The Biggest Loser

To be successful in losing weight and keeping it off for good, you need to plan your meals and snacks ahead of time. Plan them out a whole week in advance. Use the recipes in this book as a guide. Next, write out a matching grocery list. Do your grocery shopping straight after breakfast or lunch because you make more impulse buys if you are hungry. Do not buy foods that are not on your grocery list or foods that you know should not be in your pantry, refrigerator or freezer. Compare food labels to make sure you get the lowest kilojoule version of products. At home, modify your favorite recipes to ensure they are lower in saturated fat and kilojoules and serve meals with a generous amount of salad and vegetables.

Too tempted? Planning ahead saves you from having to always rely on willpower. Keeping an apple and some sugar-free chewing gum in your handbag, your work bag, car or desk drawer means you always have an easy alternative to the temptations that surround you at every turn.

Work out when you are tempted the most and plan your counter attack. This is another reason to keep a food diary (see for an example) as it will make it obvious when you are most likely to succumb to temptation. To avoid temptation, try the suggestions on the opposite page and see for ideas on how to negotiate ‘special’ occasions.

If you have a bad day, the first step is to give up the guilt. Do not beat yourself up about it – you’re human after all. There will always be temptations and obstacles in your way, so turn them into positives. Learn from any lapse you may have had. How did it make you feel? What behaviour will you choose in the future to avoid the same thing happening again? Work out how to deal with your triggers, whatever they may be. Start dealing with things directly and find coping strategies that are right for you.

Take it day by day. If you have a bad day (or week, or month) and end up eating too much, or bingeing, or not exercising, do not give up. One day does not mean there’s no point for the rest of your life. It’s so easy to give up but you get nothing and will never, ever be the person you want to be. It’s easy to fall back into old bad habits, especially when food provides comfort, but these habits are self-destructive. You can’t build a new habit – or change your life – in a day. It takes time, patience and commitment to learn new skills.

If it works for you, follow the 80/20 rule: if you stay on the path to your goal 80 per cent of the time, giving yourself 20 per cent as room to move, you’ll stay committed and still achieve your goal. It may take a little longer but it keeps you on track and it’s realistic.

Stop thinking ‘all or nothing’ or ‘good and bad’. Make a resolve right now that you will not give up on your new healthy lifestyle, even if you have a lapse for a moment, day or week. Choose not to be discouraged or feel guilty about this; no one is perfect and sometimes you have to miss a workout or you do indulge. Just be confident in yourself that you will resume your healthy eating and exercise plans. And do something as soon as possible that gets you back on track, such as going for a walk or making your next meal extra healthy.

HEALTHY EATING TIPS

1 Eat breakfast every day. Breakfast eaters have been shown to have more willpower in the mornings. If you think you are too busy for breakfast, set the table the night before and put the alarm on for 5 minutes earlier, or pack your breakfast in a lunchbox and take it to work.

2 If snacking is your biggest temptation, plan to have a favourite snack every day and work it into your kilojoule count. Pack your snacks for the day ahead into your lunchbox.

3 At dinner, use smaller-sized plates, cups and bowls so your eyes and brain think you have eaten more than you really have.

4 If fast food restaurants are a magnet for you, then you may need to plan your driving routes ahead of time so that you do not drive past them.

5 At coffee shops, never pick up the menu. Order a coffee without even looking at the menu to avoid that ‘just this once’ temptation.

6 Do not buy anything that is sold in multi-bags. Multi-anything means multi-tempting.

7 Only purchase foods that fit with your healthy eating plan and that you really want to eat or are happy for your kids to consume.

8 Plan all meals ahead so you are not tempted to give in to takeaways.

9 Get your fruit and vegetables home delivered so you feel you have to use them up.

10 Never, never, never go to an all-you-can-eat buffet, for very obvious reasons.

11 Never eat in front of the television because it creates eating amnesia and you have no idea what you have eaten. If you do watch television, get up in the ad breaks, because food advertising works and it will tempt you to buy and eat more of the wrong stuff.

12 Swap whole milk and full-fat yoghurt and cheese to reduced-fat or skim varieties.

13 Swap sweetened beverages to water or reduced-fat or skim milk.

14 Serve potato without fat, which means swap hot chips and fries to mashed, boiled or homemade chips without using fat.

15 Buy the leanest meat you can afford and trim off all visible fat.

16 Use low-fat cooking techniques (see Cooking basics for more information about low-fat cooking techniques).

17 Swap high-fat cereal-based foods and snacks, such as the ones that come in multi-bags, biscuits, cakes, pastries and crisps to lower fat choices like raisin bread, low-fat yoghurt, fruit, air-popped popcorn or packaged snacks containing fewer than 400 kilojoules per serve.

18 Limit ‘extras’ to an agreed number per week and when that limit is reached, there are no more until next week.

Special occasions are a chance to celebrate and let your hair down, carefully. With some planning ahead of time you will discover that special occasions do not have to mean that healthy eating goes out the window. Using the recipes in this book as a guide and the suggestions here will help you to navigate a healthy path through most situations where there will be lots of tempting foods and drinks. Celebrations are a chance for you to be a role model for your kids, your family, friends and work mates. Planning ahead is the key but it‘s also important to allow yourself a few occasions to treat yourself in moderation or you may be more likely to blow out completely.

Have a BirthDay and not a Birth Week. This automatically limits the party food and birthday cake to one. Purchase or make some party food that is low kilojoule, for example supermarket-bought snacks need to be less than 400 kilojoules (100 calories) per serve.

For higher kilojoule items, serve them in the smallest size that is practical. Be sure to have a fruit platter of the best available for the season including strawberries, watermelon, apple slices and grapes. Make some air-popped popcorn and have a plate of healthy sandwiches to satisfy your hunger so you can be more selective about the ‘extras‘ you choose to consume. Have lots of diet drinks and water available. Swap the lolly bag for cheap party items from discount stores, including balloons, balls and cheap toys.

Rather than spending lots of money on fatty party food that you do not really want and know will wreck your healthy eating plan, spend money on special foods that can be expensive but you really enjoy and are also low in kilojoules, like prawns or mangoes.

Set out some healthy pre-meal snacks of home made or supermarket-bought low-fat dips with vegetables, such as chopped carrot and cucumber sticks, strips of capsicum and cherry tomatoes.

Supply low-kilojoule soft drinks, soda water and reduced-alcohol beverages. You could make a fruit punch using cold green tea, mint, diet ginger ale and low-kilojoule lime cordial with lots of crushed ice and some orange and lemon slices.

Expand your barbecue offerings and try some barbecued vegetables. Chop chunks of vegetables, such as zucchini, mushroom, capsicum, onion and eggplant, and marinate in a mixture of 2 tablespoons each of balsamic vinegar and lemon juice, 1 tablespoon of reduced-salt soy sauce and 2 teaspoons of olive oil. Cook on a hot barbecue plate, stirring frequently until cooked, then toss through with 2 teaspoons of brown sugar to create a glaze and serve immediately.

Serve a couple of types of salad and always make one a green salad with any dressing served separately.

Reduce the number of times that you eat out and when you do, choose carefully and avoid going out in large groups because you always end up having more courses and more alcohol than you intended.

Avoid all-you-can-eat restaurants but, if you have no choice but to go, then use a small (entrée-sized) dinner plate. Make sure half to three-quarters of your serve is made up of vegetables or salad. This action alone immediately limits the amount of meat, potato and rice you can fit on your plate.

When ordering from a menu, either share a course or order an entrée size or child-sized meal.

Use your holiday as an opportunity to do more physical activity than you usually do. Better still, plan a holiday where it is easy to be active every day and hard not to be active. Walk as much as possible and do not use a car.

Plan to stay somewhere with a kitchen so you have the options of preparing at least some of your meals and snacks; it will be easier to control your kilojoule intake if at least some of your meals are homemade. If your are eating out, balance the extra kilojoules with extra exercise or watch your kilojoules during the day so you have some extra to cover the evening meal.

Avoid going to shopping centres or food courts at mealtimes so you can limit your purchase to a coffee or a drink. Then, do not even look at the menu and recite a mantra to yourself of ‘I only order skim varieties of coffee‘. It‘s hard to resist the lure of the many food outlets if you are passing them when you are hungry. Another approach is to take only the exact amount of money that you need to purchase for a coffee or drink so that even if you feel hungry, you won‘t have the money to pay for it.

Take a piece fruit with you wherever you go out so at least you can partly satisfy your hunger while you are there. Better still; go shopping after a meal when you are least hungry. If you must order food then choose food outlets that offer salads or low-fat meal deals. Choose options that include salad or fruit and always choose water or a low-kilojoule drink.

If you successfully resist spending money on food, it‘s important to acknowledge your achievement: put the amount of money you would have spent into a jar and save up for a non-food reward, such as going to a movie or buying a book or DVD.

If you struggle to control your weight then doing a stocktake on how much sleep you get is important, especially if you struggle to stay awake in the afternoon or fall asleep unintentionally. Chronic tiredness contributes to weight gain. This is because a lack of sleep alters your metabolism by interfering with levels of the following hormones important for weight loss.

Leptin is produced in body fat and its main job is to help regulate energy intake and expenditure and tell your brain to stop eating. When you sleep leptin levels rise. If you do not sleep enough you miss out and keep feeling hungry.

Ghrelin is a hormone produced in the gut and it stimulates you to eat. When you don’t get enough sleep ghrelin levels rise and you feel more hungry.

Cortisol is the body’s stress hormone and levels decrease overnight during sleep and then rise in the early hours of the morning just ahead of waking, in preparation for the day ahead. This is how our body tries to refresh us and lower stress levels naturally. Poor sleep leads to high levels of cortisol which leads to a rise in blood sugar levels and thus increases your risk of type 2 diabetes.

Any deficiency in growth hormone differs for adults and children. In adults, a reduction in the overnight production of growth hormone means your muscles are more likely to be infiltrated by fat and it also weakens your immune function. Children are less likely to grow well or feel well.

The two main categories of sleep are Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep and non-REM sleep. REM sleep occurrs every 90 to 120 minutes and takes up about a quarter of sleep time. During REM sleep you dream your most vivid and exciting dreams. Non-REM sleep is where your body goes into growth and repair mode.

If you are awake during the night you are more likely to eat to try and help you get back to sleep, or for ‘something to do‘. If you are trying to stay up late or working a night shift, then you may be eating to try and stimulate yourself into staying awake.

Short sleep or poor sleep that leaves you exhausted the next day brings its own daytime nightmare because when you are exhausted you have trouble making the ‘healthy‘ decisions when it comes to choosing meals and snacks. You are also less motivated to cook or shop for healthy foods.

While there is a large variation on the exact number of hours of sleep individuals need, the table below will give you an idea of the target hours of sleep needed to refresh and repair your body, to optimise the hormones that help regulate body weight and help children to grow and develop properly.

GOOD SLEEP HABITS

1 Do not drink coffee or tea for four to six hours before bed. Caffeine is a stimulant and it will keep you awake. It also decreases the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. If you need a warm drink, have decaffeinated varieties.

2 Have set, age-appropriate bedtimes for children and adults. Aim for this to be the same time each day.

3 Get up at roughly the same time each morning, including weekends. If you struggle, then use an alarm to help you establish a regular waking time.

4 Turn on bright lights or go for a walk outdoors to tell your brain it is morning.

5 If you do get a bit short-changed during the week, make up for lost weekend sleep by going to bed as early as you think you can fall, and stay, asleep on Sunday night.

6 Aim to get the family members to spend the age-appropriate number of hours in bed each night (see the table on the facing page).

7 Have a bedtime routine so your body knows it is sleep time. Do tasks in the same order every night. This trains your brain to go on automatic pilot and into sleep mode. This applies particularly to young children. A typical routine is to have dinner followed by bath, quiet play, say goodnight, bedtime story, settle and then sleep.

8 Remove televisions, computers, mobile phones and all other stimulating technology from bedrooms. Train your brain that the bedroom means sleep.

9 Avoid nicotine and alcohol as they sabotage sleep. Even though alcohol makes you fall asleep faster, it then makes you wake up in the second half of the night and robs you of the deep dream sleep.

10 Keep children away from caffeine and check their drinks because so-called ‘energy‘ drinks contain caffeine or guarana, which has a stimulant effect similar to caffeine.

11 Do regular physical activity, such as a walk, swim, bike ride or gardening. This improves sleep. However, you need to do this during the day, or a few hours before bedtime so your body has time to cool down, and to avoid being too stimulated to sleep.

12 Develop regular meal patterns; this means eating three healthy meals and one to three small healthy snacks each day. Avoid eating dinner any later than 8 p.m.

13 Have a small supper, such as a cup of skim milk with a teaspoon of Milo or Ovaltine and a slice of toast with margarine. Have it no later than two hours before your usual bedtime to help stabilise your blood sugars during the night.

14 Young children need quiet activities, such as stories or nursery rhymes in the lead-up to bedtime. For adults and teenagers, a routine of stretches and relaxation exercises before bedtime can help achieve a restful night‘s sleep.

15 Lying awake worrying is more annoying than not sleeping. If you are worried or your brain races then write any worries on a pad of paper near the bed. This gets the negative thoughts out of your head. If you still can’t sleep then get out of bed, do a quiet activity and then go to bed and try again.

16 If you are a snorer, have sleep disordered breathing or sleep aponea then talk to your GP in case you need specialised help to improve your sleep. If pain keeps you awake then also talk to your GP.

Low in fat	Contains 3 grams of fat or less per 100 grams of product.
Reduced fat	Contains at least 25 per cent less fat than the usual version of this food.
High fibre	Contains at least 3 grams of fibre per serve.
Very high fibre	Contains at least 6 grams of fibre per serve.
Low sugar	Contains 5 grams sugar or less per 100 grams of product.
No added sugar	Does not contain added sugar, but may contain ‘natural’ sugars that come from fruit and milk. These foods are not necessarily lower in kilojoules than other foods.
Low-joule/Low-calorie	Contains almost no kilojoules or calories.
Diet	Usually means the product is artificially sweetened and has a lower kilojoule count compared to regular versions.
98% fat-free	This product contains 2 per cent fat, which means it has approximately 2 grams of fat per 100 grams of product.
95% fat-free	This product has 5 per cent fat, which means it has approximately 5 grams of fat per 100 grams of product. Keep in mind that as a comparison, 1 teaspoon of margarine contains about 4 grams of fat.
Pick the tick	Foods with the Heart Foundation ‘tick’ have met strict guidelines for being reduced or low in saturated fat, salt and kilojoules and may also be higher in fibre, depending on the category. The ‘tick’ is a useful guide for making healthy choices. Not all foods apply to undergo the strict accreditation process to earn the ‘tick’. However, you can use the nutrition information panels from these products to compare with labels on similar products.
Light/Lite	This can refer to the colour, flavour, texture or the salt or fat content of food. The product may not be a healthy choice, or low in kilojoules at all. Check the label carefully.
Cholesterol-free	This can be misleading. It does not tell you the fat content. These foods can still be high in fat, for example peanut butter, olive oil and avocados, and therefore high in kilojoules. All vegetable and plant foods are cholesterol-free because pre-formed cholesterol is only found in animal products. Our bodies make cholesterol from saturated fat so avoiding products high in saturated is always an important issue when making food choices.
All natural	This is not a guarantee that this product is good for you. There are some nasty things that occur naturally in our environment that are still not good for us, such as arsenic. Sugar, oil, butter and cream are all natural ingredients.
Saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats	These are the different types of fat. Saturated fat, mainly found in animal foods, is the major fat that increases blood cholesterol levels. All types of fats have the same number of calories but monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are important in small amounts to keep your heart healthy. In excess, they still lead to weight gain. All fats provide 37 kilojoules or 10 Calories per gram. This compares to carbohydrates and protein, which are both 4 Calories per gram (protein: 17 kilojoules per gram; carbohydrates 16 kilojoules per gram).
Trans-fat	These do occur in small amounts naturally in dairy products, beef, veal and lamb but most trans-fat comes from solid margarines and cooking fats used in processed foods, such as pies, pastries, cakes, biscuits, buns and in some margarines. Trans-fats act like saturated fats in our body and raise blood cholesterol levels and can contribute to heart disease.

AGE GROUP	HOURS OF SLEEP NEEDED
Babies	14–15
Toddlers	10–12 plus naps
Primary School	9–10 hours
Teens	10 hours
Adults	8 hours, less needed as you age