjective. They're spicy. Very spicy.). If I eat two packs of those, I'm only at 500 calories. However, since the Mama's noodles are WAY spicier than Nissin or Maruchan, I find that I feel like I'm OK to stop eating after just ONE pack at 250 calories - which is a significant thing. The Mama's noodles are more expensive than the regular kind, but considering the quality difference, it's worth it to me to spend the extra money, eat half as much, and still be happy about what I ate.
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ElizabethKalmbach wrote: »alexandravictoria88 wrote: »Is it really? If i ate the way i wanted and everything i loved..i would not be in a calorie deficit lol
The trick is to control the *quantity* of whatever it is that you love. That can be tricky for calorie dense options, and a little weird with pre packaged items like ramen where 1 serving is 1/2 a pack. (Who even eats like that? How do you even USE half a flavor packet of the soup mix?)
There are some good little habit changes to make to improve satisfaction/fullness without having to give up everything all together. If you make those substitutions gradually, they can become new habits, and eventually you'll find that you're doing much better day to day without feeling like you're giving up everything you love.
Just start out by tracking everything you're eating and look for your big problem areas. Then brainstorm solutions for those problems and try out a few alternatives. These forums are great for getting suggestions and options on substitutions/alternatives.
Like, if we go back to the ramen exemple, because I freaking love Ramen... 1 PACKAGE of Nissin or Maruchan ramen is typically about 400 calories. I could *easily* eat 2 in one go for 800 calories.
My friend clued me into Mama's brand noodles, which are 250 calories per pack and have MUCH BETTER flavor (Admittedly subjective. They're spicy. Very spicy.). If I eat two packs of those, I'm only at 500 calories. However, since the Mama's noodles are WAY spicier than Nissin or Maruchan, I find that I feel like I'm OK to stop eating after just ONE pack at 250 calories - which is a significant thing. The Mama's noodles are more expensive than the regular kind, but considering the quality difference, it's worth it to me to spend the extra money, eat half as much, and still be happy about what I ate.
Well, one could weigh the contents of the flavor packet on a sensitive scale (possibly one that has half grams) and split it up. My new OXO has trouble with weights under 3 g so wouldn't work.
This recipe has you toss the flavor packet and use ginger, soy sauce, lime juice, etc.
I undercook the steak, make a big batch with everything but the noodles, freeze that, and later defrost and then cook the noodle in the broth. It was a PITA to break up the ramen, so I switched to very thin spaghetti, which is cheaper, breaks more easily, and allows you to skip the step of tossing the flavor packet.
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@kshama2001 LOL my scale is only accurate to +/- 5g. Having had to deal with sorting medications to the mcg, I would probaably mix *All the broth, use half, and decant the rest to the freezer. I would probably split the noodles in half by DEPTH and preserve the remaining half uncooked, if I wasn't so lazy. With procedures like that, Ramen is no longer any kind of "convenience food."
I'll stick to my 250 calories for the WHOLE pack Mama's Noodles.
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ElizabethKalmbach wrote: »@kshama2001 LOL my scale is only accurate to +/- 5g. Having had to deal with sorting medications to the mcg, I would probaably mix *All the broth, use half, and decant the rest to the freezer. I would probably split the noodles in half by DEPTH and preserve the remaining half uncooked, if I wasn't so lazy. With procedures like that, Ramen is no longer any kind of "convenience food."
I'll stick to my 250 calories for the WHOLE pack Mama's Noodles.
Yes, I should have included in my post that Mama's Noodles is by far the most practical solution for you
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I don't have a meal plan because I don't need or want one. I have daily goals for my total calories and macro breakdowns. It's not really hard for me to work within that structure.5
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just_Tomek wrote: »alexandravictoria88 wrote: »
You missed the "stay in calorie deficit" part didnt you. I know I know, to simple to make sense.
Lol yep.0 -
I learned a lot with MFP and all those supportive members - subjects like "trigger foods", "food stacking", "portion control", "binge eating" were an eye opener and eventually I also realized that my body tells me his basic needs. My macros % have changed a bit over the last 570 days and so has my meal plan. It works for me - no cheat meals necessary, binge eating thing of the past and I am still losing weight - slowly.1
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alexandravictoria88 wrote: »Is it easy enough for us who are not qualified to write our own meal plans to suit our needs? Does anyone do this? I get so confused with all the numbers and grams, bmi , tdee etc.. could be the fact i have dyscalculia and i struggle but wow its confusing. Id love to be able to do it myself without paying someone to do it for me lol
Overall, you can write your own meal plan to suit your needs, but it'll need work. Dyscalculia does make it harder though, obviously. If may be worth it to pay for a nutritionist or dietician, if you have spare cash, but you CAN do it yourself.
Here's what I think can make it work for you.
1. Learn about vitamins and nutrients. Just the basics - they literally have something like 'nutrition for dummies' or something like that. The main thing you want to learn, though, is this: what vitamins are stored, vs. what just go through the body. For those that just 'go through,' you'll need to eat about 100% of what you need, every day. For those that are stored, you can have a lot less one day, as long as you eat more of it the next few days, you know?
2. Learn about what vitamins are used in fortification. For this reason: people have very little skill in actually figuring out a healthy diet 'naturally.' Eating the way the food pyramid wants, or 'just eating healthy' or 'just eating in moderation?' Yeah, no, that would not keep you healthy without tweaking, which makes it a good thing that we all get extra help.
Because at this point in our society, we have fortified foods, right? Certain nutrients were so commonly short in our diet that people were getting sick or dying, so the gov't stepped in and started adding them to foods that the vast majority of people ate on a 'typical' diet. So RIGHT NOW, people can sometimes do the above - just eat 'healthy,' etc... - and get enough nutrients, but that's not because this technique works in a general sense. It's because the government literally tweaked the food supply so that it COULD work, because again...people are bad at this. :-)
However, people's dietary choices are changing faster than the fortification is, so it's good for you to be aware of what's going on if you are making your own meal plans. People are drinking less milk, for example, which used to be a huge source of dietary calcium, and you'll notice that juices like orange juice are starting to be fortified with calcium, but it's not the norm yet.
Sea salt is growing in popularity, but iodized salt exists because people don't typically eat enough iodine, so if you do switch to sea salt, you need to find an iodine source.
There are other nutrients (can't recall off the top of my head) that are used to fortify wheat products with. it's worth checking out what they are if you don't plant to have a lot of wheat products.
3. So, at this point, knowing some nutrients you have to be aware of, obviously comes the math part, which is insane and I would imagine really makes the entire thing difficult for you. So, for that...I have the following I have used which helped me a lot.
First, this site - https://nutritiondata.self.com/ .
this site has a long, long list of ingredients (unprocessed and processed, both) along with a list of all the nutrients associated with them. Then, if you get a free membership, they have a place you can make your own recipes, and for each recipe, you have the option of filling out all the food choices for the recipe, chosen from their list. When you do that, the nutrients of that entire recipe are listed out for you.
So what I have done, is if I come up with a meal plan for a day, I entered in the entire meal plan, every item, and then looked to see if I got the right numbers for all the nutrients - everything at 100% or higher, etc...
It helped a LOT when trying to figure things out.
It was sometimes not possible to get everything perfect - like if I was using an item the website didn't have, that makes it tricky - but I could at least get a pretty good approximation of my ingredients, and use that, and it honestly helped a lot.
It was not a fast process. I ended up looking up a lot of recipes and tweaking things over and over, trying to get things to work. But as you do it more, you get to know more, so it's easier to add or take away food you need (oh, hey, I'm low of vitamin C this day - bell pepper has a lot of that).
I ended up having to do it because I have a lot of allergies, so really needed help, and I had so many that the dietician really couldn't help me much. But I was able to, so I imagine you would be able to as well. :-)
Wishing you good luck!
Oh, and one other thing....there are websites online where you can take, or offer, microjobs (you can google them) for very small amounts of money. And they CAN be things as simple as: add this up for me, calculate this out for me, etc...
So if you got the basics together but anything with the numbers is really hard/impossible, you literally might be able to pay someone for the microjob of doing the calculations, you know? :-)0 -
alexandravictoria88 wrote: »
I eat everything I love and changed the way I portioned the servings.
Make what you like.
Weigh the serving you want.
Adjust the portion as needed to stay within your calorie goals (use MFP to set your goals).
It really is that simple.
The hard part - adjusting the weighed portion BEFORE plating it and eating it.
Doing it consistently day after day after day after day and having to wait a few weeks to see the impact on your scale readout.
The harder part -
continuing to do it week after week after week, allowing for spikes up and down because - life -, and still being able to see a positive impact on progress chart.
good luck
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alexandravictoria88 wrote: »Is it easy enough for us who are not qualified to write our own meal plans to suit our needs? Does anyone do this? I get so confused with all the numbers and grams, bmi , tdee etc.. could be the fact i have dyscalculia and i struggle but wow its confusing. Id love to be able to do it myself without paying someone to do it for me lol
There are several ways to approach meal planning. First what is it that you want a meal plan to do?
Are you looking for nutrition? portion control?
Look up calorie/portion information on foods you are eating. Then log the portions and meals into MFP. Some people prelog for a day or a week. One note is that eating pretty much the same meals helps. For example every other day (sometimes 3-4 days in a row) I have raisin Ezekiel toast with 20 g peanut butter and a small banana.
If you are looking for nutritional advice, then that's a broader field.0
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