Eat…..Ten Steps to Healthy Eating

The balance weight loss programme is made up of four easy-to-follow stages:

• think

• eat

• live

• move       

Of these, one that many people want to know more about is eat.

 

We believe in educating you to understand about healthy eating and empowering you to make your own choices in your diet. After all, you're going to eat every day for the rest of your life so it's vital that you don't have to rely on us or someone else to tell you what to put in your mouth.

Instead we help you to make simple changes, one at a time if you wish, to your eating habits in order to help your body function better, improve your health and energy levels, and as a result, reach a healthy weight too.

We do this through our 'Ten Steps to Healthy Eating', taking the ten most important aspects of any healthy diet, giving you a simple questionnaire to assess how you're doing in each, and then providing you with the tools and support to make changes to any of the steps that you wish. It really is a case of 'one step at a time.'

                                          Image courtesy of pakorn / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

To give you an idea of what our Ten Steps look like, we've included a short extract from our book, due out soon that works alongside the questionnaire to help you identify what you need to change, why it is important, and most importantly how you can make the changes in a way that you can stick to forever. We hope you like it and find it helpful.

Step 1: Timing is everything – when to eat

This is a good place to start. It helps you to realise that healthy eating is not only about how much you eat, when you consume food is also important.

You’ll have heard many things about when to eat foods, possibly including:

                          Never eat carb’s after 4pm.

                          Don’t consume carbohydrates and fat together.

                          Make sure that you every three hours on the dot regardless of the type of food that you eat!

To date science doesn’t strongly back up any of the above statements. Whilst they may work for some people, this is most likely because the first two will restrict the amount of food that can be consumed, limiting calorie intake and leading to weight loss. The diet that the latter point is based on also limits the calorie intake allowed.

So what evidence and common sense advice is there out there for when to eat?

Start the day right

The number one message from the scientific literature at present appears to be to eat breakfast. Various studies have reported benefits of consuming breakfast (Wyatt et all, 2002, Berkey et al, 2003, Elfhag and Rössner, 2005, Schlundt et al, 1992). Eating breakfast is likely to:

   Balance blood sugars.

   Prevent unhealthy snacking later in the day.

   Regulate mood, which can affect eating choice.

   Be part of a set eating routine, which has been shown to be effective for weight loss and maintenance.

   Increase metabolic activity, increasing the rate of calorie burn.

So what is a ‘good’ breakfast? This is a great time to get rid of the idea of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ foods. A food that may be good for one person may well be bad for another, and a food that might be bad at one time may be great at another, even for the same person. Take a Mars Bar for example, sat on the couch in the evening having done no exercise all day and having just had a big dinner, a Mars Bar may be considered a bad food. If you’ve just run 20 miles though in training for a marathon and are feeling a little shaky from low blood sugars, a Mars Bar becomes a good food. It’s all about balance! Finding the right foods at the right time for the right purpose.

Of course, in general terms, some foods may be considered better balanced and healthier than others, so rather than tell you a food is good or bad, we prefer to use a balanced scale to show you examples of foods that may well help you lose weight and be healthy, and others that most likely will not. Everyone is different so you may need to play around to find your balance but hopefully this serves as a handy tool for you. Generally, the least healthy foods are ones that some would argue aren’t even foods at all, heavily processed and full of refined ingredients, whilst the healthiest tend to be closer to their natural state.

Out of balance	Better balance/room for improvement	Well balanced
Missing breakfast or just having tea or coffee	Having a small snack on the go	Making time for a proper breakfast
Fried foods e.g. fried bread or fried eggs Processed sausages or bacon	Baked beans on toast	Boiled eggs Scrambled eggs Poached eggs Unprocessed, organic, local meats e.g. steak, sausages or bacon fresh from the butchers Oily fish e.g. sardines, mackerel, salmon, pilchards
White toast	Wholemeal toast	Dark, wheat free breads like spelt or rye
Margarine and processed spreads Shop bought jam or marmalade Peanut butter made with added sugars	Marmite, honey, homemade jam or marmalade, or non-organic butter	Natural organic butter Unrefined peanut butter e.g. Whole Earth Unrefined almond butter
Breakfast cereals (e.g. Coco Pops, Frosties, Corn Flakes or similar) Cakes and pastries Breakfast biscuits or cereal bars	Muesli Bran muffins	Porridge
Heavily sweetened or sugary yoghurts	Flavoured natural yoghurt	Low fat plain yoghurt Natural live yoghurt, organic where possible
Juice from concentrate or shop bought smoothies Sugar or sweeteners in hot drinks Fizzy drinks (sugary or diet) Meal replacement drinks Stimulant canned drinks Milkshakes	Homemade fruit smoothie Tea/coffee (not as a replacement for food) No added sugar squash Protein shake	Vegetable juice Herbal or fruit teas Water Milk
Chocolate Sweets	Dried fruit	Fruit Vegetables (e.g. asparagus with eggs and smoked salmon) Nuts and seeds

If you want to know more, or find out about the other nine steps, please do get in touch, we're always happy to answer questions and you can have a free face-to-face, telephone or Skype consultation.

info@balanceweightloss.co.uk

0775 200 1203