Average Jane's guide to healthy living and weight loss

Posted by Sebastyn in Social Commentary | 10 comments

I am no expert in healthy habits. That’s why I call myself the Average Jane. I had my beliefs about health food, exercise and the sort, just like the next guy. I HATED sports at school. I still hate the types practiced at school. I hated salads. I no longer do. And, some months later, I felt really old and fat. I no longer do. I want to bust some myths for you, like my strength and conditioning coach (it’s a qualification to train professional athletes) -husband busted for me.

90% of weight loss is about diet

Exercising to loose weight is not really necessary. You don’t have to buy Total Gym and bust your ass to lose weight. It helps, but not that much. Exercise will tone you, it gives you a better form, but in terms of weight loss it’s fairly insignificant. The basic formula is simple: Eat less than what you use – but don’t starve yourself. You see, you can go too far with “eating less”. It’s not about not eating, it’s about eating smart. Let me elaborate.

Breakfast

You’ve heard that you have to have breakfast, right? Have you heard why? I will tell you. After sleeping the full night, your body has completely used up all available carbohydrates. Normally, you would start looking for food straight after waking up, as the ancient human would not worry about having a shower, doing hair and make-up, get kids to school and so forth before sitting down to eat. So if you start franticly fussing around before eating, your body will get this message: “Okay, there’s no food available and it looks like a crisis, we better hang on to what we’ve got!” It goes into an economy drive, slowing down your metabolism to only use what it takes to keep you alive. You’ll feel tired; your brain doesn’t function well and so forth.

If you have your breakfast, your body decides that everything is fine, and it can safely burn off the calories that you take in and then some. If you’re in a hurry, have a banana. It’s easy and fast to eat and contains a lot of energy – and sugars (carbohydrates), everyone loves bananas! Ideally, you could eat more, but you can start off with the banana and once you’re done with most of the hassle of the day, have something else that keeps you going until lunch.

Eat 5 times a day

Every meal you skip will send the wrong message to your body. You can’t go on the whole day and then eat at 11 pm. You can snack during the day, but snack with quality foods, not with potato chips. You might find yourself feeling hungrier than normal. I certainly do, even though I eat more than what I normally would. I believe this is because the metabolism has sped up so much. So I eat something little at a time so I’ll know when I’ve had enough before I over-killed the hunger.

You love junk food

Now, let’s talk about the type of foods to eat. Try crossing out the word “junk” when you declare you love junk food. You don’t, trust me. You love food. We all love food, because it’s so damned nice! You think you love junk, but the reason why you like it is because it’s tasty and it’s there without you having to cook. You don’t like the taste of fat; it’s the salt, and the fillings. In fact, I don’t think you’d notice if the fat was missing, unless it’s replaced with something plastic like nasty equivalent.

Tips: Have a salad with a balsamic vinaigrette based dressing. If you love salt & vinegar chips, you’ll love vinaigrette dressing. If you can get your hands on Paul Newman’s Own Balsamic Vinaigrette (Lighten Up), get some. It’ll turn any salad into an irresistible snack. (I did not believe 6 months ago that I would ever say anything that silly.)

Find a healthy fast food. Fast food isn’t unhealthy by definition. It can be quite good for you. Me and my husband love love love something called Steve’s Favourite Kebab. To me it looks more like a chicken wrap than a kebab, but who am I to dispute the label. What ever it is, it’s beautiful! Salad, grilled (not fried) spiced chicken in chilli sauce wrapped up in a tortilla bread and grilled. Unfortunately, unless you live in Hobart, I think you’re out of luck, but you can find your local Subway instead. At Subway, get the honey oats bread instead of white bread.

For home made burritos, get the Old El Paso burrito kit. Spicy hot, and healthy at the same time, what could possibly beat that?

Body time

Your body doesn’t work on a weekly basis. It works on a daily basis. This means, that you can’t eat like a horse today, and then say to yourself that you’ll make up for it tomorrow and eat nothing. Your body thinks that your tribe had a kill today and you ate that one fat cow, but today we’re back to no food available -panic mode. Your body is engineered to keep you alive during starvation, and it jumps to every chance to save your life. (Do it a favour and give it the same consideration it gives to you.)

Plan a menu for a week

You know how the panic strikes when you simply don’t know what to make for dinner? Plan a weekly menu and repeat it until you’re sick of it and then plan again. It takes so much hassle off your days when you know what you’re going to have for dinner. It also gives you something to look forward to, if you have some extra very special favourite foods on the menu. Here’s what we have:

Monday – pasta (durum wheat) with mince and a sauce. (We vary the sauces.)
Tuesday – Salad, chiken thigh and couscous.
Wednesday – Old El Paso burritos light version extra hot. :p
Thursday – Steve’s Favourite Kebab (they laugh at us when we go in.)
Friday – Fast Food Friday; meaning cold foods that don’t need cooking. Little indulgence allowed.
Saturday – Random (Saturdays can get so varied that it’s easier to decide what to eat on the day.)
Sunday – Home made Rye base tuna pizza.

Exercise

Do you want to buy Nintendo Wii? Do you have it? Do your kids want it? If you can afford it, get it. It’s fabulous. (Wii and a dance mat.) If you have it already and you thought it’s just for the kids, kick them off it for an hour a day and use it yourself. It’s so much fun you won’t believe it. Weight loss exercise doesn’t need to be over the top. Don’t believe in the images of “the Biggest Loser” where they work out like they were at a boot camp. They are doing fitness training, not weight loss training. It’s for drama purposes, not for efficiency. There’s two ways to do it: The interval training: Work as hard as you can for a minute, and then slow down to almost stopping pace for a minute and repeat for the duration of half an hour to an hour. The level heart rate method: Keep your heat rate around between 114 and 153 for the duration of 30 minutes to an hour. Both are good, interval is better but sucks ass to do. Wii is excellent for the later method, as it raises your pulse easily to that level. If you don’t have a heart rate meter, just keep an eye on your general level of exhaustion – you shouldn’t be overly exhausted, light sweat would be about right. (It doesn’t matter if you work out a bit harder than that, it just takes you to fitness training levels, and but you’ll still lose some fat.

Other methods: Biking, roller-blading, walking, swimming. Same general rules apply.

Pros

I have a lot more variety in my favourite foods now.
I look better. My skin is glowing; it sometimes stops me in front of the mirror!
I have my waist back.
Very little effort.

Cons

I miss chocolate, but the less I have it, the less I grave for it. I still allow myself a chocolate treat every now and then though.

Reading: Donna Aston Fat or Fiction

Motivational help and monitoring your progress: Traineo.com

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