That’s an interesting concept for a lot of people but in many cases weight loss comes down to the type of food you eat, more than cutting back on everything and starving yourself.
I often meet new clients who are having difficulty losing weight and when I look at their food diary I can see how much is missing from their day in the way of food that is helpful to weight loss.
In order to drop body fat we need to supply our body with the nutrients it needs, as well as enough food to keep our metabolism ‘stoked’. Think of your metabolism as a furnace and you need to stoke the fire to keep it burning brightly. Another thing to take on board is that about 15% of the calories we burn in a day comes from the thermic effect of food. When we eat our body has to digest the food, assimilate it and then eliminate it and this all requires energy, (burning of calories).
What helps with stoking the fire, apart from eating regularly (ideally 3-4 hourly) is the type of food we eat. Protein and fibre really work well to help increase calorie burning and yet fibre, especially vegetables at lunch time, are one thing I see missed most in clients’ food diaries.
I know that at this time of year salads might not appeal to a lot of people, but get creative and think how else you might be able to incorporate veggies in your lunch. You might like to make a large amount of vegetable soup, just using fibrous veggies and stock, with herbs and other seasonings. Blend it and then have some before or with your lunch. Or make the soup from fibrous veggies, etc and then add shredded cooked chicken to make it a complete meal. Here’s a link to a delicious roast veggie and chicken soup. I used leftover roast chicken and by roasting the veggies it really gave the soup lots of flavour.
Another way to get veggies into your lunch is to roast a whole pile of low calorie veggies such as onion, whole garlic cloves (or whole garlic bulbs), chunks of carrot, courgette, capsicum and halved Brussel sprouts. If you want to include pumpkin or kumara, then refer to your nutrition plan to work out how much to use. Multiply the amount by the number of servings of veggies you plan to have. I like using a couple of cloves of roasted garlic and squashing them into plain yoghurt to make a yummy dressing for the roast veggies. Add seasoning to taste. Roasted garlic is sweet and delicious.
While mentioning Brussel sprouts, I’ve been blown away this winter by just how many people are eating them. I thought that they would be an unpopular vegetable, but I’d say that about 95% or more of clients I’ve asked, say they love them. Maybe it’s because we don’t boil them for 20 minutes these days!!
