Piff Poff

Almonds are good, high in protein so keeps the hunger at bay.

Piff Poff

I know two other people that are desperate to gain weight, it's as much an issue for those that want to lose weight. Me? I just have to look at cakes and on goes another 2 pounds, I am quite successful for 6 months or so of a diet and then just get exhausted by the whole thing, the shopping, the hours of food prep, the constantly thinking, oh I've got to eat, oh, I've got to prep something, oh, I've got to shop, so I lose 30lbs, get bummed out, and then put it all back on again and am back to where I started. I just need a programme that , is a) good for you and b) not so labour intensive. After a day at work, I don't necessarily want to spend 3 hours in the kitchen cooking supper and prepping the next days/weeks snacks and lunches.Oh for a personal chef.

SchnookoLoly

Haha okay forget the yogurt and banana! You can use whole milk instead of yogurt, that works fine as well, and just skip the banana and add in other fruits. If you use frozen fruits then it comes out a bit like frozen yogurt! You can also add a bit of honey for a calorie boost and a bit of sweetness.

Dinner sounds good! As I mentioned, tortellini also works. Scallops are delicious. You can add in some bacon, bacon goes well with scallops and adds a lot of flavour.

BTW, you can set MFP for Weight GAIN if youw ant to track what you're having! You can say "I want to gain half a lb per week" and it will give you a calorie goal to achieve that!

Keep nuts around to snack on - pistachios, almonds, brazil nuts, pecans, walnuts... this is making me want nuts now. Goddamn!

And now I am going to go get my burrito salad for 525 cals. Nom nom nom.

caretaker

No time for lunch - Gatorade @ 50 calories and back to work!

Shard

No time or no room...

Oink

You're an evil person.

Shard

Do as I say, not as I do

Oink

AlliF

They may be high in calories but they are very filling and contain a lot of benefits - high fibre content, fats that actually lower bad cholesterol, loads of vitamins and minerals and antioxidants.
My favourite snack is a small handful of pistachios - if you buy them in their shell then it stops you eating them so quickly.

scrubbedexpat091

Working grave yards just didn't lead to a lifestyle of meals. I'd get up at 10pm, get ready for work, drink a fruit/veggie smoothie with some protein powder, and then from 11p to 7a I'd snack on fruits, nuts, and usually had a chicken breast as well, banana's and apples over my 8 hour shift.

I would get home around 7:30am stay awake until 8:30-9:30 and then go to bed.

I don't eat in 2 hours leading up to bed due to acid reflux caused by a hiatal hernia.

But I have never been a 3 square meal person, I have always eaten small portions pretty much all day, grazing. Large amounts of food at once have always cause me stomach issues, so eating small but frequent was my solution.

As for chicken prices, to me it is pricey here but I came from the US where food tends to be cheap. One problem I encounter in Canada is my go to foods, the one's I enjoy are either not available or very costly here, so its always been a struggle.

I have been a picky eater since childhood and I don't adapt to new foods well, which has been a hurdle but slowly working on it. I have gotten to a point where I can eat broccoli and asparagus now in small portions so it's a start.

It also doesn't help that we have nothing like No Frills, or Super Store and 2 of the 3 grocery stores are owned by the same company which means prices are basically high at all 3, and Wally Mart only sells processed junk food.

[QUOTE=SchnookoLoly;11462187]Hey Jsmth... I feel like I can actually help out here. Here's my weight loss journey.

Short version: 2 years 2 months at it. Down 2st. Healthy BMI now. It's a lifestyle change, not a diet. Mantra is "eat a little bit less, move a little bit more".

That is an awesome story. I think I am going to buy a dry erase board calendar so i can easily track and the put it all into the website as well, I don't have a smart phone, so I will use the white board so its more visible and so I am more conscious of what I have already had for the day and so on.

I am going to get some water repellent clothing as well so I can walk in the wain without getting soaked, that has been the largest problem here, always rainy and even with an umbrella end up soaked after a 30 minute walk...



Up until 30, I couldn't manage to gain weight and was always under what my idea weight was supposed to be, and ate anything and everything, then poof 30 happens, and that seems to be the magic number for weight gain, and in the last year its really gotten up there, so I am trying to stop it before:

1) I gain more weight.

2) I know getting older is just gonna make it harder so starting now before it's an issue seems to be the wisest decision.

SchnookoLoly

The MFP website is really user-friendly, I like it a lot. I always used a combination of the website (when at work) and the phone app (when on the move), so you certainly can just use the web version! Just being conscious of calories in what really makes a big difference.

Walking is great! The more you can walk the better. Have you considered swimming? You can then do that indoors, it won't hurt your knees, and it's fantastic exercise.

Hahahahaha always the way, isn't it!

Lychee

I like your attitude and your goal of trying to slim down. I notice, as I age, my own body growing in ways I have never seen, so I hear you and applaud you for your efforts.

I've bolded a few points (including the point that you don't swim - many people seemed to have missed that) to get your original story back on track.

First, I notice that you eat a LOT of apples. Apples are full of sugar. Natural sugars, yes, but sugar nonetheless. An apple a day is great, but 4+ apples a day is like drinking 2 cans of Coca Cola per day, in terms of their sugar content. I would think you would want to cut back the pop and the apples, and replace the apples with something with less sugar, like carrots. Carrots and hummous make for a cheap healthy yet filling snack. You can even make your own batch of hummous, which is cheaper than buying it premade, and it keeps for quite some time. When you get bored of carrots, you can switch it or mix it up with other vegetables - celery, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, etc.

Second, you live in Squamish, correct? How about pursuing some hikes in the rainforest? That will get you walking on soft ground with a variety of elevation gains. Use the network of trails to do some brisk walking. Squamish is the "Outdoor Capital of Canada" or so they say, so this shouldn't be hard to achieve, and no need for a gym.

I am not a fitness guru, but I have been paying attention to my diet and exercise habits over the past year, and use YouTube for free exercise videos that I can do at home. You can do a lot of challenging fat-burning, muscle-building exercises at home without having to buy any fancy equipment, without having to strain your knees. Pilates is good for this. Jillian Michaels is also another name you may wish to look up - she has a lot of short but intense workouts worth pursuing. These are always challenging the first few times, but they do get easier over time. Don't give up on them!

Another idea for breakfast - black beans, salsa, and scrambled eggs. Tasty, healthy, filling, and cheap. Make your own salsa to also save costs.

Chilli is another dinner idea that you can make on the cheap, and it lasts you for lunch and dinner for the rest of the week. It's also affordable given that you can make a huge pot of it and freeze it in smaller batches to eat later.

Beans - that is a food that is cheap, filling, nutritious, and gives you the sort of energy you will need for when you increase your physical activity. Bulk dry beans are cheaper than canned beans, and can last forever.

Invest in spices - I know you have extremely limited budget - but spending $2 on a packet of chili powder or curry powder - can make an another bland meal taste amazing. The benefit is that the spices last forever, and can make cheap and otherwise bland nutritious food taste incredible, and it may encourage you to cook in healthy, affordable ways. Spices such as ground coriander, ginger, ground cumin can open your culinary world into making Indian lentil curries and chickpea curries, again, that are cheap, healthy, flavourful, and nutritious.

Regarding chicken, I've been finding that a roast chicken from a supermarket is cheaper than buying individual chicken breasts (often the most expensive part of the chicken). Chicken thighs are almost always cheaper, if you must buy chicken parts. The benefit of buying a whole roast chicken is that it the chicken gives you leftovers to eat the next day, and then it gives you a carcass to boil for chicken soup the day after that. Add eggs noodles, carrots, and celery, and you have another meal that you can freeze and save for later as lunch or dinner down the road.

So I guess the short to my long response is this:

- eat less apples (sugar)
- add more beans/lentils to your diet
- invest in a few spices
- make large pots of food to provide you with leftovers for days
- buy whole chickens, they last longer and give you more in the long run
- go for brisk walks on local nature trails
- pursue online pilates exercise videos

SchnookoLoly

I got curious and put all this into MyFitnessPal.

Attached a screenshot of the values.

Calorie-wise it's about 1250, depending on how close the estimates are (for example, I just picked Corn Flakes for breakfast, since you didn't say what you actually had. The entry was for 30g or 1.25 cups... you said 3 cups, so I put in 2.2 servings, which only changed the g value, not the cup value, so it's actually about 3 cups, not 1.25!). The "goals" line is based on my measurements etc, but if yours were to be similar, sugar is WAY too high! Everything else seems not too bad, if you added another 250cals of mixed stuff and hit 1500 that probably would not be a bad day, but you would be better off swapping out some of the apples for more nutritious stuff.

In any case, this took me about 2 minutes to input based on the values you provided... and I did it on the desktop version of the site.

JamesM

Let's go back a step.

An apple is not nutritious???

SchnookoLoly

I should have written varied. *An* apple certainly is nutritious, even two is fine. Five is overkill. Too much sugar, as Lychee said. I should not have said nutritious though! I'm half asleep. :dunce: