Eating isnt the problem...

You may not be eating enough or you're just eating the wrong things. Is you diary open? You should be eating as few processed foods as possible, lots of fresh fruit and veggies, i know these are pricey, and whole grains. Also drink lots of water and stay away from sugars if possible. Without seeing your diary its hard to say for sure. You need to have about 1200 good usable calories a day, more or less depending on your height and weight etc. Feel free to add me if you want my diary is open.

1st please open your diary so people can see and help more.

2nd and just guessing here but look into insulin resistance and maybe have your thyroid checked.

3rd make sure you're logging ever scrap of food going in your mouth. And don't guess in how much it is. Buy a scale and weigh and measure everything.

Exactly!

Its not going to be easy for people to help if we cant 'see' what your diary shows you logging. It could be a combination of you not eating appropriately, your unique 'makeup' could require you to consume 1200 at the minimum, poor meal planning, eating too much junk type foods (prepackaged, preprocessed, boxed, garbage)...

Like mentioned before, it make have to do with not enough calories. The more and more articles you read about calories the more you will learn that even though you don't want BAD calories, you still need enough of the good to supply your body energy. If you don't feed your body enough calories for energy, your body starts to think that it is being starved, which in turn causes your body to not only store more calories (which adds pounds) but your metabolism will start to slow too so that it doesn't burn as many calories. Again, this is because your body thinks that you are starved.

I have a friend who is also trying to lose about 40 lbs and there are some days that she just isn't hungry when it comes to dinner so she is left with a HUGE amount of calories to consume at the end of the day. If you feel like this might be you some of the things that we thought of was just adding little bits of good calories here and there. If you eat light all day in preperation for dinner, yet find that you aren't meeting your calories, start eating a little more at lunch and breakfast, maybe even add in an extra snack. Olive oil is an excellent source of good fats so maybe add a little to your dressing.

I'm not an expert and these are just some ideas but I hope that this helped.

1) Out of the 5 days you have logged your food here, it looks like you’ve eaten out twice, which has also made you go over your calories by quite a bit.

2) Vegetables. They are good for you.

3) Keep logging, keep exercising, and look around the forums for advice on healthy meals or in other public diaries.

:flowerforyou:

Sorry guys, i'm not going to re-open my food diary because it is an absolutely horrible representation of my eating habits over the last 5 days. I ate out twice because a friend was in town for her annual visit and she likes to go out.

I do recognize that I eat too much sodium, I've been trying to cut that back, but it's hard to do unless you're keeping a journal (which i just started 5 days ago when i joined here)

I eat plenty of vegetables, I've cut down on carbs (infact, i tackled both with one side dish last night when I made "mock mashed potatoes" with cauliflower instead of potatoes.

I probably shouldn't have bothered asking this question without being able to show you guys a proper representation of my eating habits.

To the one who said thyroid problems: it runs in my family, and that's been on my mind since i started gaining weight, but unfortunately (and not so unfortunately) everything is "normal" for that... So that's not it.

If you posted here asking for help - there are those of us here who genuinely wanted to help you.... myself included. But, in opening your diary to show us, that meant seeing the whole picture from the inside. We couldnt help you without 'seeing' what you documented.

I already sent you a private message in reply.... I hope you will realize that in asking a question of help or to understand, sometimes its better for someone outside our own minds, to see the things that WE dont..... could be a helpful eye-opener to you....

If you posted here asking for help - there are those of us here who genuinely wanted to help you.... myself included. But, in opening your diary to show us, that meant seeing the whole picture from the inside. We couldnt help you without 'seeing' what you documented.

I already sent you a private message in reply.... I hope you will realize that in asking a question of help or to understand, sometimes its better for someone outside our own minds, to see the things that WE dont..... could be a helpful eye-opener to you....

Oh I know, I'm just sayin'-- I only have 5 days worth of stuff logged because I just joined, and those 5 days are not a good representation of how I normally eat because of the unanticipated circumstance of my friend being in town for the first time in a year. I'll re-evaluate when I have a better picture of my daily food intake and decide, at that point, if I still need to reach out to you all for help.

I appreciate everyone's willingness to help, but I think I asked prematurely for people who do not have the ability to see an accurate representation of my diet.

To be honest with you - if you recorded your daily intake in your food-log, like most of us saw, that is a true intake. That is what you truly took in on the day you posted. If what you posted on each day is NOT accurate, then that means you werent posting truthfully.

If you truthfully ate that Hot Pocket, the double portion of pasta and the prepackaged turkey, and you listed it, that is your accurate posting.

We have to hold ourselves accountable for everything we eat, and therefore everything we post in our diary.

We also have the ability to hold ourselves accountable for the things we choose to eat and hope we are doubly truthful with ourselves that what we record in our diary is what we in fact had....

The food items you listed, the numbers that show up, the portions you eat all come up. And THAT was the information people were asking to see in order to originally help you before posting anything to offer help.

Asking prematurely is not the case here. Everyone is new at one point, and we all ask for help, but I know based on your email reply to me that you were very uncomfortable with sharing your diary information. And what most of us found, well, to be honest with you... its no wonder you were apprehensive based on what you have documented.



Your original post said "My problem is, I eat healthy, and I don't over eat. Infact, i'm substantially under my cal goal most days (except days when i go out to dinner and then i'm WAY over).

I see a lot of talk about "eat less" and "eat healthier" but what if those aren't the issues? I already eat less than i probably should and I eat very healthy on a regular basis. I exercise daily (whether it's cardio or just going on a long walk) and I just can't seem to get my weight to budge.

Does anyone have any advice? Should i force myself to meet my cal goals each day? I'm never that hungry!"


Advice to you would be this:
1.) Like another member pointed out, you consume way too much sodium. I agree with this.
2.) Also another member posted, "vegetables, they are good for you" - I agree with this, you did not have an adequate daily amount...
3.) Some of your meals (regardless of what youre activities are, regardless of how many times you went out to eat), are way too high in carbohydrates.
4.) Not enough well balanced proteins
5.) Consider whole fruits instead of fruit juice - the body works better with whole fruit as opposed to drinking them because in juice form, its just gonna go in and out of your body fast... and thats not good for insulin
6.) Be honest with yourself. Youre not eating a balanced intake at all regardless of your exercise, going out with friends, or anything.

In your five days of logging, you were originally correct, this is an absolute horrible representation of what you consumed. If you can come to terms with the fact you made some less-than-desirable choices, and come back with a fighting chance of wanting to do better, then you will have renewed the focus of what using MFP is all about. You ate very poorly.... We ALL eat very poorly at one point or another. SO WHAT! We are human! BUT, we also have to come back and keep fighting to make better choices so things will be a benefit! No more excuses of entertaining friends - you can still make better choices... and that is all of us were trying to help you understand.

BUT, you have definitely shown that you were comfortable enough to ask people for some input... but unfortunately in a couple of your email replies, you came off to me as being protective and coming up with excuses for what you logged. All I was trying to do was to offer you help and to be there if you ever wanted some ideas....

But, the only person you are hurting is you.....

So.. its up to you - make better choices than what you have allowed yourself to have, document those choices, watch portion controls... You posted on another thread that you did previously consider a low-carb lifestyle and it did work back then... Why not go back to it again if it worked before? That choice, only you can make....

Ill extend the offer of being a supportive person, but its up to you if you want to accept.

I'm sure it will start kicking in soon:D

Whatever your goals are on here, be sure to eat your calories. But definitely listen to others when they say "eat veggies, eat GOOD calories, don't eat preprocessed/packaged foods, and be 100% honest about what you eat (especially with yourself)".. we all have our ups and downs and this is a journey to find what works for you.

you will figure it out, and no matter what others say to you, something will finally click. I have played around with so many different options, and have finally found something that has been working for me. When you work out, be sure to eat some, if not all of your calories. Otherwise, your body will definitely store what you're eating as fat and you will see the number on your scale rise.

good luck; and we are all here for support, no matter what.