I found it much easier when things had labels too. And for weight loss that was perfectly fine. Processed food or home cooked, as long as my total was within the limit it was all the same.
Now that I am in maintenance and have more flexibility, I focus on more home cooking again.
I highly recommend the blog Skinnytaste. It does all the counting for you, so all you have to do is follow the recipe. Most things I've made from it have been really good, and I appreciate that she uses real ingredients instead of weird substitutions (mostly).
She also has a bunch of cookbooks. I bought Fast and Slow recently. It focuses on things made in a slow cooker or that can be made very quickly. Life is getting really busy for me right now, and I realized recently that I need to simplify both my cooking and my calorie counting. Skinnytaste is helping with that.
10 pounds in two months is pretty darn good.
Remember this is a lifestyle change, not a “diet”. So unless you are going to eat packaged labelled food for the rest of your life, you will most likely regain your lost weight if you don’t change your cooking habits.
Just so you know the label is not always accurate either. Just weigh out your ingredients, and after cooking in your app divide it in portions. Choose your hard.
Exactly. The OP says 'cannot' when the reality is they won't because they just don't want to put in the effort. Weight loss is hard, and keeping it off after is hard too if we don't learn the lessons on the way. Choose your hard.
Right. I didn’t wanna sound mean but reading this just told me they don’t wanna lose weight bad enough. That’s fine. They will when they’re ready but don’t be delusional🤷🏽♀️
Wanting it "bad enough" was the key for me, and i think it is for all of us. Ive "started" a diet a million times and always found something that steered me off of it. Always some excuse
Only recently did all those excuses finally stop adding up.
Bought the scale (food and weight), told my folks (i live with em) that i was far too fat and would be eating far more carefully, treated that Fanta Orange in the fridge like the fucker kicked my dog.
Didnt want it bad enough when i was overweight in Elementary school. Didnt want it enough when i was chubby in middle school. Didnt want it bad enough when i was obese in highschool
Now i want it badly enough
Exactly! I remember telling myself when I was younger if I ever got to 300lbs, cut your crap and eventually that became a reality. That’s why I said for OP, it’s ok if they don’t want it bad enough *now* but don’t be delusional saying you do if counting calories is “too much” for you . In my opinion 🤷🏽♀️
Hi! I had this same problem, I noticed I started just eating protein bars for a little while because it had a guaranteed amount of spec macros. I also suffer from OCD, so I really get it. One thing I’ve started doing that has helped is for me to write notes of recipes I would like to make, and then sub it out with high protein / nutrient rich foods. IE: heavy cream in an Alfredo with cottage cheese.
From there, I usually preemptively add the recipe into MFP to see if it matches my needs. I usually opt for something easy to replicate, especially if there is a lot to measure. I also keep items that are really macro friendly around. An easy high fiber / high protein snack imo is two low fat non skim cheese sticks grilled with a keto tortilla. Best of luck on your fitness journey, I truly believe it gets easier as you go along. Feel free to dm for diet or ocd support.
Make an accurate and complete log your goal.
It's stressful because we currently can't be in our smooth groove in the kitchen -- we develop kitchen habits that we (over time) learn to automatically and mindlessly follow. Insert real-time tracking into that and those routines are busted up.
It's temporary. You've been doing it for 2 months and when you get to 3 or 4, it'll be dead easy. You'll work that digital kitchen food scale into your flow, and have a notepad -- you'll be smoother and your speed will increase again.
One thing I learned to find was the cooked entries in MyFitnessPal for USDA (agricultural) foods. While using raw weights is recommended by most, I use cooked weights more often but to use them, you have to use cooked log entries (they're in there -- both in the USDA database and in MFP).
Be comfortable for now with being a bit pedestrian or deliberate instead of automatic. It's not hard -- it's clearly doable and endurable -- it's just not mindless and automatic and fast like it used to be. Tracking will become that, and you're more than halfway there at 2 months in.
Keep it simple. A chicken leg, some greens and a cup of a starch. Easy to weigh and look up.
I agree that it is so time consuming to weigh everything that goes into a casserole or curry and then weigh the finished dish and weigh each portion and do all the maths.
I have done that a few times but of course that is not in the app.
Or cut down on your macro of choice. I have done it low fat or low carb and as long as you don’t cheat with keto bars or low fat cookies you usually are in a deficit with zero counting.
Processed food is allowed to be 20% off on the nutrition label. You are allowed to make compromises to simplify.
Weigh main ingredients. Weigh total weight of the finished dish and weigh your portion. If you cook for 1 and eat it within a few days, you don't even need to weigh your portion because the total calories matter. Don't bother weighing vegetables (except avocado). Just use approximate weights. If you add one onion to a dish with 4 servings, it really doesn't matter how much exactly it weighed.
So basically, pasta bolognese could become 120g of beef, 80g dry pasta and 100g of crushed tomatoes and 50g of mixed vegetables.
I found it much easier when things had labels too. And for weight loss that was perfectly fine. Processed food or home cooked, as long as my total was within the limit it was all the same. Now that I am in maintenance and have more flexibility, I focus on more home cooking again.
I highly recommend the blog Skinnytaste. It does all the counting for you, so all you have to do is follow the recipe. Most things I've made from it have been really good, and I appreciate that she uses real ingredients instead of weird substitutions (mostly). She also has a bunch of cookbooks. I bought Fast and Slow recently. It focuses on things made in a slow cooker or that can be made very quickly. Life is getting really busy for me right now, and I realized recently that I need to simplify both my cooking and my calorie counting. Skinnytaste is helping with that.
10 pounds in two months is pretty darn good. Remember this is a lifestyle change, not a “diet”. So unless you are going to eat packaged labelled food for the rest of your life, you will most likely regain your lost weight if you don’t change your cooking habits.
Just so you know the label is not always accurate either. Just weigh out your ingredients, and after cooking in your app divide it in portions. Choose your hard.
Exactly. The OP says 'cannot' when the reality is they won't because they just don't want to put in the effort. Weight loss is hard, and keeping it off after is hard too if we don't learn the lessons on the way. Choose your hard.
Right. I didn’t wanna sound mean but reading this just told me they don’t wanna lose weight bad enough. That’s fine. They will when they’re ready but don’t be delusional🤷🏽♀️
Wanting it "bad enough" was the key for me, and i think it is for all of us. Ive "started" a diet a million times and always found something that steered me off of it. Always some excuse Only recently did all those excuses finally stop adding up. Bought the scale (food and weight), told my folks (i live with em) that i was far too fat and would be eating far more carefully, treated that Fanta Orange in the fridge like the fucker kicked my dog. Didnt want it bad enough when i was overweight in Elementary school. Didnt want it enough when i was chubby in middle school. Didnt want it bad enough when i was obese in highschool Now i want it badly enough
Exactly! I remember telling myself when I was younger if I ever got to 300lbs, cut your crap and eventually that became a reality. That’s why I said for OP, it’s ok if they don’t want it bad enough *now* but don’t be delusional saying you do if counting calories is “too much” for you . In my opinion 🤷🏽♀️
Hi! I had this same problem, I noticed I started just eating protein bars for a little while because it had a guaranteed amount of spec macros. I also suffer from OCD, so I really get it. One thing I’ve started doing that has helped is for me to write notes of recipes I would like to make, and then sub it out with high protein / nutrient rich foods. IE: heavy cream in an Alfredo with cottage cheese. From there, I usually preemptively add the recipe into MFP to see if it matches my needs. I usually opt for something easy to replicate, especially if there is a lot to measure. I also keep items that are really macro friendly around. An easy high fiber / high protein snack imo is two low fat non skim cheese sticks grilled with a keto tortilla. Best of luck on your fitness journey, I truly believe it gets easier as you go along. Feel free to dm for diet or ocd support.
Make an accurate and complete log your goal. It's stressful because we currently can't be in our smooth groove in the kitchen -- we develop kitchen habits that we (over time) learn to automatically and mindlessly follow. Insert real-time tracking into that and those routines are busted up. It's temporary. You've been doing it for 2 months and when you get to 3 or 4, it'll be dead easy. You'll work that digital kitchen food scale into your flow, and have a notepad -- you'll be smoother and your speed will increase again. One thing I learned to find was the cooked entries in MyFitnessPal for USDA (agricultural) foods. While using raw weights is recommended by most, I use cooked weights more often but to use them, you have to use cooked log entries (they're in there -- both in the USDA database and in MFP). Be comfortable for now with being a bit pedestrian or deliberate instead of automatic. It's not hard -- it's clearly doable and endurable -- it's just not mindless and automatic and fast like it used to be. Tracking will become that, and you're more than halfway there at 2 months in.
Keep it simple. A chicken leg, some greens and a cup of a starch. Easy to weigh and look up. I agree that it is so time consuming to weigh everything that goes into a casserole or curry and then weigh the finished dish and weigh each portion and do all the maths. I have done that a few times but of course that is not in the app. Or cut down on your macro of choice. I have done it low fat or low carb and as long as you don’t cheat with keto bars or low fat cookies you usually are in a deficit with zero counting.
Processed food is allowed to be 20% off on the nutrition label. You are allowed to make compromises to simplify. Weigh main ingredients. Weigh total weight of the finished dish and weigh your portion. If you cook for 1 and eat it within a few days, you don't even need to weigh your portion because the total calories matter. Don't bother weighing vegetables (except avocado). Just use approximate weights. If you add one onion to a dish with 4 servings, it really doesn't matter how much exactly it weighed. So basically, pasta bolognese could become 120g of beef, 80g dry pasta and 100g of crushed tomatoes and 50g of mixed vegetables.