More broccoli, less chips?

My 10 top tips for fat loss

It’s that time of year again. Oh yes,  New Year’s resolutions.

Too much turkey? Feeling guilty about all that Christmas cheer/beer? Feeling the need for renewal and refocusing of goals?

It seems everyone is looking at how to shift a few pounds and make themselves feel a little better after the over indulgence of the holidays. And of course around now there’s a plethora of ‘top tips’ floating around the web giving you suggestions for ways to loose fat, but often they’re not much more useful than ‘cut the carbs’. So what counts? Let’s get to the bottom of the top tips.

Here’s the point: focus on WHYs and HOWs, not WHATs

Your health, fitness and body shape is the expression of your behaviours and actions and what they do to your body over the months and years. You have to change WHY you’re doing things, not just WHAT you’re doing otherwise you’ll fail in the end. Many ‘top tips’ don’t recognise this.

So in my years as a nutritionist, what do I think are the 10 ten tips? As I say it’s about actions, behaviours and habits.

Actions

1. Figure out why you’ve been slacking on the health and fitness front.

2. Write down goals and a defined plan and tell people about them. Read more..

The flexitarian experiment begins

In a world short of resources and rife with poor farming practices, how much can your conscience stand?

So my girlfriend lost an argument with a vegetarian, that’s how this all got started.

Thanks love.

The challenge is this: go from eating animals and animal products 4-6 times a DAY to being a vegan save for 2-3 servings a WEEK, and stay happy and healthy doing it.

I’m a nutritionist who experiments on himself a lot, trying different diets to see the advantages and disadvantages, not because I think there is a fix all ‘diet’ out there, I just need to live them for a while from the inside to experience the problems for myself. Veganism is something I had wondered about undertaking for a long time I just couldn’t find the excuse to make such a huge change. Now I have that excuse.

I. LOVE. MEAT.

If there is a heaven, surf and turf is on the menu. Proper surf and turf with a T bone and a lobster not rump and scampi. Read more..

Poly unsaturated fats bad for your health?

Shocker! Research out recently demonstrates that higher intakes of omega 6 fats are linked to bowel disease. Could everything you understand about ‘good fats’ and ‘bad fats’ be wrong?

Yet again new information highlights the fact that though food producing companies use the potential benefits of  certain nutrients as a selling point,  the truth is usually far more complex…..

Poly unsaturated fats (think omega 6, omega 3, fish and flax oils etc) have been pushed and pushed on the strength of their health benefits. Encouraging effects on heart, brain and joint health and been demonstrated but there’s also information that you don’t hear a huge amount about. Much of it surrounds omega 6 in particular.

THIS article on the BBC highlights the findings of a group of multinational group of researchers looking at the effects of different levels of dietary fats. They found that high intakes of certain poly unsaturated fats could have a severe impact upon  gut health. In a sentence:

‘Those with high intakes of omega 6 polyunsaturated fats were almost twice as likely to develop ulcerative colitis’

In fact some of the conclusions were startling;

An estimated 30% of cases could be attributed to having dietary intakes higher than the lowest quartile of linoleic acid intake.

Startling but not completely unexpected. Why? Below we’ll look at the why’s and hows: Read more..

Clinical nutrition update: a new mechanism governing hunger? Sterols and cancer

Two interesting reports from the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition this month…..

GI and satiety

We all know that eating lower GI carb sources is the smart choice, what is being discovered now is more and more info on the actual mechanisms of this contribution to health – as well as the odd suprise.

Glycemic Index (GI) is a measure of the rate at which carbohydrate hits the blood after you consume a carbohydrate containing meal.  When you consume a meal with high GI carbs, a significant portion of the carbs are released speedily into the blood….

Read more..

Batched Diet hacks

Get more good, interesting, tasty foods in your life, support good health and great body and cut the mess and stress.

(clock design M&Co. 5 O’Clock, Tibor and Maria Kalman)

Practically speaking, which is what this blog is all about, ‘diet’ is only a small part of the nutrition picture, it is also the lifestyle you lead, the types of cooking you like to do or find easy. These are all things that have a huge influence on what goes into your mouth.

When we looked at Batched Training we discussed the methods you would use to switch up your training focusing more on the things that work and saving yourself a LOT of time in the process. Here we’ll try and cover a few ideas that may work for diet and nutrition meaning less time stress and mess but rather a better more interesting diet, better health and a better body.

Batching for those who don’t know is the process of saving up similar tasks and doing them together to save all the time you spend in preparation. If you’re not convinced I have put more examples in the Batched Training entry. With exercise this would be getting to the gym, getting changed, showering, warming up etc. When talking about diet and nutrition you would think about things such as chopping vegetables, cooking, washing up of filling the machine and so on.

Below are some examples of Batching hacks I use in clinic.

Batch one: Food list and food shopping

Put together a lists of foods that you will go through in the week, put in a ‘core’ of good foods; lean meats, veg, pulses, grains, quality dairy etc. This is make things a lot easier, healthier and save you money. You can even go so far as putting together a menu for the week and buying just those foods.

If you’re leading a busy hectic life you need to do one thing first off: buy at least some of your food on-line.

We would all like to be able to shop locally, buying fresh ingredients on the day and you can when you have time but you have to safeguard your diet, this means buying good choices every week including

• Lean meats (pref organic with lots of game etc)
• Lots of fibrous vegetables
• Nuts & seeds
• Tins of pulses, tomatoes etc
• Frozen vegetables as a back up

With on-line shopping not only do you not have to travel there and back (remember your time is money) and by using the proforma shopping lists from you account to make it an almost one click experience, even more time saved. By using tools like MySpupermarket you can even save money filling your basket and comparing the supermarkets.

So time and money saved.

Batch two: Food preparation

I am a big fan of chopped frozen veg for busy people. If it’s a choice between that and not eating veg then go for it. When your shopping arrives you can take 10 mins to dice up a load of veg and meat , divide into usable portions and freeze for use later in the week. Seems stupid but this will save LOTS of time.

Batch three: Cook up a load of meals all at once

Did you know you can cook more than one meal at once. Obvious I know, but you’d be surprised the amount of people that haven’t though about this. Dedicate 90 mins somewhere in the week to cooking up a load of stews, stir fry soups etc and store them in the fridge and freezer to eat through the week.

You can also use the double dinner trick as well; just cook twice as much as you need and take to work the next day (if office politics allows!), it’s simple, obvious buy most people forget about this. Of course it works better for some dished than others – scrambled eggs would not be a good choice here!

This also works for portion of protein like chicken breasts, salmon etc. Cook them all at once and store for use in other dishes.

The ‘Pret Audit’: batching your lunch fact finding and decisions

Go to the 3 nearest sandwich shops to work, select 4 dishes that comply to your needs for example; maybe you’re carrying a little too much weight and need to cut down on carbs and/or fats and need to up the protein? Write down the choices (that is very important) and keep this list in your desk draw.

When at work with no food from home look at the list make your selection (a 1^st and 2snd choice from the same place) then leave to buy it.

Batch five: Supplements

In an earlier blog I discussed the types of Supplements people may use in the context of a busy but healthy lifestyle. Many people use these proteins, vitamins, fish oils, herbs etc but most have trouble remembering to take them every day. By dividing them down into packs using small ziplock bags containing all the pills and capsules for each day you can just grab and go in the morning confident in the knowledge that all you need is there.

This also works for protein powders as well though by simply having a tub at work in the desk draw and one at home there’s little need for this.

The above hacks swing between really obvious, a bit geeky and simply really boring but they do work. I encourage you to give them all a god for just 2 weeks (the second week is where the magic really kicks in) and see how much time this frees up leaving you to enjoy life and not be tied to the cooker

The Capsule Kitchen

First published March ‘08

If you only have tasty ‘good’ foods in your kitchen then you are going to eat well at least some of the time, right? So stop messing around, save time effort and money and but what you need to to get you to your goals of a strong healthy body.

The Capsule Kitchen is an idea I use often in clinic and something that I will expand on in an up-coming book but below is a condensed version of the food choices component. The full version of the Capsule Kitchen also encompasses food bought less often, cookware and utensils as tricks you can use to make buying your food simple, easy and quick and also save money at the same time. However, for not we’ll stick to the shopping list

What is on the shopping list

On top of just listing foods that you should get regularly I find helpful to put in the context of your kitchen at home. As I can’t tailor this plan to each of you just make sure that yo have a good amount of the following always on hand.

What is in the kitchen

The cupboards

Nuts

Dried Fruit
Legumes: either tinned or dried including lentils, chickpeas, beans etc
Oils and fats

Virgin or extra virgin olive oil is great for salads and low temperature cooking (roasting vegetables etc). Coconut oil is great for frying (it is a more healthy type of saturated fat) as is butter. NB other healthy fats like flax and fish oils should be kept in the fridge

Green and other similar teas
Spices
Vinegar

Tinned fish: mackerel, salmon, tuna, pilchards etc

The fridge

Poultry
Lean cuts of meat
Fish: Oily and non oily
Eggs
Cheese: Both high quality low fat and also strong cheeses
Fruits and berries (some of course can be kept out of the fridge)
Fibrous vegetables
Sauces: try to find the low fat and low sugar options, they are out there it us takes a little looking.

In the freezer

Your freezer is your safety net for when you fridge stocks run low.

Frozen berries
Meat, poultry an fish
Vegetables:
pre chopped by you and in bag bought from the freezer section; it doesn;t matter, just keep a selection.
Pre-cooked foods:
Every time you cook up stews, chicken breasts, stir-frys, chilli’s etc then cook 2 or 3 times as much as you need and divide into single servings.

What is NOT in the kitchen

There are very few ‘bad foods’ but only ‘bad diets’ but the more of the flowing foods you can leave out of your diet the closer you will reach your goals. ‘If it’s in the house then in the end you are probably going to end up eating it’, if this is a given then you would be well advised to consider binning the following:

The fridge

Soft drinks and most juices
Mayonnaise
Fatty dairy products
Processed and/or high fat meat products
Most foods in colourful boxes

The freezer

Ice cream
Frozen deserts
Frozen ready meals and similar products
Cheap meat products (grill steaks etc)

The cupboards

Crisps chips and other snack foods
ANY products containing hydrogenated oils
Biscuits
Highly processed baking and baked products
Tinned fruit in syrup

My top 5 – lifestyle and sports supplement choices

Supplements are just that, additions where required to a solid healthy diet that suits you and your lifestyle. There’s a lot of money to be made out of these products and so a bewildering array of and classes of supplement have sprung up.

Here are my opinions on the top 5 of both sports and lifestyle supplements formed from working with athletes and busy health conscious people.

Top 5 ‘lifestyle’ supplements

These types of supplements are the ones used to aid your diet, they are essentially readily usable ‘functional food’ that allow you to easily bridge a gap having a concentrated serving of the desired nutrient(s) or food type

1) Fish oils
2) Milk protein concentrate
3) Greens powder
4) Flax seed powder (omega 3, lignans and fibre)
5) Unflavored whey (cooking etc)

Top 5 sports supplements

Sorts supplements are ones that are going to aid training and recovery as part of a suitable nutriton plan, they sit on top of the required amount of healthy foods as an adjunct.

1) Recovery drinks (usually whey, matodextrin and dextrose mix)
2) Fish oils
3) Beta alanine
4) Nootropics and some neurostimulants (DMAE and the like more info in an article I wrote here)
5) Creatine monohydrate (not creatine ethyle ester? Why? Look here..)

Not everybody should use these supplements, in fact most people don’t need to and some just should not so check first if you are considering using any supplements. All the above are ADDITIONS to a solid healthy diet, right for you and your goals so get that sorted first, whole food is much more important than the above.

4 food hacks

Here are for very simple ways you can transform the quality of your diet

1) Water not flavoured drinks

Hydration is obviously hugely important to health – you are after all a bag of chemical reactions happening mainly in water however many people are chronically dehydrated and when they do drink they choose wrong.

Get used to having most of you water coming from non calorie containing beverages. However you’ll still want to avoid low cal fizzy drinks (which contain strong acids) and artificially sweetened products which may be a problem to health (whilst they can be considered safe there remain many question marks).

Fruit teas and green teas are good choices but ideally you should get accustomed to drinking plain water as this will allow you to drink more and more easily.

2) Brown carbs not white

Brown grain based foods like pasta, bread etc are made from grains that haven’t been so highly polished, this means that they retain lots more fibre and micronutrients. ‘Brown’ choices don;t have to be boring and they are often more tasty, tyr different grain breads and mixing white and brown pasta as a way to transition over to the better choices

3) Oats not breakfast cereals

Again, there’s lots more fibre to be had as well as more in the way of micronuteints but also they will keep you fuller much longer helping you avoid blood sugar crashes and cravings for sweets and chocolate.

4) Omega three not trans fats
These fats are damaged (trans and cyclical fats) such that the body has a very hard time processing them, there really is no specific safe limit for these fats so avoid products that contain the works ‘hydrogenated vegetable oil’ on the ingredients such as some crisps, margarines, peanut butters and very many processed foods (especially those found in the un-refrigerated sections of the supermarket.

Omega 3 type fats are the polar opposite to trans fats, they are very useful to the body but hard to get hold of n the diet. Including oily fish, grass feed beef and plenty of foods like walnuts and flax oils of seeds will support you intake.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of these fats, they are involved in a huge array of beneficial processes in the body but due to the fact that they go rancid easily they are practically speaking hard to get hold of so get as much as you can when you can.

There you go, it couldn’t be any clearer. 4 simple ways to transform your diet