The Diet of a 140lb Woman
What does the diet of a 140lb woman look like?
I was recently chatting with my personal training client, Suzi about her weight loss journey. She has done very well and is in training for her first triathlon after already dropping a significant amount of weight.
Our conversation went towards healthy behaviours, and what exactly we have to do in order to get a certain outcome with regards to our weight, body fat levels etc. In particular, we were discussing behaviours that would make up the diet of a 140lb woman.
I was explaining what my girlfriend, Rachel does and jokingly named it ‘the framework of a 10 stone woman’. For American readers, 10 stones is 140lbs. For the Europeans out there, it’s 63.5kg.
I’ve distilled it into this post – the diet of a 140lb woman.
Before we go any further, there are a few things I need to point out…
- Rachel is 5’7, so is a relatively tall woman. Weighing 140lbs gives her a BMI of 21.9. Don’t use 140lbs as your target if you are significantly taller or shorter.
- This isn’t a diet prescription for all – it’s just me explaining what she does and why I think it’s a good idea.
- Currently she is following a plan like this to get her back to 140lbs as she has not long given birth to our second child, so her exercise has been limited!
The diet of a 140lb woman…
Breakfast: A small breakfast, usually very simple. Mostly fruit, yogurt or protein based – the main rule is that it is quick, easy to put together but tastes good! With two kids and work, any breakfast we have is usually about speed. Fruit smoothies are a good idea – plenty of vitamins and minerals, hydrating and not processed.
This is usually paired with a coffee or tea and a glass of water.
Lunch: This is where most people struggle. Rachel will usually have something very healthy – a homemade soup, a salad or on many days, a mixed vegetable crudites with a hummus dip. Typically this will be chopped peppers, carrots, whole mange tout and cherry tomatoes, eaten raw and dipped in the hummus. It won’t appeal to everyone, but it’s an excellent way of saving more calories for the evening – plus, it’s nice and light, meaning you won’t feel lethargic in the afternoon.
The lunches are often things we have cooked previously and either kept in the fridge or freezer, ready to use again. Tips like that save time, meaning you don’t have to set impossible expectations of cooking three meals per days for yourself – it’s just too time consuming.
The picture below is a homemade tomato and chorizo soup, typical of the kind of meals you’ll find in the recipe section of my blog.
Evening Meal: This would be eaten post-training and is where the bulk of the days calories would come in. Typically as a family we avoid gluten-containing foods and cycle our carbohydrates based on how much exercise we have done (more exercise = more carbs), but apart from those loose rules, it’s pretty much what someone would consider ‘normal’ food.
Almost all of it is cooked from scratch, we rarely eat microwaved meals etc, but we don’t count calories or weigh foods. It’s mostly a case of bulking out a dish with meat and vegetables, leaving less room for the fat and starchy carbs!
Something like the pic below is a typical evening meal (we aren’t ever going to win points for presentation!) This is shredded chicken with bacon and mixed vegetables.
Exercise: This is a big part of life for us (I’m a personal trainer, of course it is!) Our training is almost mostly weight training, with a conditioning session or bike ride thrown in once or twice per week. At weekends, we’re always active – that may be taking our kids for a walk in the woods or a swim and occasionally a bike ride or training session.
I won’t go into deep details about exercise (I do that here), but if you follow a good strength training plan and avoid lots of cardio, paired with good nutrition you won’t go wrong. Don’t worry about weight training making you big and bulky. It won’t. At all.
This is Rachel setting up for a deadlift…
You might be a woman aspiring to drop to 140lbs, so hopefully this diet of a 140lb woman post has provided some clarity on the kind of approach that would get you there. Distilled, it’s as simple as this…
- Eat a small but healthy breakfast
- A light lunch
- Eat a healthy, higher protein evening meal
- Drink plenty of water
- Exercise regularly
Think I’ve heard those kind of tips before! Yes, there are more ways to save on carbs and get yourself trained, it all depends on what you want – check out the waist training diet and guide here which is quite different than what Rachel did.
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