Tweaks for Healthier Eating

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