Meal planning for weightloss – any ninja tricks?

lunge – Member
No snacks in the house, you hear me?
I’m having trouble hearing the writing in your post 🙁

I’ve found 3 things helped a lot.
Planning and
discipline
No fear of hunger
A goal

Thats four!

Planning and discipline is 1, well I’m claiming it is anyway!

I found I could cut out a lot of excess crap calories by not taking my wallet to work, even if I was tempted by a Greggs sausage roll or a doughnut I couldn’t buy one! Made a massive difference. Was far too easy to end up polishing off 500+ calories without thinking about it.

Nobeerinthefridge – Member
Whats wrong with MyFitnessPal?

It’s fine if you eat pre packaged shite, or are prepared to weigh and measure every ingredient.
Totally unnecessary to weigh anything IMO, it’s for keeping a check on mindless face stuffing rather than anal calorie pontificating.

BAnana +1

Most people know what a portion of rice/spaghetti/carrots/whatever looks like. You can kid yourself if you really want to and eat more, but you’d know that you’re kidding yourself.

My wife signed up to one of those properly controlled diet/exercise systems. She makes her own meals based on very strict ingredients lists, quite often very ridiculous – the amount of butter in some of them would kill me in a day! No salt, no sugar. On-line meetings once a fortnight. She has lost over 3 stones in 2 months, I kid you not!

medoramas – Member
My wife signed up to one of those properly controlled diet/exercise systems. She makes her own meals based on very strict ingredients lists, quite often very ridiculous – the amount of butter in some of them would kill me in a day! No salt, no sugar. On-line meetings once a fortnight. She has lost over 3 stones in 2 months, I kid you not!

Don’t you come round ere, with your high fat, low carb diets!
😉
You should know, to do so is a hanging offence on this forum…….
And if listen, eeeeeeever so carefully.

Yeap, you can hear members reaching for their pitch forks.

RUN!

I have no problem smashing down a fruit/veg/protein shake which I make & take to work (so I do my morning ride fasted after a couple of espressos!)

I do a similar thing, though it’s Earl Grey in the morning and I’ve never had a weight problem 🙂
My concoction is basically cold porridge but now contains around a dozen ingredients, the only fruit is a small amount of raisins. Eaten or rather drunk at my desk when I get in. Takes a week or so to get used to riding without eating but I happily did a 25 mile road ride the other morning with 1850ft of climbing with nothing but a cup of tea till I got back. I’m fairly sure the fasted exercise is useful whether or not you want or need to lose weight.

no_eyed_deer – Member
Davidtaylforth has body image issues.

Hey! I love my body, as does my girlfriend. And your girlfriend probably would too. That’s why we do it right?!

A friend from the gym once said to me “best chest in the North West”
Although looking at us together in the mirror, his is probably better since he spends more time gaining and less time road cycling (which definitely doesn’t help things in terms of gaining muscle).

And FWIW; iDave diet, plus a few other tips and tricks I’ve picked up along the way.

medoramas – what programme is your wife doing? sounds intriguing…. 😉

I’ve been doing the 5:2 and eating big salads with loads of different ingredients for the past few months. Just starting to get bored with salads and moving onto lots of steamed greens instead. Obviously, I eat protein with them (egg, cottage cheese, fish, etc). I still eat carbs but I’ve cut down on bread, and only have whole grain rice and pasta.
I was pretty strict with myself for the first couple of months and lost enough weight to notice in my clothes. Then so as not to put it back on, I’ve continued with it but not quite as strict. I still have cake if I want it on days when I ride my bike.

Whats wrong with MyFitnessPal?

another vote for MFP, and as has been mentioned before, you dont need to get anal about calories. guess the weights if you like as long as you guess the same all the time, it doesnt matter whether youre out with your figures or not.

i spent a bit of time pretending what i was going to eat, so putting different meals in that i knew i liked, then adjusting bits to see what that did with the macro figures. you soon get a feel of how many calories your consuming and know if you need to dacker it down a bit or not.

Totally unnecessary to weigh anything IMO, it’s for keeping a check on mindless face stuffing rather than anal calorie pontificating.

Mostly true, I tend to weigh pasta etc the first time so I know roughly how much a portion is, I then do it by eye. Over time my eye measurements gets more generous and if the weight loss stalls, I weigh things again and portions have normally increased.

For me the best thing about MFP is being aware of how many calories are in things before eating them. Before I could easily eat half a pack of chocolate hobnobs with a coffee an hour before lunch. When I am tracking calories, I still have a couple but not half the pack.

You know that info is printed on the side of the packet?!