Plan Ahead

Eating regularly and eating the right things are vital to balancing blood sugars.  If you skip breakfast because you don’t have the time it will mean that at some point your blood sugars will drop and you will grab the quickest or nearer food to get your sugars up which is often a chocolate bar, biscuit or crisps and these then create a blood sugar spike.  Regulating your blood sugars and avoid putting your body under stress is key to good health.  Skipping breakfast means that you are playing catch up all day! 

The secret to maintaining a balanced diet is

• planning ahead

• eat roughly every 3 hours

• make the food count. 

Look at your daily routine and ask yourself, can you do anything differently (change your behaviour)?  Getting up just 5 minutes earlier could mean you have time to prep a quick breakfast, put a healthy snack together for midmorning. Cooking a batch of quinoa, cous cous or bulgar wheat can form the basics of at least 3 day’s lunch.  It just takes a little bit of advanced planning and you could save yourself calories and money!

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Portion size

Eating the right size portion (food eaten in one sitting) is as important as eating the right food.  Prepping meals (see above), reading food labels and weighing things will mean that you will get a better understanding of the serving sizes.  Better portion control will lead to better digestion, controlled blood sugars (see above) and ultimately weight loss. 

 

The link below provides excellent examples of portions on a variety of foods:

www.bupa.co.uk/health-information/nutrition-diet/portion-size

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Drink More Water

Water is an essential element to our body’s maintenance and repair.  Water is a natural appetite suppressant but more importantly without enough water your body will struggle to metabolise fat!  Insufficient fluids will also make you feel lethargic and less inclined to do any physical activity.

Water requirements vary from person to person.  You might have heard mention of 2 litres/8 glasses a day but the colour of your urine is a good indicator that you are getting sufficient.  (Download my Urine Colour Chart from my Peeing and Pooing Blog).  2 litres is a good starting point but if you exercise, sweat a lot, have a manual job or are a larger build then you will need more.  Do not underestimate how much water you use during exercise, vomiting or have diarrhoea.

There are some very good apps, such as Water Reminder-Daily Tracker,  available that will prompt you to drink and measure your daily consumption.

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Get Active

Note I do not say exercise!  Increasing your basic physical activity levels will dramatically improve your physical and mental wellbeing and will increase the number of calories you burn too.  To maintain your current weight, you can just continue as you are and nothing much will happen. conversely if you get more physically active and change your eating habits then your weight will go down.  It’s that simple.  Look for easy ways to grab 10 minutes here and there to start with and this will build your motivation to stick with it. Park the car further from the office, take the stairs, use a toilet further from your desk, carry out a simple routine in the house before you watch tv or in the adverts (see below)

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https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/213740/dh_128145.pdf

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Change Your Behaviours and Habits

Unfortunately we all have formed habits and behaviours that can be our undoing when it comes to weight loss.  For example, do you associate Friday night with take away or pizza?  Do you eat your food in front of the TV?  Do you clear your plate because you don’t like to see things go to waste?  Do you throw the same foods into your supermarket trolley every week?  Identifying and being aware of your current habits and starting to build better ones is the foundation to weight loss success.  Record your day in detail from waking up and switching off the alarm to resetting the alarm before you go to sleep and look at all the behaviours and habits you do without thinking.  Do you shower, clean teeth, get dressed, do hair or perhaps you shower, dress, hair, teeth.  Initially don’t change anything just record all your daily habits.  Once you have carried out this exercise, look at your actions in more detail and ask yourself which of these habits and behaviours should I stop/change because they are bad behaviours?  What would be a good habit that I would like to implement? Some behaviours we have genetically inherited from our ancestors and others we have grown up with so, making changes can be difficult but identifying what needs to change is a good starting point.

 

For further help with behaviour change coaching sign up for a coaching session.

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