Are you like me? Want to eat tasty, nutritious food and lose weight? It’s not that
impossible. Instead of worrying about points and counting calories, or
“can I have this or that” in my allowance, and feeling guilty if you have that
“forbidden food”, think of your food in colour,
think freshness, think taste, think adventure!
If it looks good and tastes good, we want it again. What I
am saying is start with having most of the foods you like, but in proportion -
and not as often. You may find that you expect and desire them less as
your taste buds change. For myself, I will never give up the desire to
have chocolate!
We live in a society that expects treats, and expects self
rewards. Meanwhile, our bodies have to survive the rigours of this life
and we need to feed them the best way we can. We have much more choice
than our parents and grandparents ever had, yet we generally are unhealthier,
more overweight, and most of us are less active. Maybe we are making bad
choices due to the availability of convenience foods.
Let me get right to the point. I am not saying we can only
blame the above for the fact that 66% of the population in the UK is
overweight, (in the last twenty years this figure has doubled!) but let’s
compare a few Items we eat now to what they ate years ago.
Let’s start with our grandparents. They certainly ate
differently to us, mainly due to costs. There were lots of stews around
then. These were made to last several days – or even more. They
were boiled every day to stop them going bad because there were no
refrigerators. You could have stew two to three days running. (Have
you ever thought of turning your remaining stew into liquidised gravy.
Unlike our ancestors, you can freeze it! Who says the fussy little
ones won’t eat vegetables.)
Our grandparents typically used ten inch plates. Nowadays plates
are often 12 inches or above. Bowls and cups have also got larger.
The “bun”.
(I mean a small, snack cake rather than a bread bun.) Years
ago, a bun was probably a small sponge cake. Today, buns are usually much
larger and more exotic. Muffins and cupcakes are very popular but will
cost you dearly in more ways than one. Do you know that there are approx.
250 calories difference between a simple “bun” and a muffin or cupcake.
(As an experiment, take a small piece of muffin and roll it
between your fingers. The amount of fat that comes out will hopefully put
you off ever eating a muffin again. These are definitely “fatty cakes”.)
The good old burger.
It’s now 2-5 times larger in size than when it was first introduced,
and is dressed lavishly with extras – not like the simple “Wimpys” of
yesteryear. They have also developed the cheapest way to make these,
although the marketing makes them sound full of goodness. That little
baby will cost you over 250 calories without all its “mayo”, etc. (If you
like burgers, try to make them yourself out of meat that you are satisfied is
good quality lean minced steak that is typically only 5% fat. See my
recipes for simple instructions for making burgers. A good quality burger
is a healthy snack.)
Now let’s wash it down with a cup of coffee. Today, an average latte will
cost you 330 calories (and, maybe, half an hours work to pay for it)! It
may be as much as 16 oz compared to a simple coffee like we used to be served,
which were about 8 oz and 45 calories.
Pizza.
Two slices of pizza that we might have been served in the past was 500
calories. Nowadays, two slices of pizza would typically represent 850
calories. (An extra 350 calories.) In simple terms, if you normally
have 4 slices of pizza a week and your weight was steady say, twenty years ago,
the increase in calories would mean that over this time you would have gained
40 lbs due to that fact alone.
This list goes on and on; it seems we have sacrificed simple and
fresh for size and convenience. And, make no mistake, many of our modern
habits stem from the marketing hype which we have been gradually bombarded with
that directs us towards wanting what the vendors want us to want for their convenience and profit.
So the “lets nip in and have a cuppa or a burger” will today, cost
you hundreds more in calories. Now, I am not saying don’t have it at all,
but ask for a simple coffee (filter, americano, etc.) and share a bun with a
companion or buy a biscuit instead. (Oops, watch the biscuits.
Garibaldis, arrowroot, rich tea and similar biccies are OK in moderation, but
watch out for the shortbread, wholemeal and chocolate covered varieties that
are very high fat!) Better still, wait
until you get home. It will cost you less money and you may have had time
to talk yourself out of the temptation by then.
To get a general view on the effect of “calories”; it is generally
accepted that the average person requires 3500 calories to make a pound of fat,
or needs to “give up” 3500 calories to shed a pound of fat.
Of course this is extremely general because it assumes that
everything else stays the same (unchanged lifestyle and metabolism) and makes
no allowance for people being different – metabolic rates, body types, and so
on – and doesn’t discriminate between the different food groups (too little
protein input would lead to muscle wasting), but it does give us a “rule of
thumb” way of looking at the situation.
Here it is:
If you have a fixed diet, are an average person with normal
metabolism and constant weight, and start a twice a week 500 calorie snack
habit, you can expect to gain about a pound
every month (every three and
a half weeks) or around a
stone every year.
So four burgers a week makes you put on a stone in a year!
For burgers, substitute any weekly indulgence with a similar
energy value, like 6 pints of beer a week, 12 chocolate digestives a week, 16
hobnobs or bourbon biscuits a week, 24 garibaldis a week, 8 slices of lightly
buttered bread a week, 200g of chocolate a week, and so on. Obviously,
half the indulgence would result in half a stone a year
.
Similarly, if we are in a stable situation, denying ourselves 1000
calories a week would lead to losing a stone a year.
What about the effects of exercise on weight loss in sensible
terms?
Well, for a 11 stone person, a half hour jog equals a beefburger
or a pint of beer. So does about a half hour of leisurely swimming or of
very brisk walking.
(Note that the amount of work done in exercise against your body
mass and therefore the amount of calories it represents is directly
proportional to your weight. So a 20 stone person uses twice as much
energy as a 10 stone person to accomplish the same physical objective when
running or walking. This is a bit different in the case of swimming,
lifting weights, etc.)
To summarise, don’t deny yourself anything in moderation, but
offset the effects of indulging in extras by cutting out something else of
similar energy value or by doing some exercise.
To help with all this, adopt portion control in order to regulate
the proportion of your meal made up of proteins and carbohydrates. It is
always tempting to load your plate with these but you must make sure that you
get the right amount of vegetables as well.
