RATING: 4 out of 10
User's comments:
Breakfast: Special K with low-fat milk
Lunch: Sandwich made from white bread and topped with ham, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce & mayo
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Dinner: Spaghetti and mince with grated cheese
Snacks: Dried fruit, nuts, muffins, Provitas, fresh fruit, biltong, droëwors
Late afternoon/evening, I crave sweets and chocolates. I don't exercise and have little willpower. I love junk food and eat out and have take-aways often.
I am 1,66m tall and weigh 90kg. I am 28 yrs old. I drink lots of water – about 1-2 litres per day.
Expert's comments:
I think I’ll start with your daily intake before touching on a few other points you need to consider for successful weight loss.
I am glad that you are eating regularly and not missing meals. The first action to achieving stable blood sugar and energy levels and to improving your metabolism is to never miss a meal. Unfortunately, your meal content is not necessarily appropriate for satisfying your hunger and preventing energy dips over time.
Your eating plan is definitely lacking in fibre. Breakfast as a meal should contribute significantly to your daily fibre requirements, which for an adult should range between 25-30g per day.
Although Special K is low in fat, it contains very little fibre per serving size. Better options would include Bokomo Fibre Plus, Weetbix, Kellogg’s All-Bran Flakes and Pronutro (Original, Apple Bake or Wholewheat), cooked oats and oat bran served with low-fat or fat-free milk or yoghurt.
So, why the fuss over fibre? Foods that are rich in fibre are more filling and in most cases are less energy dense and contain more vitamins and minerals than lower-fibre products. Fibre helps to ensure regular bowel movements and has various health advantages, including a role in reducing LDL (bad) cholesterol levels and controlling blood sugar levels. In this way, fibre plays an important role in the prevention of modern diseases of lifestyle.
A product which provides approximately 5g of fibre or more per serving is considered a good source of fibre. Fibre absorbs a lot of fluid from the body so it is essential to drink at least 6-8 glasses of water a day which you seem to be achieving – well done!
Good sources of fibre include vegetables (raw, frozen or cooked), fruit (fresh, canned or dried), legumes (peas, beans, lentils, baked beans, chickpeas), split peas, wholegrain breads, cereals, porridges (oats, oat bran) and seeds. In your case, you need to eat more fruits and vegetables – aim for “5-a-day”. Choose brown, wholewheat or low-GI bread instead of white, select a fibre-rich cereal or porridge and try to incorporate more legumes into your weekly intake.
Check your portions of each food group. Balance and moderation are key. You need to eat enough for your body and activity levels without feeling overfull. Dish up as much as you think will satisfy you, but remember that your eyes may be larger than your stomach. Rather underestimate than overestimate your needs. Enjoy meal times and the plate that is dished for you and try to avoid going for second helpings.
Here is a helpful guide to visualise portion sizes without having to measure any of the food:
CARBOHYDRATES/ STARCH: Approximately the size of your fist; a tennis ball; 1 slice of bread.
PROTEIN: The palm of your hand (no thicker than the ‘pinky joint’); 1-2 packs of cards.
FRUIT: Size of your fist; a tennis ball.
VEGETABLES: Unlimited.
DAIRY: 1 cup of low-fat milk; 1 small tub of low-fat/ fat-free yoghurt; matchbox block of cheese; 250-300ml drinking yoghurt.
FAT: 1-2 level teaspoons of oil (canola/ olive), ‘lite’ margarine, butter, peanut butter, regular mayonnaise; 1 tablespoon reduced oil/ ‘lite’ mayonnaise and salad dressing; ¼ medium avocado; any spreads ‘thinly’ on breads/ crackers; 1 small handful of nuts or seeds.
Check that the cheese you eat is thinly sliced or grated and sprinkled thinly on your meal. Chose lower fat cheeses, e.g. reduced-fat cheddar and gouda, Dairybelle Delite, feta, mozzarella.
For your snacks, a handful of nuts and a small muffin – the size of your fist or a tennis ball – would be appropriate.
Your problem time seems to be late afternoons and evenings. This is when you need to be extra careful about your food choices. Unfortunately, eating sugary foods results in further cravings for sugary foods as the effect on your blood sugar is a sudden increase followed by an equally dramatic drop, making you feel shaky, weak, tired and hungry again for a ‘quick fix’.
Make sure you only have healthy snack choices available to choose from. The snacks need to contain some fibre and be low in fat to keep your energy levels stable until dinner.
Below are some ideas for healthy snacks:
Fresh fruit or fruit salad. Low-fat/ fat-free yoghurt and mixed seeds can be added over the fruit.
Dried fruit rolls, sticks and bars – e.g. SAD mebos sticks/ bars.
Health bars – e.g. Woolworths Cranberry & Almond bar, Apricot & Sesame Seed bar, Yoghurt & Nut bar; Mixed Seed bars, Jungle Oats Berry/ Yoghurt bars.
1 small muffin (banana, carrot, date and nut, or bran) and a fruit.
175ml yoghurt or 300ml drinking yoghurt (low-fat/ fat-free) and a fruit.
Peanuts and raisins or dried-fruit-and-nut mix with a fruit.
A slice of wholegrain bread, rice cakes, Cornthins Provitas or digestive biscuits with peanut butter and/or honey. Other toppings could include cottage cheese, cheese, Oxo, Marmite, avocado pear, fish paste, jam (obviously adding tomato, lettuce and cucumber to the topping will increase the nutritional value).
Vegetable bites, e.g. tomato wedges, cucumber or carrot sticks, celery sticks, baby tomatoes (fat-free or low-fat cottage cheese will add some taste and variety).
Popcorn (made with minimal canola or olive oil).
Biltong (ostrich, game meat, lean beef).
Take-aways eaten now and again (1-2 times a month) will not be a problem if they form part of a healthy, balanced eating pattern. You seem to be eating them far more frequently than this. It is still possible to make ‘healthier’ choices when it comes to buying or choosing fast-foods.
Here are some ideas for making healthier take-away and fast-food choices:
Steers, Nando’s and Kauai offer choices which are grilled and generally reduced in fat by comparison to their other fast-food counterparts.
When eating pizza, choose those with thin bases and make sure your toppings include mainly vegetable and low-fat options, e.g. grilled chicken, mince, steak, avocado.
Choose salad burgers, grilled beef or chicken burgers, steak rolls and sandwiches with lettuce, tomato and other raw vegetables as part of the fillings.
Ask for your burgers and open or toasted sandwiches to be made without butter or margarine.
Ask for salad dressings or sauces separate or on the side. Lower-fat sauce choices include tomato, monkey-gland and BBQ.
Chicken or beef schwarma; wraps; chicken kebabs or char-grilled chicken with rolls or pita bread are great options.
Sushi is usually very low in fat.
Thai food generally contains lots of veggies, but be careful of the deep-fried dishes, e.g. satays, spring rolls, deep-fried chicken, pork or vegetables.
Limit your intake of slap chips or rather order a roll, salad or rice.
‘Skinny’ smoothies, lattés or coffees prepared with skim milk.
Choose water or fruit juice rather than fizzy cold drinks.
You should try to reduce you overall fat and sugar intake. Try to aim for ‘lower-fat eating’ rather than no fat – overall fat intake should be limited but not eliminated.
Limit unhealthy fats, i.e. those fats obtained from animal products (saturated fat) and trans fatty acids (hard margarine, coffee creamers, coconut). Include more healthy fats, i.e. monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats from plant oils (canola oil, olive oil, avocado pear, peanut butter).
Here are some helpful hints for lowering your fat intake:
Choose low-fat or fat-free milk and dairy products, e.g. yoghurt, cottage cheese, evaporated milk. These options could replace cream in recipes.
Choose soft rather than hard margarines.
Wait until toast has cooled down before spreading margarine or butter and spread it thinly.
If you use fat, choose low-fat options for mayonnaise, salad dressings and margarine and use sparingly.
Never use two ‘fats’ to spread on your bread, i.e. margarine/ low-fat mayonnaise/ peanut butter/ avocado pear – spread thinly and use alone.
Remove all visible fat from meat before preparation. Avoid the skin of the chicken and ideally remove prior to cooking.
Aim to eat less red meat (2-3 times a week). Use lean meat options, e.g. lean mince, lean beef or lamb, ostrich, venison or soya mince. The fattiest meat is lamb, followed by beef, pork, chicken, ostrich and venison.
Eat fish (fresh or canned) 1-2 times a week
Avoid processed meats – sausages, polony, salami.
Limit the addition of any form of extra fat during food preparation (e.g. margarine, butter, cream, mayonnaise, oil, cheese).
Use low-fat cooking methods: boil, steam, grill, braai over coals, bake in the oven, poach, stir-fry. Do not fry food. If you do need to fry food, use very little oil (canola or olive oil) or try to prepare with no oil at all.
Limit the amount of gravies and sauces.
Read food labels to assess fat content. A product is low fat if it contains < 3g fat/ 100g and fat free has < 0.5g fat/ 100g. Practically, choose foods that contain fat between 3 – 10% and try to stick to about 10 – 13g fat/ meal. This can be achieved by adding only one fat to a meal and following the above-mentioned cooking methods.
Although dietary changes are essential in the steps to a new lifestyle, the combination of dietary changes as well as behavioural changes and regular exercise has been shown to be the most effective way to achieve and maintain weight loss.
You are not exercising at all, which is something you will need to introduce to your daily routine. Exercise is also a great ‘de-stresser’ after a long day behind a desk and computer. Many people find the gym quite intimidating and often off-putting, resulting in less frequent physical activity. Brisk walking is still considered one of the best exercises.
You should strive to exercise at least 4-5 times a week for 45-60 minutes at a time. This will ensure that you are burning adequate energy compared to intake, increase your metabolism and muscle mass (metabolically active tissue) and reduce fat. Remember that muscle mass is three times heavier than fat mass, so if you are exercising more frequently than usual and building muscle mass, your weight may in fact appear to decrease very slightly at times.
Try to also be more active on a day-to-day basis, e.g. climbing the stairs vs. the lifts, walking to the shops, parking far away from the entrance to the shopping mall, doing chores around the house, gardening etc. If you struggle to find a whole hour a day, the same benefit can be obtained from breaking your allocated exercise time up throughout the day, e.g. 3 sessions of 20 minutes instead of 1 session of 60 minutes.
You should measure your percentage body fat and your waist circumference (less than 88cm for females) to assess any improvement in your body composition. Losing centimetres rather than kilograms tends to be a better reflection of losing fat mass. In reaching your goal weight, remember that attaining optimal health and not just weight loss should be your overall mission.
This brings me to my next point: it is necessary for you to set yourself realistic and attainable goals for weight loss. The best way to success, without setting yourself up for failure, is to define a weight goal that you can reach by making small changes step by step.
Remember you should never aim to reduce your weight by more than 2 BMI points (or 5-10% of your current weight) at any one time if you really need to lose weight. In your case, this would be to lose 4,5-9kg at first. Once you have reduced your weight by 2 BMI points and have been able to maintain the new weight for at least 6 months, you may try to lose another 2 BMI points.
Avoid weighing yourself more than once a week as the scale should not be your measure of good health and wellbeing. Your aims would be to reduce your waist circumference, build muscle mass, lose fat mass and achieve a BMI of 25kg/ m², which would mean a weight of 68-69kg for your length.
To lose 20kg at an acceptable rate (about 0,5 – 1kg per week), using both moderately restricted energy intake and increased physical activity, means you need to remain on a weight-reduction programme for at least 20 weeks (5 months) without failing.
To motivate yourself, collect small successes to achieve your goal of being healthy which have nothing to do with what the scale tells you, e.g. walking with a friend 4-5 times a week, not frying food at home, doing something creative and practical, e.g. sewing, gardening etc.
Understand your reasons/ triggers for eating – hunger, stress, homesickness, frustration, tension, lack of self-discipline, the fact that others eat, difficulties to adapting to new eat patterns, increased availability of money to spend on food and socialising (eating & drinking with friends, peer pressure influences).
Always use hunger as your guide for eating. Occasionally, you will eat for other reasons, but let that be the exception rather than the rule. Social eating is of course not forbidden, but make sure that what you eat and how much you eat is in line with a healthy eating plan. Social eating can be managed by choosing your snacks wisely, sharing portions with friends, eating slowly, and drinking as much water as you can during a social occasion.
Remember that “treats” such as sweets, chocolates, chips/ crisps, cake, ice cream, alcohol etc. are eaten for taste and pleasure. They are packed with energy, but very little real nutrition and should therefore only be eaten to treat yourself occasionally. Make sure you savour and enjoy them and limit yourself to small portions.
Never deprive yourself of anything as this tends to result in binging on the specific forbidden food. You should stick to a regular and healthy eating pattern as much as possible. Generally, eating three balanced meals a day is not associated with weight gain, but rather what and how much is eaten between meals.
Here are a few points to summarise what you need to do to ensure healthy weight loss, which is approximately 0,5 - 1kg per week:
Eat three meals a day with two healthy snacks in between meals. Meals should contain fibre-rich carbohydrate, moderate protein and low fat. Include a wide variety of foods from all food groups (dairy, meat, fish, poultry and eggs, starches, fruit and vegetables, and fats) and don’t remove foods or food groups completely from your daily intake.
Aim to eat at least 5 fruits and vegetables daily (e.g. 2 fruits and 3 vegetables).
Control portion sizes and avoid eating seconds.
Drink at least 1,5 litres (6-8 glasses) of clean water a day.
Exercise up to 4-5 times a week to ensure you are burning adequate energy compared to intake, to increase your metabolism, increase muscle mass and reduce fat.
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