Portion control: Enjoy one or two slices of pizza and then fill up with salad or vegetables. Photo / 123RF
Slight tweaks to your eating habits can help shed unwanted pounds – and may become your new normal.
If those New Year resolutions are now a distant memory, it could be time to turn attention to our waistlines again.
Depending on how much weight you have to lose, a healthy and sustainable target is 0.5kg - 1kg per week which, for the average adult, means cutting your calorie intake by around 500 calories a day.
By making slight tweaks to your eating habits it should be easier to reach the finish line and, who knows, these might become your new normal.
If intermittent fasting feels too much for you, consider giving mini fasting a go. By pushing back your breakfast by a couple of hours, to say 10am, and not eating after 8pm, you’ll be fasting overnight for a full 14 hours.
A study published in Cell Metabolism found that overweight participants sticking to this limited-eating window saw a 3 per cent reduction in weight and 4 per cent reduction in abdominal visceral fat, due to a net reduction in calorie intake of 8.6 per cent.
With any form of time-restricted eating (TRE), make sure the day’s last meal is well-balanced and satiating to prevent late-night cravings.
Aim to fill half your plate with colourful vegetables, and just a palm-sized portion of protein (fish, meat, tofu, eggs etc), plus a similar quantity of complex carbs (wholegrain pasta, rice, beans, potatoes or other starchy vegetable).
While you’re in the fasting zone, it is best to stick to water, unsweetened tea or black coffee.
It’s thought that our stomachs have an “appetite thermostat” and can become accustomed to receiving a certain quantity of food. If we slowly turn the thermostat down – by reducing our portion sizes – we will feel satisfied with less food and slash a few hundred calories a day into the bargain. Here’s how to do it.
Put 20 per cent less food on your plate to start with, eat it slowly and wait. Only have more if you are still feeling hungry. Having pasta? A clenched fist-sized portion with sauce is enough – fill the rest of the plate with salad or vegetables.
Planning pizza? One or two slices is plenty – once again fill up with salad or vegetables.
Want to still tuck into a roast dinner? Have fewer roast potatoes and less meat, but more veg. And go easy on the gravy. Fancy a curry? Opt for a teacup-sized portion, then the same quantity of brown rice and some chopped-up cucumber, tomato and plain yoghurt.
There is no need to count calories to lose weight, but “calorie shaving” can prove effective and easily cut a few hundred daily calories a day.
Below are a few examples, but you can apply this approach to almost everything you eat.
At 35 calories per teaspoon, reducing butter is a quick win. Butter just one side of your sandwich and don’t add it to veg after cooking.
Mayonnaise packs a hefty 90 calories per tablespoon and can be replaced by thick Greek yoghurt for just 8 calories. Mix with tuna or egg for sandwich fillings, or in place of mayo in a potato salad.
Removing skin from chicken will save you around 100 calories per breast.
Try a couple of oatcakes with soup instead of bread, or opt for a wholegrain wrap rather than a sandwich.
Save around 100 calories for each cuppa by having coffee with just a splash of milk rather than choosing a milky latte.
It will come as no surprise that studies show lower feelings of deprivation are associated with greater weight loss. A simple but effective way to keep hunger pangs at bay is to focus on “nutrient-dense” foods.
These are foods which are rich in nutrients relative to their calorie content – in other words you can eat a lot of them without putting on weight.
The Aggregate Nutrient Density Index, or ANDI, is a scoring system that rates whole foods on a scale from 1 to 1,000 based on their nutrient content per calorie, the higher the score the more nutrient-dense the food.
Vegetables rank highest, leafy greens, brassicas like broccoli and cauliflower, asparagus, mushrooms, tomatoes and fruit like berries, grapes and melon are all great to fill up on.
Of course, there are foods that are extremely nutritious but higher in calories, like nuts, avocados, olive oil and oily fish. It’s still important to eat these foods for optimal nutrition but if you want more on your plate, nutrient-dense foods are the way to go.
A number of studies have shown that a breakfast containing around 20g of protein can aid weight loss. A good hit of protein in the morning activates the hormones that curb appetite, reducing cravings and overeating later in the day. Here are some to try:
A recent study by the charity Nesta found that snacks make up a fifth of the calories we eat at home – or around 370 calories per day. If you are already eating a protein-rich breakfast, and filling up on nutrient-dense foods, then your appetite should be better regulated, and you will be less likely to experience cravings. But if the munchies really won’t go away, here are some healthy snacks that will hit the spot for under 100 calories:
Alcohol is notoriously calorific, a large glass of red wine comes in at over 200 calories, and because it’s so quaffable it’s easy to sabotage our weight loss efforts without realising it. If total abstinence is too hard try having 3-4 drink-free days a week and limit your alcohol consumption on the other days to a couple of drinks.
Another great mantra for healthier drinking, coined by the broadcaster turned sober champion Janey Lee Grace is “keep the ritual, change the ingredients”.
If you love your end of day drink, there are lots of excellent no and low (nolo) alcohol products on the market now. Zero beers have come on leaps and bounds and most brands offer a decent version which contain around half the calories of their alcoholic equivalent.
Low alcohol wines aren’t quite up to the real thing taste-wise so try sparkling kombucha instead.