Fitness for Old Farts

The Grumble and Grunt (Food for Old Farts)

Most FOFs want to improve slowly over time and without too much pain in the deprivation department, myself included, so I was very pleasantly surprised by the revamped diet with which Cliff presented me. There is plenty of food and a wide variety of choices. Once you know what you are doing, you can mix and match to suit your taste.

Here are some classic diet truisms to keep you on the straight and narrow:

You are what you eat.
What goes in your trolley is probably going to end up on your ass.
The only quick way to lose weight fast without exercise and diet is to cut off a leg.
Slow and steady wins the day.
Sunday is a day off, eat what you like.

What follows is the slow low-GI, low-fat eating plan (diet) I followed while doing my twelve-week gym programme with Cliff. You will find lists of foods that fit the diet and can be used to create your own recipes once you are familiar with the plan.

Included is an easy day-by-day menu to get you going. I began to experiment after about a month, but only using the foods listed. Keeping to this eating plan made me feel better, it certainly increased my energy levels and (along with the gym) helped to reduce the fat and build the muscle I need to be healthy.

In twelve weeks of my gym programme and low-fat, low-GI diet, I lost 8 kg and increased my strength and fitness by 50%. As you can see, I dropped two trouser sizes and now feel more comfortable in my clothes than I have in years.

Do it right and so could yours.

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Low GI

For those pedantic Old Farts who care to know about such things, GI stands for Glycaemic Index. The aim is to eat carbohydrates with a low GI, in portions no larger than your fist, as a general rule.

Low-GI carbohydrates will digest slowly, leaving you satisfied for longer and releasing glucose into your system over an extended period. Here is a list of low-GI carbohydrates as supplied by the South African GI Foundation:

Fructose (for sweetening your disposition)

Air popcorn (not the microwave packets)

All beans (if it’s a bean it’s low GI, although if it’s baked, welcome to the Old Farts Club)

Acidified sorghum (Tini/Ting’)

Chickpeas

Lentils

Stampkoring (sounds like food for gumboot dancers)

Low-GI bread (all types)

Pumpernickel bread

Provita

Low-GI muesli (e.g. Vital)

All Bran Flakes (with fat-free milk)

Special K (the new and improved model!)

High-fibre bran

Fibre plus

Jungle oats (cooked in fat-free milk)

Soy Life Porridge (with fat-free milk)

Bokomo oats (only cooked in fat-free milk – no water)

Cold mielie pap (for the masochistic)

Cold samp (for the extremely masochistic)

ProNutro Wholewheat (for those who can’t cook)

Raw oatbran (for those power outages)

Shredded bran (for the very nervous)

Bulgur wheat (made by Bulgurians)

Durum (100%) wheat pasta

Corn on the cob (mielies on the stalk for you FOFs from the platteland)

Whole kernel sweetcorn (yes, even in the tin!)

Old Millstream brown rice

Spekko rice

Sushi rice

Wild rice

Whole/cracked rye products

Pearled barley

Sweet potato

Baby potato

Not a bad list to keep you carbohydrated!

Meat and protein

Moving right along, here are some general rules for the meat eaters:

Grill instead of fry.
Eat only lean red meat. Not all red meat is bad.
Skinless chicken breasts are best.
Turkey breast, ostrich and any game bird is fine low-fat protein.
If you must fry, fry in a non-stick pan and use spray-on olive oil.
Fish is healthy meat; eat it at least three times a week.

For the less obsessed, try macadamia nut oil or grape seed oil as alternatives for frying. I personally think biltong is a fantastic snack and a good steak once a week is hardly going to turn you into Harry the Hippo.

Not all protein is red meat, although as a red-blooded Old Fart you might not think so. It was Mick who said ‘that’s not protein, that’s chicken’, when told that the skinless chicken breast he was given for lunch was his protein for the day. The right low-fat proteins are a healthy positive on your diet. High fat content and processed meat proteins are a negative.

Here is a list of positive protein options, but it’s not a definitive list. There are a lot of other positive proteins out there for you to discover. This is simply the list I gave to Mick after the chicken comment. After reading the first three items Mick said, ‘There is something fowl about this.’

Chicken breast

Turkey breast

Ostrich meat (a good alternative to red meat)

Game birds (no, not the fun time girl on the bike, Guinea fowl, pheasant, that sort of thing)

Salmon (great for essential fatty acids)

Tuna

Pilchards

Trout

Bass

In fact, most non-oily fish (avoid butter fish)

Shrimp, prawns, lobster and crab (although they are high in cholesterol, but as most of you Old Farts are on cholesterol pills anyway, enjoy)

Extra-lean ground mince (ground beef)

Lean sirloin steak (grill)

Game meat (from kudu to warthog, game is low fat and we are spoiled for choice in SA)

Lean sliced gammon (remove the fat)

Low-fat cheeses (only low-fat cottage cheese for the fanatics)

Eggs (egg whites only for the above fanatics)

Baked beans

Cannellini Beans

Lentils

Kidney beans

Vegetables

As a general rule, divide your vegetables into green and yellow. Have green with one meal and yellow with the other. I could do a list of vegetables, but come on guys, surely you can recognise a veg by now? NO? Fine, here is a list of some green veg and some yellow veg for those colour-blind readers!

Green veg:

Green beans

Spinach

Green peas

Snow peas

Cabbage

Brussels sprouts

Broccoli

Cauliflower (yes I know, but it’s classified as a green veg)

Asparagus

And hundreds of others

Yellow veg:

Butternut

Pumpkin

Gem squash

Sweet potato

Yams

Carrots

And any other veg that is not white or green

Really, that’s all you need.

Fruit

I absolutely refuse to do a list of fruit, but use fruit as a fat-free snack and try to eat two different kinds of fruit a day. Yes, an apple, an orange, a pear and banana will do nicely, along with grapes and plums and even tomato. Don’t forget litchis and strawberries and apricots and naartjies and …

Other stuff

For all foods that are not in their pure state, check the nutrient content on the label before buying and do not put it in your trolley if it contains more than 10% fat per 100 g. (Pure state foods are non-processed foods such as fresh fruit and vegetables.)

Common sense

Use your common sense guys. Obviously a bucket of fried chicken or a plateful of pork ribs is not going to help you lose weight and will probably clog up an artery or two, but every Old Fart to his own and if you have to be told it’s bad for you, you are beyond a diet anyway.

Day by day

To get me going and make things easy, Cliff gave me his daily schedule of meals in a menu form, and I found it extremely helpful and convenient simply to turn a page and see what I could eat at that mealtime.

With Cliff’s permission, and my thanks, here is that day-by-day meal plan. In my experience it goes well with any of the exercise programmes in this book. So stop the grumbling and get with the plan.

7-DAY MEAL PLAN

BREAKFAST	LUNCH	DINNER
MONDAY
1 cup cooked oats with raw oatbran 2 tsp low-fat margarine 1 tsp honey 100 ml low-fat yoghurt	Open sandwiches: 2 slices seed loaf or low-GI bread 1 cm-thick slice avocado 1 tsp lite chutney 1 pilchard tomato/lettuce/cucumber salad	spaghetti bolognese green salad
Snack 1 small apple	Snack 1 small pear	Snack 1 handful mixed nuts
TUESDAY
1 cup high-fibre bran 1 cup low-fat milk 1 tsp honey	1 serving* beans in tomato sauce 2 slices low-GI bread	fish and chips baby carrots and peas
Snack 1 small orange	Snack 1 small appl	Snack 2 kiwi fruit
WEDNESDAY
1 cup cooked coarse Mabela with raw oatbran 1 tsp honey 100 ml low-fat yoghurt	Snackwich: 2 slices seed loaf or low-GI bread 25 ml low-fat margarine 1 boiled egg	fish curry thinly sliced cucumbers and dill with low-fat yoghurt and lemon dressing
Snack 1 small pear	Snack 100 g grapes (10 large or 20 small)	Snack 1 small packet dried fruit
THURSDAY
¹⁄₂ cup wholewheat cereal 1 cup low-fat milk 1 tsp honey	lettuce, cucumber, tomato and asparagus salad with 50 g (¹⁄₄ tub) chunky low-fat cottage cheese or ¹⁄₃ round of feta cheese 6 Provitas 2 tsp low-fat margarine	bangers and mash
Snack 1 naartjie	Snack 1 apple	Snack 50 g strawberries
FRIDAY
1 serving* muesli 1 cup low-fat milk	Grilled cheese and tomato: 2 slices seed loaf or low-GI bread 2 tsp low-fat margarine 2 tsp lite chutney slices tomato 30 g low-fat cheese (Grill in oven with the cheese on top.)	hamburgers
Snack 2 kiwi fruit	Snack 1 large or 2 small plums	Snack 1 small packet dried fruit
SATURDAY
1 fried egg with tomato, onion and mushroom (fry in healthy cooking spray) 2 rashers bacon (fat removed) 1 slice seed loaf or low-GI Bread 2 tsp low-fat margarine	Chicken salad: 30 g cold chicken (1 thigh, no skin or fat) lettuce, cucumber, tomato 6 Provitas with lite mayonnaise or 2 tsp low-fat margarine	grilled salmon mushroom and rice ratatouille or baby marrows
Snack 1 small orange	Snack 50 g strawberries	Snack 1 small nectarine
SUNDAY
2 low-fat bran muffins 30 g low-fat cheese	Open sandwich: 1 slice seed loaf or low-GI bread 1 tsp low-fat margarine 50 ml (¹⁄₄ tub) fat-free cottage cheese lettuce, cucumber, tomato	crumbed roast chicken pieces rice tomato, onion, garlic and fresh basil salad Dessert: canned fruit (¹⁄₂ x 300 g can, no sugar added) and a dollop of lite custard
Snack 1 handful mixed nuts	Snack 1 large or 2 small plums	Snack 1 small apple
* 1 serving = ¹⁄₂ cup or 50 g * 1 dollop = 4 tablespoons (60 g) Note: The dinner plan is basically free of quantity restrictions, but be sensible and do not overeat.