It takes a lot of willpower to ignore the biscuits in the biscuit tin. It takes determination to pick a chicken salad over a nice big burger and chips. It takes control to avoid picking up a bar of chocolate over an apple in the store. It’s hard to watch other people enjoying a custard filled, sugar glazed doughnut. I know, I’ve been there so many times…
It’s so challenging to see the bright side of missing out all these things you love to eat. You know you need to lose weight. You know these things will put on weight. You know that if you just say no to some of these things more often it’ll help you reach your goal….but even then it’s not as easy as that.

Weight loss isn’t easy, and for those who do lose weight easily, they normally put it back on easily too. But you don’t have to torture yourself. You can have chocolate, you can have cake, you can have burgers and deep fried chicken….but you can’t have loads of it. During weight loss, you need to be happy with what you eat otherwise you feel like you’re on a diet which makes you feel like reaching for the take away menu even more!

Things you can do to keep you and your diet happy;

* Choose a day when you can have whatever lunch or dinner you want. The rest of the week, stick with as much vegetables and lean meats and fish as possible. But that one day is yours to have chicken nuggets and chips for lunch or pizza for dinner if you want to. I do this on a Saturday as it’s nice to do what I want on the weekend.

* Either say no completely or control your portions. Some people find it easier to have the”out of sight out of mind” approach and not buy or even look at temptation foods in store. That way when you get home, you have only healthy foods and you get into the habbit cooking and eating these foods. If you can do that, great! But if you love your temptation foods too much to completely go without them, then you need to remember you can have them as long as you keep your portions sensible. Now I know how hard that can be….you cut yourself a piece of cake and decide to go back for one more piece, or you cut yourself a slightly larger piece than you really need. Trust me, I could eat a whole cake in one sitting! But why do that to yourself? Why not have a little piece each day to keep your sweet tooth under control? Keep at the smaller portions and it’ll become second nature

* Swap high sugar and fat to low sugar and fat. There are so many varieties out there that are helping you make a healthier choice and still you can eat the foods you want! There are so many low fat and low sugar sauces, treats, desserts and drinks out there that DO taste nice, you just need to give them a try!

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Well, I’m finally back at the gym (horrah!) and I realised that I’d been out of it for so long that I just didn’t know how to tackle it!

I know that for me to lose weight, I need to be doing cardio most of the time. But when I was doing my routine before, I was doing up to an hour on the cross trainer 2-3 times a week and weight wasn’t budging very much.
So, I had a really good chat with one of the gym staff to see what he might suggest. He explained to me that it’s not necessarily what I’m doing but how I’m doing it. He asked me about High Intensity exercise and whether I’d tried it. I told him that I had, but because of my health issues, it caused my muscles to severly spasm!

It turns out that I was using the cross trainer on a too high effort level. He said that I don’t need to be doing really high resistance levels, just the motion of switching between fast pace and low pace movement. He showed me a program on the cross trainer that tells you when to use a fast pace and when to slow it down throughout the workout whilst keeping it to a lower resistance level so I don’t stress out my muscles.

I loved the program. Very simple to set up on the machine and I can do it for as long as I want and it’ll figure out when to slow down the pace and step it up again. It actually made the time on the cross trainer fly by and it felt a lot more fun instead of zoning out staring at the clock every few minutes! It’s the first time in a while that I actually realy enjoyed my work out and I’m looking forward to doing it again this week!

Doing this High Intensity workout means it’ll help spike my metabolism to help burn fat more. If I can do this type of workout 3 times a week and build up the time on the cross trainer, it’s really going to help kick start more weight loss!

I’m very excited to have learned something new and I’m looking forward to doing this new routine. It gives me more purpose and focus in the gym and I can tailor the idea to any of the machines.

I thoroughly recommend chatting with one of the trainers in your local gym about your weight loss and what you’ve tried/has or hasn’t worked for you. They may just hold the answer you’re looking for!

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You know what? Not all treats have to be full of calories, fat and sugar. It’s true! There are so many tasty things out there that will satisfy your sweet tooth, but the biggest part is giving it a go!

Fruit is the simplest way of getting your sweet tooth fix. Clemantines, grapes, pineapples…there are a ton of sweet fruits to choose from and experiment with! You just need to be careful with how much of these you eat as you don’t want to be having too much sugar, natural or not, when trying to lose weight.
Yoghurt is awesome to have for pudding and adding fruits will help count to your 5 a day. I have found a no fat no sugar yoghurt that is thick, creamy and perfect to add fruit to. The yoghurt called “Total” has a no added sugar and no fat version of it’s original and is wonderful to use to thicken smoothies or blend on it’s own with fruit of your choice for your customised yoghurt. I love to have ti with pieces of fruit added to it, maybe with some honey.

OK, so you have to have some chocolate or “proper” sweet otherwise you’ll go nuts, right? Well there are little solutions to that too… Marsh-mellows are lovely squishy sweet things and there are plenty of no sugar ones out there that practically taste exactly the same, if not better than the original full sugar ones! They are ideal for a sweet treat! Also, instead of going for the whole hog and buying yourself a whole chocolate bar, get chocolate chips instead. Just have tea spoon sprinkle with your yoghurt to get that chocolate crave out the way without gorging on a huge sickly bar! There is also no added sugar chocolate, you know…and that stuff can be just as lovely as the full sugar variety without as many calories.

Hot chocolate drinks can be used as an after dinner pudding to calm that chocoholic in you without too many calories. And it will last you a bit longer if you drink it slowly through the evening. Again, there are some absolutely lovely “light” versions that have much less sugar in them than the original ones, so try them out!

Honey is a wonderful sweetener. Add it to yoghurt, pancakes, fruit and smoothies to sweeten it up with less calories. But if you’re not keen on honey, I would recommend trying out different types as I have found out some are not so nice whereas others are just lovely!

If you want to try your hand at cooking some of your own treats like cookies and cakes, remember you are in control and you can use whatever recipes you have as a guide. Instead of butter or lard, use margarine. Instead of cane sugar, use sweeteners or the “half spoon” sugars that combine sugar with sweeteners to cut back on the calories. Maybe leave the chocolate out of the recipe and replace it with nuts like almonds or dried fruit. There are so many things you can customise! The outcome may not come out exactly like the one with all the fat and sugar, but with some practise you’ll get a great treat that not only you worked hard on, but something much less fattening too!

Ok, savoury puddings might not be your thing, but if you really want something to fill you better than sweets, then maybe a few crackers with low fat cheese might just be the trick. You can get some lovely low fat sweeter tasting crackers that with the cheese can really satisfy your sweet tooth without you craving anything more sweet.

Lastly, one of the biggest things is to watch your portions! It may be a low fat cake, but if you eat all of it, you may as well not have bothered with a low fat cake! Savour you treats, make them last and enjoy them instead of just gulping them down before you’ve even had the chance to properly taste it! Have a smaller plate, take smaller bites and use smaller spoons/forks to make smaller portions look and feel larger and last longer. Have a glass of milk, water or cup or tea with it, whatever drink helps to fill you up.

Puddings don’t have to be your enemy, you can make them your friend with just a little bit of thought and compromise!

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Well, now that everything is back to normal after Christmas and New Year, I’ve really got to grips with my diet by scheduling what I eat. I know, it probably sounds a bit overboard…but actually, it’s made healthy eating a hell of a lot easier and I’m getting much more of a variety of food too!
I realised that I was eating plenty of chicken and lean meats, but I was hardly eating fish. Fish, as it is or only smoked, can be incredibly low in fat and calories whilst containing healthy oils. So I have now incorporated a lot more fish into my week through scheduling my meals. I’ve also allowed myself treats, but only twice a week. I can choose what days they fall on, but it means that once my two treats are up, that’s that!

So, to spread out what I have each day, I make sure I’m not having the same thing twice in a row so that I can have a better variety of meat and fish in my meals. With each of my meals, I will make sure I’m getting a good serving of vegetables and fruits and stick to having things like couscous, rice or pasta earlier in the day and only once in the evening a week. This is how my weekly meals look:

Monday – Toast+Fruit for Breakfast, Soup+Fruit for Lunch, Fish+Veg for Dinner

Tuesday – Cereal+Fruit for Breakfast, Sandwich+Fruit for Lunch, Chicken+Veg for Dinner

Wednesday – Toast+Fruit for Breakfast, Soup+Fruit for Lunch, Fish+Veg or Fish Pasta Bake for Dinner

Thursday – Cereal+Fruit for Breakfast, Sandwich+Fruit for Lunch, Chicken+Veg for Dinner

Friday – Toast+Fruit for Breakfast, Soup+Fruit for Lunch, Fish+Veg for Dinner

Saturday – Cooked Breakfast, Soup/Sandwich+Fruit for Lunch, “Anything I want” Dinner (eg, pizza, kievs, burgers, take away:but only once a month etc)

Sunday – Cooked Breakfast, Soup/Sandwich+Fruit for Lunch, Red Meat+Veg for Dinner

Treats (Chocolate, cake, sweets, etc) Twice a week, anytime, anyday.

Pudding – Fruit, Hot Chocolate drink, Light Popcorn, Treat (if the two only allowance hasn’t been used up!)

Drinks – No Alcohol (because I don’t drink it anyways!) Green Tea, Weak Squash, Water, Milk.

Snacks – Fruit, No Sugar No Fat Yoghurt, Low Fat Cottage Cheese, Low Sugar Nut Bar.

With this set into place, I don’t get bored because I’m eating something different each day, I’m not stuck as to what to have for meals because it’s all ready sorted out for me and I can keep track on what I’m eating MUCH more easily! It’s made food shopping much easier too as I know what to get and know how much it’ll be too.

I highly recommend looking at what you eat during your week and slimming it down, especially if you’re like me and struggle with exercise. It’ll take some time getting used to, but after a month of replacing rice and pasta with broccoli and beans for example, you’ll soon not only get used to it but enjoy it too! Remember, you don’t have to be eating things you hate! If you don’t like fish, then alternate your meals with lean meat and chicken, or quorn! There’s so many combinations, you just need to find what works for you and tweak it down the line if it’s not quite right.

Hurrah for a happier healthier you!

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For decades, scientists and nutritionists have mostly considered calcium as a mineral that is good for our teeth and bones. However, only a few people know that calcium does much more than that. Evidence based studies and resources have now signified the prominent effect of calcium on weight loss. According to the American Dairy Association, those people who have the lowest amounts of calcium have higher amounts of stored fat. Likewise, according to Medscape medical news (March, 2008), “calcium-rich diets play a direct role in the prevention of obesity.”

This certainly means that a lack of the mineral calcium in our diets can be among one of the causes of abnormally high body weight. According to a study, if you are getting a low average level of calcium i.e. 255 milligrams daily, you are 84% more likely to be overweight than those getting the highest level of 1,346 milligrams per day. Similarly, by simply getting adequate calcium in your diet, as many as 80% of you can help yourselves lose excessive weight. It has been also found that people who consumed 1000 – 1200 mg of calcium daily lost about 10 pounds after a few weeks.

Calcium & weight loss connection

Diets high in calcium increase the fat burning effect of a meal i.e. if your diet contains less calcium than the recommended range, the body releases more of the hormone calcitriol which regulates the working of fat cells in our body. Due to this increased secretion of calcitriol, your fat cells make and store more fat and your weight increases and vise versa. According to the second theory, high calcium diets may suppress fat accumulation and weight gain with a positive effect on glucose tolerance, insulin resistance, and lipid profile.

Foods that contain calcium

Foods that are high in calcium include low fat dairy products e.g. skimmed milk, soy milk, low-fat cheese, yogurt and baked beans, dried figs, broccoli, darkest green leafy vegetables and calcium-fortified food like cereals and orange juice. If your diet is not high in calcium, some good calcium supplements e.g. chewable calcium tablets should be considered. Another best source of calcium is coral calcium obtained from fossilized coral reefs above sea level.

In light of the above-mentioned facts, overweight or obese individuals who are interested in working toward better health should consider increased calcium intake along with an overall healthier lifestyle. At the same time, they should be strongly advised to eat a low-calorie diet and consult their dietician or doctor to decide about which form of calcium will work best for them.

Finally, do remember to introduce certain vitamins and minerals to your diet that help in calcium absorption as most of the calcium you consume is lost in urine. A balanced diet rich in vitamins and minerals help calcium get easily absorbed in the bloodstream.

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