Different foods to normal

I,m new here names Robbie and from the Uk aged 44 I have spent this past 3 evenings having a look about and attempting to fill in my food log each day.

At the moment I,m 12 stone 1  which is about 15lbs more than I want to be, never had to diet before as i was trim so must be old age :(

Diet wise I'm lost though, as what to change so i still feel satisfied after each meal. I,m a meat and spuds and veg bloke, crunchy nut cornflakes for breakfast with tea and toast. lunch can be anything, and i tend to eat a wee bit a night with a night cap some nights.

The other thing i,m not sure about is targets basically the site says i need 500 calories less a day to loose 1lb a week until 20th april etc, is that without burning of more calories each day ?

Hopefully some nice people here can guide me in the right direction

hiya :) dinner was huge lol, it looked like such a small amount before I cooked it, but really, I didn't need an evening snack haha. I'm going to start on tea for today soon, I've been busy all day revising for an exam tomorrow and I'm hungry :/

How has it been going up until now with the diet? Sounds like you've taken to porridge :p
Don't worry about the odd refined sugar snack once in a while, just don't overdo it and you'll be fine.

If you want to know how many calories there are in your home-made meals, you can enter them in CC's recipe analyzer (it's under foods). Takes some figuring out, but this way you won't underestimate/overestimate your cals :)

I must have a play about with that analyzer do da, but when making a big pot of soup i dont really weigh stuff I tend to pur and chuck stuff in and using the chicken to get stock etc will be fun to work out, I dont care really as apart from a wee bit of fat from the roasted chuckie its all really good stuff in there.

I'm going ok with the diet you seem pretty good at it, funny thing is we always want whats bad for us, why can we not crave apples and oranges lol

Hope you do well in the Exam tmw Kate, well i,m sure u will anyways .

tonights tea here is chicken curry with boiled rice, that will fill the tummy up.

Exactly, soup like that won't be bad for you at all and it sounds delicious - bet it's pretty good for you :)

Haha, life would be too easy that way it seems; but as you go on with your diet, you'll notice you stop thinking of yummy bad foods after a while - at least I do; no more cravings, yay!

Thanks, I've still got some revising to do, but hopefully I won't do too badly :)

That chicken curry sounds great, home-made from scratch? Good thing with curries is that you can make big batches and then freeze some for those days you really don't have time to cook :)

I'm glad to hear that the cravings get easier, I must admit that's my biggest problem at the moment, not sure whether its down to quitting smoking a couple of months ago and no having a we tipple at night or the food issue, but its not easy lol,

The curry was a wee cheat as I just used a jar of tikka , added an onion, red pepper, and those aduki beans i had cooked along with some lean chicken. Normal basmalti rice as I have a big bag of it but will get around to wholemeal rice at some point.

 you can eat plenty of porridge in the morning that's brain food, you'll walk the exam

Hope you got on well at the exam kate, been busy here past few days and after 10 days I dont seem to have lost 1lb, hard to tell as one day i,m lighter then next heavier.

still 169 or 168  don't think my bod want to reduce lol

For me the start of losing weight was to make sure my portions were correct.  I bought a scale and began to measure all ingredients.  I was very surprised to find out how large my former portions actually were.  Try to eat more vegetables and fruits in there natural state.  No frying your food or if you must use a small amount of extra virgin oilive oil.  Use as little sugar as possible.  Oatmeal is a wonderful....fill you up food and 2 tablespoons ground flax seed will provide the Omega oils your body needs.  I think you will notice a slight difference within a week or so but realize you did not gain the weight overnght nor will you lose it that quickly.

I agree with sherry, you need to make sure you weigh your portions, especially when just starting :)

It might take a while for you to start losing weight, some people find their weight barely changes the first couple of weeks...you just have to persevere I suppose, I'm sure it will start coming off.

The exam went alright, btw, robbie, I'm fairly sure I've passed :) on to the next one!

 I suppose i better weigh some things but at least I don't have to do that with fruit  etc, potatoes and veg etc i sorta guess and allow what the figures say for a chicken breast etc.

Figure wise i,m running about 1600 or 1700 a day so i reckoned even if i was out a bit my allowance of 1850 would still be ok  on top of the added exercise, and no drink at night lol, though one night this week we had a wee tipple

I'm glad i,m not alone in loosing nothing for the first 2 weeks, i was getting worried, as most people say you loose the most in the first week

Kate's got me well on the oats now, though went for a boiled egg this morning with toast instead, I see some people talk about egg whites, can you buy em separated or do u just take the yoke and chuck it then do ???? with the whites.

Best get the food scales out haha, as it can make a lot of difference, for example: go over 25g on what you think is a cup of oats (1 cup = 80g) and you go from about 300 cals to 390...Half a breast of chicken is 95g (not as much as you'd think) and a 140 cals. If you think your portion of chicken breast is that, but in fact it's closer to 150g, you go from 140 to 230 cals.
Like you say, it isn't that bad in things like fruit and veg (and they're definitely healthy snacks) but despite that, I'd still measure out most of your foods, to get used to what a cup of this or so many grams of that looks like :)

Nah, just chuck the egg yolk - or keep it for later (they're quite nutritious and freeze well, you can even keep them covered in the fridge for a day or two). Egg whites freeze well, too :)

The whites you can make into an egg white omelet (here are some examples); it's very high in protein and low in cholesterol, and lower in cals too.