[foxglovewilted]

Hi Everyone!
I just joined and have never been as unhealthy and overweight as I am now. I'm 20 years old, 5foot 3 and 235 pounds. 2 years ago I was 115 pounds and had never encountered weight issues. I stopped being accountable and adapted my husbands lifestyle and now I need some support! If I can get exercise tips for starting out, and ideas for healthy meals to keep me away from my husbands fast food lifestyle and to help me adapt to healthy eating habits i'd really appreciate it! I have a long road ahead and I want to make every day count.

[Munchy]

The two things that have helped me the most are getting in the kitchen to cook, and planning ahead.

Since I don't always want (or have time) to cook everyday, I make batches of foods on weekends, divvy them into containers, and freeze them. Here is a link explaining exactly how I freeze some of the foods.

Ideas for really tasty meals can be found all over, but my favorite recipe websites are www.skinnytaste.com, www.cookinglight.com, www.eatingwell.com, www.livebetteramerica.com, www.emilybites.com, and www.peanutbutterandpeppers.com

To put a meal plan in place, I first started with actually writing it down. Breakfast, Snack, Lunch, Snack, Dinner, Snack and a calorie total at the end. As time went on, I could tweak my days according to my hunger. If you don't need all of those snacks, get rid of them and add more food to your meals. If you're hungrier in the morning, eat more food then and less at night. It's all a balance. I find that planning ahead with what you will eat is so much easier than eating something on the fly, then trying to figure out how to tweak the rest of your day after the fact, especially when you're just beginning.

For example, a meal plan for 1800 calories/day could look like this:
I have no idea what your stats are, but let's go back to the 1800 calorie number. This is what a real, balanced day's meals could look like for you, especially if you like to eat often:

BREAKFAST: 2 egg (140) omelette with mixed non-starchy veggies (20), 1/4 cup 2% cheese (80), 2 pieces center cut bacon (70), high fiber English muffin (90) = 400 calories
SNACK:1T peanut butter (95), 1 large apple (115) = 210 calories
LUNCH:1 steak and cheese sandwich with onions (350) = 350 calories
SNACK:3 cups of popcorn (93), 2T melted butter spread (100) = 193 calories
DINNER:Fettuccine alfredo with bacon (339), sauteed spinach (68) = 407 calories
SNACK:1 piece of peanut butter pie (216) = 216 calories
Your total day comes out to 1776!

For exercise, you can start slow. If you don't exercise much now, start going for an after dinner walk. As time goes on, you will probably want to do more and more.

Good luck! There are many different forums here with a lot of great advice

[mccull83]

I too do a lot of making food and freezing it in single portion containers (it's foods that my husband would eat as well, like ground turkey taco meat for low calorie/carb tortillas or to put on salad with salsa, or shredded BBQ chicken made in a crockpot and I eat plain but my husband puts it on a bun for a sandwich, or burgers made from ground turkey that I add a bunch of seasoning to to make it super taste and that I eat plain but husband adds a bun, etc.)
I learned i had to make it easy for him AND me otherwise I wouldn't take the time to make myself something and my husband's pleads to go out to eat would quickly break down my will power. now I can just list off what his options are and he has dinner within 5-10 minutes.
I start my day writing down what I'm planning on eating and cross it off the list once it's eaten. I also wrote down a list of 100 calorie, 300 calorie and 500 calorie foods I can have so if my mind is drawing a blank on what to eat tomorrow, I can quickly come up with solutions rather than stand in the kitchen and eventually snacking on all the goodies I find. I personally shoot for 1500 calories (I'm a female, 30 years old, 5 foot 8 inches, 237 pounds). Exercise wise I currently have an active job (but will be changing to a sedentary job in a couple weeks), and try to stay moving when at home (we have a couple acres), and have been trying to get back to getting on the treadmill more (in January/February I would do 4-5 miles 3 days a week on the treadmill and lost 25 pounds in those 2 months, then took a break in march and GAINED 5 back).
Anyways, just an idea of what I'm working on and what's worked for me.
I hope you find what works for you