to fill it.
If I was an unscrupulous diet pusher I would right now be directing you to a website to buy a special, branded ‘Eat Less, Fatty’ plate that cost fifty pounds or something. I’m not. My advice is have a look on-line for a nine inch plate, or – better still – try the charity shops.
Other things to consider
Be really careful about the amount of carbs that you eat. I don’t believe for a minute that carbs are bad for you. In fact, diet’s that cut out all the starchy carbs make me mad, you need them for energy and to make you feel full. However, we do tend to eat far too much of them. For example, my family would make spaghetti bolognese and fill a huge dinner plate with the pasta. Go to Italy, home of pasta, and you get about a fifth of that amount, because the Italians understand that carbs are only one part of the meal. The internet is your friend here. Search for single portion sizes of rice, pasta, potatoes etc. and weigh them until you are confident with how much you need.
Another tip: love your Tupperware. It is very easy when making a meal in bulk to eat more than a single portion. My way of dealing with this is to tub everything into single portion sizes and pop them in the fridge or the freezer. This is also great if you are a singleton – rather than making a supermarket ready meal, you can take something delicious and homemade out of the freezer.
Chapter 4: Diet Food: Is it worth it?
I want to take a minute to think about diet foods. By this I mean food items specifically aimed at people losing weight, e.g. low fat yoghurts, low calorie bread etc. My take on this I like to call the ‘rice cake phenomenon’. I would rather eat less of something nice with actual TASTE than subject my mouth to the horror of a rice cake.
Take low fat yoghurts for example. I like full fat yoghurts that are really creamy, which generally come in about 200 calories. A low fat yoghurt generally comes in around 50 calories, which is obviously much less, but they taste awful. I would much prefer to have one nice creamy yoghurt than four horrible ones.
So the question to ask yourself when thinking about switching to low fat food is ‘is it worth it?’. I take sugar in my tea and recently thought maybe I should stop. Then I discovered that there are only 16 calories in a teaspoon of sugar. For the sake of 16 calories I decided to keep enjoying my sweet tea.
Rather than buying specialist diet versions of food, you can instead make some simple substitutions that will make a huge difference. When I’m watching my weight I substitute a simple salad of rocket, tomato, peppers and cucumber for the white carbs part of a meal. For example, fish and chips becomes fish and a salad. You’ll be amazed at what a difference this makes.
Now I’m not saying that there aren’t some foods that you should be wary off. Be really careful with premade food, particularly ready meals and takeaways. That’s not to say never eat them, but you should at least be aware of the amount of calories you are consuming.
So here are a couple of horror stories. I love takeaway pizza, and could happily eat a medium pizza all to myself (although a couple of pieces might be kept cold for breakfast!). The well-known brand that I buy from has 200 calories per slice of medium pepperoni pizza. That doesn’t sound so bad does it? But here’s the killer. There are eight slices in a medium pizza so if you eat the whole thing that is a massive 1600 calories!
And supermarkets are no better. I love a curry, and my local supermarket do a chicken tikka masala meal for one which includes the curry, rice, naan and onion bhaji. It’s pretty tasty, but then it should be at 1150 calories. Again, there’s no reason why you can’t eat a meal this fatty, but be aware of how many
If I was an unscrupulous diet pusher I would right now be directing you to a website to buy a special, branded ‘Eat Less, Fatty’ plate that cost fifty pounds or something. I’m not. My advice is have a look on-line for a nine inch plate, or – better still – try the charity shops.
Other things to consider
Be really careful about the amount of carbs that you eat. I don’t believe for a minute that carbs are bad for you. In fact, diet’s that cut out all the starchy carbs make me mad, you need them for energy and to make you feel full. However, we do tend to eat far too much of them. For example, my family would make spaghetti bolognese and fill a huge dinner plate with the pasta. Go to Italy, home of pasta, and you get about a fifth of that amount, because the Italians understand that carbs are only one part of the meal. The internet is your friend here. Search for single portion sizes of rice, pasta, potatoes etc. and weigh them until you are confident with how much you need.
Another tip: love your Tupperware. It is very easy when making a meal in bulk to eat more than a single portion. My way of dealing with this is to tub everything into single portion sizes and pop them in the fridge or the freezer. This is also great if you are a singleton – rather than making a supermarket ready meal, you can take something delicious and homemade out of the freezer.
Chapter 4: Diet Food: Is it worth it?
I want to take a minute to think about diet foods. By this I mean food items specifically aimed at people losing weight, e.g. low fat yoghurts, low calorie bread etc. My take on this I like to call the ‘rice cake phenomenon’. I would rather eat less of something nice with actual TASTE than subject my mouth to the horror of a rice cake.
Take low fat yoghurts for example. I like full fat yoghurts that are really creamy, which generally come in about 200 calories. A low fat yoghurt generally comes in around 50 calories, which is obviously much less, but they taste awful. I would much prefer to have one nice creamy yoghurt than four horrible ones.
So the question to ask yourself when thinking about switching to low fat food is ‘is it worth it?’. I take sugar in my tea and recently thought maybe I should stop. Then I discovered that there are only 16 calories in a teaspoon of sugar. For the sake of 16 calories I decided to keep enjoying my sweet tea.
Rather than buying specialist diet versions of food, you can instead make some simple substitutions that will make a huge difference. When I’m watching my weight I substitute a simple salad of rocket, tomato, peppers and cucumber for the white carbs part of a meal. For example, fish and chips becomes fish and a salad. You’ll be amazed at what a difference this makes.
Now I’m not saying that there aren’t some foods that you should be wary off. Be really careful with premade food, particularly ready meals and takeaways. That’s not to say never eat them, but you should at least be aware of the amount of calories you are consuming.
So here are a couple of horror stories. I love takeaway pizza, and could happily eat a medium pizza all to myself (although a couple of pieces might be kept cold for breakfast!). The well-known brand that I buy from has 200 calories per slice of medium pepperoni pizza. That doesn’t sound so bad does it? But here’s the killer. There are eight slices in a medium pizza so if you eat the whole thing that is a massive 1600 calories!
And supermarkets are no better. I love a curry, and my local supermarket do a chicken tikka masala meal for one which includes the curry, rice, naan and onion bhaji. It’s pretty tasty, but then it should be at 1150 calories. Again, there’s no reason why you can’t eat a meal this fatty, but be aware of how many
Similar Books
