GEORGIE - Sunday 7th FEB
With Rosie's "Daily Diet" blog fresh in our minds, I thought it might be good to share with you a few little helpful ‘keeping on track’ tools.
I personally suffer two failings when it comes to my nutrition. It’s not WHAT I eat, as I like the healthy stuff and can keep my ‘treat’ food to a sensible level - it’s HOW MUCH that counts. The first problem is that I am a pig, so put it in front of me and I will eat it (that, my friends, is a whole other blog that we shall get around to soon) and the second is that if I don’t track what I put in my body, then I don’t keep my weight constant or am not able to lose a few pounds.
The primary function of diet programmes such as WeightWatchers is that you COUNT how many points (or calories) you are putting in your mouth a day. I don’t advocate fastidious calorie counting, and like Rosie said, I don’t advocate eating less then you should (it only makes your body store the fat) but knowing WHAT you are putting in your body everyday really helps.
I remember 3 years ago when I moved to America; a little on the chubby side, and a little inspired by the huge levels of obesity around me, I changed it all up. I started properly exercising and eating well and that was the start of all this. BUT about six months in, after an initial weight loss of the extra chub I stopped losing weight. I wanted to lose another 5 kilos (10 lbs) and it wasn’t happening. My trainer at the time recommended a food diary. I wrote down everything I ate, and he looked at it. Amazing how often I was going well over my daily limit of calories when I wasn’t paying proper attention! I started researching ways to track what you put in your body for an article last year so though I might share with you a few of the results in case they help!
www.sparkpeople.com
This online community boasts 7 million US members alone. It has an online daily nutrition and exercise tracker that takes a while to get used to but takes 5 minutes a day once you have it. It’s also a great way to help you track your sugar, carbs and protein intake. (I NEVER manage to eat enough protein no matter how hard I try!). There are also thousands of online team leaders and other ‘sparkers’ who get involved in lots of online discussions that can help you feel less alone on the sea of good health!! They will also send you 'you can do it' emails that help motivate!
Loseit! App for Iphone
This is my saviour. A little icon on my iphone screen that lets you track what you eat and offset it against exercise at the touch of a button. There are other apps for iphone and Blackberry but having tried them all out for an article I was writing this is the one I would recommend the most. Recently this app has been tied up to a Loseit! website which has expanded its capability so I highly recommend this if you are in iphone land. (Available at the App store and last time I looked it was FREE!)
WeightWatchers
The reason this programme works is that you quantify what you put in your body and stick to the limits they set you. Zar did WeightWatchers with great success and will tell you that the only way you can fail to get healthy and STAY healthy on this programme is if you fail to count your intake properly. It’s that simple!
Finally - Keep a food diary!
One of my best friends in London is a GP. She says she cannot believe the amount of overweight/obese people who come to her saying “I hardly eat anything but I’m still fat”; to which she ALWAYS sends them home to keep a food diary for 2 weeks. They write down EVERYTHING they eat and drink in that period and she looks it over. She says its unbelievable that so many of these people are regularly eating more then a thousand calories over their daily needs and wondering why they are struggling. Keeping a diary of what you eat takes discipline but is a great way to LEARN about the nutritional value of what you are eating and thus how much you should be shovelling down your throat. It helps moderate the amount of ‘treat’ food you eat and monitoring the amount of calories you intake in alcohol can sometimes be a sobering experience for some!
Hope these help, please feel free to post comments on any or ALL of our blogs - see you all next week in blog land!
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