Healthy Eating Blog (Weight Concerns)

Are you a calorie counter? Get ready to have your mind blown

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Is it worth counting calories? Let's have a look at what calories are, how they are measured and at just how accurate the numbers are on your food packages.

I’ve had to think a long time about what I am going to write about National Obesity Week or, indeed, if I was going to write anything at all.
It’s a confusing time to be a Dietitian.
This is how my day went whilst trying to write this blog.

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One of the most challenging and, perhaps, polarising concepts for Dietitians at this time would be the emergence of weight neutral approaches to dietary management. For an outcome focussed profession, trained in the quantitative skills of energy requirement calculations and “diet plans”, the potential change in this focus to a weight neutral approach can be one that is either readily embraced or rejected as a “step too far”. Weight loss currently remains the primary recommendation for health improvement in individuals with high body mass index (BMI) despite limited evidence of long-term success. Weight neutral approaches have now emerged as a result of building evidence that “dieting” with a weight loss goal does not result in significant health improvements, regardless of weight changes. (1,2) and that dieting as a weight loss strategy proves unsuccessful in terms of long term maintenance.

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When they coined the phrase, “good things come in small packages”, they definitely must have been thinking about eggs. When it comes to nutritional value, eggs are action-packed with good quality protein, vitamins, minerals and healthy omega -3 fats. Despite this, the health benefits and risks of eating eggs have been debated for many years. The elephant in the room has always been that a single large egg contains around 187mg of cholesterol.

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It’s all in the planning.
Ok, so I did mention planning in tip 1 but this is all about planning your events. Scout ahead. Make sure you know what foods and drinks will be on offer at each function- this way you will know how best to prepare and plan. It sounds a bit over the top but it does help.

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You may have seen the “reversing Diabetes” reports and books coming out in the media/press right now. New results coming out from a UK study, this month, have also shown that people can reverse their Type 2 Diabetes with a strict low calorie diet regime. The research is part of a growing body of evidence showing that people with Type 2 diabetes who successfully lose weight can reverse their condition because fat is removed from their pancreas, returning insulin production to normal. But can it be done?

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You may have noticed, when browsing through my website, that I offer both traditional and “Non Diet” approaches to weight concerns. Wondering what this Non Diet Approach is and if it might be for you? Consider these questions.

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Someone told me that I should pretty much start this blog off with a joke.. there are so many and they are so bad! I had to settle for this one:

Q: “why did the chicken have to wash his mouth out with soap”
A: “because of all the fowl language”

Oh dear!

Jokes aside, chicken is such a popular meat, it’s scary. Consumption of chicken in Australia has slowly increased over the years and, as mentioned in my previous blog, we are eating about 45 Kg of the stuff per person each year.

So why is chicken so popular?

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Since I arrived back in Brisbane, I have been enjoying some great hospitality and the brilliant Australian food and wines. I have been staying with family members who like to have a drink each night with dinner and sure have noticed the weight creeping on. Oops.

Over the years, I have seen many women who are looking to reduce weight; and I have found that regular drinking of wine over the week is a big contributing factor to weight gain and a bit of a barrier to weight loss.

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Teenagers sleep a lot, right? Well maybe this isn’t such a bad thing, according to a small study on sleep restriction and dietary intake, published this month. In this experiment, forty one teenagers (between 14 and 16) were placed on a three week sleep programme and their diets were monitored. The first week included normal sleep, to stabilize sleeping patterns and the following weeks included restrictions, (6.5 hours vs 10 hrs).
What they found was…..

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Increasing portion sizes would have to be one of the major contributors to weight gain and the obesity epidemic. Everything is supersized, “standard” portions we think are normal are far bigger than they were in the past and even our plate sizes have increased. It’s easy to lose track of what is actually the right portion size for us.
So how can we tell?

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Just a quick mention of my successfully kept resolution from the start of 2012. I was terrible for cooking too much pasta and was determined to downsize the portions and prevent food waste. I’m happy to say this one has been a success and I’ve managed to cook the right amount each time using this handy tool – my spaghetti portion measurer. I’d highly recommend using portion measures, especially for things like pasta and rice.

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Having just eaten a small red apple for my mid-morning snack, I’m wondering why more people don’t eat apples.

Apples are plentiful here at the moment, I love seeing trees full of them and an abundance of fallen apples on footpaths and in some of the local parks here. Apples are the perfect snack, easy to throw into your bag for an emergency. They are the perfect “fast food”, contained in their own fabulously coloured packaging.

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Ok, you’ve tried the method in “are you really hungry?“ to tell if you are really hungry or not and find that yes, at certain times of the day you are just darned hungry before time! What do you do? If you are trying to cut down, it makes it very difficult to avoid eating over your requirements.

There are a few strategies to ward off hunger between meals. Firstly you need to consider if you are getting enough exercise, water and sleep as these will all have an impact on hunger. In fact, a paper recently published suggested that early morning exercise can reduce hunger cravings during the day. Sleep has a big impact on hunger and satiety hormones.

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Have you ever started on a weight loss plan to find you are so hungry that it all goes wrong? Hear people say that on their latest diet they are “never hungry”? We have all felt hunger. Hunger isn’t always bad. In fact, I actually think it’s a good thing to feel just a little bit hungry for some of the time. We have been programmed into thinking we must always feel “full”. Why so?

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