<p>DH and I have been making some positive changes in our diet recently, both to stay healthy and lose a couple of pounds that have crept on. So far so good. I found a meal plan that’s been wonderful. It consists of meals that are very quick to make, and for the most part can be put together with a trip to the farmers’ market every week plus a few things we already have on hand. It’s a plan for a week of 1200-calorie per day meals.</p>
<p>I’d love to have other meal plans like this, basically good, fresh, fast meals pre-calculated to be around 1200-1500 calories per day. </p>
<p>Anyone have any suggestions? The less work the better, as far as I’m concerned Books are ok, online sites would be better. I’m a fan of allrecipes.com and use a lot of their recipes, but would love to have something like the plan above, where a week’s worth of meals is already planned out.</p>
<p>I’m a believer in stocking the house with piles of nicely prepared fruits and vegetables that are handy to snack on. I know that counting calories works for others. The beauty of my system is that if the fridge is bursting with roasted Brussels sprouts, grilled zucchini, celery and peppers with balsamic, fresh blueberries, etc., you can pretty much eat all you want with no weight gain. Just count the bread/potatoes and the protein.</p>
<p>If you lose 5 pounds in 7 days, all you’ve done is lose water weight that you’ll put right back on. Unless you are “biggest loser” obese, the absolute most you want to lose is 1 to 2 pounds per week. For many women, it would not be safe to lose more than 1 pound per week.</p>
<p>1200 to 1500 calories is arbitrary and may not be enough. The best way to approach it is to determine your basal metabolic rate – the number of calories you would need to maintain your weight if you did nothing but lie in bed 24/7. Then, you multiply that by an activity factor ranging from 1.2 if you never exercise to 1.9 if you are a professional athlete training twice a day. That gives you the calories you need to maintain your weight. It might be 1500. It might be 2750.</p>
<p>Then, to lose one pound per week, you need a weekly deficit of 3500 calories or 500 calories per day. For example, I need 2700 calories per day to maintain my weigth, thus I need to eat 2200 calories a day to lose one pound per week. Double that to a deficit of 1000 calories a day to lose 2 pounds per week. That would put me right at my basal metabolic rate, so 2 pounds per week would be the absolute maximum sustainable weight loss for me, without physical deterioration from malnutrition.</p>
<p>Here’s why crash dieting doesn’t work. If you eat below your basal metabolic rate, you aren’t eating enough fuel to maintain basic body function and your physical condition will deteriorate. That is totally counterproductive to the whole goal: getting more physically fit. That bottom line threshold of basal metabolic rate is why it is often not possible (or healthy) for women to lose more than a pound a week. </p>
<p>I’ve averaged 1.78 pounds per week for the last 29 weeks, which works out to a calore deficit (fewer calories consumed than burned) of about 900 calories a day. Figure I need 2700 to maintain and I’ve been eating about 1800 or so. </p>
<p>Exercise, especially resistance weight training is really important because adding lean muscle mass increases the basal metabolic rate and burns more calories. Dieting that reduces muscle mass is self-defeating because you have to consumer fewer and fewer calories.</p>
<p>Here’s the kicker and how you know that anyone who says their diet will let you lose 5 pounds in one week is a liar.</p>
<p>To lose one pound requires a deficit of 3500 calories. To lose five pounds in a week would require a deficit of 17,500 calories for the week or an average of 2500 calories a day LESS THAN it would take to maintain your weight.</p>
<p>So, my maintenance figure (with significant exercise) is 2700 calories a day. To lose five pounds of fat in a week would require eating 2500 calories a day less than that or a grand total of 200 calories a day. I would be in serious trouble by the end of the week on 200 calories a day. Forget exercise, my metabolism would be going into shutdown mode.</p>
<p>Now, because they are smaller, a lot of women have a maintainence level of maybe 1800 calories a day, maybe 2000 calories a day. It’s physically impossible for them to eat 2500 calories a day less than that. You can’t eat negative calories! So they could go the entire week without a single morsel of food and still not come close to losing five pounds. But, they would be seriously compromising their health.</p>
<p>If a diet says “lose 5 pounds in 7 days”, they are selling snake oil and establishing unrealistic, unsustainable weight loss concepts in people’s minds. I’m hear to tell ya that losing 1.8 pounds a week for 29 weeks is a signficant fitness gain. Nobody need to be trying to lose 5 pounds per week unless they weigh 400 pounds and are consuming 5000+ calories a day to pack on weight like that. If you need to lose serious weight, you’ve gotta make a permanent, long-term diet and exercise lifestyle change. There’s no point in trying to diet for a little while, IMO. You just end up yo-yo’ing.</p>
<p>My wife gave me a rough estimate that a bedridden geriatric patient needs about 10 calories per pound of body weight to maintain their weight. So if they weigh 120 they need about 1200 calories to maintain</p>
<p>I should clarify that my main goal to is come up with an easy set of healthy menus that I can use interchangeably that have a known caloric value. I can then add or leave off extras - protein shakes, more fruit, more veggies, etc - based on activity and how I’m feeling that week about my weight. My goal isn’t to lose 5 pounds in a week. DH and I are already well within the normal weight and BMI ranges for our height, and we work out at the gym 2-3 times/week. Eating a little less in terms of calories and a little better in terms of nutrition isn’t a major lifestyle change for us. The major lifestyle change is the empty nest, and we’re taking advantage of it to tweak our meals a bit </p>
<p>What I liked about the recipes that I linked is a) they taste good, b) I can mainly use organic fruits & vegetables that I buy at my farmers’ market, c) they’re very easy to make and d) I don’t have to flip through cookbooks or websites to come up with meals that are around 400 calories each. What I’m really asking is: does anyone know of similar weekly (or even daily) meal plans that have the characteristics I mentioned above?</p>
<p>I’ll take a look at the Weight Watchers website - thanks for mentioning it, thumper.</p>
<p>I am currently trying to eat 1400 to 1500 calories a day as part of a plan to lose about a pound every two weeks. (idad btw is absolutely right about the snakeoil btw).</p>
<p>Breakfast
1/2 cup of yogurt + 1 cup of fruit + 1/4 cup granola or cereal
or
1/2 cup oatmeal with fruit
or
1 egg + 1 cup fruit (and sometimes 1 slice of bacon)</p>
<p>Snack
Don’t usually have one, but I might have fruit, or a 90 cal granola bar, or half a banana with peanut butter</p>
<p>Lunch
3-4 oz of meat or 1 oz of cheese or the vegetarian equivalent
1 cup (or more) vegetable (usually sauted in a little olive oil, often with curry spices)
salad</p>
<p>Afternoon snack - see the morning</p>
<p>Dinner
same as lunch, but sometimes I’ll have a really small portion of potato, pasta or rice</p>
<p>Evening Snack
1 small piece of chocolate </p>
<p>Pretty much infinite quantities of coffee.</p>
<p>I eat waffles and drink wine on the weekends (which nearly always put me over my calorie goal), and when I need a bread fix I’ll have half a bagel or half an English muffin at breakfast. </p>
<p>Honestly I don’t worry too much about recipes. I find that even when I put a little sour cream sauce on a small pork chop it just doesn’t do that much damage. I think portion control is the critical thing.</p>
<p>I’ve found most Weight Watchers recipes to be lacking in flavor–I have three of their cookbooks, and have only found a few recipes that we like. I think Cooking Light magazine and website might be a good source for you. All the recipes include info on calories, fat, carbs, etc. But the calorie counts you are looking for seem low for someone who is not looking to lose a lot of weight.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Make a big pot of turkey chile and put the leftovers in the little tupperware containers and freeze them - this makes many meals that take only a couple of minutes to heat up via a microwave.</p></li>
<li><p>Make eggplant lasagna and do the same as above with leftovers.</p></li>
<li><p>Tuna with spinach lettuce, onions, celery and ‘not’ a pile of mayo/oil. This only takes a few minutes to prepare and has a lot of protein and the omega 3.</p></li>
<li><p>Throw lots of green and red peppers in things to bulk them up and add flavor - plus they’re good for you.</p></li>
<li><p>One egg omelet with the aforementioned green and red peppers and onions.</p></li>
<li><p>Turkey or veggie burger on the grill.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Try to stay away from things with - noodles, rice, potato, bread, tortillas (i.e. carbs). Be careful not to substitute too much cheese or fatty meat (no sausage, bacon, regular hot dogs, etc.).</p>
<p>If you like salads, but hate the ft & calories in most prepared dressings, check out Lighthouse Pear Gorgonzola, 50 calories & 2.5gm fat per serving. Most of the others were 120-170 cal & 10-20 gm of fat PER serving</p>
<p>That’s what threw me off. 1200 - 1500 calories a day is very close to starvation for most men, probably below their basal metabolic rate. It’s pretty low for most women and would, in all likelihood, result in on-going weight loss.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what the goal is? To eat like that and then supplement it with high-calorie protein shakes leaves me scratching my head. Why not just eat bigger/better meals?</p>
<p>I, personally, would not last long with a 400 calorie limit for dinners. I really enjoy a good, made from scratch, dinner and that’s hard to do with that kind of limit. I mean, a really good salad with homemade dressing, some blue cheese, and croutons is more than 400 calories. My attitude (and I have been trying to lose weight) is: take away the junk food, but don’t mess with a good, filling, tasty dinner. Don’t give me tapas-sized portions.</p>
<p>mathmom I could eat what you suggest for breakfast all the time and never get tired of it. What I couldn’t do is follow your lunch/dinner plan because I seem to need more variety than that later in the day, otherwise I’d go nuts. </p>
<p>I used to subscribe to Cooking Light - I’ll take another look.</p>
<p>Thanks for the ideas, ucsd<em>ucla</em>dad - turkey burgers on the grill (topped with lettuce and grilled red pepper, no bun) are another staple for us.</p>
<p>I’ve tried the Pear Gorgonzola salad dressing before and liked it - thanks for the suggestion!</p>
<p>Of the recipes that I linked, the dinners were terrific - I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything by having fewer calories & smaller portions. </p>
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<p>I don’t want bigger or better meals, necessarily, I’m merely looking for meals similar to the one on the menu plan I linked. </p>
<p>I don’t drink protein shakes, btw, that’s DH’s thing when he comes home from the gym. He’s lost 7 pounds in the past couple of months and needs to maintain where he is, not lose any more. My supplements are along the lines of a banana, peach, a handful of almonds, a wedge of Laughing Cow low-fat cheese, etc.</p>
<p>I’ll take a look at Sparkpeople - thanks for the tip!</p>
Books are ok, online sites would be better. I’m a fan of allrecipes.com and use a lot of their recipes, but would love to have something like the plan above, where a week’s worth of meals is already planned out.</p>
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