Thursday, May 04, 2006

Eating to Lose Weight #2

Have you got fed up with weight loss plans where you have to count points? Weigh everything you eat? Eat special foods that cost a fortune? Confused about high carbs/low carbs, and the GI of foods? Me too. I wanted to invent myself an eating plan that was healthy, dead simple and that didn’t cost me huge amounts.

One thing I AM doing, however, is recording what I eat. It’s so easy to virtuously say that you hardly eat a morsel at mealtimes, while forgetting all the snacking you’ve done inbetween. A 50 cent notebook is all you need. I record what I eat each day (don’t leave it to the weekend thinking you’ll remember – you won’t), plus my weight (if I weighed myself that day) and or measurements. I also note anything out of the ordinary eg extra exercise, or if I felt unwell or was hormonal. As women, we are horribly affected by our hormones, and I know my weight goes up considerably at hormone time regardless of what I eat. Such is life.

Ok, a bit more on breakfast. It’s not just important that you have it, it’s WHAT you have that’s important. This is the best time of the day to be eating whole grains, which we should have every day. Don’t go for instant oats – pick the kind that need to be simmered for 5 minutes. Add things like kibbled wheat to make it chewy, because one thing we don’t do enough of in our over-processed society is chew our food. Our ancestors had nothing like today’s incidence of bowel cancer, and diet is a big part of that.

However, I get bored with the same breakfast every day. Some days I crave to have scrambled eggs on toast, or a toasted bagel with honey. Especially at the weekend. So I do. Remember I said I loved bread? Shirley’s Food Rule #2 is: if you have bread or toast for breakfast, you don’t get to have it any other time during the day. Yup. You heard me. Bread ONCE A DAY. And preferably NOT in the evening. If you have porridge or grains for breakfast, you get to have bread for lunch. And make those slices thin. Much as I love it, I know that bread clogs me up and slows me down.

Valeri asked about my sourdough - I made the starter from (I think) flour, water and honey about 2 1/2 years ago. Every time I use some, I 'feed' it with more flour and water, and it just keeps going. If anyone is interested, I'll hunt out the starter recipe. At least I know exactly what's in my bread, and there's no preservatives or additives.





4 comments:

Shirley Goodwin said...

Can't agree with you on this one, Cathy - I believe it's the bread itself. "You are what you eat" is what it's about.

Nora and James McDowell said...

Here they have available in the stores bread that is made of organic sprouted grains - no flour.
If one were following Weight Watcher's numbers a slice of it would be worth one point, whereas even regular whole wheat bread (or stoned wheat) is 2.
One has to read labels like a hawk, but the Silver Hills Balanced bread has 5 grams of fibre and 6 grams of protien. Their Squirrely Bread is similar and is covered in sesame seeds and has sunflower seeds in it so it's good and chewy.
I have found Oatmeal to be the perfect breakfast and in Japan they treat diabetes with cinnamon so what could be better? I also add ground flax after cooking the oatmeal.
Two years ago I lost a very significant amount which is now creeping back and your "write it down" advice is probably the very most important. I need to give myself a good kick and start doing it again.

Digitalgran said...

I agree with you Shirley. I dare not eat bread. Bread is a treat once in a while. I'm the same as you, I have always been over-fond of it.
I do love porridge and have it almost everyday with a tablespoon of ground linseeds and the same of bio yoghurt.
I also find writing everything down helps.

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