FOOD ADVICE: Simple steps for managing weight (From News Shopper)

FOOD ADVICE: Simple steps for managing weight

4:08pm Monday 26th July 2010 in Freetime By Helen Sullivan

Weight management is more about management than dieting.

Once you’ve taken control of some lifestyle choices, any changes in diet will follow more easily.

Certain habits become comfortable and then present barriers to changes you may want to make to your diet.

Take for example the cup of tea that’s too wet to drink without a biscuit or the cheese and crackers that always accompany evening TV viewing.

“Old habits die hard” is a familiar saying and there’s a lot of truth in it.

Changing things that you’ve done since childhood is a difficult task, but if you take a long look at why you have, and whether you need sugar in tea, extra salt on food, added butter on potatoes or the crispy skin from the roast, you may be able to break these seemingly harmless but quite unhealthy habits.

The habits listed above all contribute to weight gain or more serious long-term diseases. If you tackle an increase in weight before it causes more problems than buying a new pair of trousers, you will have saved you and your family the struggle of dealing with long-term health issues.

• Getting diabetes in your 50s isn’t the best time to realise weight loss is a good idea. Think about change before eating too much becomes seriously unhealthy.
• Being diagnosed with high blood pressure means cutting back on salt and losing weight, but with serious consequences if you don’t, so cut back now to prevent this from happening.
• Getting arthritis because your weight is too much and your diet isn’t healthy makes life difficult and painful, so deal with your weight and diet now before these conditions become inevitable.

Helpful lifestyle changes can be small and gradual. For example:

• Stop automatically turning on the TV when arriving home from work. Instead, turn on the radio for some uplifting music and spend time in the kitchen on food preparation.
• Reduce the amount of sugar you take in tea by half a teaspoon every week until you don’t need it any more.
• Walk to school with your children, walk up and down stairs instead of taking the lift or get off the bus/tube one stop earlier each week to increase your physical activity levels.
• Write a weekly menu and shopping list one evening a week, then shop so all your food is available when you need it and you only have to think about meal planning once a week.

Support is the key to losing weight. Guidance from a nutritionist on lifestyle and dietary changes over a period of eight weeks can have a dramatic effect.

Look to lose 1-2lbs a week and gain a wealth of knowledge about a healthy diet. Food diaries recording your daily intake will show where changes can be made and with as few as two each week, the resulting 16 small tweaks to your eating habits amount to surreptitious and painless weight loss and a new healthy lifestyle which can be sustained.

Get in touch with Helen Sullivan for your personal weight management course on 07813 983 927, foodhero@hotmail.com or visit the nutrition stall at the Farnborough Fayre on September 4.