This is a day of thanks.
Today I feel buoyed by the wonderful people who have shown their support for my quest to be healthy. Friends have offered to go swimming, biking and walking with me. What amazing people out there!
Arohanui (great love) to you all.
I've also had some wise words from a friend who lives on an island on the other side of the world to New Plymouth, New Zealand, where I live.
She took the time to write an email filled with sound advice about losing weight, getting fit and taking control of one's life.
Here are 20 of her helpful tips:
- Take baby steps on this journey.
- Changing very small things can make a big difference.
- The ONLY way to lose weight (non-surgical way, that is) is to use up more calories than you take in. BUT that doesn't mean ripping into a whole lot more exercise or eating a diet that's so restrictive you give up at the end of the first week.
- Eat more protein - protein triggers the production of a hormone which tells you you're full. Sports nutritionists advise eating a MINIMUM of 20g of protein at breakfast and to eat protein at every meal.
- Don't skip meals. Ever! In fact, instead of having just three meals a day, try five or six smaller ones - this will help you stave off hunger pangs.
- Use a slightly smaller dinner plate - even when you know it's smaller, you'll eat less.
- Choose low-calorie versions of your favourite foods BUT avoid anything with sweeteners in - you might think you've satisfied a craving for something sweet but your body will know you haven't had real sugar and the next chance it gets, it'll urge you to eat something high in sugar. [It's OK my friend, I can't bear artificial sweetners - they hurt my throat.]
- Switch to virtually fat-free milk and yoghurt.
- Buy canned fish packed in water rather than oil.
- Avoid highly processed food and ANYTHING with hydrogenated fats in. It was a bit of a shock to me to find that nutritionists now all agree that butter is better for you than margarine. You can recognise a hydrogenated fat because it's something that is normally liquid at room temperature but which has been altered to be solid (eg, the canola oil in margarine, olive oil in butter alternatives, palm oil in anything).
- See if you can stick to eating only foods which were around 500 years ago.
- DON'T avoid fats. Some of the essential vitamins that you need are fat-soluble. You need around 25g of fat per day in order to get enough of these and about 35% of your daily calories should come from fat. Mix up the types of fat - saturated, poly- and mono-unsaturated.
- You can increase your metabolic rate by increasing the amount of muscle you have - muscle uses up more calories. You're at an age where resistance training is important anyway. Even if you get a couple of half-kilo weights and do some arm exercises for ten minutes (while you watch the news or whatever) each day.
- Soup! A well-blended soup will keep you feeling fuller for longer than if you'd eaten the same ingredients as a meal with a glass of water.
- The wider the choice, the more you eat, so stay away from buffets.
- Small amounts of exercise count. If you're doing something around the house, put on some music that's loud and with a beat and dance your way through it. If you're having a conversation on the phone (rather than taking notes), stand up and walk on the spot. Every little tiny bit of exercise will make a difference.
- Make sure you don't get dehydrated. It's a myth that you should drink eight glasses of water a day - the water contained in your food and in cups of tea etc also counts. But if you're trying to lose weight then increasing your fluids will help.
- GET ENOUGH SLEEP. It is a proven fact that people who don't get enough sleep put on weight. Read about it here:
http://thyroid.about.com/od/loseweightsuccessfully/a/sleepdiet.htm - Consider following the rules set out in Paul McKenna's "I
Can Make You Thin" self-hypnosis programme. Those rules are: When you are hungry, eat. Eat what you WANT, not what you think you should have. Eat consciously and enjoy every mouthful (ie, sitting at a table with no distractions). When you think you are full, stop eating.
He makes the point that most of us have forgotten how to listen to our bodies and we really don't consciously recognise feelings of hunger or fullness. - Don't expect miracles - set realistic targets. Aim to lose 500g. Then aim to lose another 500g.
Thanks my friend.
Today I have:
Worked 9.5 hours
Walked for 20 minutes with the dog
Eaten two good meals
Worked through lunch and ate a piece of apple cake instead (not a good move, but the cake was made for me!).
Given up a wonderful job at Puke Ariki to try and cut back on my hours (all my jobs are fantastic)
Slept for 8 hours!
Watched Clementine play basketball.
I will add that you need to understand that a carbohydrate turns into sugar, regardless of its form or "GI", and sugars not metabolized as energy becomes body fat. Avoid rice, pasta, bread, potatoes, and anything with a high carbohydrate percentage.
ReplyDelete"Fat free" foods are usually high in sugar - avoid anything "diet" and go for the normal version (especially with dairy products as milk is high in lactose (a sugar), and the skim milks are even higher in sugar than the full fat version). If you like milk, buy full fat cream and dilute it down with water.
Stop checking the fat content on food packaging, and start checking carbohydrate content - you will be shocked at the high sugar loading of so called "diet" products. But lets face it, food companies dont want you to lose weight as then you will stop buying their expensive diet products. Diet foods are a con.
Eating fat does not make you fat (proven beyond a doubt by multiple scientific studies!), eating sugar does - if you can undo the brainwashing that the food industry has done in convincing you otherwise, you are half way to losing loads of weight.
Fruit juices are extremely high in fructose (a sugar) so avoid them altogether.
Best diet to lose weight is eating a high protein, low carbohydrate, medium fat diet - meat and veges for all meals, with eggs for breakfast.
Eggs can be cooked in less than 2 minutes in a microwave, so you can always have them when you are in a hurry.
And if you must, dark chocolate (70% cocoa) is your friend, with about half the carbohydrates/sugars of normal chocolate :-)