What should portion sizes look like for a teenage girl? page

[ebrady98]

14 years old, 149 pounds, 5'3". I want to lose fat around my belly and legs. I need to get lighter for running as well.

For breakfast I've been having 3 eggs and 2 slices of bacon + 35g of butter (which I'm thinking is too much?)

Lunch is a salad, which isn't huge. 1 salmon fillet with 6 or 7 nuts and some lettuce and leaf things. :P

Dinner is a cut of meat (not usually fatty and not very big) and some steamed veggies. The meat would probably be palm sized.

Then I usually have a bowl of fruit. Strawberries and blueberries and around 5 tea spoons of Greek yoghurt.

I've been doing this for around two weeks now. I'm not sure about satiety signals, because if i'm not hungry for lunch I can't just leave it and eat it at, say, 3:00PM. I'd get some weird looks if I was in class. And some days I'm hungrier than others. But does this look like too much food for weight loss? I will also start HIIT in the form of running when I clear my cold.

I'm scared that I eat as much as men haha.

[namelesswonder]

You eat as much as you need to, don't worry about what other people think. That looks like a good amount of food, but I'm taller, not losing weight, and done growing, so it's tough for me to say. There's no formula for this, so you'll need to play around with what works best for you. You might need to eat differently on the day of or after activity. I find that I am much hungrier when I'm active, so I eat more carbs (like sweet or regular potatoes, or more starchy fruits).

If there's a discreet snack you could bring for days that you find you are hungrier after lunch, you could keep that with you just in case.

[Gadsie]

Seems like little to me, but just eat when you're hungry. You don't eat as much as men, I'm a 15 yo guy and literally eat 3-4x as much (;

[Lewis]

I'm scared that I eat as much as men haha.

I wouldn't worry on that score. If it's all good food and you don't feel stuffed and have to force it down where's the problem? Carbohydrate consumption in the form of bread and potatoes makes up so much of the average person's diet that it contributes quite a lot in way of calories, so that even if they were all that was relevant (they're not) ... well, no need to spell it out. Some eggs and bacon and butter don't go that far. Add some steamed veg and some fruit, and you'll still have only 6 or 7 hundred calories.

But what do I know? I thought I recognized your name and location vaguely and clicked your previous posts and my previous reply to you had vanished into the ether. AFAIK, I didn't say much more than keep negotiating and do get your sleep. But I'm probably crazy enough to cross the line without even realizing it and got censored.

Your food log looks fine to me.

[Annieh]

Hi ebrady, congratulations on your commitment to your health and fitness. The quality of your food looks good, I am impressed that you have put together such a meal plan. As others have said, if you are not losing weight on this amount then you need to drop back a little on consumption and/or lift some weights to build some muscle.

However since you are probably still growing I don't think you should make drastic cutbacks or too intensive workouts, but just tweak a bit. I am much older than you but similar in height. While losing weight (from 140-130) I started my day with 2eggs and some vege such as silverbeet. I was also doing a weights class twice a week. Maybe you could try some squats and planks or pressups.

Muscle weighs more but takes up less space than fat so you will look and feel slimmer while burning even more fat - way to go.

And don't worry about what others are eating, most people don't know how to feed themselves. I was at a family party and ate more meat than everyone except my teenage nephew. But I had much less cake, haha.

[sbhikes]

Are you going to be running on the track team? If so, you will get hungrier soon enough! If you aren't hungry at lunch, perhaps you need less breakfast. A lot of teenagers don't like breakfast. Otherwise, that's really not a huge amount of food. The thing about this food is that it works differently inside your body so it won't stimulate as much irrational hunger and it won't trigger binging and it won't pack on the pounds like pastries and junk food.