good eating guide

How to improve your eating habits for good

In this world of fast food and TV dinners the average diet has sadly taken a turn for the worse. More and more people are diagnosed as clinically obese and kids are even sent to “fat camps”. What is the world coming to? I blame the media.
Everything is thrust in front of us, trying to entice and tempt us with looks, taste and smell. I am all for human progress but this seems like an area in which we have regressed.

So how do we change habits of a lifetime?
How do we lose bodyfat and keep it off?

Read on and all will be explained...

One of the most difficult things I have to explain to my clients is that you can eat an awful lot of good food and still lose bodyfat! You can eat every three hours and still lose weight. They just cannot accept that eating will make them lose weight. People are still stuck with the notion that you have to starve and deprive yourself. All that depriving your body of food does is slow down your metabolism even more which can actually result in more bodyfat after eating less food.

The main key is to speed up your metabolic rate (the rate at which your body burns calories for energy and heat) with exercise and regular eating.

Exercise

The more muscle tone you have the more calories you will burn because muscle is live tissue and needs calories to maintain it. Whereas stored fat is unused calories. So it stands to reason that the higher the percentage of muscle tone you have on your structure, the more your body will burn calories and the less likely it is to store calories as bodyfat.

For more detailed information about exercise check further on this site.

Eating for life

Eating a small, well balanced meal every three hours allows your body to digest and utilise food more efficiently. The body is also a creature of habit and if you give it food every three hours it will soon get used to this and will expect that meal. Your whole system will be ready for it and very little if any will be stored as bodyfat.

This is the reason why...
Your body has a starvation mode built-in so if you eat a meal and then donít have another for, say six hours like many people do then the body will instinctively store some of that meal as bodyfat as it doesn’t “know” when the next meal will come. It will also slow down your metabolism so you don't need as many calories to perform simple, everyday tasks. This means that, yes you guessed it, when you eat a meal or something naughty your body is in an excess calorie balance and stores this excess as bodyfat.

Ten ways to help you lose bodyfat for good

• Exercise three times a week
• Eat well balanced, quality, small
• meals every three hours.
• Drink plenty of bottled water, this
• helps food move efficiently
• through your system, cleansing
• waste products as it goes. Water
• is also needed to metabolise fat.
• Never miss meals.
• Be consistent.
• Always keep a food diary. This will
• keep you on the straight and
• narrow.
• Never miss breakfast.
• Don't lose weight too quickly,
• the slower the better.
• Keep your cheats to the bare
• minimum, I recommend a cheat
• meal one day a week. But keep
• to your calorie guidelines.
• Feel good about yourself.
• Reward yourself whenever you
• achieve another one of your
• goals.
• Be positive, you can and you will.

Working out your calorie balance

Everybody burns calories at different rates depending on activity levels, lean body mass etc. To help you lose body fat you need to know how many calories a day your body uses, then you can take charge of the situation and eat the right amounts from the right foods at the right times. Sounds complicated, but I can assure you it’s not. I will explain how you can do this very simply. (You may have seen the word “kcal” on food labels. This is short for kilocalorie which is simply another word for calorie)
Weigh yourself first thing on the morning of day one with nothing on. Take a notebook and entitle it “Daily Food Log” or something similar and on the first page record your weight. Each day make notes of the food and drink you consume and tally up at the end of the day your total calories. Again this can be done simply, by purchasing a calorie counter from any bookstore. It seems like a lot of hard work but I assure you it is not, when you reap the rewards this system will give you. This will tell you about you and how many calories a day you need in order to maintain your body weight at present.
So each day total up all your calories, which will take all of five minutes. At the end of the week if your weight has not changed you now know what number of calories maintains your weight.

Here is an example...

Weight: 11 stone 2 lbs.

Monday      1950 kcal
Tuesday     1800 kcal
Wednesday 2050 kcal
Thursday    1700 kcal
Friday         2100 kcal
Saturday     1870 kcal
Sunday       1900 kcal

Weight 7 days later: 11 stone 2 lbs.

You have not gained or lost so these calories are maintaining your body weight. To find the average daily calorie intake find the total of all the calories and divide by seven (the number of days), which in this example = 1910 kcal (calories).

This system is so simple, just think back to all those starvation diets you may have tried only to put back on what you lost and more. You see if you drop those calories too low remember that your metabolism may slow back down again.
The calories you have been eating may have come from so called normal foods. By simply changing from those foods to good foods and eating every three hours a lot of the fat and processed rubbish is dropped and more often than not that is all that’s needed to lose bodyfat. You will find that you can eat a great amount of food when the calories come from quality sources - you can eat a heck of a lot rice for the same calories as a chocolate bar.

So, to summarise:

1900 calories from poor food sources, eaten at odd times, makes you fat and sluggish.
1900 calories from good food, spread throughout the day at three -hour intervals = a lean body and bags of energy.

Don't forget that you will also be exercising. This will build muscle tone, which in turn makes your body burn more calories and the workouts themselves burn anything from 300 to 600 calories.

The body fat will just melt away. I
make it sound so easy and that is
why I get so frustrated when I see people struggling because it IS so
easy.

Which foods should I eat?

I will explain briefly and simply...

There are three main categories of foods which you should eat:
Protein, Carbohydrates and Fats.

Protein
This should be derived from lean meat, poultry, fish, egg and dairy products.
It can also be derived from nuts, seeds and pulses in the right combinations if you are a vegetarian. See separate section elsewhere on the site.
Protein is needed for muscle tone and plays a major part in the regeneration
of all living cells within your body.
Try to eat protein in each of your meals.

The Best Protein Sources:
These outlined are the cleanest and best to use:.

Chicken
Turkey
Fish
Eggs
Lean red meats, such as the leanest cuts of beef.
Dairy Products, such as milk, yoghurt, low fat cheese and cottage cheese.

Carbohydrates
There is a myth regarding carbohydrates - that they make you fat. It is not the carbs (carbs is short for carbohydrates) that make you fat but any excess calories eaten over maintenance level. If you are sedentary and therefore not burning the energy you are putting in your body you will gain bodyfat.
Carbs are a very important part of your everyday diet as they are the energy that drives your body. Without them you will be listless and tired. Carbs are also stored in the muscle cells and give you tone and a firmness to the muscle. Many so called diets and slimming clubs tend to cut back calories too far, basing everybody on a points system and assuming everyone has the same calorie maintenance level. Tarring everybody with the same brush, you now know that this isn’t the case. Yes people do lose weight on these diets, but the weight loss comes mainly from water and carbs stored in the muscle. This happens because the body goes into shock when the calories are too low. The body slows its metabolism, holds on to body fat, yes holds on to it, and burns stored carbohydrates for its energy needs.
So although you admittedly lose weight, you are also less toned with a softer looking body. Your bodyfat percentage will not be any lower and your metabolism will have slowed down. So when you have a cheat meal or come off that diet your weight will increase at an alarming rate and your bodyfat percentage along with it. It is just a vicious circle.
Our plan is to speed up the metabolism so we need to eat all food groups, carbs as you now know are very important.

The Best Carbohydrate sources:
Are complex Carbohydrates, complex meaning simply that they take longer
for the body to absorb due to their molecular make up.
Simple Carbohydrates should be avoided as much as possible as the body absorbs them very rapidly. This causes a sharp increase in blood sugar levels, followed by a sharp drop which is when food cravings occur. These simple sugars as they are called are also more easily converted by the body into fat cells, and should therefore be avoided where possible, foods such as sweets, cakes, biscuits etc.

Complex Carbohydrates:

Potatoes
Rice
Pasta
Whole wheat Bread
Oats
Cereals
Vegetables and Salad Stuffs
Fruit is a simple Carbohydrate but is needed for a balanced diet.

Fats
Again fats have a bad rap but not all fats are bad. I will go into the importance of good fats in the more advanced section. But for now let’s keep it simple.

You must keep away from saturated fats, as they are dense in calories and bad for your health. These include burgers, sausages, pies, fish and chips and all the similar rubbish you know you should not eat.
Some fats are needed in your diet for various functions, including hormone production, lubrication of the joints and the elasticity of the skin. Some fats will come from the protein foods you will eat, but some essential fats are needed.

So try to eat some of these foods once or twice a week.
Salmon
Flax oil
Nuts and Seeds.
So now you have some basic information on clean foods you
should eat.

Now let’s get to work on how to prepare them and when you should eat, bearing in mind that I will just outline the foods and not the amounts. This will have to be worked out by yourself, as you will be working to your own calorie levels.
Again at risk of repeating myself too much, you should eat every three hours. Even if you are at work, you are entitled to a break and if you can have a coffee you can eat something, you must get something down you.
A yoghurt and a piece of fruit would be fine to keep you ticking over. It only takes a few minutes and a little forward planing.

Following is an example of how a day’s eating could look:

Breakfast;
One bowl of cereal, oats, muesli, or shredded wheat with semi-skimmed
milk. One banana and a glass of
orange juice.
Mid Morning;
Yoghurt and a few nuts and seeds.
Lunch;
Chicken breast, rice and salad.
Mid Afternoon;
One small cottage cheese sandwich.
Tea;
Fish, potatoes, vegetables and one glass of wine.
Supper;
One slice of toast and honey.


Now who would go hungry on something like this?
As mentioned earlier amounts will have to be worked out by your self.
There will be a detailed calorie chart elsewhere on this site.

Ten ways to prepare protein foods: for taste and nutrients

Grill
Steam
Pressure cook
Oven-bake in foil with onions, mushrooms and peppers.
Boil in low calorie soup.
Microwave.
Turkey mince cooked in a tin of tomatoes, with onions, mushrooms
and low sugar beans.
Use mixed herbs and spices.
Stir-fry in pineapple juice & add pineapple chunks when 90% cooked.
Mix tuna in cottage cheese or add a
few nuts or chopped salad stuffs to make it more palatable.

Ten ways to prepare carbohydrate foods: for
taste and nutrients

When using rice you can add chopped fruit and a few nuts or seeds.
On potatoes you can add cider vinegar.
Sweet potatoes can also be used and although they taste sweet, there is very little difference in calories and carbohydrates.
When using pasta dishes, use plenty of mixed herbs and chopped vegetables
Keep away from butters and so called low fat spreads.
On toast small amounts of honey and pure fruit jam can be used.
With sandwiches, butter and margarine is still not needed, if you make the filling moist enough.
Use cottage cheese with tuna and salad stuffs with meat.
With cereals low fat milk can be used as well as yoghurt and chopped fruit.
Try not to over cook foods.
Buy only fresh fruit and vegetables
Cooking meats in pineapple juice or soup can give a great sauce for rice and pasta.
You can mix carbohydrates i.e. 1oz of rice 2oz of pasta.

Healthy Eating Summary

Work out your calories - daily amounts eaten and maintenance level

Substitute your foods with healthy alternatives

Exercise three times a week

Eat every three hours

Never miss meals

Drink plenty of bottled water

Make sure you eat all 3 food groups: Protein, Carbohydrates and Fats.

Sticking points

There will come a point when you will stick at a weight on your way to your goal weight. Only as a last resort should you drop your calories by a couple of hundred, then only temporarily. It is much more efficient to add in some bodyfat burning, cardiovascular work (Aerobic Work).

Beginners CV (Cardiovascular) Work

This can be added to increase calorie expenditure and burn more body fat. This should be done at a moderately hard level, where upon exercising you feel warm, possibly sweating and feel as though you are mildly out of breath. But not so out of breath that you would be unable to keep up a conversation if needed. This will be best for burning body fat, increased fitness and speeding up the metabolism.
Do some CV work after your workouts for twenty minutes or so on a stationary bike or fast walk on a treadmill. A brisk walk to work twice a week can do wonders as can a brisk walk late on in the evening before bed which also helps to speed up your metabolism as it is slowing down ready for sleep. This will also make you burn more calories while asleep.