Okay, just thought I'd post a quick question I've been stewing over here. I just started eating healthier & working out, & radically adjusting my diet has & is persisting to be a bit of a challenge, especially since I have to buy all of the groceries now instead of relying on my mom (natural/organic diet). Basically I'm just a little unsure & perhaps concerned if I'm getting enough calories per day? I use the daily plate to track my calories online, & based on my goal of losing 2lbs/week at my starting weight of 205, it says I'm allowed around 1600 calories a day. Now at first I was trying to eat less, because I was coming in over that 1600 recommended, but I haven't been trying to eat less at all recently, & sometimes I'm barely breaking 1000 calories. I'm not sure how accurate the information is, but I've heard people say you need at least 1200/day to be eating a healthy amount? I wasn't going to stress it as I can squeeze a few extra hundred calories in here or there, but today's caloric intake moved me to seek help. All of my snacks & meals have been eaten today, & having just finished a devilishly good treat I shouldn't have had, I find that I came in at just 823 calories total! I used to eat a couple hundred shy of that PER MEAL. Now is it just me, or is something wrong here? Yesterday I ended up licking a tablespoon of Peanut Butter & drinking a glass of milk to get my extra 200 (& make 1200 calories exactly). Am I just overreacting, or should I be eating more calories a day? Please, let me know. I'll post today's snacks/meals below, so you can take a gander. Thanks for taking the time to read, I appreciate your consideration.

Breakfast-
1/2c Organic Whole oats: 150 Calories
1Tbsp Brown Sugar: 30 Calories
1Tbsp Sugar: 45 Calories
Morning Snack-
Quaker Chewy Granola Bar: 90 Calories
3 Ritz Crackers: 48 Calories
Lunch-
1c Organic Chicken & Wild Rice Soup: 90 Calories
Brocolli: 14 Calories
Mid-Day Snack-
1 Laughing Cow Spreadable Cheese: 35 Calories
1 Slice Turkey: 15 Calories
Dinner-
Chicken, Egg White, & Veggie Stir-fry: 248 Calories
Pre-Bedtime Snack-
Gudrud Fine Belgian Chocolate: 100 Calories

Where is your fruit? There isn't a single serving of fruit all day. You could easily bulk up those calories, and should, by getting more fruits, veggies and more protein into that diet. Add a banana to breakfast (120-150 calories). And your mid-morning snack had no protein, no fruit and no veggies. You could have a 50 calorie cheese stick with your granola bar and some carrots, a protein bar and 1/2 an apple , some yogurt with granola and blueberries, apples or carrots with peanut butter, a handful of almonds...whatever...just bulk up those calories and I would get more protein into the first half of your day. Your mid-afternoon snack again has no fruit and no veggies -- which is OK if you were getting enough elsewhere but it is also incredibly low in calories -- bulk it up -- veggies and fruit can help with this. Your dinner is a little low on the calorie side, not bad if ALL of your five or six meals a day averaged around 250-300 calories, but they don't.

Yes, you really should stress about not getting enough food day after day. It is extremely important -- not just for weight loss but also for your general health. When you eat under your calories to this extent, your body will burn its lean muscle mass instead of fat to stay alive...icky...it basically eats itself. Oh, and your metabolism crashes making weight loss extremely difficult.

Eat more...hungry or not. Many of us go through the "not hungry" stage or through phases of not feeling hungry...most likely it has to do with decreasing the amount of sugar and carbs in our diets, getting better protein and whole foods and also just the mental exercise of "dieting". Regardless, you need to eat and try to reach those calories goals. You will lose weight in a safe, sane way, and your body will thank you for taking better care of it with increased energy, nice muscle mass, etc. as you go along...but most especially when you reach your goal.

If I ate like that for any length of time I'd be heading straight for a binge. You need fruit, and more volume. Why just one slice of turkey?

Fruit would be good with any of those meals...or all of them.

Try and get to 1600 - your body needs fuel.

Yep. What both the people above said.

You have no fruit and very little veg in your meal. Add an apple to your breakfast. Or stir in a spoonful of peanut butter to your oats instead of all that sugar.

Ditch the chewy granola bar which has NO nutritional value whatsoever and have a piece of fruit, some cheese, something that will nourish you.

I'm also confused about some of your quantities and calories. For example your lunch has 14 calories of broccoli? 1 serving of broccoli is about 1 cup chopped. That amount has 35 calories. Why are you only eating 1/2 serving or less?

For your snack, why only 1 slice of turkey? A regular serving of deli turkey is about 5 slices (61g) and has 60 calories. Why not have a full serving?

For dinner why are you only eating the egg white? Why not the whole egg? The yolk has a LOT of vitamins in it; you should eat it!

You could easily boost your nutrition and your calories by adding in just a few healthy items and eating just a little more.

.

Whoa whoa! It's ok. Everyone has to learn sometime. This is how you learn - you do it, you make a mistake, and you go ... well, I won't do *that* again. And it's better to learn NOW, while you're young, and to build healthy habits. It's much harder to change them when you're older.

A few things for you - while I understand wanting to eat all organic, it's MORE IMPORTANT TO FUEL YOUR BODY! So if you're on a really tight budget and the difference between buying organic and buying regular means you get enough food to eat, don't buy the organic. A 5lb bag of regular apples you should be able to get for around $3.99, whereas you'll pay $3.99 for a pound of organic apples. In this case it's better to buy the non-organic and have food to eat.

I would suggest you make a plan for your meals - at least until you get the hang of what is enough and what is too much. I have been cooking for 30 years and I still plan my meals out on Sunday so that I can go grocery shopping either Sunday night or Monday evening. I rarely go shopping w/out having a meal plan first or I wind up not buying enough food, or not buying the right kind of food.

I've posted a link to my plan before, which I lay out in an Excel spreadsheet. It contains my meal plan for the week, plus my shopping list which I build from the meal plan. It looks like this:


You don't have to use Excel. You can do the same thing by making a chart on a piece of paper. But the idea is to plan out every meal and every snack and then use that to create your grocery list. If you know that you're going to eat a turkey sandwich every day for lunch, then you know you'll need 1 lb of sliced turkey (1 lb of turkey has about 7 60g servings). If you know that you are going to make hamburgers for dinner one night, you know that you'll need about 1/2 lb of burger for 2 people (that'll give you each 4oz of meat). Etc. So you can figure out what you need to buy.

And it'll also help you budget because you won't be buying things and then trying to figure out how to use them.

Speaking of budgets: When you're on an extremely tight budget, buying things like granola bars is a bad idea. Those types of convenience foods are some of the most expensive things you can buy. Far better to buy a box of oats and make your own oat bars if you really want them, than to buy them prepackaged. As well as being cheaper, they'll be healthier if you make them because you can control the amount of sugar. And of course, there won't be any preservatives.

Planning will also help with the issue of not having time to prepare something becuase you're running late in the morning. I've posted this before, but every Sunday I boil a dozen eggs. I make 5 1/2 pb sandwiches (2 T pb on 1 slice whole grain bread, folded over, and put in a ziplock baggie). I portion baby carrots out into snack baggies. I divide my yogurt out into 5 individual containers. I slice a block of cheddar cheese into 1 oz portions and put them in ziplock baggies. I count and set aside string cheese. If I've made something like hummus, I portion it into 5 small containers. If I have apple sauce for the week, I portion it into 5 small containers. If I make oats in the crockpot, I make them Sunday during the day and then portion them into 5 containers. Basically anything I can do Sunday night to make sure that in the mornings I just grab 4 or 5 things and throw them into my bag ... I do it.

Then every night I slice an apple and put it in a ziplock baggie. I fix whatever I'm going to have for lunch the next day - whether it's leftovers from the night before, or something fresh. I put it in the baggie, or the Tupperware container or whatever. I have a shelf in my fridge that is *just* for my food that I take to work and it all goes there. That way in the morning, all I do is grab stuff, throw it in my lunch cooler, and leave.

Planning, planning, planning - it's hugely important especially when you've never done this beforea nd you're just learning what to buy and what amounts to buy it in. At some point you may find that you don't need to plan this strictly any more or that you want more flexiblity, and that's fine. But for now, I think you'd benefit from really planning out your weeks ahead of time.

.

I'm trying to do a natural diet as well, but have run into budget constraints. One thing that I decided on was that I'd rather have the health benefits of eating more fruits and veggies (undoubtedly better for you) than eat totally organic stuff less often. It's a decision that you have to make for yourself, but it is something to consider. If you're eating less fruits and veggies because you only want to buy organic, you probably aren't doing yourself any favors.

I would starve to death on this diet.

more fruit and veggies for sure!

Lately I have been getting those Japanese tangerines and putting them in the fridge. They peel SO easy, much easier than a regular tangerine and so cold and sweet and only 72 calories so I can have TWO! MMMM they are SO good!

Utrthworm,

Add some yogurt to breakfast, you could use more calcium and there is some research that milk and milk products help in weight loss.

Ditto on the fruit and veggie issue. Look for sales, things are often on sale when in season. Right now citrus fruits (oranges, clementines etc) are going relatively cheaply.

The average age of independence in this country is 26! I admire you for wanting to be self-sufficient, but if you have parents who are willing, maybe you can ease into it a bit more.

Also, there are a number of agencies that help with credit counseling/financial management. I doubt you are in debt yet, but setting up a livable budget is a skill, and there are ways to learn it. (I work with homeless teens preparing them for self-sufficiency.) Figure that to eat healthy and cheap you need to budget about $40 per week per person.

I'm glad I can help.

One thing that helps a lot, too, is building a list of "standard" or "go-to" recipes that you can use all the time. Once you get used to cooking, there are things that you know you can make that take very little time and that you will mostly always have the ingredients on hand for.

For me it's things like meatloaf, veggie stir fry, an omelette or fritatta, cabbage and tomato soup, etc. These are all quick and easy things that I know I can whip together in a matter of minutes .. so when I'm making a menu I can throw them in there to round out meals and snacks.

.

I know a lot of young people don't/won't eat beans, but they are cheap, a great way to get your protein and are full of fiber. I use them a lot for chili, salads, soup. They are also very filling!

Bananas are cheap too! They would be nice to have in or with your oatmeal IMO. I'm glad they are cheap because my family loves them. We eat a lot of beans here as well. -Beans and eggs are very cheap sources of protein.

I haven't had time to read the whole thread, I just read your original post.
Do you really need to put TWO TABLESPOONS of sugar on your oatmeal? That a LOTof sugar and it is not good for you, and not really from the viewpoint of calories (although I would rather have 75 calories from blueberries or raspberries).
I do sweeten my oatmeal as well, but I use less about 3/4 TEAspoon of Splenda and about 1/2 teaspoon of brown sugar (maybe even less than that). That is literally the only sugar I consume in a day, i.e. in the form or sugar, and only on days when I have oatmeal for brekkie.

Sorry about sounding less than supportive earlier - I wasn't thinking about the financial part of it.

Frozen fruits and veggies can be pretty cost effective (even canned if you watch the added sugar/salt) - and you can get all kindsa stuff even when it isn't in season. Avoid the stuff in fancy packaging that you can microwave in - the normal stuff is easy to prepare.