Many diets fail to tackle the underlying reasons for weight gain. Instead, they often impose strict restrictions on our favourite foods, leading to intense cravings. Additionally, some diets can be unhealthy by eliminating essential food groups, such as healthy fats or complex carbohydrates.
With over 15 years experience in healthy weight loss, this is what works!
What you need to know:
1. Planning - eating healthily involves thinking about it a few days before. When you don’t have the right food in the house, you are more likely to eat the wrong thing. Make your menu fit in with your work / social life so that you have quick meals on busy days, and can spend more time creating and batch cooking on easier days
2. Blood sugar balance - if you start the day on sugar, you are heading for a blood sugar roller coaster. Sugar highs are followed by crashes causing cravings for more sugar and raising stress levels, and the whole thing repeats. Healthy weight loss requires balancing each meal with protein, some healthy fats (nuts/ seeds, olive oil, avocado) and complex carbs (potatoes in the skins, brown rice, pulses) you will feel fuller for longer with less cravings. Cravings are not the same as hunger.
3. Willpower - are you supporting your will power? Are there foods in the house, or in sight that you don’t want to eat that don't support weight loss. Either don’t buy them or hide them. When going out for meals or socialising, check the menu first and create an agreement with yourself of how you are going to eat / drink when out, and stick to it.
4. Snacking - the food manufacturers convince us we need to snack, but if you eat two or three balanced meals per day, you won’t need snacks.
5. Keep a food diary - writing down what you eat and drink on a daily basis is very useful for noticing unhealthy patterns
6. Listen to your appetite. Do you eat when you aren’t hungry, or over eat because you are bored. Listening to your true appetite when your blood sugar is balanced will allow you to eat only when hungry rather than reacting to cravings
7. Fill half your plate with veg. Filling 50% of your plate with non starchy veg or salad is not only healthier, but means you eat less whilst still feeling full.
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