If you’re struggling to lose those extra few pounds that you put on over Christmas and new year, the temptation to go to extremes and massively reduce your calorie intake can be immense, especially when you’re bombarded with diet programmes wherever you look.

I really hope I can persuade you to ignore all the hype and not be seduced by the hype. To be fair, dramatically restricting your calories will result in weight loss – absolutely! The various programmes that offer meal replacement bars and drinks, giving you between 500 – 800 calories a day will work – but for how long?

I see SO MANY clients who have been on these programmes, often many times over,  only to  put the weight back on, and often end up weighing more than before they started the miserable process of being hungry and bored on one of these plans.

There are a number of problems with low-calorie regimes that make long-term success highly unlikely:

There’s the psychological issue of deprivation and boredom: once you’ve committed to a low calorie diet, it won’t take long before you’re craving and obsessing about the foods you enjoy but can’t have. Soon you’ll be cheating, then beating yourself up about cheating and invariably this leads to feeling useless, hopeless and depressed.

Then there’s the inevitable problem of your body’s response to being deprived of energy – it will very quickly adapt to the reduced calorie intake and manage to do exactly what you demand of it i.e. your typical daily activities, on less. Your metabolic rate drops to accommodate your energy output in comparison to your energy input. End result, your metabolic rate will be more efficient i.e. slower than when you started. The less you eat, the less you will need to eat – simple!

Finally, my biggest issue with these diets is that they prevent you from learning how to feed yourself well and manage your weight using fresh, natural foods. The artificially flavoured meal replacements  may be packed full of added vitamins and minerals, but you will not be getting the goodness, the enzymes, fibres and flavours that will satisfy you; the diet will not nourish you properly on a physical or psychological level and it will suppress, not stimulate your internal furnace.

These diets can never be long-term because they are so restrictive. Once you resume your ‘normal’ eating, the pounds will pile back on.

Learn to eat well and you will never have to think about a diet again – really!

Oh the joy of Sunday radio 4 listening. There’s Desert Island Discs, some whacky quiz-type show, and then, the very wonderful Food Programme. I’ve listened to this show for years and it retains my interest because the subjects covered are so varied and extremely current.

This weeks show was on the notion of calorie counting – arrgghhhhhh! It was so wonderful to hear some well-qualified experts in the field of nutrition and dietary science making it unequivocally clear that calorie counting as a guide to weight loss is a waste of time.

I won’t go in to the scientific details, you can get those by listening again on the iplayer, but the point is well made that all calories are not equal. I have been trying to convince dedicated yo-yo dieters for years that they have to stop being guided by the calorie content of foods. The old adage of ‘energy in, energy out’ as an equation for weight loss is just not true. 100 calories (a measure of energy) from a piece of cake is absolutely not going to have the same effect on the body as 100 calories of carrots or a 100 calorie piece of steak.

What I didn’t know is that Weight Watchers this year dropped their calorie counting system all together in favour of a colour-coded scheme – hallelujah!  The whole concept of calorie counting and how many calories are required is seriously flawed. How can a sedentary woman of 5’2″ with very little muscle tone need the same calorific intake as a woman of 5’10″ who is fit and active with a lot of muscle – bonkers!

The resounding message from the programme, which I agree with wholeheartedly, was this: there’s no need to worry about calories if you are making your own food from fresh and minimally processed foods; calorie counting drives people to eat the wrong foods, choosing calorie content over nutritional benefit e.g. nuts are super healthy but a high calorie food. Eat real food and you never need think about calories ever again.

If you’re struggling with this concept, think of it like this – our bodies need a fairly constant supply of nutrients to maintain all the very many complex functions in the body. Eating real food that provides the body with these nutrients,  your body will use, not store the food you eat. Processed foods, comprising ingredients that our bodies don’t recognise and cannot use i.e. foods that have been messed around with,   cannot be used by the body so will be stored instead, as fat.

For all you meat eaters out there – it’s coming in to Game season and I strongly urge you to make the most of it.

Pheasant is a great meat. It can be a little dry so I recommend you use the breast meat, cut in to strips, and quickly sauteed with lots of veggies to make a fabulous, healthy dish that keeps the meat moist. Or roast the whole bird just like you would a chicken, basting regularly. If your butcher does not have any, request they get some in.   Pheasant is lean, low in fat and has a lovely flavour.

For me though, the most fabulous wild game is venison. Another lean meat that is super healthy. It is an amazing deep purple colour because the animal is so active. Deer are not intensively reared so they live a naturally free life before being culled. Different cuts require different treatment. The steaks can be flash fried in a little butter and olive oil or you can get diced venison which makes amazing stew -    pop it in a slow cooker or casserole dish with lots of root veg, mushrooms, juniper berries and a little stock and 6 hours later you’ll have a fantastic, hearty meal (there are loads of great recipes online).

These clean, lean, tasty meats are satisfying and nourishing, providing lots of the amazing amino acid L-Glutamine which heals the gut lining; supports immune function; aids in muscle recovery after exercising and improves stamina.

It has been far too long since my last blog. So much has been going on in the health world and as a responsible nutritional therapist I have been attending numerous trainings, trade shows, lectures and forums to maintain my CPD (continuing professional development) requirement and to keep up to date with the latest research and discoveries in the world of natural health.

I have also been working hard on the book and I have been very busy with clients. Interestingly, numerous people have come to me lately for help not with a specific illness or health complaint, purely with a desire to be as healthy as they can be. This always makes me very happy as prevention is always far preferable to cure.

I am often asked in my practice and when contributing to newspaper and magazine articles, what I eat for breakfast. Getting your breakfast right is key to maintaining steady energy and blood sugar and subsequently managing what you eat for the rest of the day.

It has been a lengthy work in progress to find a breakfast that I not only enjoy but also offers me the correct balance of macro-nutrients, micro-nutrients, healthy fats and fibre to keep my going until lunch time. In fact I have done such a good job, my lunchtime is now around 3pm as I am not hungry or even thinking about food until then.

So, what do I have? Well, I always chop up some fresh fruit – not a lot, usually half an apple and half a kiwi. If berries are in season I’ll be having blueberries and strawberries (British, of course).  Added to my fruit are  freshly ground seeds. This may sound like a faff but it isn’t if you get organized. I make up a large pot full of my seed mix which I keep in the fridge – generally 50% flax about 25% pumpkin seeds and the remaining 25% made up of hemp with a little sunflower and sesame too. A couple of tablespoons in a little coffee grinder and whizzed up for a few seconds, you have a highly nutritious, tasty ‘powder’ full of healthy fats, fibre and minerals.

On to this I add a sprinkle (about 2 tablespoons) of organic jumbo oats (this amount varies depending on whether or not I’ve just got back from a run), I then add some toasted coconut flakes, a dollop of live, organic natural yogurt and moisten it all with some oat milk – my current favorite now that I have totally rejected soya milk!  Oh yes, I also add a teaspoon of a powdered multi vitamin and mineral product (from Cytoplan) that tastes mildly of vanilla and offers me trace nutrients that are easily lacking in today’s foods. This is a tasty little nutritional health insurance I choose to invest in!

Adding the yogurt, coconut and freshly ground seeds ensures I have a balance of proteins and fats to the carbs found in the fruit, oats and oat milk. If I want a really super energy-charged breakfast, I also add some goji berries and raw cacao nibs.

It may sound exhaustingly complicated to those of you who are used to opening one box, pouring in some cereal, adding milk and you’re done, but it’s really not. It takes me a couple of minutes and I know I’m giving my body all that it needs, especially after a hard work out.

I do also love an eggy breakfast. I use really good quality eggs to increase the nutritional value. Invariably scrambled for ease, I add watercress, rocket or spinach, garlic and onions  to make it super-scrumptious and nutritious. However, my eggy option never satisfies in the same way my oaty breakfast does so it’s the egg option if I know I have to eat an earlier lunch or when I am not working out.

I ALWAYS start my day with a pint of warm lemon water and I have white tea when I eat my breakfast.

I am always hungry when I have my breakfast. This is important as, if you are not hungry, you will not digest your food very well and it’s very easy to overeat.  I love not having the crazy energy dips and mood swings I used to have before I learnt to eat well. So, for those of you who crave carbs, use caffeine and sugar to keep you going and are ready for lunch by midday, consider making your breakfast more substantial, well-balanced and filling. If you do, you may well find you eat less throughout the day while you have more energy, more mental clarity and if you’re struggling to lose weight, this approach could make a big difference to what the scales say too

Eating fat helps you lose fat – FACT!

I understand that it is somewhat counter-intuitive to accept that eating fat facilitates fat loss, as fat is almost twice as high in calories as carbs and proteins and if we eat fat it must make us fat, no? Well, no!

I know I talk a lot about fats, but I cannot stress enough how important it is to incorporate healthy fats in to your diet. They are not just fundamental to brain function, cellular activity, glowing hair & skin and heightened mood, they are key in the extremely complex processes of manufacturing hormones and keeping them in balance and this hormonal balance is a critical aspect of weight loss, or more specifically, fat loss.

Many studies have confirmed that eating fat increases satiety, meaning your hunger is more quickly satisfied and this feeling will last much longer than eating a meal low in fat – hence you eat less.

Low fat diets tend to be high in carbohydrates. ‘Lite’, low-fat, non-fat foods contain higher amounts of sugars, flavourings and fillers (added starch) to try and replace the satisfying ‘mouth-feel’ and flavour that fat provides, but these additions will not only not lead to you feeling satisfied, the sugars will trigger a rise in insulin levels. This may well lead to these sugars becoming the very body fat you are trying to lose – here’s why….

Insulin is a very powerful hormone that controls blood sugar levels. When insulin levels are high, triggered by eating sugar and high carb foods, insulin moves these sugars out of the blood while also triggering a series of enzymic pathways that tells the body to store fat. When insulin levels are low, enzymes are triggered to release fat from the cells to be burned as energy.

Eating fat helps to keep insulin levels low, therefore inhibiting the fat-storage message. The notorious Atkins diet (very high fat, high protein, virtually no carbohydrates)  worked on this principle – keep insulin levels low enough, the body will burn fat as fuel rather than store it. Although the Atkins diet is not something I would ever recommend as a healthy option, its success as a weight-loss tool does demonstrate that insulin management is critical to losing body fat.

So, a healthy way to get rid of the trouble spots that just won’t shift is to keep refined carbohydrates like sugar, white flour, crisps, baked goods, chocolate etc. to an absolute minimum; have small amounts of whole grains for breakfast and lunch but for really good results stay off them after about 5pm;  include a wide range of low-starch fruits & vegetables (no potatoes, corn or parsnips) and make sure all you meals have healthy fats and proteins present.

This will ensure your insulin levels stay low so  your body is primed to burn fat rather than store it. Understanding this process is key to losing stubborn body fat and for releasing yourself from the low-fat mantra that so many people are caught up in.

See my previous blog for which fats are healthy and which are not.