My ten dieting secrets for successful weightloss

It finally happened. I have reached and actually fallen slightly under, my goal weight of 140lb (I’m currently 139.9lb). I weighed 155lb in January, when I weighed myself to see if giving up alcohol would make any difference to my weight over Dry January.

Tuna and egg salad with extra light mayonnaise

Using FatSecret a free diet app, which records calorie (also fat, carbs etc) and sets goals etc I have managed a simple diet since then and now am planning to just stay around this weight.

Several people have asked my my ‘dieting secret’ and sadly I’m not sure there is one. The secret is that well known one, you have to eat less calories than you need…then you lose weight. If you eat more than you need you gain weight, and if you eat the right amount you stay the same.

That said I do have some tips to sticking to your set limit. And some ideas for meals and snacks to keep the calories down.

1. Don’t ban any food. If there is a food you like and want to eat just include it in your plan. This might mean you have to eat a smaller portion, maybe half a pizza with a green salad rather than a whole pizza! or a small chocolate bar rather than a 1lb one, or it may mean missing out something else, so why not just have dessert for dinner? If you have a sweet tooth and crave lemon meringue just go for it, but you can’t have everything.
2. You will need willpower. There are lots of foods that taste much much better than skinny feels but if you want to lose weight you may have to say no, not every time (see point 1 above) but some of the time. Be prepared to feel like a holy martyr. Feel good about saying no and if you feel hungry and your stomach grumbles ensure you know how many calories you’ve had that day and then mentally tell your body to ‘suck it up and use some of the fat you have  already!’  (don’t do this out loud though, it’s considered odd)
3. Plan some snacks. If, like me, you are always hungry and fancying a nibble on something, plan some snacks. I have found that there are great low calorie options such as savoury popcorns, fruit, and even low calorie crisps that can be included in your diet.
4. To start with just record what you eat and when, I found using a dieting app was great for showing me where I was going wrong! When you see what you are eating and a pattern you can look at how to change it. If you always snack at 10.30 it’s silly to just stop – but you can change what you snack on (see above) Like wise if you tend to eat a larger meal at a certain time of the day, tailor your calories toward that. I like to eat a medium breakfast, snack at 10.30 and then have  a light lunch with a bigger evening meal for example. The FatSecret app is free and available on Android, Apple products and on the web. The website allows you to buddy up with people similar to you too, which can be a great boost.
5. Top examples of low calorie foods and meals I discovered are : Tuna fish, spookily low in calories and eaten with a salad (eg salad niciose) can be really filling for a tiny percentage of your daily allowance). Quorn, another high protein, low fat, low calorie food, great in a tomato sauce (homemade with no added sugars etc) with rice or green beans. Sushi, I found that a small pack of Yumie sushi at lunch was only 200 calories, perfect with a bottle of water, feels exotic and special full of flavour and very few calories. I’ve already mentioned popcorn, brands like Propercorn are great. 
6. Bulk up your plate with more vegetables (not root veg) and try to cut down on fat and carbohydrates. Lots of people will swear by a low fat or a low carb diet – in my opinion these work because fat and carbs have the most calories! I’ve used calorie counting only and have found adding extra lower calorie vegetables to meals has worked well.
7. Drinks are easy to consume and can hide an alarming calorie content. Alcohol really is an empty calorie (add Costa Chai Lattes to that list of hugely calorific drinks too!!) and alcohol is a poison, so I have given it up completely in the week. I now drink non alcoholic beer and wine after work instead, double health gain! Since finding out how many calories are in those yummy flavoured Frappes and Lattes in coffee shops I also tend to avoid them unless it’s a treat. Saving big money and numerous calories.
8. Be honest with yourself, if you don’t record everything you eat you might gain weight and will feel defeated. Better to see where you are going wrong on food intake so you can change it. It’s not easy to diet. You will need to change habbits. There is no magic trick. You just need to eat less. If you mess up a day, don't panic, just go back to doing it right the next day. I went to a couple of events where food was on offer so I just gave myself a diet holiday! That way I didn't feel bad, I enjoyed myself and went back to the diet afterwards. (oddly you do find as time passes you automatically make better choices anyway) 
9. I haven’t talked about exercise and that’s deliberate. I don’t exercise much and I didn’t step it up when I started this diet. The extra calories burned via exercise are surprisingly low.(you need an hour of fast cycling to burn off a single donut). Exercise will change some of your shape and convert fat to muscle and muscle is denser than fat and can weigh more. Most scientists agree that diet is much more important to lose weight than exercise (I’m not talking about over all health – exercise is obviously good for health, but losing weight is what I’m focusing on)
10. Drink more water. Everyone says this, but it's true and it helps. It stops you eating when really you are just thirsty. It fills your stomach if you drink water with a meal. It helps your body work and it's zero calories. And it's something to swallow!

So there they are, my diet secrets, which sadly boil down to eating fewer calories. But it is possible! It’s taken me 6 months at 1600 calories a day (1800 in the first 2 months) but I’ve lost 15 lbs. The FatSecret app allows you to choose how fast or slow you want to lose the weight and I chose slowly and it’s worked perfectly. I would suggest after losing 5lbs or so you reassess the calories you should be consuming, as you get smaller you need fewer to stay the same!

Homemade Quorn Chilli

Good Luck - let me know how you get on.

(This in not a sponsored post. Nothing to disclose here, move along)

Dry January

I'm taking part in dry January this year. For those not au fait with what this entails, dry January is sadly not a guarantee of a rain free month but a chance for people that normally imbibe to ...erm...not.

So for 31 long days I shall be shunning alcohol, no sneaky beer after work, no bottle of cava (and subsequent drunken blog post) on a Sunday after noon, no downing shots until I puke during The Musketeers (well not until February anyway).

What is the point? Well may you ask, it's not long enough to really rest the liver or help my liver function in any way (though I am going to take some milk thistle to see what that might achieve!) and I'm not doing it to raise money for charity (do not get me started on sponsored stuff - that's a whole other post).

I'm doing it because it will be good for me, for me, I'm not saying it would be good for you or you should do it. I hope it will help me sleep better (actually I barely need help there, but maybe I'll be more refreshed from the sleep I do get), I know it will help me save money, at around £5 for a bottle of wine or case of beer I should be £10....£20 .....£30 .... quite a bit better off for not buying it. I also hope it will break the habit of an alcoholic drink each night after work, maybe letting me get back to 'not on a school night'. I'm not a saint or a martyr or better than you, I'm just choosing to not drink alcohol during January.

Why tell us all about it them? Another good question. I think it will be easier and dare I suggest, more fun, to do this as a group with other friends in real life and on social media, also a promise is somehow easier to stick to when you tell everyone about it.

Do you think it's really such a big deal? Well no, not really, I gave up booze no problem for 9 months when I was pregnant and only drank small amounts for the ten months after that as I was breastfeeding, so no I don't think it will be anything other than a minor annoyance.

I'm spending some money on drinks though, just non alccoholic ones. I will be stocking up on Ginger Beer, J2O, sparkling water and various fruit juices, not becasue I think they are healthy but I know I'll get bored of tap water.

Are you taking part? If so what are your reasons? And what will you be drinking instead? I'd love to know.

The one where I get Nakd and there are pictures........

Ok so having grasped you and your dirty minds……

This is the blog I should have written a week ago but I’ve been ill. -- excuses! Pathetic!

The lovely people at Natural balance Foods know how much I like their Nakd fruit/nut bars because I’ve raved about them online before, so they were keen for me to try the new flavours just out. They sent me the three new flavours to try and I did. (see "I get nakd" ;-- see what I did there?)

I’ve always been more of a fan of the fruity flavours than the chocolate, so I was surprised to see that 2 of the new flavours were chocolate based, I must be in the minority I guess.

If you have never had one of these bars before there things you need to know, they don’t look great, they are (mostly) raw.

So issue one :appearance, to be fair they look like compressed squirrel shit (they actually probably share a lot of the contents too!) but this is not reason to not eat them! Oh no! brave the look and bite into the tempting goodness, due to the fact they are raw all the goodness is still there!

issue two: rawness Just squished into a chunk of tastiness are all the vitamins and minerals and fibre and YUM!

Issue three : taste - they are bloody yummy!

So I tried the new Berry flavour first Berry Delight, and it was delightful! As I said I like the berry flavours and feel I’m getting a huge chunk of my 5 a day at the same time as getting a delicious treat, so that was all good.

Then I tried the Cocoa Delight, and while I wasn’t delighted (I told you I prefer the berry!) it was still yummy, very chocolate-y but not ‘sweet’ like a sickly milk chocolate bar. I do love the texture of the bars too.

And last I tried the Cocoa Mint……….and it blew my mind!!!! It is the tastiest most scrumptiously deliciously minty chocolaty bar of goodness I have ever tasted. Even my normally fussy DD agreed to try a nibble when she smelled the minty loveliness of the bar, and she liked it! Yes people of the world, I have discovered healthy snacks that taste so good they could be junk!!

Run to the shops now before I buy all the mint bars!

(That said, I discovered Gingerbread flavour too and my oh my is that one a taste of heaven too! Can’t get enough of this tasty goodness)

Did I mention they are suitable for vegans, they are all natural, no added sugar, and gluten, wheat, dairy & GM free? cos they are!

How old is too old? (or 'sniff it and see')

Every now and again on social media someone says they have chucked away a yoghurt 3 days past the 'use by' date, or asks if bread 2 days past the sell by date is OK to eat or........well you get the idea. They want to know if they can safely consume an item of food that seems to be saying  

NO! DON'T EAT ME, YESTERDAY I WAS FINE 

BUT TODAY I AM FILLED WITH POISONOUS BACTERIA 

THAT WILL KILL YOU IN AN INSTANT 

WITH PAIN YOU CAN ONLY IMAGINE 

or something like that anyway.

I am old enough to know that expiry dates are a fairly new invention. Yes young people you read that right, we have not always been told when food is 'past it's best'. For hundreds, indeed thousands of years we used our own judgement! We looked at things, smelled them, touched them and decided 'is it still good'? (* when I say 'we' I do not, obviously, mean me! I mean the human race, I'm not thousands of years old, or hundreds come to that!)

And in some cases we still do. While supermarkets may wrap your vegetables in a plastic bag with a sticker proclaiming 'use by 9 Feb 2010' your local green grocer is unlikely to do the same, my local green grocer sells cucumbers, they are long and firm and green and that's it! I have to fondle the cucumber and decide how fresh it is! Is it soft? getting limp? then I'll ask if it's discounted or buy a firmer one! (are you all right? some of you appear a little flushed?)

Likewise my butcher does not put 'use by' dates on his pork products, i have to admire his loins and decide if they are fresh, are they greenish in hue? Do they smell? If not, I'm happy, a pink fresh loin is most women's dream, as are his sausages and his faggots! but I digress.

Until 1973 no stores in the UK used best before dates at all! And it was Marks and Spencer that began the trend purely as a marketing technique, to show how 'fresh' their food was! Of course all other food sellers leapt on to the bandwagon to be sure and keep up with the new trend.

It's true that some foods nowadays are hard to see. How can I tell if a tin of beans is 'fresh' or if a carton of orange juice is? and the simple answer is of course that I can't, like the rest of society I rely to some degree on labelling of the packets, but wouldn't it be easier to tell me when it was packed rather than a use by date? When I bake a cake I estimate how long it will last (bad example - 10 minutes in my house) by the date it was baked and then I use judgement.

When I open a loaf of bread and it had a patch of mould on it, I tear off the blue bit and toast the bread! I only throw away the whole loaf if it's more mould than loaf or if the flavour is totally tainted. Marmite can disguise a multitude of tastes.

And yoghurt is gone off milk! As is cheese, it can't go off! Sniff it! how does it smell? I've often eaten yoghurts 2 weeks past their 'use by' dates with no ill effects at all. And cheese can usually just have the mould cut off - after all cheddar is often already 24 months old by the time you buy it! So why would another month make any difference?

But I'm not alone, I am aware that many of you eat food that you have judged to be OK. Just remember it's a skill, learn it, pass it on, don't be afraid, trust your instincts.  My good friend Donna on Twitter sent me this handy link to get you started.

And don't come crying back here if you get sick.


Remember that this advice is just from a boring old person, not anyone clever and don't take risks with the elderly, the very young or the infirm. (No testing mouldy yoghurt out on your granny!)

PS   A website called Love Food Hate Waste perpetuates the myth by saying NEVER eat food past the use by date, which is just silly IMO. They even tell you 'if it looks fine, still throw it away!  I still say that for cheese and many other products this is ridiculous.


If you would like to buy some out of date food to practice on - look here for some cheap deals. Yes indeedy, an online retailer that specialises in old food!