Dieting = Will Power versus Won’t Power

What on earth is that supposed to mean? I hear you ask – good question.

Well here’s my rationale. 

Personally I used to really struggle with dieting. Main reason being that it meant I’d have to be strong willed, disciplined and I’d have to deny myself all the things I love to eat and drink. So when skinny people say things like ‘I don’t understand how someone can get so fat’ I feel like screaming at them ‘You have no idea how hard it is’. And let’s face it, it really is hard.

Let’s be totally honest here

 

Dieting is no fun what so ever. So why is that?  

For me it was that my Won’t Power was stronger than my Will Power. In other words I found it easier to make excuses and put off making the commitment, telling myself ‘I won’t start my diet this week because I’ve just been shopping and I can’t waste all the food and drink I’ve bought’ or ‘I won’t start until the summer’ or ’I won’t start until I’m not so busy’ or ‘I won’t start while the kids are off school’. The number of excuses I could find were endless.

Well I’ve recently decided that I would like to lose another stone and I’ve been trying to figure out the least painful, least effort route to do that. 

So I looked at what I eat and drink and thought – cappuccino! 

Really – I hear you gasp. Yes, really – I figured there’s about 95 calories in the ones I use which come in a sachet ready mixed with coffee, powdered milk and sweetener. So if I have 3 a day that’s 285 calories a day just in cappuccino. Multiply that by 7 days a week that’s around 2000 calories I could cut out just by giving up my cappuccinos.

But I don’t want to give up my cappuccinos!

 

This is when my Won’t Power came face to face with my Will Power and battle commenced!

So what happened was that there was much negotiation with my conflicting ‘Powers’ and we reached a mutually agreeable arrangement so that I now have one sachet of cappuccino a day and two on Sundays as an extra treat while I read the Sunday papers. And that’s still a reduction in my calorie intake of around 1400 a week, which over a month I reckon will equate to a couple of pounds weight loss. Take that a step further and I reckon if I do that for about a year I’ll have lost that stone.

So I’ve renamed my Will Power as Will Find A Way Power – and Won’t Power has been shown the door…

The moral to this story being that you really can eat a whole elephant! No seriously – what I have found is that small changes can make a massive difference over time and you can lose weight.

This article is intended for entertainment purposes only and it is recommended that you seek medical advice when making changes to your diet or lifestyle

The Fasting Diet – Fact or Fantasy

You may or may not have heard of the fasting diet but essentially what it is is when you do alternate days of fasting and the others just eating normally.

It’s been on the news recently as a chap by the name of Michael Mosley has used the method to lose a stone in five weeks for a Horizon documentary. That in itself is a massive achievement. Losing a stone would be enough to notice a difference and would be a great motivator to keep going to reach your target weight.

A strong word of warning, to anyone reading this, particularly those that are pregnant or diabetic, please seek medical advice before trying the fasting diet. Michael was monitored by a medical team while he was doing this. Proper tests have yet to provide proof that a fasting diet is beneficial in any way. 

Anyway, what Michael did was a 5:2 fasting diet whereby you eat normally for five days out of seven and fast for the other two i.e. normal eating for 3 days then fast for one, then normal eating for 2 days and fast for one, or vice versa. Now by fasting it doesn’t mean don’t eat at all. It means eating enough of the right stuff to get you through the days you are fasting. In essence keeping the amount of calories you consume to around 500 for a female and to 600 for a male.

Eating the right stuff is a difficult one to quantify as this is all unproven. Personally I need some carbs otherwise I feel a bit weak and wobbly (as my mom would describe it). So I found a balance of a small bread roll, eggs, meats such as ham, poultry and fish and plenty of salad and veggies kept me going nicely. I coupled that with drinking plenty of water.

What I found was that on the fasting days even though I’d eaten less I felt more energized and mentally alert and after a short while, much to my surprise, I actually looked forward to those days.

Let’s do the math

On the basis of a 5:2 fasting diet cycle you will effectively reduce your calorie intake by around 3000 to 5000 per week depending on whether you are a male or female. The diet is supposedly effective on a primitive level as it replicates the ‘cave man’ famine and feast for want of a better description. By which I refer to when as cave men we would have hunted and captured our prey and eaten well for a few days then survived on a lesser volume of food until the next hunt. It kind of makes sense when you think about it.

It could be argued that if we reduce our calorie intake by 3000 to 5000 per week we will lose weight anyway which I have no doubt we would. That would mean cutting down all week though which is when the denial is a daily chore and so hard to maintain. The great thing about the fasting diet is that for the best part of the week we can eat normally and that the pains of denial are only for two days which we can all cope with.

I have tried the fasting diet myself and found that it did work and that I steadily lost over half a stone in a month. Not fantastic for those that want miraculous results as quickly as possible but none the less easy and achievable weight loss for very little effort or pain. What I will do in future is reduce it to a 6:1 fasting diet so that I eat normally for six days and fast for one.

My only initial concern was that it may induce the yo-yo effect with my weight in that my body would learn to grab hold of fat on the days when I wasn’t fasting otherwise known as starvation mode. I was delighted to note this wasn’t the case and the weight has stayed off. 

Needless to say some form of regular excersize will also help the weight loss. And when I say excersize I don’t mean going to the gym every other day because personally I find that as interesting as watching paint dry. What I mean is a half hour brisk walk twice a week by walking to the shop for bits and pieces or getting off the bus one stop sooner on my way to work.

If you do try this you can leave a comment on my blog where you’ll also find other tips and links relating to weight loss.

It goes without saying that before you embark on any major changes to your diet or lifestyle you should seek medical advice.

Paleo cooking - fad or fact

It stands to reason when you stop and think about it that our diets today consist of primarily processed foods that are stuffed with artificial colouring, preservatives, chemicals, bulking agents and additives.

Processed foods are typically lacking in many ways in the basic goodness and nutrition their raw product state orignally offered.

Some would argue that our food today is in some part responsible for many common day ailments like diabetes and cancer to name a few. Can this be so?

Well if you think about it logically our ancestors way back wouldn't been ingesting anything like what we do today. Our diets today tends to be driven more by convenience and immediate saitsfaction that any consideration for what we actually put into our bodies.

Liken that to your car - how well do you think your cars engine would function if you added a half pound of lard and a cup of sugar to every four litres of fuel. It would pretty soon get choked up and have all sorts of problems with clogged jets and poor performance. Now can you see the effect of a poor diet.

Paleolithic man would have had a diet based on the readily available fruit, nut, meat and fish etc in its most unprocessed state. Natural, healthy and totally ingestible.

There's a link at the bottom of my blog to a Paleo Recipe Book you might like to consider. I've bought it and there are some great quick easy, satisifying and filling meals in there.




 

Rumour has it "prolonged mastication can help with weight loss"

So, the question is - Can prolonged mastication (chewing your food, in other words) help with weight loss?

Well, the theory goes that by chewing our food for longer, it is, in the first instance, more broken down. This in turn apparently aids the stomach in breaking down the food faster, extracting all the good stuff from the food and then passing the waste through the system.

The other factor that apparently comes into play as well is that by chewing our food for longer (prolonged mastication) our brains and tummys are telling us we are full when we've actually eaten less food. Which of course, effectively means we have reduced our food consumption. Which means we've reduced our calory intake.

Typically we only chew out food about 10 times before swallowing - so try chewing 15 to 20 times and delaying putting the next mouth full in for a few moments longer.

Add to that, drink a tumbler of water (not fizzy) throughout your dinner. This will help with traction of your food.

From my research the general consensus is that after about 20 minutes of eating our tummys and brains start to tell us we have had enough.

This one action could be enough to lose a considerable amout of weight without hardly any effort and you'll save money in the interim as you won't be eating as much.

Good news all round then.

Standard advice is of course, consider seeking medical advice before making changes to your lifestyle. This article is intended as a suggestion and not advice.