A Little of What You Fancy Does You Good

One of the biggest mistakes most people make when undertaking a new diet is to completely cut out the foods they love. This is the single biggest cause for the binging sessions that ruin a diet and, in some cases, end it all together.

It is incredibly likely that at least some of your favourite foods are high in fat, and therefore every diet in the land will tell you to forsake them. However, you should always view a diet as a lifestyle change, or you’ll spend your life yo-yoing from one weight to another. Looking at it like this, is it really possible that you’ll never touch your favourite foods, ever again? Of course not, and that’s why diets tend to fail.

The key word here is ‘moderation’. There is truly nothing wrong with having a curry on a Friday night, so long as it isn’t every Friday night. Make it a monthly event, set in the calendar, that you can look forward to. But you must be strict – if you break and indulge in a curry before that set date, the date needs to move back another four weeks.

If a calendar-strict system of operation won’t work, then perhaps altering the days on which you diet will. Try dieting 80% of the time, or put simply, on week days. Most of our socialising – and therefore, our indulgent eating – happens on the weekend anyway. So make Saturday and Sunday a diet-free zone and indulge. You aren’t going to lose weight as quickly this way, but it definitely is more conducive to building a slimmer lifestyle that you can stick with for years.

Then there are the small changes you can make to your favourite foods that keep the essential reason you enjoy them but lower the fat content. Making foods more diet friendly takes a little effort, but it’s worth it. For example, a typical English fry-up is calorie laden and would make most dieticians scream with horror. Yet with a little alteration, it might be a little heavier than salad, but it’s not in the red zone. To begin, switch from frying or scrambling eggs to poaching. When choosing your bacon, be selective, buying cuts with as little fat as possible – then grill, not fry. You can also try microwaving bacon, which is even better, but it is something of an acquired taste. Switch the butter for your toast to a low fat one, grill your sausages, leave a tomato uncooked and use low-fat baked beans. Small changes, but big ones when it comes to fat content.

The GI Diet – Do You Want To Be Fighting Fit?

Countless people, no doubt, have heard of the GI diet and assumed it has something to do with GI Joe, the fictitious American soldier of television cartoon fame – or less flippantly but still inaccurately they imagine it has some connection with the American troops of World War II, where the abbreviation “GI” stands for either Government Issue, General Infantryman or Galvanised Iron depending on whom you listen to. This is a common misconception, but a misconception nonetheless. The term GI in reference to a diet applies to the “Glycaemic Index” of different foods, and the theory that judging foods by their Glycaemic Index can allow the dieter to lose weight and live a more healthy life.

A food with a high GI will break down very quickly in the digestive system, as a result releasing glucose into the bloodstream and providing what is commonly known as a “sugar rush” – a short-term boost that will give a person a sense of energy and well-being. A low GI means that a food will break down slowly, giving slow-release sustained energy throughout the day, and will therefore not have the common “crash” effect present when a sugar rush expires and leaves the person with an energy debt, feeling shaken, tired and often depressed.

The GI diet was developed by research scientist Dr. David Jenkins nearly 30 years ago at the University of Toronto, and came about as a result of a study into which foods would help diabetics control their blood sugar level. The Glycaemic Index is concerned with how quickly the energy is released into the body, and the higher GI a food has, the quicker it is broken down in the digestive system. Thus a food with a low GI is considered a good thing.

Foods with high GI include corn flakes, croissants and white bread – traditionally breakfast foods which are considered to kick-start a person’s metabolism. Adherents to the GI diet point out that these foods may get the day off to an energetic start, but are partially responsible for a mid-morning “crash” which can leave you hanging on waiting up to two hours for lunch to top up your energy levels. It is generally held that a better option is to eat fruit or grainy breads for breakfast, as their lower GI will keep a steady level of energy going for most of the day.