My chest has slipped a bit and I shouldn’t be handing out dieting advice, but I thought I would have a shot anyway. Just rememeber: it’s a way of living not a diet, as my wife would say.
Eat breakfast
Missing meals does not let us lose weight, mostly because we tend to snack more during the ensuing ten or fifteen hours. And most of those snacks are not healthy calories.
Eat a healthy breakfast
A whole bunch of people chug a cup of coffee with buttered toast. Nutritionally, I would say that is garbage. You can’t get the right nutrients from a bagel either. And those rice pops and corn flakes are just junk foods, however fortified with iron they are.
Eat regular meals.
MIssing meals does not let us lose weight. Eating regular meals throughout the day helps burn calories at a faster rate, and reduces the temptation to snack on junk food.
Eat plenty of fruit and veggies
Fruit and vegetables are low in calories and fat, and high in fibre – and are packed with vitamins and minerals.
Drink water
Most dietitians will tell you to drink at least eight glass of water a day. Your tummy rumbles and you automatically assume your body is telling you to eat, but you might be confusing thirst with hunger. A glass of water half an hour before eating will trick your body into feeling more full and thus consuming less food (fewer calories).
Exercise
You might be able to cut your weight by starving yourself or eating healthily, but the likelihood that you can shift those last stubborn pounds is small. Regular activity or just taking the stairs instead of the lift is important to losing (or maintaining) weight. Get that fitness tracker and go for 10,000 steps a day. Walking around the block and then kicking it back under the bed is going to help no-one.
Use a smaller plate
Your stomach is like a cat – the more you put in front of it, the more it will eat. A cat doesn’t know when to stop eating, just like your stomach That saying about your eyes being bigger than your stomach is true. Subconsciously, that small plate contains the same amount as a big plate. It takes twenty minutes for the stomach to tell the brain that it’s full, so eat slowly and stop eating before you feel (uncomfortably) full.
Get your fibre
My father ate all bran flakes every morning for years. In theory that works, but in practice it has a whole bunch of other naughty things like salt and sugar that it should not have. Getting your daily fibre involves eating fruit and veg, wholegrain bread, brown rice and natural stuff like that. It will help you feel fuller for longer and is widely known for keeping you regular, too!
Read the label
Government regulations are normally a pain in the you-know-what, but in the case of food labels, it does a good job in keeping us informed about what’s in our food. The food labels that manufacturers have to put on their items include number of calories, energy, fat (including saturated fat), carbs (including sugars), fibre, protein and salt. They show the reading per 100g and per serving and RI (reference intake) for an average adult.
Don’t keep junk food
It is tempting to buy chocolates, biscuits, crisps, sweets and soda pop when you do your weekly shop. Try not to. Buy fruit, unsalted popcorn, raw nuts and filtered water instead, and when you want to snack, snack on those.
Cut down on alcohol
Alcoholic beverages are made by fermenting and distilling natural starch and sugar, which means that alcohol contains plenty of calories – about seven calories per gram, almost as much as pure fat. A glass of wine can contain as many calories as a piece of chocolate.
Don’t completely ban foods
Restricting yourself from specific foods will make you crave them. Have the occasional chocolate or burger with fries, just don’t make it a habit.
Plan your meals
Plan your meals for the week. Include meals and snacks. When you make a shopping list and you do a weekly shop, it restricts those bad buys. Going into the shop every day to pick up something small usually means picking up a bad snack at the same time. Also, eat before you do your shop; it really does stop you buying too much unhealthy stuff.
David Owen Nunes
David is many faceted, fascinating, fastidious, fair, fabulous and the other F word. He works in the Pensions Industry, plays occasional golf, and dreams of being able to write full time.
