I’ve just read a great article from a journalist called Zoe Harcombe for The Guardian. While I never want people to think that I’m preaching, or that I have my diet and exercise regime sorted (because I’m still definitely a working progress), I try to regurgitate what I learn from my personal trainer about nutrition and workouts as much as possible.
He always tells me to buy fresh meat, fruits and vegetables, not to take supplements, and not to eat ready meals. EVER. We already knew most of that – right? But actually, the majority of women I know are constantly looking for low-calorie low-fat meals to consume and end up eating things like Weightwatchers ready meals and Slim-a-soups. Or they’re on something like the Cambridge Diet or a Juice diet. Meanwhile, they look disapprovingly at the complex carbs I’m eating for my lunch and ask me how many calories is in it.
My response is always: “I don’t care. Calories are stupid.”
Each serving of my quinoa & wholegrain rice is 216 calories – whereas a two-finger KitKat is only 107 calories. Does that mean the KitKat is better for me?
And a diet coke or coke zero has no calories in it whatsoever, so I can drink them all day long, can’t I?
I don’t look at food in the same way any more… I look at it as fuel for my body. I try to ensure that I always have protein and lots of nutrients on my plate, plus complex carbs to fuel my evening workouts. It frustrates me so much, when I hear the women in my office congratulating each other on how little they’ve eaten that day. “I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday” says one. “Oh, well done you!” says another. Honestly ladies, can you hear yourselves??? Your body needs food and water to SURVIVE.
If we take a long hard look at ourselves, we all know deep down how to get the body we want. We eat natural, healthy foods like meat, fish, fruit and vegetables, and we do a little exercise. That is all that’s required to maintain a good shape. So why do we all find it so difficult?
The NHS ‘eatwell plate’
News headlines this week revealed that British women under 20 are the most overweight in the whole of Western Europe. And it’s because of what they’re taught is a ‘healthy, balanced diet’ – part of which is to ‘eat plenty of starchy foods like bread and pasta’.
And the body conscious among them are taught that calories are bad things that you need to work off. To pre-empt this, many of them choose not to eat the calories in the first place, but many end up eating hardly anything at all.
“We have known for almost a century that calorie deficits lead to short-term weight loss, followed by rapid regain…You probably weren’t that overweight when you started the first calorie-controlled diet. You lost weight; gained it back and a bit more; tried again; lost a bit less; gained a bit more… In the UK females are starting to eat less from a younger age and, ironically, that’s why they’ll end up weighing more from a younger age.” (Zoe Harcombe, The Guardian)
Also something to bear in mind – when you lose weight, your fat cells shrink. But if you put weight back on, those same fat cells do not simply expand again. Your body creates new fat cells to put on top of the shrunken ones! So each time you put weight on and then try to lose it again, it gets harder and harder, because your body has more fat cells.
Please ladies (and gents). If you’re trying to lose weight, don’t do it through a ready-meal plan or faddy diet where you aren’t allowed solid foods and you’re left feeling miserable. Do it the RIGHT WAY by eating fresh, natural foods. There are too many people counting calories and not enough people counting chemicals.
Just Me and Fruit Tea 