Sticking to a diet is never easy, but some hints and tips can help you along the way. Here, dietician Helen Bond shares her twenty key steps to making your diet work for you.
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1. Ask the right questions
Before you start trying to lose weight, it’s important to ask yourself some important questions. Why do you want to lose weight? Is now the right time? Are you motivated to change? Why haven’t you been successful to date, and how confident do you feel about being successful this time?
Write all your answers down on paper, along with the pros and cons of losing weight. This way you can see clearly in ‘black and white’ the reasons why you want to lose weight. Making changes to your diet and lifestyle, and developing new habits isn’t easy, but having the motivation, willpower and being ready for the challenge is crucial to your weight loss success. Keep this list somewhere you can see it each day, such as on your fridge door or in your locker at work. Reading the list every day will constantly remind you what you want to achieve and it will also be useful to refer back to if the going gets tough.
2. Find inspiration
Find a photo you like of your old skinny self, to motivate you to lose the weight. Watch television programmes like ‘The Biggest Loser’, ‘The Food Hospital’ and real-life weight loss stories like ‘Embarrassing Fat Bodies’ for inspiration.
3. Set a realistic weight loss goal
A weight loss goal should be challenging and require you to make an effort, but not be an impossible mission. Over ambitious targets can be easily broken! But by setting smaller goals, which you have a real chance of reaching, you can boost your confidence in your abilities to keep on track until you arrive at your destination. Aim to lose about five to ten per cent of your initial body weight over a 3-6 month period. Once you’ve reached your goal, congratulate yourself and set another weight loss target.
4. Have a time scale
With today’s fast paced society many people want to see extreme weight loss results within the shortest amount of time. But it’s probably taken years to accumulate the extra weight — so taking a year or so to lose the weight is completely reasonable. Research shows it’s far healthier and safer to lose weight slowly and steadily — around 1 to 2lbs (0.5 to 1kg) each week. Experts agree that you’re more likely to maintain a healthy weight long-term at this rate of weight loss and you shouldn’t lose more than 2lbs (1kg) a week.
5. Forget crash diets
Whilst a celebrity endorsed, novel approach to rapid weight loss can certainly be an appealing prospect, ‘crash’ or ‘fad’ diets don’t work for long-term weight loss, and most aren’t healthy. The only way to lose weight is to eat a nutritionally balanced and varied diet with appropriately sized portions and burn off more calories than you eat.
6. Do the maths – it’s a simple equation
If you take in fewer calories than your body needs for day to day functions, it draws on its own fat stores to supply it with sufficient energy, and you’ll lose weight. You can achieve this by eating fewer calories, exercising more or doing a bit of both. Cutting your daily calorie intake by around 500 a day will help you to lose weight steadily and healthily — around 1lb (0.5kg) per week and you may lose more if you’re more active too. This is because 1lb (0.5kg) body fat contains 3500 calories. It may not sound like much, but it soon adds up over the weeks — lose a 1lb a week and your will be a stone lighter in 14 weeks or 3 ½ months! Most men will lose weight in average around 1800 calories a day and most women on 1500 calories.
7. Keep a food and mood diary
Most of us literally don’t know what we are eating, or how all the things we unconsciously eat are adding up – finishing of your child’s fish fingers, nibbling on the odd biscuit or pinching a chip! For long term weight loss you need to identify problem foods and ‘areas of weaknesses’ in your day. By keeping a food diary, you will become more aware of your eating patterns and the changes you need to make. Carry a small notebook with you and write down all the things you eat and drink on a typical day, along with any associated feelings. According to research in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine ‘dieters’ who jot down everything they eat and drink lose twice as much weight as those that don’t.
8. Take small steps
There are lots of simple things you can do to start to lose weight. You don’t need to make big changes, just a few small steps can make a real difference, whether it’s looking at food labels to cutting down on calories. Making sure you always start off the day with a healthy breakfast or signing yourself up to take part in a 5km charity race. As the Old Chinese Proverb said, it is better to take many small steps in the right direction than one great leap forward only to stumble backward.
9. Think positively
Focus on all the wonderful delicious, nutritious and seasonal foods that you can enjoy as part of your meals and for snacks, rather than all of the ones you need to cut back on. Eating is meant to be enjoyed and all foods have a place in a balanced diet. There is no such thing as good or bad foods, only good or bad eating habits — save ‘comfort foods’ for an occasional treat, not an everyday snack.
10. Speak out
Announce that you are serious about trying to lose weight to friends, family and work colleagues, so that they can support you and try not and sabotage your diet success with indulgent girlie lunches.
11. Eat regularly
You are far more likely to raid the biscuit tin if you’re starving, so make sure that you aim to eat three meals a day, spread evenly throughout the day and choose healthy snacks in between meals, such as a low fat yogurt, a piece of fruit or handful of nuts. For example, if you are allowed 1500 calories a day, you could have 300 calories for breakfast, 400 calories for lunch, 500 calories for dinner and two healthy snacks of 150 calories.
12. Remove temptation
Out of sight really can be out of mind. Clean out your cupboards and your fridge by removing sugary, fatty snacks and crave inducing comfort foods –they are much easier to avoid if they aren’t in your kitchen.
13. Treat yourself
Replace comfort eating with non food treats you know you will enjoy, such as a long hot soak in the bath or a facial at the beauty salon. If you have given up polishing off a bottle of wine a week and the average bottle is around €7, you’ll save €28 a month to put towards something nice.
14. Healthy snacking
Keeping nutritious snacks in your office draw, handbag, car and fridge allows for convenient and planned access. Fill up the fruit bowl with lots of colourful produce. Keeping healthy essentials in prime position in the fridge (low fat yogurts, vegetable sticks, low fat dips like salsa, chopped fruit etc) and in the larder (wholegrain bread sticks, oat cakes, dried fruit, nuts and seeds etc) will help you keep yourself on track and avoid the temptation of slipping back into old eating habits.
15. Plan your meals
Planning your meals helps ensure you get a balanced diet and reduces the temptation to stop off for ‘take away’ or order a pizza on the way home from work. Remember, it’s easier to stick to your shopping list if you shop when you’ve eaten and aren’t hungry — this will help avoid impulse buys.
16. Check food labels
Many foods have now introduced ‘Traffic light labelling Systems’ on pack. These labels are there to help you make healthier food buys. They show you ‘at a glance’ if the food has high, medium or low amounts of fat, saturated fat, sugars and salt. Try to eat more of the green and ambers and less of the reds. As a rule, low in fat is 3g of fat or less per 100g; low in saturated fat is 1.5g or less per 100g; low in sugar is 5g or less per 100g; low in salt is 0.3g or less per 100g.
17. Get active
Try to meet the governments recommended amount for exercise a week to boost your weight loss efforts, improve your mood and the way you feel about yourself — 30 minutes of moderate intensity activity, at least 5 times a week. It doesn’t need to be a punishing hour on the treadmill, just something that gets you hot and sweaty and a little out of breath but still able to talk. If you don’t fancy 30 minutes all in one go, split it into three 10 minute chunks or two 15 minute sessions.
18. Get some sleep
Research suggests that a lack of sleep may affect our appetite, making us more inclined to overeat. The hormones ‘ghrelin and leptin’ that control hunger and fullness are influenced by how much sleep we get, so getting a good night’s sleep may be vitally important in helping you to control your weight. Try to get seven or eight hours shut-eye a night! But what do you do when you are struggling to sleep? Have a look at your eating habits, as certain foods like milky hot drinks can help boost the levels of serotonin. This brain chemical becomes melatonin, a sleep – inducing hormone that’s secreted in the brain in response to darkness or low levels of light.
19. Avoid distractions while eating
Avoid watching television while you eat as it can make you eat far more calories without even realising it. Studies have found that it distracts people from listening to their ‘internal satiety cues’ which tell you that you’ve eaten enough. Research shows that overweight adults who cut their viewing time in half over three weeks burned off an extra 119 calories a day. In a week, that tots up to 833 calories.
20. Laugh out loud
A study published in the International Journal of Obesity shows laughter really is the best medicine for losing weight, by increasing the heart rate and calorie expenditure by up to 20 per cent. Just 15 minutes of laughter a day will burn 10 to 40 calories, depending on a person’s weight and the intensity of the laughter. That’s enough to lose between 1 and 4lb a year. Also, having a good laugh usually gives a mood boost, which in turn can help you feel better about yourself and motivated to lose those extra pounds.
Helen Bond is a Consultant Dietitian to the ‘123 hello me’ weight loss programme
