Overeating

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samanthaz1377
samanthaz1377 Posts: 1 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been. The weight just piled on and it’s all because of my unhealthy habits. I’m at 270 and climbing. I need a change. Idk how to cook well and I rely on fast food. I need to learn simple meals and exercise at least sometimes a week. But I’m failing. Anyways here’s the start of my journey. I plan to lose weight in 2023.

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  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,996 Member
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    I've been following food blogger Ethan Chlebowski on youtube for some time for meal inspiration. In his latest video, he shared that he'd lost 80 pounds, gained almost 20 pounds back recently, and is recommitting to losing weight for 2023.

    The video is about three cooking techniques that you can apply to make a wide array of healthy, filling meals.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1EpTfvPc84

    I like his videos better than his newsletter, but it may be a good source of inspiration and information and will link to videos: https://unique-speaker-8271.ck.page/7544ad4df5
  • sollyn23l2
    sollyn23l2 Posts: 1,674 Member
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    You can do it. I've found most people who say "I can't cook" simply don't want to try. I often get the rotisserie chicken from Costco. Add a side like bagged salad, or some other vegetable you like, or even some rice, and boom, you've got a meal. Or make it into a chicken sandwich. Shred it, add some soy sauce and a vegetable, and bam, you've got a stir fry.Take a pork loin, put it on a baking sheet at 400 degrees, throw a couple potatoes in the oven along with it and boom, you've got dinner.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,996 Member
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    sollyn23l2 wrote: »
    You can do it. I've found most people who say "I can't cook" simply don't want to try. I often get the rotisserie chicken from Costco. Add a side like bagged salad, or some other vegetable you like, or even some rice, and boom, you've got a meal. Or make it into a chicken sandwich. Shred it, add some soy sauce and a vegetable, and bam, you've got a stir fry.Take a pork loin, put it on a baking sheet at 400 degrees, throw a couple potatoes in the oven along with it and boom, you've got dinner.

    I use rotisserie chicken as the base for soooo many meals. It can be as simple as a sandwich for lunch or a wrap for snack.

    Here are some ideas for meals: https://www.allrecipes.com/gallery/ways-to-use-rotisserie-chicken/

    Some look like calorie bombs, but can be lightened by using low fat or less dairy and/or bulking up with vegetables.

    If you're cooking for one, meals like soups or stews freeze especially well.

    Speaking of freezing, I often make a big batch of some kind of rice and beans, to which I've added a lean animal protein and bulked up with a vegetable like cabbage or green beans, and portion out servings to freeze for later.
  • LiveOnceBeHappy
    LiveOnceBeHappy Posts: 434 Member
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    What sollyn2312 said. It doesn't take much to grab some cooked chicken and add some veggies or salad and some rice. You'll save money and a ton of calories. If you're living on fast food, you're really used to a lot of fat and salt with your food, but you'll get used to real food soon enough.

    I go to Costco and buy their bagged fresh shredded chicken (2.5 lbs). I use a rice cooker to cook rice or I cook mini potatoes in the microwave. Then I make a fresh or frozen veggie. Use any sauce you like on the chicken (tikka masala, other Asian sauces, whatever in moderation).

    Last night I at 5 spinach raviolis from Costco with 1/2 cup marinara sauce with 3.6 ounces of chicken breast, plus 3 mini peppers. I don't really "cook". I heat up!

  • kbmnurse3
    kbmnurse3 Posts: 7 Member
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    My advice buy a digital food scale and keep it on your counter. Weigh and measure EVERYTHING. Drink water, water and more water. Meal plan/prep is a must. I use YouTube for my fitness routines
    FREE!!!!!!!!!. Start out slow. Try Leslie Sansone walking routines. Good luck. You are a star. :wink:
  • csplatt
    csplatt Posts: 1,080 Member
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    I put several chicken breasts in the slow cooker with some water, seasoning (like garlic powder and onion powder and pepper) and chicken broth. Cook until it shreds and use for tacos or just straight up chicken.

  • penguinmama87
    penguinmama87 Posts: 1,158 Member
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    csplatt wrote: »
    I put several chicken breasts in the slow cooker with some water, seasoning (like garlic powder and onion powder and pepper) and chicken broth. Cook until it shreds and use for tacos or just straight up chicken.

    This is a really good strategy. I do a lot of actual cooking, but my real secret is probably that I prep my own "convenience foods" myself, and this is one of the tricks I use. I am not making every meal completely from scratch every single day. I make a few dishes and then reheat or use the leftovers to make new things.

    Rotisserie chickens are great. You can even use the carcass in a slow cooker to make your own broth if you like, rather than just throwing the bones away. But that might be a few steps away just yet.

    If you can read, you can follow a recipe and cook. I personally don't like videos but that's another option if the visuals help you.
  • zebasschick
    zebasschick Posts: 1,061 Member
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    can you change from fast food to convenience food? beside rotisserie chicken, there are lots of tasty frozen foods with the calories and nutrition into right on the package. there's also stuff like yogurt cups, cottage cheese and lots of similar pre-packaged foods. maybe a slice of sourdough bread, a serving of instant rice with something. or there are yummy foods in microwavable bags - my husband loves the tasty bite brands of indian foods, and you just microwave them for 90 seconds.

    one of my favorite things used to be to pour 92 grams of egg whites on a very small paper plate, microwave it for around 1:11, then mix it up, put 28 grams of cheese on it, and put it back in the microwave for 40ish seconds. yum!
  • sbelletti
    sbelletti Posts: 213 Member
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    I eat a ton of salads and wraps. No cooking needed! (Although I've been addicted to Afia frozen falafel for the past year, and I'm not sure that popping those in the oven for 10 minutes counts as actual cooking, either.)
  • BartBVanBockstaele
    BartBVanBockstaele Posts: 623 Member
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    I don't like fast food one bit. It is extremely time consuming, inconvenient, expensive and it tastes bad. I just buy frozen vegetables and cook them in the microwave. The whole operation, including preparation and cooking, takes 13 minutes. For me, that is not even enough time to put on my shoes and jacket, take the elevator and walk to some fast food place. It so happens I am eating my favourite this minute: "oriental" vegetable mix with sardines. I love it. A lot.

    You can do this. The cooking part is only hard if you want to win in cooking competitions.
  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 10,021 Member
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    The odds are against you and I do hope you beat them, I'm rooting for you. Yes, learning to cook would be essential and necessary and the sooner you move up the learning curve the better. A little extra movement would also be beneficial. Cheers.
  • LiveOnceBeHappy
    LiveOnceBeHappy Posts: 434 Member
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    BartBVanBockstaele wrote: »
    I don't like fast food one bit. It is extremely time consuming, inconvenient, expensive and it tastes bad. I just buy frozen vegetables and cook them in the microwave. The whole operation, including preparation and cooking, takes 13 minutes. For me, that is not even enough time to put on my shoes and jacket, take the elevator and walk to some fast food place. It so happens I am eating my favourite this minute: "oriental" vegetable mix with sardines. I love it. A lot.

    You can do this. The cooking part is only hard if you want to win in cooking competitions.

    LOVE IT! It's true. Cooking is pretty dang easy. Heating up is even easier! I do soup a lot for lunches. Open can, empty can into bowl, microwave 3 minutes. Eat my apple in the 3 minutes while the soup is heating up. Bam. Lunch.

    Portion control is key too. I can cook and heat up and portion control a lot fewer calories than a fast food meal loaded with calorie-dense fats.
  • ridiculous59
    ridiculous59 Posts: 2,865 Member
    edited January 2023
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    My mother always told me "If you can read, you can cook". So true!! If you can read these forums, then you can cook, because people have given you some great ideas.

    Sunday was always my food prep day for the week. In the colder months I'd make a Crock-Pot full of soup (lots of easy recipes on-line), and that would be my lunches for the week. In the warmer months I'd make a huge salad, and that would be my lunches for the week. I'd grab a container of soup or salad in the morning, and a can of tuna, a couple of hard boiled eggs, or some leftover chicken, and my lunch was made. I have the same thing for breakfast just about every morning: plain Greek yoghurt and frozen berries of some kind.

    You can do this. I had topped out at 232 pounds when I said enough was enough. But you have to give yourself a good reason why. I wanted to be healthy and to run a 5k. For someone else it might be to play soccer with their kids. Or go horseback riding (most trail rides have a weight limit for their horses). Or ziplining!. Or maybe it's just to be able to walk up stairs without feeling out of breath. Whatever dream you have...make that your end goal. In the meantime, I found that breaking it down into 10 pound smaller goals gave me that "I did it!!" feeling of accomplishment.

    Weightloss is very much a mental game, but you've taken the first step by reaching out. Good job 🙂
  • BartBVanBockstaele
    BartBVanBockstaele Posts: 623 Member
    edited January 2023
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    LiveOnceBeHappy wrote: »
    LOVE IT! It's true. Cooking is pretty dang easy. Heating up is even easier! I do soup a lot for lunches. Open can, empty can into bowl, microwave 3 minutes. Eat my apple in the 3 minutes while the soup is heating up. Bam. Lunch.

    Portion control is key too. I can cook and heat up and portion control a lot fewer calories than a fast food meal loaded with calorie-dense fats.
    I totally agree. I actually used to make soup in my rice cooker. That has several advantages, including that it is kept warm until eaten. Because it is a small 3-cup one, it also helps a lot with portion control. On top of that, soup is extremely forgiving. It boils down to putting a few vegetables in a pot, add water and a few spices. That said, I don't even do that right now. I just weigh 250 g of frozen vegetables, add a protein, such as a can of sardines or 50 g of cooked soybeans or some such thing, set the timer to 10 mins, press the button and when the microwave says "ping!" it is ready. I add some tomato puree, spices and psyllium husks, mix and eat. That is usually less than 3 mins of work, and I have a single container and fork to wash. It can hardly be any easier.

    My motto is simple: food does not have to taste good, but it should not taste bad, because I will not voluntarily consume it in that case.

    I don't like salads, not because I think they taste bad, but simply because there is more work involved and the quantities bought tend to be more variable. On top of that, given the sorry state of most so-called fresh vegetables at the stores where I go, I don't see the point. Frozen is superior, both convenience-wise and quality-wise. And as if that were not enough, it is cheaper too and it stays OK for months to years in the freezer. To me, that is an overall win.

    Everyone is different, but it has served me well enough. Now, over 60 kg lighter, I am slowly approaching the end of the losing phase, the maintenance phase will allow me to titrate up a few calories, probably not much more than 200 or so, so there will be no dramatic diet switch.
  • BartBVanBockstaele
    BartBVanBockstaele Posts: 623 Member
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    ridiculous59 wrote: »
    My mother always told me "If you can read, you can cook". So true!! If you can read these forums, then you can cook, because people have given you some great ideas.

    Sunday was always my food prep day for the week. In the colder months I'd make a Crock-Pot full of soup (lots of easy recipes on-line), and that would be my lunches for the week. In the warmer months I'd make a huge salad, and that would be my lunches for the week. I'd grab a container of soup or salad in the morning, and a can of tuna, a couple of hard boiled eggs, or some leftover chicken, and my lunch was made. I have the same thing for breakfast just about every morning: plain Greek yoghurt and frozen berries of some kind.

    You can do this. I had topped out at 232 pounds when I said enough was enough. But you have to give yourself a good reason why. I wanted to be healthy and to run a 5k. For someone else it might be to play soccer with their kids. Or go horseback riding (most trail rides have a weight limit for their horses). Or ziplining!. Or maybe it's just to be able to walk up stairs without feeling out of breath. Whatever dream you have...make that your end goal. In the meantime, I found that breaking it down into 10 pound smaller goals gave me that "I did it!!" feeling of accomplishment.

    Weightloss is very much a mental game, but you've taken the first step by reaching out. Good job 🙂
    Your mother is completely correct. Highly sophisticated recipes and presentations can be really great, but no one I have ever known regularly eats like that, except on rare occasions. Most of the touted recipes are essentially just a way to waste time for people who are bored and don't know what to do with their time, and to make things worse, more often than not, they entice us to overeat.

    If you don't like Greek yoghurt, you may want to try Skyr. It tends to have even less carbohydrate and more protein, and because it is actually more akin to cheese, it also taste differently.

    As for berries, I stay mostly away from them for now, because they are a trigger food for me. My favourite here in Toronto is the No Name 2 kg mixed berries type because it does not contain strawberries. I love strawberries, but the frozen ones taste mildly disgusting to me whereas frozen raspberries are my absolute favourites, followed by blueberries and blackberries, so that mixture is just about ideal for my taste. I also often add a bag of frozen cranberries to the mix. The only problem is that I cannot stop before the bag is empty at which time I am not all that full and still quite hungry. In short, bad new for (my) weight loss. So, I follow the German saying that "Gemüse ist das bessere Obst" (vegetables are the better fruit) and it serves me well.

    In my view, weight loss should be simple and not require oodles of extra work and time. That has the seed of failure built in. There comes a time that depriving oneself of sleep in order to shop, cook and wash dishes will be too much.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,564 Member
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    Are cooking ingredient boxes a thing where you are? I don't mean those super expensive meal subscription kits. In some countries you can buy a small box containing vegetables, herbs, sauce and maybe rice or wraps, and you just add a bit of oil, your protein of choice, salt and pepper. The cooking instructions are on the packaging, and you get a meal with several servings out of it with reasonable calories. Might be an option for starting to learn how to cook as you don't need to decide on vegetables, and the cooking instructions are really simple. I learned to cook with similar things.

    This is an example from the Netherlands: tk4l8c5ttfrf.jpg

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