Diet is useful or not

Answer 1

My thoughts on diets and how useful they are...

Yes, if diets mean understanding what you eat and eating healthily. No, if dieting means crash diets or unnatural eating habits.

I've cooked for years. I've been overweight and I've been on diets. Yes, I've been there and I know what works - eating sensibly, balanced meals, small amounts frequently and consuming only fresh, quality produce. That's how you lose weight and keep it off. That's how to love what you eat and look forward to meals.

Here are my keys to diets that have worked for me:

1. only ever small frequent meals.

Have 6 little meals a day:

• Breakfast
• Morning Tea
• Lunch
• Afternoon Tea
• Dinner
• Supper

Really.

The idea is to train your body that food is around the corner and it's frequent, so there's no need to store. Our mechanisms are primitive and hark to our origins as animals and cave-men, to the days when food had to be hunted and it was feast or famine. So the body learned to conserve and store energy.

So, if you skip breakfast, if you have only one large meal a day - you are training your body to store reserves.

If you want a diet to lose weight - learn to eat tiny meals. So for morning tea and afternoon tea, I'd have a couple of plain cookies with a cup of tea. For supper, a small handful of nuts or a cup of low fat cocoa. Naturally, you'd eat a healthy small portion of whatever you favor for your main meals but watch the portion size.

2. Eat good, fresh produce.

Throw out manufactured yummies - all those chippies and lollies you have in the pantry - out they go and make your own. It's the amount of transfats, salts, preservatives and chemicals that we KNOW is cumulative damage, yet we continue to eat them because it's so freely available.

I eat cake, biscuits, bars when on a diet - just smaller quantities. And I make them myself so I know exactly what goes in it. Please make your own treats.

Of course, you've heard it a million times to eat fruit and veg.

But on a diet, I eat anything as long as I know the source of the ingredients. Healthy eating includes desserts, cakes, cookies, cream and chocolate...but sparingly. Don't deny yourself. Eating is not punishment.

3. Find Easy Recipes to whip up. It's so easy to eat healthily

Cooking good healthy meals and treats is so simple. Go and find easy recipes and whip them up. Cooking does not mean slaving in the kitchen and neither does it mean lovingly spending hours doing gourmet meals.

Use fresh quality produce.

Cook quickly to make tasty meals.

4. The key is to enjoy all food...sparingly.

Enjoy everything.

Of course you can eat cakes when on a diet - just not a whole one in one sitting. Slice it up into portions and enjoy a slice a day. Freeze the rest. I eat chocolate - but only a small portion a day. Yes, I eat butter and cream too - but only tiny amounts, and savor it.

Just remember the body is primitive and if it thinks it's starving and in lean times, of course, it'll go into storage mode. So, you have to re-train to allow the body to think it's times of plenty and feed it frequently (but in controlled amounts).

Where did I learn this?

When I simply could not lose weight after two children, I sought help from a dietitian. What I learned was the above and it works.