No More Diets

How can I possibly diet when I only eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. I only have a half hour break for lunch so it is always very rushed most days only a couple pieces of fruit on the go. My job is very active Home Care in which I would be cleaning four or five houses a day plus personal care is also added into my days work. By the time I come home and cook dinner I am too exhausted to exercise further.

Oh dear. It’s no wonder you are exhausted if you are going all day with only a couple of pieces of fruit between breakfast and dinner. This is really too little food to keep anyone going even for a sedentary worker never mind someone with an active job like yours.

The main problem here seems to be that you are eating too little to keep your metabolism going - your body will be conserving fat and calories because it thinks you are starving.

It’s important to spread your calories throughout the day and not eat everything in one dinner at night. Half an hour is still enough to get some good nutrition including some lean protein and I think it would do you good to have a small snack mid morning and after noon as well. Then balance your eating with a smaller dinner than usual.
It sounds like you are probably getting enough exercise already so that may not the way to go for you. (You know you have to run more than a marathon to lose a pound of fat so even for most people exercise is a bonus and a way to keep healthy rather than the main way to lose weight).

Focus on healthy regular eating for a while to get your metabolism back on an even keel before you think about losing weight.

Also if you are on your feet all day and not eating much between meals make sure that you are drinking enough water and not drinking calories - it’s easy to forget that sugar in tea, coffee and soft drinks can add up to an awful lot of calories not to mention those in fruit juice, milky drinks and alcohol.

I have read so many diets which all propose different calorie amounts. How many calories should I be eating to lose weight?

The simplest calculation for the number of calories you need to maintain your weight is to take your weight in pounds and multiply by 12. (Remember, there are 2.2lbs in a kilogram if you weight yourself in kilos.)

If you weigh 10 stone (or 140 pounds) that’s 1680 calories daily just to stay the same.

To safely lose weight, subtract no more than about 250 calories from that and then make sure you get active to the tune of 250 calories a day. That doesn’t have to be formal exercise - it can be doing gardening, housework, cycling or walking - anything active.

This will give you a 500 calorie a day deficit, and should result in you losing about a pound a week.

Actually I’m not that fond of calorie counting because it’s too easy to underestimate the amount you are eating or to forget to add something in and too easy to overestimate the number of calories you are burning. And even if you manage to lose weight by being meticulous in your calculations, who wants to keep calorie counting forever? When you stop counting the weight piles back on.

To my mind it’s better to forget about counting calories and to train yourself to eat sensible portions of delicious healthy food and to change how you interact with food so that you have good habits and a slim body for the rest of your life - and so that’s what I teach in my 8 week weight loss coaching program.

How can I stop thinking about food?

It’s just typical isn’t it? Just when you want to reduce the amount you eat and lose weight you start thinking about food more than ever.

And to be fair - it’s hard not to think about food. It is all around us - at home, on every street corner, at every social function. We just can’t ignore it - and if we even try our hunger will bring us right back to reality.

So maybe it’s not possible to stop thinking about food altogether - we can really only try and reduce the times we think about food.

I find the best way to tackle this issue is to…

a) avoid getting bored - if you are doing something you love you will never think about food until you get hungry. Think about whether boredom is a factor and then start working on adding more interest and non-food related pleasure into your life. There is so much available to capture our imagination these days that there is no need to be bored. Whether you are bored at work or at home - tackle this problem at source - do you need a new job or a new hobby rather than a new diet?

b) plan food ahead of time. Take away the need to constantly think about food by planning your meals a week or a few days ahead and preparing them in advance too. If you always have something healthy and delicious to look forward to, you’re less likely to hanker after something else less healthy.

c) keep “unplanned” food (as much as possible) out of sight to keep it out of mind. Don’t buy what you know you don’t want to eat. Don’t wander past the bakery store of you know you’ll be tempted. Turn off the TV or avoid the commercial breaks.
d) never ban food - it only serves to make you want it more. If there is a particular food you love, which is not particularly healthy, plan small amounts with your meals or snacks

e) eat enough so that you are not hungry all the time - if you are trying to lose weight fast with a starvation diet of course you’ll be able to think of nothing else but food

How do you stay motivated when you start to feel deprived of all the good-tasting stuff?

It really depends on how you are losing weight.

If you are following a weight loss program where you have rules where foods you love are forbidden then you can start to crave the good stuff more than you ever did before.

This takes iron will-power especially when the food you love is on offer in a restaurant or at a friend’s house. (You aren’t tempting yourself are you, I hope, by keeping the food around at home…?)

You may want to practice pausing at the moment you are tempted and remind yourself why you want to lose weight and what it means for you - run through the end result in your head - and then compare that with the momentary pleasure of the food.

But I tend to tackle this issue by working on removing the feeling of deprivation altogether.

In my program I have my clients tackle this problem by encouraging them to :-

a) eat the food they love, to buy the very best and to eat it in small portions, sitting down, very slowly, enjoying every moment. If you really taste the food, eat it when you are hungry and “know” you are consuming it - then a small amount is much more likely to satisfy you than if you stuff down a huge portion guiltily by the fridge.

b) find new healthy satisfying recipes and foods so that over time the food they love and the food that does them good get closer together. Healthy food does not have to be wall to wall salad and cottage cheese - there are loads of fantastic real food dishes which taste great, fill you up and satisfy your hunger for the good things in life so that you’d never know you were trying to lose weight.

These two approaches take away every sense of deprivation - the sort of diet mentality where you can’t have this and you can’t have that … until you come off the diet, eat it all again (in large amounts) and put the weight back on.

What is the best way to eat the “right” number of calories without having to go so obsessive?

Actually even if you are obsessive it’s difficult to get calorie counting right without being wired up to scientific measuring equipment.

Sure, there are calculations you can do where you input your age, your sex, your height, your weight and your level of activity but it will all still depend on your own metabolism (rate of burning calories).

And of course the amount you need changes (gets less) as you lose weight - and also changes day to day with the activities you do.

So it’s best that none of us get obsessive about calories - though it sometimes helps to have an idea of the rough amount you use each day if only to help put you off eating mega amounts of fast food or a big plate of cakes.

If you follow a few simple guidelines you can usually forget about calories altogether and still lose weight

a) eat your calories rather than drinking them - it’s quite easy to drink a whole day’s worth of calories in an evening out or throughout the day and not feel like you’ve had anything to eat (you haven’t)

b) eat only when you are physically hungry - not just because food is there or because you feel like nibbling something

c) stop eating before you are full - once you are full you have eaten too much. As a guideline serve lean protein about the size of the palm of your hand, a handful of carbohydrate (pasta, rice or potatoes) and fill up on veggies or salad

d) choose healthy food (low fat, whole grain, fruit) over unhealthy (fried, white bread/pasta/rice, dessert)

e) eat unhealthy food (chocolate, snacks) in very small doses - and no more than once a day

f) move your body whenever you can - if it needs doing, do it, if an errand needs to be run, run it, if a dog needs to be walked, you walk it…I’m sure you get the idea

I don’t generally advise low-calorie substitutes for foods - to my mind you are better eating smaller quantities of real foods and enjoying them than eating chemicals or even poor substitutes in terms of taste. But if you’re happy with that it’s one other way to reduce calories without counting.

I don’t eat vegetables. How can I diet without eating them?

This question is a bit similar to the one from the lady who couldn’t eat salad (”Salad upsets my stomach“) but also subtly different so I wanted to answer it too.

There are so many people who just don’t eat vegetables - and at least two of my friends run a mile from anything green.

First of all, do you have to eat vegetables to be slim?

No - neither of my friends are carrying too many pounds

Do you have to eat vegetables to lose weight?

Here I would have to say that they definitely help - they add a huge amount of bulk to your diet without adding many calories at all.

I usually recommend that you try and fill half your plate with vegetables or salad and then have a quarter lean protein and a quarter whole grain carbohydrates. Without the vegetables you can’t add much more carbohydrate or protein (which are relatively calorie dense) to fill you up.

So if you try and lose weight without them you will probably get hungrier than your friends who eat more veggies. You may also have to go into calorie counting mode because you won’t just be able to rely on the fullness signals you get.

I just wonder why you are so against vegetables.

Maybe you were forced to eat them as a child and swore never to eat them again once you had a choice. But there are so many different varieties and so many ways of cooking them that I wonder if you could not learn to love them for the sake of your health as well as your weight.

If you want to give vegetables another try, some ideas which work for my friends “because they don’t taste like vegetables” are

• roasting vegetables in a little olive oil in the oven to create a sweet taste and crunchy texture - great for carrots, peppers, parsnips and sweet potatoes
• making them into soup - even disguising them completely by pureeing the soup in a blender
• adding them to a curry, casserole or stew - where the taste of the sauce disguises that of the veggies
• adding grated vegetables to bulk out minced (ground) meat in a bolognaise or chilli dish
• mixing in vegetables in a macaroni cheese (e.g frozen peas and sweetcorn)
• stir frying them and adding a strong stir fry sauce which disguises the vegetables
• combining mashed potato with mashed root vegetables

Each of these ideas will add bulk to your diet without the calories and without that heavy boiled sprouts and cabbage taste you might have grown up to dislike.

I’d like to know what not to eat to lose weight

In my opinion there’s absolutely nothing on the forbidden list. Forbidding something just makes it more attractive. I would rather you look at the whole vast quantity of wonderful healthy food out there and select the majority of your meals and recipes from that rather than worrying about what you shouldn’t be eating.

Try and select most of your food from a whole variety of the following

• fruit, salads and vegetables
• nuts and seeds in small quantities
• whole grains and pulses
• lean meat
• fish
• low-fat dairy products
• a little cheese and butter
• eggs
• a little cold-pressed oil

It’s much more empowering to choose food that does you good than it is to be told what not to eat.

I also have to say that I eat everything myself that does not make me cringe when I read the ingredients - the cringe making stuff is anything which I know is damaging - things like high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils and fats and any list of chemicals that belong more in a lab than in a kitchen. I enjoy chocolate and I have a little most days.

The key thing to remember is to focus on the quality of your food (aim for delicious nutritious healthy meals) and the quantity (aim for feeling physically hungry before you eat anything and satisfied not stuffed at the end of your meals) and you’ll go a long way.