What do you think of this meal plan?

[mondaymonday]

I think my friend is trying to lose weight in an unhealthy manner. She's aiming to lose 5-10 pounds in 10 days to look good for a wedding, which is really unhealthy in itself. She's only going to be eating fruits, vegetables and small amounts of fish and chicken, and is cutting on carbs (nearly completely) and sodium. She will also be doing weights and cardio.

Here is her day 1 meal plan:

Breakfast: boiled egg and a piece of toast with "a tiny bit of" butter; tea

Snack: an apple

Lunch: filet of sole with mushrooms, zuchini, yellow peppers, and some spinach leafs, sprinkled half a lemon on top with some black pepper. then i put it on romaine lettuce with a tiny dash of ceasar dressing

snack: a banana

dinner: chicken salad (not sure what's in this though...)

2 L of water throughout the day.

I think it's great that she wants to make a change in her life and start eating healthy, but I fear she's not eating enough at all. She will be eating a variation of the meal plan above for 10 days- what do you guys think? What can I tell her to add/change to her plan?

Thanks!

 

[Captain FT]

I think my friend is trying to lose weight in an unhealthy manner. She's aiming to lose 5-10 pounds in 10 days to look good for a wedding, which is really unhealthy in itself. She's only going to be eating fruits, vegetables and small amounts of fish and chicken, and is cutting on carbs (nearly completely) and sodium. She will also be doing weights and cardio.

Here is her day 1 meal plan:

Breakfast: boiled egg and a piece of toast with "a tiny bit of" butter; tea

Snack: an apple

Lunch: filet of sole with mushrooms, zuchini, yellow peppers, and some spinach leafs, sprinkled half a lemon on top with some black pepper. then i put it on romaine lettuce with a tiny dash of ceasar dressing

snack: a banana

dinner: chicken salad (not sure what's in this though...)

2 L of water throughout the day.

I think it's great that she wants to make a change in her life and start eating healthy, but I fear she's not eating enough at all. She will be eating a variation of the meal plan above for 10 days- what do you guys think? What can I tell her to add/change to her plan?

Thanks!

We could use a little more info. What is her starting weight, what does she want to get to. Crash diets are never good, but I know girls that eat less than that. My guess is it would barely be 1000 cals, with some more info we could give a better answer. See my sticky at the top for the kind of info we are looking for

 

[Tatyana]

Do you keep posting about yourself and saying it is someone else?

Is this just a diet or diet and exercise?

If she has a high bodyfat percentage and a lot of weight, the doing a starvation diet for ten days is not such a big deal. The bbdy knows it has a lot of fat stores and will lose fat.

If she is not that overweight but doing the utter fashion anoxeria look in an attempt to lose 10 lbs she will probably rebound and gain all the weight back +++.

The physiology of this

1 lb fat = 3500 kcals
1 lb muscle = 600 kcals

You can easily create a calorie deficit of 600 kcals and if you are not that overweight or fat, your body will think that it is starving, preserve fat for future periods of starvation (as that is what our physiology is designed to do), and start getting rid of the lean tissue/muscle.

It is really difficult to create a 3500 kcal deficit in a day which would equal 1 lb fat.

That is why most healthy diets say to expect a fat loss of 1-2 lbs of week, that is creating a 500-1000 kcal deficit every day.

When you lose muscle, you loose one of the more metabolically active tissues in the body. Muscle uses around 2-3 times the calories as fat just to maintain itself, fat uses almost nothing or very few kcals. So when you go back to eating normally, after losing 5-10 lbs of muscle, you can't eat as much as you did before without putting on fat.

This is also what is responsible for the 'middle aged spread' as without resistance training (weights) most people start losing muscle mass at age 30, and by age 60-70 have about 50% of what they did in their 20s.


When you starve off the pounds, typically you just end up with a smaller but still fat self.

I am going to copy this thread to the women's section.

 

[Tatyana]

If your friend is going to do a crash diet, then make sure she mostly eats all her calories in protein and essential fatty acids and takes a multi-vitamin.

This will minimise any damage if she is just a normal girl, not seriously overweight or obese.

 

[Thandie]

I think my friend is trying to lose weight in an unhealthy manner. She's aiming to lose 5-10 pounds in 10 days to look good for a wedding, which is really unhealthy in itself. She's only going to be eating fruits, vegetables and small amounts of fish and chicken, and is cutting on carbs (nearly completely) and sodium. She will also be doing weights and cardio.

Here is her day 1 meal plan:

Breakfast: boiled egg and a piece of toast with "a tiny bit of" butter; tea

Snack: an apple

Lunch: filet of sole with mushrooms, zuchini, yellow peppers, and some spinach leafs, sprinkled half a lemon on top with some black pepper. then i put it on romaine lettuce with a tiny dash of ceasar dressing

snack: a banana

dinner: chicken salad (not sure what's in this though...)

2 L of water throughout the day.

I think it's great that she wants to make a change in her life and start eating healthy, but I fear she's not eating enough at all. She will be eating a variation of the meal plan above for 10 days- what do you guys think? What can I tell her to add/change to her plan?

Thanks!

With that diet she'll lose some water and retain a lot of body fat because her metabolic rate will slow down. In addition at some point she will be so hungry, she will start bingeing. Does she want to start to eat healthier and reshape her body or this is just for a wedding?

I'll be happy to help her if she wants to get into better nutrition.