1300 calories per day

I'm eating the way I intend to eat for the rest of my life so not limiting myself to the same few foods. If that works for you, great - but how long will you do that for?


OP, I don't get into the Friends Request thing / want to share my diary, but I'm also 53 and eating around 1300 cals a day, so this is a rough idea:
My breakfasts typically vary between three things - 1) bacon, eggs & mushrooms, sometimes with grilled tomato 2) porridge (made with almond milk) and berries 3) sugar-free soya yoghurt with berries, seeds and nuts. Very very occasionally, I might have a bacon or sausage roll or a poached egg on toast, but I don't generally eat bread due to a food intolerance (and that's aside from the fact that I'm diabetic).

Sometimes I'll make a chicken & veg soup or a spicy butternut squash soup (if so, they typically do for 4 days) or will have omelette (usually mushroom but sometimes ham) and side salad if at home, but mostly I have salad for lunch - but the protein element differs daily and even what I add to the salad stuff changes regularly. Lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, radish and spring onions are staples, but I may add other salad leaves, sliced peppers, artichokes, avocado, capers, olives, beetroot, red cabbage, celery or grated carrot. To that I'll add chicken or ham or roast beef or mackerel or tuna or sardines or prawns or salmon. I usually make a big bowl of salad that'll be enough for three days. I then add a protein, plus a third of the salad mix, to my lunch box. You can have a lot of salad for not a lot of calories. I normally have a pack of popcorn (44 cals) or a pack of lentil curls (93 cals) with my lunch.

I usually have a resealable bag of almonds in my drawer at work and also at home for a mid afternoon snack if needed. Not an exact science, but 15 almonds weighs about 15g. It helps keep me away from chocolate.

I rarely have the same thing for dinner within a 3-4 week period. If I make a meal, I usually cook in bulk and freeze the additional portions. With curries (beef, chicken, lamb, prawn, vegetarian - different sauces and spices), stirfries (beef, turkey, chicken, seafood - different sauces, Thai etc), bolognese, chillis (veg and meat), lentil raghu (good with grilled chicken or salmon on top), fish pie, Cottage pie, moussaka, tagine, traybakes (found a lovely chicken, bean and leek BBC Food recipe online) and more in my freezers, I don't get bored but know that each meal is a me-sized portion that will fit my calories. In between, I might do grilled chicken or salmon or marinaded tuna with lots of veg and a small amount of carbs.

I cook rice in bulk and freeze it in 100g portions. I sometimes do a batch of cauliflower rice and freeze that in portions too. Depending on my dinner and how many cals I'm actually going to end up on vs how much exercise I've done that day, I may have rice or cauliflower rice or half and half as an accompaniment. I usually do courgetti when having bolognese and just add a small amount of pasta.

I prefer to pile my plate with veg and have limited carbs. That's partly because of the diabetes but also because a large pile of veg will fill me up for fewer cals.

I do pre-plan my menu so that I know I'm going to get variety and also so that I know what accompanying veg I want to buy at the supermarket, if any. I can then enter the meals in to my MFP diary, even a few days in advance, to see how my week will (should) pan out.

One caveat to the above. Whilst my cals are 1340 cals a day (I'm in maintenance), I exercise almost daily and therefore actually eat around 1500, sometimes more. In case you're not aware, MFP is designed such that you eat your exercise calories on top of the 1300 you've been allocated. If I need to eat more cals, I've usually got mini babybels in the fridge or can have more nuts or I might have a can of beer - but pre-planning helps a lot.