Tony_H wrote:For you diet experts, how good/bad is my diet:
Breakfast - fruit juice and cereal, usually corn flakes with milk, sometimes hot
Lunch - mixed rocket salad with ham and cheese, orange peppers, thousand island dressing OR a bowl of soup OR a tin of Heinz Ravioli
Dinner - white meat with jacket potatoes and mixed salad OR beef stew and mashed potatoes OR sometimes chicken fajitas with salad OR pasta (lagange or tuna pasta and red onions).
I have managed to stabilise at a certain weight, but no matter what I do I cannot go any lower on the above diet.
Tony,
It depends what you are aiming for. I presume what you want is a long term healthy, balanced diet which will keep you slightly below your present weight.
The first thing you have to do is keep a food diary, and be honest with yourself. I am quite sure you are also eating other, less healthy things, than the ones on your list - like cake and puddings and biscuits and crisps and chips and beer etc. I think you may well find that they are the cause of you staying heavier than you would like. I know this is my problem. Calories can hide in things you never think twice about, like sugar or milk in your tea. So make a food diary and add up the calories. I did this for someone once and discovered that he was drinking something like 1/4 of his recommended daily calories in his tea (because he put masses and masses of sugar in it and drank tea all day).
If you're heading for a healthy diet I'd get rid of the cornflakes to start with. They are well known as good examples of over refined carbohydrates with a high salt content. The main idea here is to go for simple, less processed foods, like porridge or muesli (without any extra sugar). My favourite muesli is the 'rich' one from Holland and Barrett.
If you're eating something like ham, the same applies, go for the less processed one - preferably cook it yourself. And hard cheese does have masses of calories, which is why I eat philadelphia light and spread it as thinly as possible (ditto with whatever butter substitute you're using).
Home cooked stew and soup is very good, but possibly not so good if you're buying ready made - what they put in it, and the number of calories in it can vary a lot. Salad and baked potatoes and chicken etc. are also very good.
I notice you haven't mentioned fruit - maybe you just forgot to include it?
A very good tip I got out of a heavily serious nutrition book was to eat different coloured fruit and veg. It's something I never thought about before, but apparently the colours actually make a lot of difference, so red beetroot, orange carrots, green lettuce, purple cabbage, yellow sweet potato etc. - the plate ideally should be a rainbow of differently coloured fruit and veg.
The idea is to eat the right foods as your main meal and then you don't get hungry in between meals and eat rubbish, because your blood glucose levels stabilise. I have to say that I find this does work, but what happens to me is that when I'm really busy and stressed out I don't have the time to make a proper meal and I grab the nearest thing which may be something like a sugary fruit bun. This upsets everything and leads to me eating more rubbish.
Eating regular meals and taking time to eat properly, sitting down, is also very important, because you can train your stomach when to expect food and when to know that eating has finished, so you don't get those awful hunger pains.
Finally, I need to lose about a stone as well - fancy a race? No cheating mind :roll:
Ally
