Five Steps, Seven Days: How to Clean Up Your Diet

If you feel like you need a fresh start with your diet, you’re not alone. Whether you’re feeling fatter and sluggish after Christmas, or you’re just having one of those weeks where you just abandon wellness in favour of convenience, it’s time to clean up your diet and take control of your wellbeing! Below, we’ve got a seven-day clean eating challenge that can help you on your journey to a healthier diet but, don’t worry, it’s not as strict as it sounds.

 

‘It’s easy and the payoffs include skyrocketing energy, weight loss, better control over your appetite, and even better looking skin,’ explains registered dietician Cynthia Sass, MPH, RD, author of S.A.S.S! Yourself Slim: Conquer Cravings, Drop Pounds and Lose Inches. ‘You don’t have to stick to a strict meal plan—we know that’s not realistic for everyone. Instead, we’ve outlined five simple rules to follow…You’re free to pick and choose your favourite recipes or create your own (as long as you stick to the rules).’ A diet plan where you have the freedom and control? Sounds like a winner to me! Try implementing the following five rules for just seven days, and see what a difference it makes to your diet and overall wellness.

 

1. Eat whole foods only: Rule number one of this challenge means that you need to ditch your blueberry muffin in favour of eating oats and blueberries in their whole forms. Sass instructs, ‘When you eat packaged foods, only buy brands that contain “real food” ingredients—ingredients you easily recognise, can pronounce, and would use to make a “from scratch” version in your own kitchen. If a food contains even one ingredient that makes you think “huh?” skip it, at least during the clean eating challenge.’

 

2. Keep meals simple: ‘Delicious, healthy food doesn’t have to contain a lot of ingredients,’ Sass asserts. ‘Keep your meal ingredients to a minimum—just be sure to include a source of whole grains, lean protein, and healthy fat at each meal. For example, veggies and shrimp stir fried in sesame oil over a bed of brown rice seems restaurant quality but can be whipped up faster than takeout.’

 

3. Eat more slowly: If you grew up with brothers and sisters, you might have learned to eat quickly to stop irritating siblings nicking the food off your plate. However, you’re not in survival mode anymore, and eating slowly and mindfully has been proven to help with weight loss. To help you eat more slowly, Sass advises, ‘Put your fork or spoon down between every bite, and focus on the flavours and textures of your food.’

 

4. Schedule your meals and stick to your routine: Not only does this mean eating your meals at regular times; you also need to schedule in your snacks so you don’t stray off the path. ‘Try not to let more than about four hours go by between meals or snacks,’ Sass recommends. ‘Steady meal timing helps regulate your digestive system, blood sugar and insulin levels, and appetite.’

 

5. Listen to your inner compass: Anyone who has ever tried to lose weight will attest to the fact that you need to pay attention to what your body is telling you. So often, we binge on unhealthy foods not because we are hungry, but because we are bored, sad or simply not paying attention. Sass urges, ‘Eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full, meaning satisfied, not stuffed…get used to relying on your hunger and fullness cues to tell you when to stop and start eating.’

Categories: diet, Eat Slowly, eating, eating challenge, Food, nbsp, Routine, sass, Weight Loss, whole foods

How to Lose Weight without Going on a Diet – Seriously!

Urgh, dieting – is there are more heinous word in the English language? Just the word itself makes you want to run away screaming and dive into a pile of chips, so how on earth do you actually do it? Now that I think about it, do you even need to diet? In fact, it is possible to lose weight or maintain your weight without actually following a diet plan or depriving yourself of anything you truly want to eat – score.

 

Before we get started, at no point am I going to tell you to take pills, cut out foods or actually get on a diet plan. We’re looking at practical advice that can help you to be the weight you want to be and take care of your wellbeing, without “going on a diet” or even exercising, so to speak. The dirty little secret of weight management is you don’t have to starve yourself or exercise hours a day to achieve it. There, I’ve said it. Here are the tried-and-tested tips which, if you actually follow them, do help you to lose or maintain your weight goals.

 

1. Keep your blood sugar level balanced – by snacking: Although your mum always said it would spoil your dinner, snacking is absolutely essential for weight loss and maintenance, as well as your overall wellness. Letting your blood sugar level to rise and dip is the underlying culprit in daytime grogginess, hunger pangs and cravings. To keep your blood sugar level at a low and stable level, you need to eat several small meals a day – say five to seven – instead of two or three large ones. You should aim to consume 300-500 calories in each meal, compared to the average meal of about 1200 calories.

 

2. Eat whatever you want: I bet you didn’t expect to read that! Depriving yourself of the things you want to eat means that you will really feel that lack, and your brain will begin craving that item even more. That food you won’t let yourself have becomes forbidden fruit (well, let’s be honest, forbidden cake) and soon that treat temptation will be too much to bear, and you’ll give in and overindulge. The key here is to limit the amount of the food, rather than eliminate it altogether. If chocolate is your secret love then have a couple of squares – that’s fine! Just don’t eat a family-sized bar in one sitting. A slice of pie? Sure. The whole thing? Perhaps not. As with all things in life and wellness, everything in moderation.

 

3. Eat slowly and chew your food: When you ingest food, it takes about 20 minutes for your body to realise and register that feeling of fullness. That means if you wolf down your dinner, you’ll be reaching for dessert before your stomach has even dealt with the pre-dinner nibbles. Slow down and give your body time to register the food is there by taking small bites and making the meal last at least 20 minutes, as it should.

 

4. Mix up your tastes and textures: Weight management is a psychological game; you trick your body into doing what you want it to do by making the brain think you’ve given it what you’ve conditioned yourself to believe you need. Human beings are creatures of habit, making patterns and associations until food becomes a routine you don’t even think about. Doing something outside that routine, however, registers in your brain in a different way, making it stand out. Therefore, by eating a variety of foods – especially tastes and textures you’ve never tried before – your brain will register you have eaten more foods and will reduce hunger and cravings.

Categories: Blood Sugar, diet, Eat Slowly, Food, level, Lose weight, nbsp, sugar level, Variety, weight, Weight Management

How to Improve the Way You Start and End Your Day

Better wellness is an admirable goal, but why does it have to be so complicated? With superfoods, supplements and strict diet and exercise fads, you can be put off the whole thing before you even get started. However, if you make just a few small complementary changes and commitments to taking care of your health and wellbeing, you can simply and easily start to naturally detox your body, shed your weight, and feel great.

Firstly, start your day with water and lemon. A healthy metabolism begins with good digestion, and good digestion begins with an acidic stomach. If you add lemon to your – preferably room temperature – water, you will help to prepare your digestion for breakfast, as well as quenching your thirst, warding off your cravings and providing your body with a dose of immune system-boosting vitamin C. Remember to keep drinking water throughout the day!

However, it’s not just about starting your day right, but ending it right too by eating dinner before 8pm. Your body has a natural body clock with which you need to be in sync. Traditional Chinese medicine states that the best time of day to eat dinner is between 5pm and 7pm, so that your body has adequate time to digest before you go to sleep. At night, your body works to replenish and heal all of your organ systems, so giving it extra tasks – like digesting – makes your body less effective all-around. So, eat before 8pm and you will wake up feeling refreshed and balanced.

When you’re having your earlier dinner (or eating at any time for that matter) slow down and chew. The time it takes for your food to travel from the mouth to the stomach is approximately six minutes. Bearing this fun fact in mind, under-chewing and rushing your food will make it almost inevitable that you’ll overeat before you realise you have. Therefore, eating slowly is an easy way to control your portions, and lose weight. Also, eating quickly often indicates emotional wellness problems, such as anxiety and stress. Take control of your stress levels, no matter how low or high they may be, and you will speed up your metabolism and lose weight.

 

Categories: Dinner Before 8pm, Eat Slowly, Water and Lemon