How many calories and is this enough food?!

Hi there. I'm aware I need to include some protein...etc into the food diary.

Working on that. But can someone advise me whether this is too much or too little food to be consuming? I'm a student so money is a bit tight, so I tend to each processed foods, but keeping within a certain calorie limit.

Breakfast: Asda reduced salt and sugar baked beans 210g, 2 slices of Warburton wholemeal bread. 1 tesco medium egg (However I thought it was hard boiled, rolled it to crack the shell, and it cracked and all the yolk came out of it, so ate mostly whites)

Lunch: Homemade carrot and coriander soup (Consists of 400g carrots, 1/2 large red onion, massive bunch of coriander leaves and 1 oxo cube) Which serves 4. With two slices of whole meal warburton bread

Dinner: Congee (chinese rice porridge). It consists of 75g tesco easy cook white rice, 1 cup spring onions, 100g pollock, 1 oxo cube and serves 2. 

Snack: 2 tesco scottish oatcakes

Is this enough food for today? If not how come? And how many calories is all this?

Thank you so much

Kelly

You can enter all this into the food log and find out how many calories you are consuming for the day. What are your stats? Age, height, weight, etc. That will help us help you figure out if you are consuming enough!

I'm 5`2. Last time I weight I was around 113lbs. But I know I have gained lots due to the tightness of my clothes...so maybe around 120lbs!

i'm not going to calculate your calories for you, because i'm sure you're quite capable of reading labels. i will tell you that if money is tight, you should be avoiding processed foods like the plague. your budget will go a whole lot further if you buy whole foods and prepare your own meals.

because i am apparently spectacularly bored, i've stuck all your food into the calorie count food log, which reckons that your grand total is 670 calories for the day.  obviously there is a bit of room for error here, but unless the website is somehow underestimating by a good 1000+ calories, you are not eating enough.

how active are you?  stick your details into the bmr calculator to see how much you should be eating.  (clue: it's more than double what you are now!)

Nevermind. I ended up giving in and binging on rubbish =\! Bad day. 

My 2p - at first sight, that looks like a huge amount of carbs - not that carbs are evil but there's no nearly enough balance.

No fresh fruit & veg?

2 Oxo cubes in one day? That's a ginormous amount of sodium!!

You may not have a lot of money, but that's no excuse. A box of oats will go a long way for starters....

Beans and rice, are inexpensive.  I like to make a pot of soup with dry black beans, a can of cheap stewed tomatoes and a little bit of rice.  I add hot sauce and a spoon of plain yogurt sometimes. 

Oatmeal with a little sugar/cinnamon. 

If you do a search for frugal diet, budget diet, healthy budget, cheap meal plans, cheap recipes, etc, you will find things that you like that are not inexpensive and healthy.

Also, if you don't always have time to cook, make more and save the portions for later.  I do that with beans/rice a lot. 

I don't eat this everyday...I usually buy a lot of frozen veg. However ran out, and my budget is blown for this week. Yes already. Christmas presents and all.

I do stock things like rice and cous cous. But they are plain on their own. I don't stock foods I don't like because what is the point in spending money on foods you will not want to eat? It'll just make me want to go out and buy rubbish all the time.

Meat is a killer on my budget hence why I turned to eating no meat. I eat meat once in a while when I can afford it. I only live off 20 a week. Including food, travel and socialising so it is a really tight budget! 

I am not making an excuse for anything. If I could afford to buy those things I would. It's not like I'm not wanting to buy it. When I am at home, my mother grows most produce and stocks healthy foods. it's not like I don't want to eat it so don't dare say i am making an excuse when I am not. Yes a box of oats will go a long way. But why on earth would I want to eat oats if I don't like them?! Living of a budget means I'm not going to splash out on foods I do not like. You've suggested to go easy on the carbs yet you suggest i buy a bah of oats..which will go a long way..How does that work? when I eat shredded wheat for breakfast. I'm not going to go and eat porridge all day. yes it goes for staple ingredients like cheap pasta and such. But I'm talking about other produce like vegetables to make the staples taste nicer. 

A pack of peppers is so expensive these days! The only place that sells cheap veg is Lidl! Yet their produce tends to go off in about 2 days which makes the whole cheap thing stupid.

I didn't eat 2 oxo cubes in one day. It goes in the meal I made and if you look I did make things from scratch. I don't just make one meal and scoff it all. It does spread out to 4 meals.

Coriander soup?! Carrots and onions! There's the veg! The rice dish!? Spring onions and a hell of a lot of it! Just because the veg isn't whole it doesn't mean I'm not getting any of it. This is only a days worth not my lifes worth.

The Eatwell plate suggests eating carbs with each meal. 

Original Post by mcjenny23:

Beans and rice, are inexpensive.  I like to make a pot of soup with dry black beans, a can of cheap stewed tomatoes and a little bit of rice.  I add hot sauce and a spoon of plain yogurt sometimes. 

Oatmeal with a little sugar/cinnamon. 

If you do a search for frugal diet, budget diet, healthy budget, cheap meal plans, cheap recipes, etc, you will find things that you like that are not inexpensive and healthy.

Also, if you don't always have time to cook, make more and save the portions for later.  I do that with beans/rice a lot. 

Thanks! :]! Will take a look at budget diets! Shame I'm not too keen on beans, however will give that stewed things a go maybe buy an aubergine to go with it. 

Original Post by kellyyuen:

I don't eat this everyday...I usually buy a lot of frozen veg. However ran out, and my budget is blown for this week. Yes already. Christmas presents and all.

I do stock things like rice and cous cous. But they are plain on their own. I don't stock foods I don't like because what is the point in spending money on foods you will not want to eat? It'll just make me want to go out and buy rubbish all the time.

Meat is a killer on my budget hence why I turned to eating no meat. I eat meat once in a while when I can afford it. I only live off 20 a week. Including food, travel and socialising so it is a really tight budget! 

I am not making an excuse for anything. If I could afford to buy those things I would. It's not like I'm not wanting to buy it. When I am at home, my mother grows most produce and stocks healthy foods. it's not like I don't want to eat it so don't dare say i am making an excuse when I am not. Yes a box of oats will go a long way. But why on earth would I want to eat oats if I don't like them?! Living of a budget means I'm not going to splash out on foods I do not like. You've suggested to go easy on the carbs yet you suggest i buy a bah of oats..which will go a long way..How does that work? when I eat shredded wheat for breakfast. I'm not going to go and eat porridge all day. yes it goes for staple ingredients like cheap pasta and such. But I'm talking about other produce like vegetables to make the staples taste nicer. 

A pack of peppers is so expensive these days! The only place that sells cheap veg is Lidl! Yet their produce tends to go off in about 2 days which makes the whole cheap thing stupid.

I didn't eat 2 oxo cubes in one day. It goes in the meal I made and if you look I did make things from scratch. I don't just make one meal and scoff it all. It does spread out to 4 meals.

Coriander soup?! Carrots and onions! There's the veg! The rice dish!? Spring onions and a hell of a lot of it! Just because the veg isn't whole it doesn't mean I'm not getting any of it. This is only a days worth not my lifes worth.

The Eatwell plate suggests eating carbs with each meal. 

Well, it seems from your snappy response that you've got it all figured out.  Why bother asking for advice, beyond the fact that you're too lazy to calculate your own calories?  Is this going to be another in a litany of your "OMG IS THIS A HEALTHY SNACK" posts? 

Only snapping at the person who replied suggesting I was making an excuse. I only asked whether it was enough food because I for one have no idea what a person should eat everyday. Not sure whether I eat too much or too little since people say to me I eat a lot. I wasn't asking whether it was healthy or not because I know my diet isn't healthy but I make do with what I can.

I eat around this much each day. However get comments like "How are you so skinny yet you eat so much" 

Yet you guys here say I'm eating too little, so I was confused and maybe I was calculating the calories wrong. 

I apologise for snapping, just don't like people saying I'm making an excuse for myself when I am trying to do the best as I can =S 

It sounds to me like you are thinking about it way too much. Everyone needs a different amoung of calories each day based on their level of exercise and other factors such as illness etc. Might I suggest you have a look at some of the really useful tools available on the website and set yourself up with a diet profile?

Don't base your self esteem on what other people say. I have found that people who say 'how are you so skinny when you eat so much' to other people are not very clued up themselves when it comes to nutrition and are best ignored. People often comment on the size of meals I eat, but the calories and fat count is nearly always less than a smaller meal of a less balanced nature. Remember, quality over quantity.