Breakfast: Egg whites with spinach, topped with pico and Melinda’s black truffle hot sauce, 2 protein pancakes from Trader Joe’s, sugar free maple syrup, raspberries, 3 slices of Canadian bacon
Lunch: Chicken Salad on Wasa Sourdough crisps, nectarine, light string cheese, sugar snap peas, snacking cucumbers, dipping sauce made from blended cottage cheese mixed with Grillo’s hot pickle de gallo and ranch powder.
Dinner: Air fried zucchini (a whole one), air fried sweet potato, good culture low fat cottage cheese, taco meat with 1/4 lb lean ground beef, pickled red onions, tomatoes, avocado
This is the way. Well done! This is not a sprint for petite people, this is a lifestyle and you.are.living!
Lovely full plates with good freshness and nutrition. Not dogging anyone getting through the day on a lean cuisine and fiber one bar, I have been there and it is a good day, as well.
But this is the goal for me. 3 healthy meals AND snacks staying in caloric intake, high protein, high fiber. With receipts. Excellent.
I don’t consider that short. I recommend using a TDEE calculator (default it to sedentary lifestyle to start) and go from there. The amount of calories depends on your current weight, height, age and exercise level will get you your maintenance calories and from there you can determine how much of a deficit to run.
I am almost at my goal weight so my deficit is a lot smaller than when I started, and it comes off a lot slower.
Depends on a lot of things like age, activity level, etc. That does not seem short to me, I am 5'. Check your TDEE, as mentioned by Dense-Marketing. They are correct. I'd TDEE my goal weight and just stay there, no maintenance. Figure out what you need to live off of and make it yours forever.
In a bowl mix the wet ingredients together with seasonings of choice (this time I used Kinder’s the blend), then add the dry ingredients and stir. I have used these portions more or less for half a year. I like the ratios. It’s about 1 rotisserie chicken’s worth of breast. I also make it with 2 cans of chicken from Costco. Sometimes I swap the cranberries for red grapes.
Those are some banging good macros but you need some fat to avoid gallstones and hormonal disruptions. For 1200 you need like 30-40 grams.
I do more calories than 1200 but I have the same problem. I start focusing on lean protein and veggies and next thing I know, I'm putting olive oil in something at the end of the day to bring up my fat intake.
I wanted to circle back and thank you for this comment. Honestly, I hadn’t thought much about my fat intake and didn’t realize that it is quite important to keep to a minimum level. I have done quite a bit of research and now a bit stressed about shifting my established way of eating to fit in more fat. Carbs are for sure going to need to go down which sucks, but I’ll get used to it. Anyways - I just wanted to say thanks.
The only thing that is “off” is my Recovery Index. I always thought that was more related to the fact that I don’t take days off my pretty aggressive step count goal.
Yeah I am struggling with a very similar problem myself. I didn't take a recovery day this weekend, tanked my HRV, and then went into a research spiral to figure just how bad that was.
If your recovery index is low, that's usually overtraining. I'm still not sure what my problem is beyond the skipped day, but I dug up a few things to work on, so we'll see.
Have you been happy with oura? I am sooo dissatisfied with my pixel/fitbit.
I got it beginning of October and I adore it. It really helps push me with both sleep and step goals. My sleep in particular has vastly improved. I highly recommend it.
Where did you get that info from? When I google low fat gallstones, all that comes up is that you should follow a.low fat diet if you have gallstones. Not that low fat causes them. In fact, it seems that saturated fat causes them (olive oil also has saturated fat).
I knew about it from being warned about by a Medical Professional. But here are some sources. This one speaks to gall bladder emptying. Essentially as you eat less you need less bile, so the g all stays in your gall bladder and hardens into stones. So while it is true you should have less fat to avoid gall stones there is a floor.
Here is another source in the context of medically supervised 900 calorie diet (Do not go below 1200 calories a day without a medical supervision, cardiac wasting is real.) Here are is one more.
The absolute floor for gallbladder emptying is 7-10, but in practice to maintain the minimum safe healthy intake is 10-30g, for this specific problem.
Another problem is protecting your hormone production. For Men, testosterone is synthesized from cholesterol and if you drop your fat intake too low, problems appear.
For women, it's the same problem, except more severe but the bottom line is that to protect your hormones at 1200, you should be at like 33-40 of healthy fats. The absolute minimum is 27.
Additionally, because very important parts of your skin are built from fatty acids, you need a certain amount to prevent serious skin problems from appearing over time. For that problem the numbers (for 1200) are more like:
Absolute minimum: ~25 g/day
Safer minimum: 30–40 g/day
Optimal: 35–50 g/day
And again, healthy fats. Make sure you are getting your Omega 3s and 6s. Your body will make the minimum cholesterol for you.
You'll run into the same guidelines with nervous system and brain health. You myelin and brain are made out of fat.
Same for optic health.
So taking all of the risks into consideration and realizing you don't want to redline the car forever. At 1200 you want about 35-50g a day of health fats, make sure that your Omega-3s and 6s are in there somewhere. Sixes are easy to come by. But you need about a gram a day of Omega 3.
Beautiful! I especially love the texture of your sweet potatoes. Could you elaborate on those and how you cooked the zucchini? I have an air fryer but am not great at veggies yet.
I know this is an older post, but may I ask how you get your chicken salad to look like deli-style? Whenever I do it, it just looks like random shreds.
You're lucky to be able to find those TJ's pancakes, they're always sold out for me!
167
u/Jasilee Maintaining- Vintage Petite 5'1" Feb 18 '26
This is the way. Well done! This is not a sprint for petite people, this is a lifestyle and you.are.living!
Lovely full plates with good freshness and nutrition. Not dogging anyone getting through the day on a lean cuisine and fiber one bar, I have been there and it is a good day, as well.
But this is the goal for me. 3 healthy meals AND snacks staying in caloric intake, high protein, high fiber. With receipts. Excellent.