Meal Plans

Hi A.! I have started a huge diet also seeing how I am 30 pounds over what I was 7 years ago when I got married. The gym I go to, Hot Springs Health and Fitness, is having a contest and I signed up. They told us to go on www.mypyramid.gov so I did and it had some helpful, healthy hints.

Let me know what you think!
M. Mc

I found a wonderful website that takes the worry out of meal time. It is www.savingdinner.com. They have several different types of meal plans with menus, shopping lists, and recipes for all. She even has one to help loose weight I think it is called declutter menus or something like that

T.

sparklepeople.com Love it!! It gives you many options and tells you how many calories, fat, etc.. is in each meal and how many to have per day. Check it out. It's been great for me!

The best meal plan is to eat whatever foods you want, but only eat about 80% of the amount you want.

Gillian McKeith offers some excellent, doable meal plans for the whole family to eat early.

But let me say, if you want to get healthy, get off phentermine. Please. It's not good for you at all. Try Hoodia. It's herbal, it's safe, and it makes you feel full so you don't want to eat.

Good luck whatever you choose to do!

L.

I have been taking Phentermine since the beginning of December (Dec 10th). I have noticed that I don't get hungry as often and even when I am hungry I don't eat even close to as much as I used to. I eat the same things that I have been eating just in smaller portions. The thing is that this medicine will make me feel as if I'm not hungry so the best thing to do is make yourself eat something even if it's just an apple every couple of hours. I have lost 7lbs. since I started taking it. That's more than a pound a week. I'm excited to wear a bathing suit this year. I have already dropped a pant size. The key is to drink lots of water and not skip a meal!!! I tend to snack so it's easier with my schedule to just take something with me when I leave the house. Every couple of hours eat and drink lots. Good Luck

what kind of meal plans are you looking for? i've never actually tried any meal plans, but i have been doing low carbs/low fat for a super long time...mmm, isn't that a meal plan? you can try foodnetwork.com, they have a healthy living section that has great low fat/low cal/low carb recipes. good luck! let me know how everything turns out! oh, and i drink tons of water! i think that is the best "de-tox" plan out there. haha.

I did the same thing about 4 or 5 yrs ago, Phentermine and all. This is what the dr told me. Stay away from anything white. No pot., no rice, no mayo, no popcorn,.... nothing white. Not much fat. He said if I watched the fat, that I wouldn't have to watch calories because without all the fat, you didn't get the calories anyway.
Smaller portions. I hate water so I would freeze a little in the bottom of the water bottle and add water and shake it to make it really cold. I drank alot of crystal light peach tea and lemonade and diet dr pepper and coke with lime and coke zero ( I was not too hip on diet drinks... but those were good).
I bought a steamer and I ate alot of broccoli, cauliflower and carrots and fresh steamed green beans, squeezed lemon over them or sprinkled some (vegetable sprinkle) on them... you can get that in the spice isle in a bottle. I would also have some budder buds on hand and sprinkle veggies with that.
Yes... they were bland and not too good but after eating stuff like that for about a week, it really wasn't that bad.
I bought a George Foreman and I would buy chicken breast and individually package them so I could pull them out of the freezer and pop them in the George Foreman. I would eat that alone sometimes. If I hadn't eaten much, I would eat it with the veggies sometimes. That usually was too much after I got use to eating smaller portions.
Fish is good. Get the wild fish at the store and bake it. You can marinate it with anything for about 10 minutes before you bake it... like italian dressing,....things like that.
For snacks I would get pretzles and eat only a handful. Don't take the whole bag with you. Just get out what you want and the put it away. You are less likely to get up and go get more. I eventually kept wheat thins around with that Kraft squirt cheese and would eat only about 3 of them (light on the cheese) and that would do me. Just fill up on water.
The best thing that worked for me is I got a tread mill. You have got to have exercise. I was tired at first that 5 minutes would kill me. But as your body gets good, healthy nutrition and not bad stuff, you miraculously get more energy. You would be surprised. After months of this, I would go to the movies and want a pkg of M & M's and I would read the calories. If it said 250 Calories, I would come home and get on the treadmill and walk till I walked that 250 C off even if I had alreayd walked twice that day. I started out walking one time in the mornings. After a while it went to twice a day; morning and then night. Later I had so much energy and got so pumped about the weight loss that I started doing exercises like situps and pushups.
I lost about 40 lbs and the best thing about it is that I got in such good shape that I started running 5K runs and later worked up to running 1/2 marathons.
Now talk about feeling good about yourself!
Also after you start eating good like that and leaving out the fat, you will be able to tell if you eat fat or not. You will be able to feel it on the roof of your mouth and later that feeling will gross you out.
Also, when I first started, everytime I would pick up something to eat, especially if I knew I shouldn't have it, I would imagine it with mold on it and maggest on it. That vision helped too. (A trick that I read from someone that had lost over 100 lbs.)
Also finding a walking partner at night when your husband can babysit will help too. You actually kill 2 birds with one stone. You get abou 30 min to 1 hr out, you get the exercise and you get to talk to a girlfriend about all sorts of things.
Hey... GOOD LUCK! You can do it.

I don't do meal plans either (it always seems like something else is on sale, or it's just not what I/my family want). But anything that uses rice and beans as the main course would be good (as long as it doesn't have too much fat in it--some red beans and rice recipes, for instance, have a lot). When at all possible, use brown rice and other whole grains--they're very healthy, full of vitamins and fiber, which white rice and flour are totally without.

Probably the best thing to do is to look up "cheap" or "thrifty" recipes, as well as vegetarian ones. Some of the most fattening and unhealthy meals are ones with meat as the base. And if you do have meat as the entree (say, roast and potatoes), make the meat a small portion, and really bulk up on vegetables. Most people do a large hunk of meat and a little dollop of potatoes and green beans--you should do the reverse.

Much of the time, it's not the big things (birthday cake and ice cream) that do us in, it's the little things--the cheese sauce on broccoli, when a little pat of butter would do (or better yet, plain); the loaded baked potato; drinking juice or soft drinks instead of water.

These are more guidelines than ideas--I'm always trying to figure out what's for dinner! :-) But the main thing is to figure out how many calories you should consume, and then figure out how many calories you are consuming. This can be tedious at first, but most people generally eat the same things, so you should just be able to quickly figure out how many calories are in that chicken pot pie. And watch portion size--that's a big thing!

I've just started a blog (chubbybuddies.wordpress.com) for mutual support in weight loss. I'd love to have you on there, sharing your challenges and triumphs!

And I've joined the National Body Challenge on discovery health, and it says that they've got meal plans (but I haven't looked at them yet).

A.,
Check out Sparkpeople.com
It is a great site, it's free and it has loads of resources!
L. G