Empty calories = candy? Have to get the calories up!

[Marika]

After summarizing my first week + a few days with LE-diet i realize I first went out thinking I should eat very little and healthy. I thought sugar was a big NONO, as it usually is in diets. But when trying to track my protein it came clear that it was soooo hard to eat "real" food and keep the limits for protein and minerals and still reach up to 1300-1500 calories.

What should I do to keep calories up and protein/fat down? Eat candy with lots of sugar and little fat?

Today my plan is to eat this:

No breakfast, but 1-2 cups of coffe (black or with very little skimmed milk)

12.00 Lunch: Spaghetti (175 g cooked) with pastasauce (cheese flavour) and a few pices of broccoli.

17.30 Dinner: 2 corn tortillas (not homemade) with iceberg sallad, low fat creme fraice (5%), 2 tbs taco sauce, 30 g low fat cheese.

This gives me 880 calories, 41 g protein and 24 g fat. What should I do to get cals up? Did I get the LE-diet all wrong?

Do the rest of you eat candy or cookies or things like that? Drink soda?

*a bit confused*

[Drunken Cockatoo]

I purchased the meal-plan. There you find concrete meal ideas and also many examples on how to up your calories without going over limits in fat and protein. It is really well worth the money (at least for me).

[carmella_marie]

Full sugar soda (not diet) has lots of great empty cals, as well as low fat or fat free candy. Pop tarts, little Debbie cakes, twizzlers.... Basically low fat/fat free junk food is a great way to up calories. I also drink white wine as empty cals and the reduced fertility may sway pink.

[Rosie85]

I am curious how there is 41 grams of protein in all of that?! I eat similar things and struggle to get 30 grams of protein! What am I doing wrong???

[carmella_marie]

Different brands of pasta have drastically different protein amounts. Plus the cheese flavored pasta sauce may or may not have real cheese at all, fake flavoring with no protein or real cheese has a lot of protein.

[Marika]

I am curious how there is 41 grams of protein in all of that?! I eat similar things and struggle to get 30 grams of protein! What am I doing wrong???

I am surprised too! I use the application "Lifesum" (called Shape up before) to track all my food and I am not sure if it is totally accurate.

I eat the normal pasta that we have always eaten (Barilla, 12 g protein/100 g) and just Uncle Bens rice. I live in Sweden so many of the Brands and food you mention is totally new and unknown for me. We really don't seem to have all the choices that you have in US and UK and the food do not have all the nutritions written out on the packages.

The cheese flavoured sauce has 4.5 g of protein in it (and 8% fat) and I used about 60 grams. It seemed like a good option when I bought it. I

Do you think I am (or Lifesum is) calculating this wrong? Maybe I should double check with some other program...

[Marika]

I purchased the meal-plan. There you find concrete meal ideas and also many examples on how to up your calories without going over limits in fat and protein. It is really well worth the money (at least for me).

I am sure it is great! I 'm just not sure a meal plan would be easy to make for me here in Sweden, a lot of the food and supplements isn't available. We really don't have as many options as you seem to have, like low protein stuff etc. I've tried to find it but it seems to be more used by medical centres if having kidney problems...

And I don't wanna get obsessed with the food thing, I just wanted to make an easy non-stressing sway attempt and now I find myself totally confused and stressed over what to eat and not.

[Marika]

Full sugar soda (not diet) has lots of great empty cals, as well as low fat or fat free candy. Pop tarts, little Debbie cakes, twizzlers.... Basically low fat/fat free junk food is a great way to up calories. I also drink white wine as empty cals and the reduced fertility may sway pink.

I will so start having a glass of white wine for dinner :-) Had to google all thos things you mentioned. Will try to see if we have anything similar here :-)

[Marika]

I just went through todays meal plan and manually checked and calculated all the foods proteins and calories and it does differ a bit.

Life sum told me todays plan is 954 cal and 40 g protein, but calculating it myself i get 690 calories and 34 g of protein.

From what I can see it is probably the pasta that makes the difference, Lifesum has different alternatives of the same pasta (cooked, cooked with salt, not cooked etc) and from what I can see the numbers differ quite a lot even between "100 g boild" and "100 g boild with salt".

I guess that if just use the app I will get a rough evaluation and I wont be stressed up by over limiting a bit.

During these 10 days I lost 4 lbs so I guess I am at least doing "something low".

[stephk]

I would add in a lot more fruit and vegetables. Low carb veggies are free foods and I fill my boots every day!!

Your fat content looks very low. You could add in some lovely garlic bread with your pasta? or some parmesan cheese? You could also have some veggie soup with your dinner. As that fat content is low you could have a little avocado with it to push up the calories without adding too much protein (although you can have 50g protein and i would recommend sticking to the maximum limits so that you have more to play with later. Personally I stick to 50-60g protein and 30% cals from fat).

Others have chimed in with the empty calories. Gluten free cakes are good too as they are low in protein and lower fat than normal cakes.

I dont have time to write more as i have to start work but it does take a little while to get the hang of the diet and once you do it becomes easier and more enjoyable, I promise!

[stephk]

Marika, where are you based?

[stephk]

sorry I see you are in sweden so I wont be able to help with products unfortunately but I will try to help with meal ideas when i can

[Marika]

I would add in a lot more fruit and vegetables. Low carb veggies are free foods and I fill my boots every day!!

Your fat content looks very low. You could add in some lovely garlic bread with your pasta? or some parmesan cheese? You could also have some veggie soup with your dinner. As that fat content is low you could have a little avocado with it to push up the calories without adding too much protein (although you can have 50g protein and i would recommend sticking to the maximum limits so that you have more to play with later. Personally I stick to 50-60g protein and 30% cals from fat).

Others have chimed in with the empty calories. Gluten free cakes are good too as they are low in protein and lower fat than normal cakes.

I dont have time to write more as i have to start work but it does take a little while to get the hang of the diet and once you do it becomes easier and more enjoyable, I promise!

Thanks for advices! Fat content is mostly about 20% (about 25 g) maybe a bit low?

I figured I would start off quite strict cause we might do our first attempt before doing this 6 weeks. Since the loss in january we are so eager to get pregnant as quickly as we can so at least until now we have thought we'd just ttc as fast as the af and turns up.

If it takes longer than expected I will probably change the diet and make it more relaxed. I do have some cucumber (without peel) and iceberg lettuce, but those don't really give me any calories. It feels kind of fresh though, this diet is so very "not me", I used to do low carb before :-)

[Marika]

sorry I see you are in sweden so I wont be able to help with products unfortunately but I will try to help with meal ideas when i can

That is really nice of you, thanks!

[JP2007]

I am curious how there is 41 grams of protein in all of that?! I eat similar things and struggle to get 30 grams of protein! What am I doing wrong???

I have this same problem, I can't seem to get in enough protein! I find myself feeling full very quickly, I think it is a combination of my stomach shrinking and taking fiber. I eat similar things to but my serving sizes are smaller. If I did the math right, the 175 grams of pasta is 6 oz or about 3 servings. I think pasta averages 8-12 grams of protein per serving, so that would account for much of the protein.

I wish I could eat larger servings or squeeze in a third meal to help up my protein but I just feel sick and miserable if I overeat, especially with lots of carbs.

[atomic sagebrush]

I am curious how there is 41 grams of protein in all of that?! I eat similar things and struggle to get 30 grams of protein! What am I doing wrong???

Pasta and cheese

[atomic sagebrush]

I have this same problem, I can't seem to get in enough protein! I find myself feeling full very quickly, I think it is a combination of my stomach shrinking and taking fiber. I eat similar things to but my serving sizes are smaller. If I did the math right, the 175 grams of pasta is 6 oz or about 3 servings. I think pasta averages 8-12 grams of protein per serving, so that would account for much of the protein.

I wish I could eat larger servings or squeeze in a third meal to help up my protein but I just feel sick and miserable if I overeat, especially with lots of carbs.

Then you need to add in another meal. If you were eating 2, eat 3; if you were eating 3, eat 4. you MUST get in the 40-50 g protein no matter what.

The other option is to add in meat/egg, it doesn't take much.

Question - are you sure you are measuring the serving size of pasta correctly?? serving sizes are smaller than you think, so you may be getting more protein than you realize.

[atomic sagebrush]

Thanks for advices! Fat content is mostly about 20% (about 25 g) maybe a bit low?

I figured I would start off quite strict cause we might do our first attempt before doing this 6 weeks. Since the loss in january we are so eager to get pregnant as quickly as we can so at least until now we have thought we'd just ttc as fast as the af and turns up.

If it takes longer than expected I will probably change the diet and make it more relaxed. I do have some cucumber (without peel) and iceberg lettuce, but those don't really give me any calories. It feels kind of fresh though, this diet is so very "not me", I used to do low carb before :-)

Low carb vegetables like cucumber and iceberg lettuce are free and unlimited, you can have as much as you want and you do not count them for calories, protein, or fat.

[atomic sagebrush]

I am sure it is great! I 'm just not sure a meal plan would be easy to make for me here in Sweden, a lot of the food and supplements isn't available. We really don't have as many options as you seem to have, like low protein stuff etc. I've tried to find it but it seems to be more used by medical centres if having kidney problems...

And I don't wanna get obsessed with the food thing, I just wanted to make an easy non-stressing sway attempt and now I find myself totally confused and stressed over what to eat and not.

There are very few America-specific foods in the meal plan and the few that are in there (I mention a couple types of cracker by name so I could include the nutrient data) are easily replaced with similar products available in your area. I tried to make the meal plan something that everyone could use regardless of their country of origin.

[JP2007]

Then you need to add in another meal. If you were eating 2, eat 3; if you were eating 3, eat 4. you MUST get in the 40-50 g protein no matter what.

The other option is to add in meat/egg, it doesn't take much.

Question - are you sure you are measuring the serving size of pasta correctly?? serving sizes are smaller than you think, so you may be getting more protein than you realize.

I have a "pasta measurer", I don't know what it is called LOL. It is a plastic thing with round holes that give you a guideline as to how much pasta to use depending on the servings you need. According to this I usually eat about 2 or 3 oz at a time. This makes me a pretty large bowl and I feel full after, so I might be eating more. I guess a food scale would be more reliable but I can just picture my testosterone rising as I stress about measuring the weight of everything I eat haha.

[Marika]

I have a "pasta measurer", I don't know what it is called LOL. It is a plastic thing with round holes that give you a guideline as to how much pasta to use depending on the servings you need. According to this I usually eat about 2 or 3 oz at a time. This makes me a pretty large bowl and I feel full after, so I might be eating more. I guess a food scale would be more reliable but I can just picture my testosterone rising as I stress about measuring the weight of everything I eat haha.

Is you're measure for uncooked or cooked pasta? (I used to have one before that was for uncooked, but in grams though)

When I calculate I use the weight after boiling the pasta, which would be about 2-3 times more than before cooking it. I use my food scale a lot, I find it really hard to estimate the amount by just looking at it, especially pasta and rice.

[Marika]

Wow, I think I might have found my perfect emty calories: Marshmallow fluff! Looks like no fat, no protein, just sugar (carbs). I LOVE IT! We have it in my store in the "International section" :-)

[atomic sagebrush]

I have a "pasta measurer", I don't know what it is called LOL. It is a plastic thing with round holes that give you a guideline as to how much pasta to use depending on the servings you need. According to this I usually eat about 2 or 3 oz at a time. This makes me a pretty large bowl and I feel full after, so I might be eating more. I guess a food scale would be more reliable but I can just picture my testosterone rising as I stress about measuring the weight of everything I eat haha.

If it's making a large bowl then something is amiss here because 2 oz. pasta should only be making 1 cup of cooked pasta.

Ounces to Cups: A Guide to Estimating Pasta Yield | The Kitchn (http://www.thekitchn.com/ounces-to-cups-a-guide-to-estimating-pasta-yield-179180)

you don't need to measure your pasta precooking it, just go off the "cup" serving size when done. If you are in in the US, you are used to cups, if you are in UK/Australia just imagine the size of a tennis ball or so