here’s where I shoot myself in the foot, but let’s face it, I’m not in this for the glory. You probably don’t need this book. You know yourself how to lose weight, you just don’t want to do it. There is no magic formula, but if there was it would go something like this…
a + b + c = d
In this formula a = eat less, b = exercise, c = good self-worth and d = attaining a healthy, happy weight. So just eat less, do a little bit of exercise, don’t beat yourself up all the time and you will be slimmer and happier.
Of course most of us slip up on this. We might manage eating less, but we can’t be bothered exercising. We might go to the gym five times a week but ruin our self-belief by obsessing over every pound lost or gained.
Just because the solution is easy, doesn’t mean it’s easy to achieve it. This is where you may just need this book. Imagine me as one of those rare friends who is brutally honest but has your best interests at heart. Instead of saying, ‘I really don’t think the guy who has been sleeping with your sister is right for you’, or ‘Are you sure you should be playing so much on-line bingo?’ I am telling you to change your lifestyle for the better.
Chapter 2 Why I hate diet books
And diet TV shows. One of the most awful things I have ever seen was on a diet show. A certain TV nutritionist (BEWARE this term, you need no formal qualifications to be a nutritionist, unlike a dietician) was attempting to ‘help’ two people trying to lose weight. Instead a sensible diet plan, she started boiling up some brussels sprouts in water, with no seasoning. Gad, I thought, brussels sprout soup without even a stock cube, how awful. But no. She then proceeded to REMOVE the sprouts, and serve them slightly green sprout cooking water! I have never seen the like.
So what can we learn from ‘un-brussels sprout soup’. Firstly, never trust an extreme diet. Yes, you will lose weight if you eat un-brussels sprout soup, but it’s simply not sustainable. The same goes for any extreme food solution. That is why I’ve based the anti-diet plan in this book roughly around a simple reduction in calories. So when you reach your target weight simply increase your calories to the average for your gender (2000 for women, 2500 for men). After all, when you’re dieting you are playing with your health so be very, very careful about anything that tells you to drink pepper water, or eat nothing but meat.
And you will notice my recipes do not contain brussels sprouts. In fact, none of my recipes are specifically ‘diet’ recipes, and I hope that means that you can enjoy them with others. It also means that you can enjoy them, and keep eating them, long after you have stopped trying to lose weight.
Oh, and one last thing about diets. Never trust anything where you have to keep giving them money to keep doing the diet. A friend at the moment is doing a dvd course that involves exercises and a diet plan. The dvds cost £150. And if you want to keep going with it? Well then you naturally have to pay extra for all the add-ons. That is a whole lot of money. And I bet I know what it’ll tell you: eat less, exercise more. No one would be getting hundreds of pounds from me for that advice.
Chapter 3: The Big Secret: Portion Control
If you only take one thing from this book, this is it:
YOU NEED A SMALLER PLATE
That’s it. I said it was simple. To lose weight you just need to buy a dinner plate with a diameter of nine inches or less. So here’s why.
Standard dinner plates seem to be continually getting bigger. To keep your weight down, I advise a nine inch plate, but most dinner plates are considerably larger than this. Put simply, if you have a bigger plate you will increase your portion size
a + b + c = d
In this formula a = eat less, b = exercise, c = good self-worth and d = attaining a healthy, happy weight. So just eat less, do a little bit of exercise, don’t beat yourself up all the time and you will be slimmer and happier.
Of course most of us slip up on this. We might manage eating less, but we can’t be bothered exercising. We might go to the gym five times a week but ruin our self-belief by obsessing over every pound lost or gained.
Just because the solution is easy, doesn’t mean it’s easy to achieve it. This is where you may just need this book. Imagine me as one of those rare friends who is brutally honest but has your best interests at heart. Instead of saying, ‘I really don’t think the guy who has been sleeping with your sister is right for you’, or ‘Are you sure you should be playing so much on-line bingo?’ I am telling you to change your lifestyle for the better.
Chapter 2 Why I hate diet books
And diet TV shows. One of the most awful things I have ever seen was on a diet show. A certain TV nutritionist (BEWARE this term, you need no formal qualifications to be a nutritionist, unlike a dietician) was attempting to ‘help’ two people trying to lose weight. Instead a sensible diet plan, she started boiling up some brussels sprouts in water, with no seasoning. Gad, I thought, brussels sprout soup without even a stock cube, how awful. But no. She then proceeded to REMOVE the sprouts, and serve them slightly green sprout cooking water! I have never seen the like.
So what can we learn from ‘un-brussels sprout soup’. Firstly, never trust an extreme diet. Yes, you will lose weight if you eat un-brussels sprout soup, but it’s simply not sustainable. The same goes for any extreme food solution. That is why I’ve based the anti-diet plan in this book roughly around a simple reduction in calories. So when you reach your target weight simply increase your calories to the average for your gender (2000 for women, 2500 for men). After all, when you’re dieting you are playing with your health so be very, very careful about anything that tells you to drink pepper water, or eat nothing but meat.
And you will notice my recipes do not contain brussels sprouts. In fact, none of my recipes are specifically ‘diet’ recipes, and I hope that means that you can enjoy them with others. It also means that you can enjoy them, and keep eating them, long after you have stopped trying to lose weight.
Oh, and one last thing about diets. Never trust anything where you have to keep giving them money to keep doing the diet. A friend at the moment is doing a dvd course that involves exercises and a diet plan. The dvds cost £150. And if you want to keep going with it? Well then you naturally have to pay extra for all the add-ons. That is a whole lot of money. And I bet I know what it’ll tell you: eat less, exercise more. No one would be getting hundreds of pounds from me for that advice.
Chapter 3: The Big Secret: Portion Control
If you only take one thing from this book, this is it:
YOU NEED A SMALLER PLATE
That’s it. I said it was simple. To lose weight you just need to buy a dinner plate with a diameter of nine inches or less. So here’s why.
Standard dinner plates seem to be continually getting bigger. To keep your weight down, I advise a nine inch plate, but most dinner plates are considerably larger than this. Put simply, if you have a bigger plate you will increase your portion size
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