Do you understand portion control?

Losing weight is a long term project; its more about a change of lifestyle than a quick fix. If you lose weight very fast, you shed the pounds to start with but then it comes back on in a few weeks. When you realise you haven’t really achieved anything at all, you get demotivated – and probably eat for comfort.

I have done this so many times – until I discovered a great secret way of staying motivated to keep the lifestyle changes up. Learn more about that by signing up for my email newsletters! I will also be telling you about it in future posts.

But, in the meantime let’s  run over a few small changes you should make to your diet to help the weight just slide off!

Lets start off with portion control. Eating too much at each meal and underestimating the amount you eat is a classic mistake. It can easily wreck your weight loss program. The formula of losing weight is simple really. You need to take in less energy in your food that you are using up in your daily activities. If you think you are balancing this out, but you are choosing portions that are too big, you won’t lose weight. You might even gain weight. Extra calories in the larger portions will be absorbed and turned straight into fat.

It’s a good idea in the beginning to actually weigh food out so that you see how big portions should be and compare this with your own guestimate. Who knows what 2 oz of pasta looks like? But if you do some weighing, you do start to get more of a feel for the right sized portions. You may be surprised that they look smaller than you had been guessing before!

Another good tip is never to go without food so you get really hungry. We have all done it. You start by skipping breakfast and drinking coffee then having a salad for lunch. By 4pm you could eat whatever is in the fridge! Start with a healthy breakfast – wholemeal toast, a boiled egg, whole grain cereal and skimmed milk, yoghurt and fruit. Not all in the same breakfast of course! Then have fruit juice instead of coffee and snack on 8-10 grapes before having a healthy sandwhich and more fruit at lunch.  Have an apple mid afternoon and then a sensible dinner – grilled chicken or fish and vegetables.

Constantly boosting your blood sugar with slowly released sugars in fruit really helps.

Try it and let me know if it works for you,

Love

Jen x