13th
October 2013
Good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they
be executed!
Are you one of those people who wants to lose weight but
just cuts back a little and hopes for the best?
Have you been disappointed at the scales because you thought you’d been
good yet you didn’t get a weight loss?
That’ll be because your body keeps an accurate record of everything you
eat and drink even if you don’t. Successful
weight loss does take some effort and if you think about it, it’s difficult
to make changes to your diet when you’re not paying close attention to what you
are eating! So is it time for you to
pick up a pen and put down your fork?
Would it help you to know exactly how much, how often and why you’re
eating and making certain choices? It’s
not just about knowing how many ProPoints you’ve had, look for patterns in your
eating, do you have any triggers or habits that may be contributing to your excess
weight?
Even track the zero foods, because remember nothing in life
is ‘FREE’, everything still has calories in and ultimately gets recorded by the
body. It’s good to journal whatever plan
you’re following, even the F&H which stands for Filling & Healthy by
the way not Fat & Happy, please remember portion sizes do matter on that
plan too, you’re supposed to eat until you’re satisfied, comfortably full, not
until you can’t breathe – it isn’t an all you can eat buffet! Just because something is highlighted in
green to let you know it’s a F&H food doesn’t mean you should eat copious
amounts of it. We shouldn’t be eating ‘load’s
of anything, everything in moderation and be aware of those portion sizes.
Your food diary doesn’t have to be completed in an obsessive
kind of way, if you’re out and about and you don’t have it just take a photo or
make a note on your phone, you can transfer it across later, I’ve only just got
round to journaling Friday and Saturdays food as I was out and about most of
both days, but it was all on my phone, food and mood I tend to track more when
I’m aware my eating patterns aren’t just about the food, as soon as I’m aware
that I’m not eating because I’m hungry I start to make notes about what’s going
on as well as what I’m eating to try and find out why I’m eating in that way.
There have been studies that prove people who keep a food
diary lose more weight so if that’s likely to encourage you to do it then yep
it’s true, people who write it down lose more weight but for me its about
learning about myself, working out my patterns, my triggers, my reasons for
eating.
Of course when you do it – be honest, its amazing how we try
to not just cheat the plan but lie to our diary too! It’s almost as if, well if it isn’t written
down, it never happened…. Also make sure
you’re accurate in your records, ‘small portion’ isn’t really as accurate as
100g of… or 4pp worth of…. My idea of small and your idea of small are two very
different things!
We all have habits that it’s good to find out about, if we
don’t know we behave in certain ways we can’t change them, lots of things make
us want to eat such as the time of day – through routine we condition our
bodies to expect breakfast, dinner and tea at the same time every day, one of
the reasons you get hungry at lunchtime is because that’s the time of day you’ve
eaten for the last few years! There are
things that make us want to eat MORE than we normally would, that could be just
the sight of food; just looking at it is enough to get our mouths watering, and
the smell, that’s one of the key cues to eat. Also having lots of choice can make us eat
more than we usually would, who can resist a pudding when it’s offered? Then there’s booze – drinking hasn’t been
scientifically proven to stimulate appetite, however too much can impair your
judgement, causing you to eat more, it may just be that your resistance has been
lowered and you get ‘sod it’ syndrome!
And you may have noticed you’ve want to eat more the last few weeks,
that’ll be the drop in temperature, the colder it is, the more people tend to
eat, which is one of the reasons restaurants have their thermostats set to
low! Did you know eating a meal heavy in
refined carbohydrates such as white pasta, the body may crave food again within
only a few hours because these foods cause blood sugar to drop, and when our
blood sugar is crashing we’re gonna be a lot more interested in food”. By keeping a food diary, you’d start to
notice these and other patterns in your eating.
On that note, I’m off to make a cuppa, have a look at what I
fancy for breakfast, then I’ll write it in my journal, I’m on week 5 and I’ve
already noticed a few patterns, one being if I haven’t had a great
Friday/Saturday food wise, I have a habit of thinking “oh well I get weighed
Tuesday and start a new week, no point in bothering till then!” I will be bothering of course because that’s
two days I can do well with.
Eat Gorgeous BeYOUtiful and enjoy your day xx
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