My Healthy Eating Secrets (that aren't a secret)

Since I started living a healthy lifestyle and the side-effect of weight loss started show, many people were asking me what my secret was. For the first time in my life I was genuinely perplexed by this question, as there really was no secret. Eating healthy and living a healthy life-style had become second nature to me, so what was the secret? I hadn’t followed a specific ‘plan’, or ‘diet’, I hadn’t cut out ‘carbs’ and I wasn’t depriving myself of anything. But if I have to try and break down my ‘secrets’ then this is what they’d be. Remember - this is what worked for me. We’re all different, no one can tell you what you can and cannot eat and what you should or shouldn’t do. Any changes you make need to be for yourself with the only desired outcome to be happy and healthy – not weight loss. I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, weight-loss can be a side-effect of living a happy and healthy lifestyle.

1) Diet - Say no to diets - Don't even use the word. You're not on a diet. You're making healthy choices and living a healthy lifestyle. This is a change forever.

2) Carbohydrates - Limit your simple or non-complex carbohydrates, swap as many as you can to complex carbohydrates. So your simple and non-complex carbohydrates are white and brown sugar, honey and maple syrup, white bread, white pasta, white rice, white flour and cereals. The complex carbohydrates are wholemeal, whole-wheat and wholegrain anything. Simple carbohydrates are digested really quickly and give us a blood sugar spike followed by an energy low - which can make us feel sluggish and often craving more simple carbohydrate. Eating the wholegrain / whole-wheat / wholemeal varieties will make us feel fuller for longer as they are slow releasing and take longer to breakdown and therefore give us a more constant, sustained level of energy. They also contain more nutrients than the 'white' varieties, as the milling process used in 'white' foods strips out the vital nutrients, making them empty calories. Wholemeal / wholegrain products also contain more fibre, which is great news!

3) Balance - So now you've swapped your simple carbohydrates to complex ones, try not to eat them all day long. If you have a carbohydrate breakfast e.g. wholemeal toast, don't have a wholemeal bread sandwich at lunch time. Opt for a protein-filled lunch, so e.g. salads with eggs, chicken, fish, lentils, beans pulses etc. And vice versa. For dinner, make it an all round balance of everything including complex carbohydrate, protein and vegetables.

4) Vegetables and Fruit - Try to include vegetables and fruit with each of your meals. Smoothies for breakfast are great for getting in vegetables and fruit, salads for lunch, vegetable sticks with sandwiches, vegetables in pasta. Aim for more vegetables than fruit though and have as many colours and varieties as you can as they’ll all contain different minerals and vitamins.

5) Meat - If you eat meat try and cut down and aim for at least three meat free days a week. You don’t have to become a vegetarian, but bulk out meat dishes with plenty of vegetables, lentils, beans and pulses – you won’t notice the difference I promise and it’s so much cheaper and healthier!

6) Refined Sugar – OK so I know I said I didn’t ‘give-up’ or deprive myself of anything, but I did cut out as much refined sugar as I possibly could. And you might think, “well I don’t eat much sugar anyway”, but there is added sugar in almost all processed shop-bought products, including yogurts (more in low fat varieties!), mayonnaise, salad dressings, pasta / curry sauces, ready-meals, bread, soups and of course your obvious ones like biscuits, chocolate, snack bars, crisps etc. The easiest way to cut out refined sugar is to cook from scratch as much as possible, so make your own sauces, mayonnaise, salad dressings etc. It’s really fun and easy once you get into it. If you are buying products from the supermarket, check the labels. Don’t check for sugar in nutritional information, because if it’s a can of tinned tomatoes for example, there will be sugar listed, as tomatoes are a fruit and contain naturally occurring sugars which are fine! But check the ingredients list and see if sugar is listed there. It could be listed as sugar, but may also be written as glucose, sucrose, lactose, malt syrup, dextrose, corn syrup, fruit juice concentrate, maltose, palm sugar, rice syrup...and lots more! So check those labels! By cutting out unnecessary sugars in your every day food, if you do fancy a chocolate bar or biscuit as a treat at least you can eat it happy in the knowledge that YES it contains sugar, but you haven’t had refined sugar in anything else for the whole day.

7) Fat - Don’t be scared of fat! Dietary fats are essential to give your body energy and to support cell growth. They provide heat and can be stored in the subcutaneous tissue of the body. It is important to not consume too much saturated fat mostly found in animal products such as meat, cheese, milk, butter, cream and eggs. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are mainly found in plant foods such as nuts, seeds, vegetable oils, avocados etc. Polyunsaturated fats contain omega-3 and omega-6 which are essential fatty acids. Trans fats can be natural or artificial. They are mostly created through a process known hydrogenation which involved heating and chemically changing the structure. Artificial trans fats are found mostly in fast foods and commercial foods. Trans fats are not required to promote and maintain a healthy body. So, by avoiding processed food and cooking from scratch you can be sure that you are getting the right amount of fats and the right type of fats.

8) Snacks - Eat regularly; don’t let yourself get hungry to the point where you feel ‘starving’ as you’re more likely to make poor choices. Snack little and often on a piece of fruit, a small handful of nuts, a boiled egg, a salad, vegetable sticks etc. Just keep the portions small, less than a handful and natural and unprocessed.

9) Exercise – Yes exercise is important, but you can’t out-exercise a bad diet, so don’t even try to. Exercise needs to be fun and for enjoyment, and because it makes you feel amazing – not something you have to do because you ate a cake or chocolate bar earlier. Find something that you love, whether it is walking, badminton, jogging, skating, yoga – but honestly, do it because of how it makes you feel and not for weight-loss. Weight-loss will be a side-effect of doing all these things!

10) Calorie Counting - Stop counting calories / points / sins or whatever else it is you're counting. It’s unnecessary. If you’ve followed the above tips so far, you won’t need to count calories, as you’ll be confident that you’re making healthy, balanced choices.

11) Don’t beat yourself up - So you’ve had a chocolate bar, cake, went out to lunch and had huge portions, made a meal with lots of hidden sugar. So what? Now congratulate yourself on how well you’ve done so far with your healthy lifestyle, and move on. Just make sure your next snack or meal choice is a healthy one. Don’t write the day / week off just because of one meal or snack choice.

12) Love yourself – Just love who you are, the things you do, everything you have achieved. Be proud of your accomplishments. This will be different for everyone, and can be on a small or large scale. For a person suffering with depression an accomplishment might be that you got out of bed today! For a Mum it could be that you kept your children fed and happy today! It could be career or study based, small or large, but everyone achieves something sometimes. Just be proud of those moments, no matter how small. Talk positively to yourself, your subconscious is listening.

I hope you find something in this that is useful to you. It worked for me and I hope that it works for you too. This is a change forever, make it now – there’s no time like the present.

#health #change #diet #weight