I thought I'd do something different and actually post what I ate in a full week and the approx times I ate, just to help dispel some myths about diet which I firmly believe before I started. I've listed the approx cal values in brackets. I lost 4.2lbs this week but given daily fluctuations in weight it's probably more realistic that it was only 2-3lbs.
Monday
Lunch - Shapers Prawn Noodles (296)
Lunch - Shapers Apple/Grape snack (46)
Lunch - Shapers cream soda (3)
Dinner - Rack of ribs (760)
Snack - Banana (121)
Total = 1,226
Tuesday
Lunch - Bacon Bap (370)
Snack - Banana (121)
Dinner - Tesco Stonebaked Pizza (680)
Snack - Weight Watchers Ocean Pie (205)
Total = 1,376
Wednesday
Lunch - Pepsi (105)
Lunch - Mint lamb Baguette (500)
Snack - Banana (121)
Dinner - Tesco Stonebaked Pizza (750)
Total = 1,476
Thursday
Lunch - Shapers Prawn Noodles (296)
Lunch - Shapers Apple/Grape snack (46)
Lunch - Shapers soda (3)
Dinner - KFC (1270)
Total = 1,615
Friday
Breakfast - Bacon and Mushroom bap (500)
Evening - Beers (1000)
Dinner - Weight Watchers Hotpot (210)
Dinner - Mixed veg (28)
Total = 1,738
Saturday
Breakfast - Frosties (200)
Lunch - Pizza (890)
Snack - Banana (121)
Dinner - Takeaway (500)
Total = 1,711
Sunday
Breakfast - Takeaway (1500)
Dinner - Pork Steaks (360)
Snack - Banana (121)
Total = 1,981
Weekly total = 11,123
Daily goal about 1600 cals, weekly goal 11,200 so right on target for the week.
Start weight = 215.6
End weight = 211.4
What to take away from this in my opinion is:
1) You don't need to eat breakfast to lose weight, it's not relevant to weight loss, only calories is relevant to weight loss, this idea of stoking the furnace of your metabolism is basically rubbish, your metabolism works when it needs to based on the food you eat at the time, you don't need to help keep it running with lots of frequent meals including breakfast, all this effects is the distribution of energy during the day and how hungry you feel.
2) You can eat pretty much whatever you want as long as the calories are at the goal you need, you'll notice that I ate KFC and takeaway during that week, I also ate ribs and pizzas, it's just a case of finding food which has the right calorie values, I could easily spend 2x the cals on a thick crust pizza but thin crust ones have so much less, always check the calories on everything you eat, some things are just really high in energy. Places like KFC will list the calories of all their meals on their website.
3) If you want to snack, eat fruit, bananas are great they give you an immediate boost of energy, they're fairly cheap and you can keep them at your desk at work or in a fruit bowl in your house in the lounge so they're always in sight, they're also fairly low calorie.
4) Don't be afraid to balance your calories, you'll notice on Saturday night I had takeaway which I listed as 500 cals on Saturday and 1500 cals on Sunday, Don't be afraid to eat something yummy which is high calorie and offset some of the calories to the next day, as long as you don't get more than a day ahead you're fine, you'll notice on Sunday the rest of the calories were quite low. This also works on a weekly basis as well, at the start of the week I was generally under my limit and later in the week generally above, it all evens out over the course of a week and you still get the loss you wanted.
5) Don't eat when you're not hungry, I'm never hungry in the morning so I just don't eat, there's no benefit to eating then since I do a desk job and don't need much energy to last until lunch, you can save the calories you would have spent on breakfast and use them to have a good meal later in the day, or have some pudding or an extra treat.
Hope that gives people some perspective on my weight loss method, you can see all my weekly weights on the original post of this thread, I'm down a total of about 39lbs now (my actual lost is more than I'm tracking here as I started tracking late on this site) which is over half way towards my goal of about 180lbs, about 29lbs to go!
Happy eating
