Melampus Member

I have a chart from my local hospital which very broadly suggests 1/3 carbs (potatoes, bread etc), 1/3 fruit/vegetables and 1/3 the rest (meat, fish, dairy etc.) so if you want to start with something you could aim for that. Chicken is readily available and eating that more often than red meat seems to be good as well as a…

It seems to me the argument is over the meaning of the word. Our diet is what we eat. Some people have lousy diets, some people are on healthy diets because they have good habits, some people are on fad or unsustainable diets and some people are on a diet they have made their own informed choice about. The last of these…

I think it varies by the day. Sometimes I notice that I am fitter and not as fat as I was, other times I notice that I am still too fat. Both are true. In both cases though I remind myself that I knew there would be no quick fix when I started and that I just need to keep going. Approaching weight loss using this site as a…

Here's my understanding of how this works: Eat too many calories, more than you use by a combination of maintaining your body and any exercise you take and you will get fatter. Eat much too few calories and you body wakes up to the fact that food appears to be in short supply and enters a "starvation mode" in which your…

Like you I had see the info about the rought proportions of carbs, protein and fat I should be eating etc. but the only advice I had seen on portion size was that it would vary from one person to another depending on age, sex, activity level etc. but this site provides the missing info. For me the surprise was how many…

Welcome aboard. I have been keeping a diary here for about a month and a half and so far it is working. The thing that gave me the push to start was someone at work saying that he had been able to loose weight without feeling hungry. I had seen other people on diets eating tiny meals and complaining about being hungry and…

I have to say I am a little puzzled - normally healthier eating makes you regular but it can sometimes take time for the digestive system to adjust to new things. I'd second the suggestions of drinking plenty of water and eating enough fibre and it is far better to be able to sort this with such things rather than having…

I have had my gallbladder out too and it does not seem to be hindering me losing weight though I don't have previous attempts to compare with. With a gallbladder your body has the means to cope with a really fatty meal in a run of otherwise lean meals and digest them all fully whereas without it maybe the really fatty meal…

I have not found any disadvantage to being lighter so far. For clothes it is a case of swapping back to the ones in the wardrobe that I didn't used to be able to fit into. Interesting point about other people in the house being with you. I take the view that as I am generally cooking I get to set what we eat. I'm counting…

With a really tight allowance you can not afford to eat much food that contains plenty of calories and little other nutrition. Ideally most of the food you eat will also contain protein to keep your hunger at bay or fibre to make you feel like you've eaten a meal rather than a snack. Chips/crisps are a perfect example of…

I'd look at what you eat. While it is true that if you eat fewer calories than you use you will lose weight, regardless of how balanced your diet is, your diet does need to be balanced to avoid you feeling hungry. If you're short of something, for example, protein, you'll feel hungry. Try to eat within your calorie…

I do count them because if I set out to use a tool such as this to measure and then control what I eat then I think I have to strive to make it accurate. On the other hand I don't feel that logging calories from fruit and vegetables in any way discourages me from eating them. In fact just about as soon as I started logging…

I have had that warning once. On that particular day I had eaten what I would eat on a day with no exercise but had taken quite a bit of exercise. That resulted in a calorie deficit for the day of about 1,800 calories which did seem to produce a measurable weight loss (900g) but the following morning I felt noticeably…

Seeing some of the things people have done in the name of dieting is what has delayed me starting the diet I am now on for far too long. For me the list of strange things include substituting shakes or bars for meals, eating tiny ready meals and working in some strange, proprietary measurement system. Someone at work…

Certainly don't give up. I think you need to know why you eating. Is it because dieting is making you feel hungry? If so check that you are not short of nutrients. As an example f you don't eat enough protein you are likely to feel hungry. However many calories you eat. If dieting is making you feel lethargic are you…

I live in the UK too and our food labelling is exactly the same. I wonder if it is some European standard. Anyway I suspect the intent is to allow you to directly compare the nutrients in different products without having to adjust for different portion sizes. Many foods in MFP having 100g as a serving size and at least in…

I wasn't intending to try to account for standing at the coffee machine or anything but I am a computer programmer so my job is almost entirely sitting down. I was looking for a way to record, for example, a trip to a zoo or farm park where there is some slow walking and a lot of standing around looking rather than my more…

I live in the UK and what we mean by fibre is bulk which aids things moving through the digestive system but is itself indigestible. That means it would not matter if it was technically some kind of carbohydrate because you aren't going to absorb the calories from it. What do Americans mean by fiber?

I take you meant boost your protein intake. I can think of really easy ways to eat lots of calories: chocolate, donuts, cereal, bread...

You can eat some "junk" food if it fits in with your calorie allowance without displacing better balanced food and leaving you short of other nutrients. For me the key is to look at the info on what you are about to eat so you can see how it fits in your plan. As an example, in the past I may have found a whole pizza…

There was another thread on one of the forums here about different ways of measuring and it came to light that where I live, in the UK, recipes are normally measured by weight whereas in the USA it is more common to use volume (cups, spoons etc). In the days when a scale was actually a balance on which you had to try the…

Yes, fruits do contain sugar but they don't have the same calorie density as, for example breakfast cereal or bread and certainly nowhere near products made with refined sugar such as chocolate and candy. As I said in one of my other posts one of the things I have done to make my breakfast lower calorie is to reduce the…

Some of the producers of frozen chicken like to add water to them. They claim it is to make them freeze better though I suspect they like the fact that it increases the weight and makes them look better value than they are. In order to get the water to stick they may also add some salt - check for this on the label. That…

Depends on how you define "junk". These are certainly not balanced nutrition in the sense they have plenty of calories and plenty of fat and not much protein. If you have these as a treat, they don't take you over your calorie allowance and you don't have to drop something better to and then go short on protein, for…

I take it you have done the obvious thing of not adding salt to anything as you either cook it or serve it? When you are buying processed food you can look at the labels and try to choose products with less salt. It may also be worth checking whether the processed foods really are the cheapest in the various different…

Long before I finally took the plunge and started to diet I had always assumed pre-packed foods would be the easy bit because they had the information printed on the label and that the non-processed foods would be harder but actually sites like this have a big database (derived from the same source, I think) on…

I have to say I don't regard it as a chore though obviously it does take a little time to do it. Actually I find it an education because as I enter things into MFP I get to learn which foods are very calorie dense and therefore I should eat sparingly and which ones I can eat more of. I think if the effect of counting was…

I guess we all sometimes suspect the calculations particularly if you have tried different websites with the calculations and got different answers from each. Isn't the whole point of not trying to restrict your calorie intake too much that if you do that your body goes into "starvation mode" and slows your metabolism. If…

I am a computer programmer so all the requirements of the job: thinking, typing and talking on the telephone can be done sitting at a desk. I am also a dad to two young children. Before the oldest child was born I lost 2 stone (28lbs) riding round the local forest with our dog without dieting but since the birth I have…

If you eat fewer calories than you use then you will loose weight so in that respect it is perfectly possible to loose weight eating chocolate. The problem is that chocolate is very calorie dense being full of sugar and fat and has little of the other nutrients you need. If you were to eat your daily calorie allowance…