Christmas is coming. A time of year most people love, yet the dieter hates and fears. It can be the dieters number one enemy. It is very hard on Christmas day and the surrounding weeks not to pile on pounds. If you live in an area with a colder November – January climate you will want to eat more just so your body burns food and stays warm. So are you doomed to the post X-Mas Diet or can you prevent putting on so many pounds this year?

During this feature – The Christmas Dieter – we will be looking at low fat alternatives, healthy but fun Christmas meals and snacks, and whatever other healthy festive tips we can think of.

Today we are just going to look at a few tips to minimise weight gain around Christmas.

Tips and ideas

• Let people know you are on or still on a diet. This way they wont buy you chocolates and other tempting treats. Heck, you might get something you want off them instead!

• Make your own festive foods this year! Instead of buying cookies, chocolates or mince pies make your own from low fat ingredients and alternatives. You can make them look very festive and impress everyone you offer them to, too! Buy nuts without salt and dried fruit instead of chocolate covered fruit. Prepare early so you are not rushing around last minute buying loads of snack junk food

• If weight gain is inevitable on Christmas day, fine – why not break your diet for one special day. But at the same time dont pig out just for the sake of it. Also prepare for this weight gain by losing a bit extra from now till then. Lose 3 extra pounds before christmas, then when you put it on you will still be heading for your targets

• Go for lots of walks. There is usually something good to have a look at during this seasonal holiday. Go make the most of it.

• If you work, find something to do with your time off. Dont just sit down or you will eat just for the sake of it. Distract yourself by sending loads of X-Mass cards or shopping for the perfect present.

• Keep yourself and your house warm if possible. If you are cold your body will crave food.

In the upcoming issue we will look at a healthy Christmas Dinner/Lunch for you to cook.

The trouble with dieting is that you often want to eat when you don’t really need to. You get hungry because you are bored, hungry because you are eating the wrong foods, hungry because you are eating at the wrong time of the day, etc. So lets change all that by looking at why you are eating too much food and why you want to eat that much food.

1. You Are Eating The Wrong Foods

If you have your breakfast at eight and are hungry again by ten then there is a good chance you are not eating the right kind of foods in the morning. Same applies to lunch and dinner. So take a look at what you are eating! Would it count as junk food? Is it high in sugar? What you should eat more of are complex carbohydrates – foods that are hard for your body to break down. That means that it will take longer for your body to digest these foods and you will feel full the whole time that digestion process is occuring. Fiber is an excellent source of complex carbs. Most Americans eat way too little fiber and far too much sugary junk food.

If you find yourself feeling hungry all the time try adding a few of the following to your meal plans:

Brown Bread

Shredded Wheat and similar whole grain cereals

Lentils

Beans

Porridge

Pasta (brown preferably)

Potatoes

Spaghetti

Corn

Soy Milk

Onions

Apples, pears, plums, strawberries, prunes

Protein rich foods such as chicken and beef will also keep you full for quite a long time and won’t have too many calories (as long as they are not processed meats).

2. Your eating because your bored

We have all been there. ‘Hm I’m bored, maybe il go make a snack whilst i think about what i can do today..’

Its really not a good idea. Sometimes you don’t even notice yourself doing this. For a lot of people its routine. To stop you have to notice yourself doing this and then apply a lot of restrain. It really inst easy so the best thing to do is occupy yourself when you have free time. Food is not the only thing you can do for fun. Play a game, a musical instrument, watch tv or take up a new hobby. I really think eating due to boredom is up there in the top three weight gain reasons so give it the credit it deserves and avoid it.

3. Your portions are too big , your eating too fast- and whats that, your having seconds?!

It takes 10 – 15 minutes for your stomach to tell your brain that it’s full. That means that if you are one of those people that shovels food down far too quickly, you are going to be eating more than you actually want and certainly more than you need – you just don’t realize it till its too late. The key then, is to slow down your eating. This will help with digestion and means by the time you finish you will actually feel full.

4. You are eating because you are depressed

I’m not a psychologist, (In fact I’m not even sure i can spell the word correctly) but a lot of people eat because they are sad or depressed. Food, unfortunately, does have a comforting effect on most people, but it wont solve anything in the long run. If you think you are eating because you are depressed talk to someone about your problems – leave a comment and i’l try helping – but its best to talk to friends or family about your problems. I know its not as simple as you talk to someone about your problems and your no longer depressed, then hey presto you start losing weight, but it will be very hard to lose weight if you dont get your self happy. So start now with a huge smile, and from now on start each day like that too! Smile and say hello to people you pass on the street or meet on the bus. It will make both you and them feel much better!

5. You are eating at the wrong times of the day

Breakfast lunch and dinner are the three meals of the day – try not to skip any of them. Eat a proper meal for each and make sure you eat them at the right times. Alternatively try eating four smaller meals a day spread evenely throughout – its the best way of keeping your metabolism going as long as a Duracell battery and it will keep you full all day through! If you are hungry in between meals have a piece of fruit – an apple or a banana are both good choices.

Here are some simple but very useful rules to follow then trying to lose weight. After that are 10 things you should not do and to look out for when on a diet. These are from my own experiences.

10 Things To Do

1.Eat 4 smaller meals a day

This spreads your calorie intake over more time and makes it manageable for your body. The 4 meals should add up to your usual amount of calories (for the diet you are on). Remember, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It kick starts your metabolism – try fibre loaded breakfasts to keep yourself full or eat a couple of pieces of fruit as a healthy alternative.

2.Drink water or eat fruit when you are feeling hungry

Swap all your sweets and chocolate for fruit, or even nuts (a good source of fibre – but don’t buy salted!). If you are still hungry down a half glass of water, or just half a glass. This will suppress your appetite till your next meal. And that brings us nicely onto..

3.Drink 8 glasses of water a day

Not only will this suppress your hunger but water helps rinse out your body of all the bad stuff, such as toxins that plague it. 8 glasses is recommended, but really it depends on your build.

4.Add a little exercise to your day

I’m not talking about going for massive runs or taking up American football. What I mean is park a bit further away from work, get off the bus a step early, don’t take the lift or escalators, walk around the room on your break. Anything you can, it will all make a huge difference even though it might not seem like it at the time – and once you get used to these things they will become second nature!

5.Eat your meals slowly

It is important to eat slowly for a good reason. It takes about 5 – 10 minutes for your stomach to tell your brain that it is full. That means you could be shovelling food down for that period of time even though your full, you just don’t know it yet. So eat slowly! It will also help with your digestion if you chew your food well.

6.Cook your own meals

Supermarket microwave meals or oven box meals are out. You must buy your own food and cook it from scratch. So much rubbish goes into most of those quick meals and you have no control over it. At least when you buy and cook it all you know what’s in it! That’s good news for your health. Avoid too much salt, its bad for your blood pressure amongst other things. In fact look for a salt alternative – there are some good ones about. Whole grain foods are in, as are fresh meat, herbs spices, fish, and of course fruit and veg.

7. Eat your last meal of the day at least 3 hours before you go to bed.

You burn off calories buy moving, thinking, watching and using, but not by sleeping. Eat a big meal then go to sleep and you are just asking for weight to pile on.

8.Weigh yourself everyday.

This is not to see a pound fly off every day (as that wont happen), it is for motivation. See what you weigh and then think of what you want to weigh and want to look like. Invest in digital scales if you like, then you can see just the slightest change. If you did put on weight analyse what you did wrong (if anything) and adjust your diet so this doesn’t happen again in the future.

9.Keep a journal of your food eaten and exercise taken

There are some great free food journals on-line, such as fitday, where you will put down everything you have eaten, drunk and all the exercise you have done during a day. Then it will work out the calories you have eaten and the calories you have burned and generate stats and graphs for you to gaze at. Again, adjust if you see something not going according to plan. It is easy to find and eliminate what you are doing wrong this way.

10 Stick with your diet

This is the most important thing to do. A diet is a lifestyle change. You are not trying to look good or be healthy for the next 10 months. You are trying to change how you live life, you are trying to look good for ever, to live for longer. Stick with it. It will work.

10 Things Not To Do

1.Don’t put off starting your diet for another day.

We all love to make excuses. This time its your health we are concerned with. Forget tonight’s gorge, tonight ice cream or chocolate. Start right now! Go on!

2.Don’t think binge eating just this once is OK, and that you will never do it again.

Iv been there, iv eaten a lot and said I will make up for it the next day. But seriously, you cant make up for it in one day. It will probably take a whole week of increased exercise or dieting to make up for a huge pizza or Chinese takeaway, and it really is not worth it. If you have to, really limit your self, or better yet, cook it yourself from fresh.

3.Don’t give in to peer pressure

It doest matter how old you are, when you are with friends its hard to resist acting like everyone else. When going out for a meal it probably means having a big main course instead of a light dish or salad. Don’t listen to your friends, do what you think is right.

4.Don’t go on yo-yo diets

On and off diets are awful for your body. The more times you do this, the less effective diets become as your body gets used to them and will eventually just shrug them off. Remember, a diet is a life style change, not 90 days on 90 days off.

5.Don’t believe the fad diet hype

Fad diets don’t tend to work in the long term, even if they make you drop 12 pounds in a week. Which they wont. They are impossible to keep up because invariably they mean ridiculous eating habits such as cabbage soup only.

6.Don’t Drink too much alcohol

All alcohol is calorie laden, even spirits that look like water (vodka). On top of that, our bodies treat alcohol as poison and need food, make you crave food, to get rid of it or help absorb it (well it doesn’t literally absorb it but it has the same effect).

7.Don’t hide the fact that you are on a diet

This is very important. Tell everyone you know you are on a diet. They will almost all be supportive. You cannot hide the fact that you are on a diet or your diet will be a failure from the get go. It is not something to be embarrassed about. Losing weight and getting healthy is something to be seriously proud about.

8.Don’t set your targets too high

Short term targets that is. Do not tell your self you are going to lose 3-4 pounds a week because you wont do that each week. You may at the start, depending on your weight and water retention, but you wont all the time. And once you don’t hit that target you might feel like giving up. Set a realistic goal, a small goal. 1 – 2 pounds a week should be your usual aim, and if you don’t hit it, that’s OK – figure out where you went wrong and get back on the bike.

9 Don’t give up!

You will lose the weight as long as you stick with it. Things will go wrong, you will break some of these rules, you will snack and gorge and feel bad. But don’t give up, get back on track, analyse your mistakes, become stronger. You will get there if you keep going. Its not easy.

10.Don’t give up!

There are two good reasons I have repeated this step. One – it is the most important rule. Two – I ran out of rules. OK, there was one good reason. But seriously don’t give up and you will get there!

When feeling down look for inspirational stories on the net, or before and after pictures. Talk to friends and family. Leave comments on my blog. If you want to take up exercise find a sport you enjoy, it is the only way you will stick with it. It doesn’t have to be the best fat burning activity, just something you take pleasure from.

OK that’s it. Good luck everyone!

What is the best way to lose belly fat?

I have been looking for a way to lose belly fat for some time now. It is my problem area. I don’t just put a lot of my fat on to my tummy, i put nearly all of it there! And i’m sure I am not the only one. Unfortunately that is down to my genetics – different people put weight on in different areas. I have a friend who is constantly struggling to lose fat on her arms – it’s an on going battle with weights, aerobics and diets. She is jealous of my arms, and I am jealous of her abs. That’s just the way it goes. So I eat too much, and I get belly fat – what can I do about it?

The best way to lose belly fat

After years of gaining belly fat, then losing it, then gaining it… you get the picture – I have found out that the only thing you can do is to not aim to lose your belly fat! Instead you must simply look at losing weight in general. It is not possible to choose an area to lose weight from. You can not aim for you arms, stomach, butt or anywhere else. When you lose weight your body pulls out fat from all around your body. You can aim to tone and put muscle on in certain areas though. If your main exercise is sit-ups, it is not going to strip that fat from your stomach – it will pull it from all over you. So the only way to lose that belly, is to lose fat all over! That might not be a bad thing!

If you start doing sit ups and crunches you are going to develop great abs! This is a good thing, but only once you lose the layer of fat that is covering your abs at the moment. Build muscle without losing fat, and all you are doing is building muscle under your fat. This is going to push out your fat slightly more, and if anything make you look a little fatter. What you need to do is tone your abs – sit ups, crunches, whatever works for you – and also do plenty of aerobic exercise! If you do both you are going to have an amazing body revealed under the fat.

So is there a best way to lose belly fat?

As I talked about in the previous section, what you need to do is aim to lose weight – any weight! Exercise is really going to help, but don’t forget to diet, or at least eat healthy, or all that exercise is not going to help you at all. Here are some handy tips to help you lose that stubborn fat!

- Lose the fried food

- Take a brisk walk everyday

- Take the stairs instead of the elevator

- Replace chips/sweets with an apple/banana

- Don’t snack after dinner (your body slows down at night so cant burn off late night snacks)

- Eat high fiber foods – they will fill you up for longer!

- Eat negative calorie foods – I dare you to try putting on weight by binging on celery!

 

Just remember, don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Aim to lose weight slowly by making life style changes. It’s tough to starve yourself for long!

 

-rebecca

 

Any food that makes you lose more calories than you put on just by eating them are no good for an entire diet, (it would result in malnutrition) but as snack foods these things can be fantastic. These foods are also known as negative calorie foods. Usually it means the foods have calories, but so few of them that your body spends more than it gains eating and digesting them.

Celery – Quick example

Celery is a fantastic snack food. A single stick of celery contains around 4-6 calories. You will use about 10-12 eating it. Fresh celery tastes great, can be eaten raw with no preparation and will fill you up (eventually) as it contains lots of water – a great appetite suppressant.

List of Negative Calorie Foods

Berries (certain berries such as blue berries at least)

Cabbage

Celery

Cucumber

Garlic

Grapefruit

Grapefruit

Green beans

Hot Chilli’s

Lemon

Lettuce

Radish

Spinach

Tomato

Turnip

Water Melon

Cardboard (its edible just about, is negative in calories but really not recommended!)

These are most of the negative calorie foods. There are others people claim are negative calories, such as apples , peaches and plums but it seems unlikely considering they usually contain around 100 calories.

Try and replace sweets with sticks of celery, puddings with a slice of watermelon, your usual snacks with a slight salad made up of a few of the above, etc.  If you do this it will really be a bonus to your diet. Just remember not to replace proper meals with them!