Tweaks for Healthier Eating
Hi, I’m Norma.
First of all, I am neither a trained dietician nor a health worker
so everything detailed here is what I have been told by professionals who are,
or what I have found out for myself.
However, I have been overweight for many years and have tried
pretty well every diet and health reduction system short of gastric surgery.
I engaged with a number of mentors who were skilled in diet,
exercise and physiotherapy etc., and tried all their suggestions with varying
degrees of success. I made a note of all the tips that helped me together
with some things that worked that I discovered myself by trial and error.
My most recent attempt resulted in my being referred by my GP to a
local organisation called SOAR which is a Sheffield based community
regeneration charity set up to “Help people to
make positive changes”. Part of this organisation helps people make life
changes in order to improve their health and I was given half a dozen sessions
with a health adviser who put me on the right track.
I have now embarked on a regime of healthy eating as a route to
fitness and weight reduction with some success and I would like to share all
the positive things I have discovered with you.
Following the advise I was given, I decided to monitor and control
the relative size of each of the main food groups in my diet. I looked
around for a suitable gauging device but found that everything available was
expensive and inconvenient, mainly consisting of marked up or moulded plates. I
therefore designed my own inexpensive, convenient and portable gauge which I
called the “Portion Buster”®. This gives me a means of gauging the
portions of the various food groups present on my plate because it is all too
easy to add a bit more of the food we like. I cross referred the Portion
Buster dimensions with what is suggested in various healthy eating guides and
took note of what my mentors were saying about the relative amounts of each
main food group that we should be eating.
I started selling the Portion Buster on Ebay and I am getting a
lot of very positive feedback, so I am hopeful for the future of this device.
Some of the feedback is shown below;
What a fab item! Thanks very much. x
Very useful item. didn't realise how much i used to pile my plate
with food.A**
Great product,
as described, Happy to recomrnend
My daughter and
I are both using it, and I have type 2 diabetes so portion control is important
to me.
Best item I've
ever bought.
You can get a
Portion Buster for around four pounds on ebay, and that's the end of my
commercial.
OK, here are my tweaks:
First and most important, use your Portion Buster when loading your
plate Make sure you fill the vegetable section nice and high and don’t overfill the protein and carbohydrate
sections – no cheating! Also, don’t forget that there is supposed to be
an area around the edge of the plate without any food on it!
NOW, eat all the
vegetables first before
eating any proteins or carbohydrates. That way if, by any chance,
you feel satisfied before finishing everything, it will be the proteins and
carbohydrates that are left. This is much better for you than leaving
your vegetables. However, make sure that you don’t make too drastic cuts
in any food group as it is essential that you maintain a balanced diet.
To get a feel for what you have been eating, make a meal using
your normal portions, and then use the Portion Buster to see if your portions
have been calculated badly.
Have a drink of water before, and also during, your meal. It
will help flush out your system and also fill you up. Sometimes, we think
we are hungry when, in actual fact, we are just thirsty.
Make sure your pasta and rice are kept within the Portion Buster
section as many mistakes are made with the size of these portions.
Try to buy a smaller plate. (It should not be bigger than 8
inches or 20cm in diameter.) If not, slide the Portion Buster to the edge
of your plate to make sure your protein and carbohydrate portions are kept
within the edge of the plate and below the height of the Portion Buster.
Remember, vegetables can be piled as high as you wish.
One ice lolly is around the same amount of calories
as one chocolate and lasts much longer…
If you fancy the odd chocolate, break up some Weetabix, mix this
with Nutella and form it into little balls the size of an egg yolk. Keep
these in the fridge for those times when you do fancy some chocolate.
Only eat one, then wait one hour before you eat another. Reduce the
balls in size for more effect. Only make batches using two Weetabix at a
time; they are very tempting…
If you must have a chocolate, cut it in half and eat half now and
half later. Again, wait at least one hour in between.
Drink at least one litre of water - or a watery low sugar cordial
drink – each day, especially if you take sugar in your hot drinks.
Drinking water will reduce the amount of hot drinks and therefore sugar,
that you have. I went from 70 teaspoons of sugar per week down to 15 just
by doing this alone. Every week, try to increase the amount you drink in
this way.
Keep “nibbles” in the fridge for times when you are hungry as most
people will eat what is prepared rather than make something. It’s cheap
enough to throw a carrot away if you don’t eat it. Philadelphia Light is
great to dip these snacks in - as is salsa dip. Try using organic foods
as they taste much better and you will enjoy them more. Fresh cooked
chicken pieces are a good source of nibbles.
Try not to eat after 8pm. Don’t fill yourself up just
because it’s the last time you will eat that day and don’t eat by habit at that
time – only if you are hungry. If you need something later have it but just get
used to observing a cutoff point in the evening.
Make sure you have two pieces of fruit per day and three types of
veggies at least
Use Philadelphia light instead of butter on a sandwich. Spread it
thinly; you will hardly notice the difference and it contains much less fat
than butter.
If you take sugar in your tea or coffee, reduce this amount by ¼
of a teaspoon. Decrease this a little more one month later, and so on.
The dreaded exercise! Do something even if it’s a short walk or swimming,
anything! Maybe get your partner to drop you off locally and then you
take a short walk back. I started swimming as this is low impact but, an hour
of swimming can burn about 400 calories
Don’t be a couch potato; they say we sit for 12 hours every
day. Make this less by doing just one more household chore.
Salt: never cook with salt! If you want
salt, always put it on your meal at the table. Always sprinkle the salt
from between your fingers and not from a salt pot. This way you
will use less!
Cereals have plenty of sugar in them. If you need
more sugar, sprinkle it on your cereals with your fingers and not with a spoon
as you will use half as much this way.
Keep a food diary if you wish. Draw a column to the right
and, when you have written down what you have eaten, write in the column: C for
carbs, F for fat, P for proteins, FR for fruit, etc. You will see at a
glance how many carbs, fats, fruits or proteins you are eating in a day.
Prepare your meals in advance to avoid the temptation of a
takeaway!
Put fruit and vegetables out on the worktop to remind you that
they have to be eaten that day.
Never shop on an empty stomach, and better still, have it
delivered. A hungry shopper buys more and supermarket layouts are geared
to tempt you into impulse buying. Iceland offers free delivery with a
minimum order - as do some other stores now.
Make up a fresh fruit salad and keep it in fridge. It will
be more convenient to eat fruit if it is already prepared.
Fat free yogurts have lots of sugar in them. Only have one
every other day or gradually cut down. Adding sugar is how fat free foods
are made palatable.
Hide the biscuits; “out of sight out of mind”.
When making a sandwich, use brown bread as it has more fibre.
It is also a little tastier to my mind.
Remember to use Philadelphia light instead of butter!
If you are one of the people who always prepares too much,
remember 100 grams of potato weighs the same after cooking. 100grms is an
average portion of potatoes.
Keep opened, healthy, unprocessed foods handy.
Eat the tiny boxes of raisins for a snack or nibble.
Eat only two dried apricot pieces at a time.
Eat seeds or nuts as nibbles - but don’t eat more than three large
nuts - like brazil nuts - per day.
It is important to try to avoid eating anything that is processed. (“Processed”
foods are those that have things added to them rather than those that have
things done to them. So processed peas,
dried lentils, chick peas, etc. don’t count as “processed” in this case.)
I lost 3 kg (nearly half a stone) in 3 weeks just using this list
as a guide, AND WITH NO HUNGER too.
Be healthy, be wise!
Norma
