The Deal With Diets

High-protein diets. Low-fat diets. All-vegetable diets. No-carb diets. With all the focus on dieting, how do you figure out what's healthy and what isn't?

Lots of people feel pressured to lose weight and try different types of diets. But if you really need to lose weight, improving your eating habits and exercising will help you more than any diet.

 

What is the deal with diets?

The word diet has turn into a bit of dirty word.  It now means what fad you are on, which method you are using to restrict or torture yourself, short term fix or simply messing with your head. I use to be a very slim and went through a phase in my life where I was completely obsessed with food.  I thought about it every second of the day. I would literally dream about my ‘cheat meals’.  It made it incredibly hard to focus on anything else in my life.  It was a pretty crappy spot to be in and negatively changed my relationship with food. 

Women talk about it all the time. What about this diet, my friends lost 20lbs on this, how about shakes… paleo, vegan, juice diets, gluten free, fat free, sugar free?? The list goes on and on.  No wonder people feel confused.  It has completely over complicated food and left people completely guilty an unsure about their food choices. These are my Five Key Simplified Food Philosophy’s to take the overwhelm out of diet/food/nutrition.  They are not hard and fast rules, but I always come back to these core points. I lost over seven stone doing this, no tricks or fads. 

Mindful eating

‘If not dieting, then what?’ by Rick Kausman is an excellent book to wrap your head around mindful eating.  A simple questions to ask yourself when you are eating is. ‘I can have it if I want it, but do I really feel like it?’.  There is actually no right or wrong answer!

Mindful eating really challenges to listen to your body. What does you body want, how does your body react (positive or negative) to certain foods.  Choose to eat with the intention of caring for your body, with the attention to the affects on your body.

What are your beliefs?

It is totally a fair question to take your beliefs and values into account when choosing how you nourish your body.  Do you care for sustainability, eating local, vegetarian, organic, cheapest/budget friendly, religious considerations? This may change for you several times over your life time and shouldn’t be something you feel guilty about.

 
Educate yourself

There is always new research coming through, so be wary of jumping down the rabbit hole of the latest super food taking Hollywood by storm.  Don’t be ignorant to what you are putting in your body.  What is really in for your food? Get some basic understanding of how your body works, how food works so you know how to care for your body better.

  

Keep it simple

Think fresh, unprocessed, unrefined, few ingredients and ingredient labels you can read.  All makes sense right! If it isn’t food – don’t eat it! You know all those logical things your grandmother and earlier generations would have been teaching us.  Eat the ‘rainbow’ (colourful range of food) and eat in season.

 
Don’t restrict yourself.

Weather it be full food groups or avoiding social situations because of the ‘temptation’ you may be presented with.  It’s ok to indulge (just listen to your body, have you had enough, how do you feel afterwards?).  Food is fuel but it is also a wonderful cultural and social ritual that should be enjoyed.

How do you stay in shape?

 

Weight Loss tips!

We think everyone should feel good in their body, but sometimes we do need to drop a few pounds, for health, well being, or just to feel better about ourselves and there isn't anything wrong with that!

But there is an issue with wanting to be 'skinny' Generally when people talk about skinny people they are thinking about people with an ectomorphic body type. These people have little fat, little muscle and a delicate bone structure. Ectomorphs are either naturally skinny or it is straightforward for them to get skinny, e.g. Taylor Swift and Eva Mendes respectively. However, there are two other body types. Mesomorphs naturally build muscle and can gain fat quickly, but also lose fat relatively easy. Examples include Anna Kournikova, Janet Jackson and Jessica Biel. Endomorphic people have a body type that means they struggle to control the body fat percentage and have to work really hard at losing weight. Beyonce and Scarlett Johansson are endomorphs. Each of these three body types gains and loses weight with varying levels of ease. When planning to drop lbs remember:

• The ease or difficulty with which it takes to get slimmer will depend on your body type.

• What getting slimmer means to you should depend on your body type. If you have an endomorphic body your slim goal should not be Kate Moss, Eva Mendes or Taylor Swift (ectomorphs), but someone with an endomorphic body build.

• Being realistic means that you will achieve your goals and drop the fat, get rid of the wobbly bits and have a firm, lean body like Scarlett Johansson, Beyonce or Jennifer Lopez. The same goes for the other body types. Are you a mesomorph? Jessica Biel, Jennifer Garner and Jennifer Aniston are great examples. Determine your body type and find out who your weight loss role model is. You CAN get slim; just remember that it should mean different things to different people.

Healthiness trumps being thin. Therefore, your first and overriding goal should be to maintain or improve health. Your goal to get slimmer should come second. Ensure that all your plans are consistent with this principle.

 

 

HOW TO GET SKINNY TIPS

1. Determine your body type and choose a realistic role model. You can use the body type calculator to help you.

2. Determine and keep track of your body fat percentage. Ensure that you maintain a healthy level of body fat. Too little body fat can be just a dangerous as too much body fat, especially for women and even more so for young women. Ideally you should get your body fat percentage measured professionally. To get a ROUGH idea you can use the body fat calculator– but still get measured!

3. Determine your ideal weight based on your body type.

4. Create a calorie deficit by lowering your caloric intake by 15 – 20% below what you normally need to maintain your weight. You can use the calorie calculator to find out your calorie needs. Steer clear of crash dieting and extremely low calorie intakes to avoid triggering your starvation protection mechanism.

5. Zig-zag calorie intake (calorie rotation), i.e. change your calorie intake every few days. For example, you can have 3 low calorie days followed by 1 higher calorie day. This will keep your body guessing, avoid weight loss plateaus and reduces the likelihood of cheating.

6. Eat 5 – 6 small meals throughout the day to keep your metabolism high and to avoid cheating.

7. Cardiovascular exercise is an absolute requirement. If you want to get slim and toned, and avoid looking flabby, you have to exercise. Exercise will increase the calorie deficit you have created through diet to increase weight loss and also creates a better body. Dieting gets rid of fat, but it does not create a stunning body – exercise does. Exercise will improve muscle tone and increase your metabolism. The boost in metabolism is important, because dieting DECREASES metabolism. Exercise will help counteract that decrease, as well as improve your cardiovascular fitness and general health. Try a weight loss exercise plan based around cardio.

8. To get slim and look great you need to do resistance training. Dieting usually causes loss of muscle mass, which decreases metabolism, as muscle is metabolically active. Therefore, resistance training will help stave off the loss of muscle that usually occurs and increase metabolism. It is muscle that gives the body a healthy, shapely and tight contour. For example, anyone with nice legs also has to have great leg muscles, which gives those legs shape; otherwise they look unhealthy, shapeless and wobbly.

9. Learn how to run. Running is an excellent to get, fit and fabulous. It is a guaranteed way to get slim fast. Try a beginners running program.

10. Add HIIT (high-intensity interval training) to your exercise routine. This is a sure-fire way to blast fat and get skinny. It is a weight loss magic bullet. HIIT involves short bouts of intense exercise separated by short periods of recovery. In all HIIT only lasts about 20 minutes. However, studies suggest it is more effective than a steady-state 40-minute workout. Your metabolism stays elevated for up to 24 hours afterwards. Research also shows that HIIT may burn up to 9x more fat than regular exercise. HIIT works best when you mix it up with traditional cardio. For example, if you exercise 5 days a week, do 2 sessions of HIIT on non-consecutive days.

 

Do you have any tips?

 

Remember, before you start a new nutritional and/ or exercise program clear it with your doctor. If you have any questions about healthy weight loss and body fat percentages your doctor will be happy to help.