jackhammer

I had a bowl of Ready Brek which is an oat based breakfast, a footlong meatball subway (full of every salad item apart from olives) and that's it. I get 30 mins break on a ten hour shift

Most days I only get one real decent meal, odd being that I'm a chef and it's hardly surprising that I have lost around 17 pounds in the last couple of months.

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Sneer

I tend to eat one big meal a day, which alternates between being pasta-based, fish, chicken or pie of some sort.

My diet is negligible. I do make sure that I eat fruit and vegetables every day, usually a banana and whatever accompanies my main meal. I eat a lot new potatoes, mushrooms, olives, garlic, peas, lettuce and onion. I'm generally a big fan of vegetables, and eat them more than I eat meat. I'm not a vegetarian, however. I do eat chips quite often too.

Other than the main meal, I tend to just eat snacks, usually buttered toast, a sandwich, fruit or cereal. I mostly drink water or rooibos tea. Coffee is a fixture in my morning routine.

My problem is that I don't eat enough regularly enough.

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Rjinn

Diets don't work. Just eat healthy. Fruit, veggies, raw nuts, juice, grain bread, red meat or lentils for iron, avocado, soy products, non-junk breakfast cereals etc. Don't over eat or under eat. Eating regularly throughout the day is important, it keeps your metabolism working into a habit. Allocating one day of the week eating whatever you please is ok. Don't limit yourself too much, its unhealthy, and when you start eating more the body just holds onto the fat preventing later starvation.

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Freebase Dali

Diets do work. It's just about the kind of diet you choose.
Me, I went from 182 to 166 in 3 months simply by doing this weird new "not drinking beer every day" diet and cutting out sodas. But I think that sorta thing should be obvious.
Dieting just means manipulating the way you consume. Whether it's portioning, calorie tracking, changing habits, or whatever, that is a diet as long as you are doing something different for a specific goal.
I think that people probably need to focus more on eating and living normally, and not the normal that our cultures are making us believe is normal, be it through convenient food availability or image enforcement.

I definitely agree that eating regularly is good if you want to maintain a constant metabolism and not put your body into starvation mode, but it's not out of the realm of nature for your body to actually need to use reserves for its fuel. It's the purpose of fat storage, and very much a natural thing for a human being, among many other animals. If a person wishes to lose weight, however, they will need to purposely intake fewer calories than they burn, pure and simple, so that fat storage can be utilized instead of new caloric energy.

Back in the days where we had to scavenge and hunt for our food, surplus caloric material was a matter of survival. These days, not so much, obviously. And in the kind of world we live in where food is as abundant as it is, it's hard not to be the envy of every caveman that ever lived. But at the same time, it's not natural for us to have as much as we have. Our systems were evolved from such that expects us to not always have everything we desire.
When we pour surplus into our bodies, the body just says "hey, I'll be able to use this later!". And of course, there's never any "later" now days.

So, I think that the best course of action would be to not fear hunger. Let it tell you when you should eat, and eat when it tells you. Sate it with natural food, but not mounds of it every time. Think of the hunger response not as a sign that you are deprived, but that your body is functioning as it should be, and sate the response as necessary.

And, above all, exercise like a hunter-gatherer.

gunnels

I picked a terrible time to try and get healthy. College meal plans and schedules don't really allow for regular meal hours or reliable knowledge of nutrient intake. I've been averaging two meals (occurring at unpredictable times) a day with a snack like a glass of milk or something. I try to get as much protein as I can through what resources are provided. Carb intake mainly comes from this wholegrain wheaty cereal stuff I eat in the morning. Fats basically come exclusively from avocado and nuts. I'm predicting my daily caloric intake to be around 1500. I know it's not THE healthiest thing in the world, but considering the situation its about the best I can do. Any suggestions?

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Let's Play TF2 Sometime.|Unrepresentative Last.fm.|Puns, Pokemon, and Miscellany

Freebase Dali

What are you aiming for? Weight loss, health, or both?

gunnels

Weight loss is the reason I'm doing it, but if I'm doing it I want to do it as healthily as possible.
I don't really care about strength building. I only do weights to burn extra calories, really.

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Freebase Dali

I think the most powerful thing you can have for this scenario is, and I'm not ****ting you, a calorie counting app on your phone, or a website where you can do calorie counting.

Most people don't realize how much they're actually consuming. If you want to lose weight, you need to consume less calories than you burn, whether it's BMR only or BMR plus exercise.
The problem most people have is assuming that they're eating less calories than they're actually eating. Which is why calorie counting is a thing.
It's easier on smartphones, as there are apps that let you scan barcodes of whatever you eat and automatically add the nutritional properties to your diary. Websites do have searches for stuff, though, if you don't have a smartphone. I'd recommend MyFitnessPal. Practically anything you eat, even down to a random ass sub at Subway, will have caloric and nutritional info that you can add to your diary. It lets you set a weight loss goal, and how many calories you need to consume daily to get there, depending on the rate of loss you want.
Without it, you either have to do it with a pen and paper, or just guesstimate, and usually those two options don't yield results.

Also, sweet drinks have to stop. They actually have to halt to 0 percent of your diet.
If you need to ask why, then something is up.

gunnels

Just filled out the MyFitnessPal registration thing. This certainly makes me feel a bit more confident, considering it's suggesting I burn 1390 cals/week and eat 1900 cals/day when I already burn at minimum 2200 cals/week.
For some reason, it's suggesting I eat 270 grams of carbs and 66 grams of fat a day though.
Anyway, thanks for all the advice. Must appreciated.

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Let's Play TF2 Sometime.|Unrepresentative Last.fm.|Puns, Pokemon, and Miscellany

Freebase Dali

I don't know how different the site is from the app, as I only use the app, but I never pay attention to anything but the calorie part. I simply told it my height, weight, and activity level, then it calculated my BMR, then asked me my weight goal, then how much a week I wanted to lose. After that, it gave me my calorie goal for each day, which is around 1,320 in order to lose around 1.5 pounds a week. After that, I just enter what I eat, and it tells me how many calories I have left. When it's not a weekend where I'm drinking, I stop when I hit 0. lol.

I would think the site works the same way.