If you’ve been invited to a get-together where everyone brings a plate, it’s a sure bet that some of the other guests will bring tempting foods that are not so healthy. It can be really easy to overeat in these situations, and to eat foods that are going to show up on the scales the next day.
While you can’t control what others bring, you can bring along a healthy option – and many of your friends will be quietly pleased that you did! Next time you’re having a morning tea at work, a birthday party or a baby shower, make your contribution a nutritious one.
Fruit is a great option. Kids and adults both love it, especially when someone else has cut it up for them! Fruit kebabs with a mixture of chunks of apple, banana, strawberries and melon are always a hit. Or you can save on the chopping up and save time by bringing a plate of strawberries, grapes, lychees or fresh dates.
Crackers and dip are a popular party food. Most dips are terribly high-fat, and many crackers are too. Bring along a lower-calorie version, such as rice crackers with hummus, tzatziki or salsa.
If you have a little time up your sleeve, whip up some healthy mini-muffins. Choose a low-fat recipe with fruit in it for extra nutrition. The mini size means that everyone can have their cake and eat it too! Try this recipe with carrot, banana and apples; or this one for banana, oat and honey muffins.
What you choose to drink before your workout has a surprising impact on your energy levels while you’re exercising, and on whether you achieve your goals of weight loss and toning.
Here are some common pre-workout drinks and why you should choose them – or not!
Water
Yes! Getting water into you before you start losing fluid through exercising is a great strategy to ensure you can perform at your best. When your body is well hydrated it does a better job of transporting nutrients to your muscles and carrying waste products away.
Coffee
Maybe. If you like to get an energy boost from having a cup of java before your workout, just make it a black coffee. If you do have a milky coffee like a flat white or latte, be mindful of the calories that this drink is contributing to your daily intake. It might be a good idea to count this coffee as your morning or afternoon snack on the days you workout.
Energy drinks
No! These give you a caffeine hit and then a sugar hit on top of that. The sugar is providing empty calories that you’ll spend most of your workout burning off before you can start losing any fat. If you feel you need the caffeine, have a black coffee.
Milk
Sometimes. A glass of cold skim milk is a fabulous way to fuel up for a weight training workout, if it’s been more than a few hours since you’ve last eaten. Milk provides the perfect ratio of carbs to protein to encourage uptake into your muscles in response to weight training, meaning you’ll recover faster and achieve better toning results from your workout. It can also be a great post-workout drink for those times when you’re not going to be able to have a meal for a few hours after you workout.
It’s no secret that breakfast is the most important meal you’ll eat all day. The way you begin your day is often the way you continue. So starting by eating a nutritious meal that gives you long-lasting energy (and tastes delicious) can set up you for a fabulous, healthy day!
If you’re tired of your same old morning routine and need some new breakfast ideas, try one of these tomorrow. Or leave a comment to let me know what you love to fuel up with in the morning!
Natural muesli
Why? It has a lower GI, and is high in fibre – keeping you feeling full. Natural muesli has undergone much less processing than other cereals, which means it has more of its nutritional value intact. Add some yoghurt and you’ve also got an excellent source of calcium, which unfortunately many of us women don’t get enough of!
Scrambled eggs with spinach and whole grain toast
Why? People who eat eggs for breakfast can lose twice as much weight! (Read more here.) Eggs are also the gold standard for the biological value of protein – meaning it’s easy for your body to absorb and use it.
Scramble your eggs with a little milk, not fatty cream/butter. Adding wholegrain toast gives you a slow-burning carbohydrate for energy and the spinach is a green leafy vege, and the more of those we eat the better!
Natural yoghurt with fruit.
Skip the fruit yoghurts – they typically have a lot of added sugar, and the low-fat versions have even more sugar to make up for taking out the fat! Add real fruit yourself – plain yoghurt with a chopped banana or tinned fruit is a lovely breakfast, providing a range of vitamins and minerals, including calcium, and is a source of fibre and protein.
If you are not used to eating natural yoghurt, you can add a drizzle of honey to begin with and as your tastebuds adapt you can reduce how much honey you use. To add some healthy fats, sprinkle ground flax seeds or chopped nuts. Voila! A complete, balanced breakfast!
One question my gym clients frequently ask, is “When I come to the gym, should I do my weight or my cardio routine first?” They also want to know whether to stretch before or after their workout. Different people have different answers to these questions, but I’ll explain the reasons why I believe in the answers that I give. Feel free to give a different point of view in the comments, or let us know on what order you like to do the various parts of your workout in.
Ideal Workout Structure
1. 5 minute warm up.
Warm ups are easy to skip, but essential, no matter what type of exercise you’re about to do. It prepares you both mentally and physically to put in an awesome workout. Warming up causes changes in your joints, heart rate, blood pressure and muscles to make your workout more effective, safer, and reduce the amount of DOMS (muscle soreness) you wake up with tomorrow.
2. Weights.
Weights are a women’s best friend – they will enhance your body shape, strengthen your muscles and bones, and increase your metabolic rate and fat loss. Do your weights straight after your warm-up while you’re still fresh and it’s easier to maintain perfect form.
3. Stretch (during weights).
While you’re resting in between sets, you can put this time to good use and increase your recovery time by stretching the muscles that you’re working.
4. Cardio.
Everyone needs at least a little cardio, to burn excess fat and increase the efficiency of your cardiovascular system, which means your body learns to work harder for longer.
5. Stretch some more.
Chill out after your workout by stretching any areas that are still tight or that you haven’t already stretched. Stretches are fantastic for winding down after an intense workout and improving your recovery and your posture.
Exercise is a part of my life I love…most of the time. All of us who have made exercise a habit still go through occassional phases when we just can’t summon the motivation to actually do it. We still plan the workout and pack the clothes, but turn around at the entrance to the gym. And then feel even lousier for missing the workout!
So what’s a girl to do? (Hint, giving up jogging and lying down on the pavement is not one of my recommended ways to cope!)
First, think about why you’re in a funk. Are you actually in need of a rest – both physically and psychologically – because you’ve been overtraining? If it’s been more than a week since you last had a day where you did nothing more strenuous than go for a walk – take a day off. Put your feet up for a day or two and get an early night.
If you’re OK to exercise and just need a little boost to get you going, here are some other things you can try that have worked for me:
- Make an appointment with a personal trainer. You’ll show up because you won’t want to let them down and when you get there you don’t even have to think about what to do in your workout. No personal trainer? Book in for some exercise with a friend.
- Try a new class or go back to an old favourite. Your gym might have just the thing on offer to spark your motivation - something fun that you don’t normally do. Otherwise, look around at classes you can visit on a casual basis.
- What about yoga, rockclimbing, kayaking, zumba, outdoor circuit training…get on Google and give something adventurous a go!
- Treat yourself to new workout gear. If your budget’s tight, you don’t have to buy expensive clothes, even a new pair of soft white socks or a fancy post-workout shower gel might do the trick!
- Plan something special to reward yourself after your workout. Anything from a massage to something as simple as renting a DVD, having a lovely warm bath, or a gourmet yoghurt.
- Take the pressure off by doing something that you wouldn’t normally consider to be a “real” workout. It can be just as beneficial to body and mind to occassionally swap your usual workouts for a stroll in the park or some gentle yoga.
Lastly, if none of this works, have a look at what else is going in your life and your head. Is there something you need to address? I try to remember Theodore Roosevelt’s advice for any situation:
“The best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”
Let’s play “who am I” to reveal the identity of this junk-food-in-health-food’s clothing
- I can be a good source of fibre
- I often have added iron, folate and other B-group vitamins
- I am oh-so-easy to prepare and to eat
- I have added sugar
- I am marketed as a healthy way to start the day, often by lean, energetic sports people.
Who am I? I am processed cereal.
It seems healthy, doesn’t it, and you may be thinking I’m being a bit neurotic by calling it a junk food. Let me explain the problems with eating processed cereal using each of the clues above.
, if a manufacturer adds vitamins and minerals back into a food, it’s because it’s had much of the natural nutrition stripped from it while being processed.
a) need the extra sugar because they train 10 hours a day, or
b) would be in big trouble with their nutritionist if they actually ate this stuff!
You can easily replace processed cereal with your very own blend of natural muesli, and throw all your favourite ingredients in the mix. Some of the things I like to put in my muesli are:
- rolled oats
- chopped nuts
- ground flaxseed
- shredded coconut
- chopped dried fruit like dates and apricots
- bran
- cinnamon.
Serve this with some low-fat natural yoghurt and fresh fruit on top for a filling and slimming breakfast, one that’s both delicious and nutritious. Yum!
I think most of us would agree that the only attractive “muffin top” is the choc chip kind! But did you also realise that the size of your waist is an indicator of your health risk? Excess abdominal fat, especially if it’s visceral fat (stored around the organs in your abdomen), increases your risk of diseases like diabetes and cancer. So not only is a jelly belly uncomfortable and unattractive, it can be dangerous!
The cause of excess fat is clear but if your body stores more of its excess fat on your belly than other areas of your body, the reasons for this are not so straightforward.
You’ll accumulate excess fat any time that your “calories in” exceed your “calories out”. If you eat more than you move, you get fat.
Where that fat lands is determined by:
- Your genetics
- Your sex (whether you’re male or female that is, not how much you have!)
- Your hormones, especially cortisol and your ratio of androgen to oestrogen.
Cortisol is one hormone that you may have some control over, and reducing it benefits you in more ways than one. Cortisol is a stress hormone – anytime your body perceives that you are physically or emotionally under threat, your cortisol level rises. So next time someone dumps extra work on you, you could inform them that they are increasing your abdominal fat!
Alternatively, the thought of the fat cells in your belly getting bigger could encourage you to get more Zen about that extra workload or the crazy traffic.
Decreasing your stress levels – either by removing the thing that stresses you out, or changing how you react to it – could make your belly flatter as well as help you feel better.
You can also add relaxation into your life with whatever you like to do to let go of tension. Meditation, a walk in a peaceful place, a warm bath, a cup of tea on the deck, a massage…write your own anti-stress list and make a point of making time for one of these activities every day.
Check back soon for my next post where I look at ways to turn that belly fat into belly FLAT!
Fitting exercise into your already jam-packed working day is not the easiest thing to do. First you have to find and protect the time to work out (see 4 ways to get fit in your lunch hour for some tips on this). Then you have to make sure you have all the bits and pieces you need to exercise AND to make yourself presentable afterwards.
It’s amazing how forgetting your socks or a sports bra totally derails your best intentions to exercise!
I’ve learnt the hard way and created a few simple routines that make it easy to be organised to workout on a work day.
- Get out what you need the night before. You have less chance of changing your mind, or forgetting something small but important, like antiperspirant!
- Keep spares of things you might forget, like clean undies or a hair tie, in the bottom of your desk drawer at work.
- Have a toiletries bag with all your essentials in it just for the gym. All the supermarkets these days have mini versions of shampoo, moisturiser, even facial scrub. Don’t keep swapping your make-up and toiletries in and out of your gym bag and bathroom – buy spares just for the gym. Also stick to a minimalist routine. When you’re glowing with the benefits of exercise, you really only need some powder, lippy, and mascara, and stick your hair in a ponytail or elegant bun.
- Consider buying a second pair of shoes to keep at work. Shoes are the bulkiest item to carry around, and a second pair actually costs you no more as both pairs will last you twice as long as usual! Plus, if you get a break in your schedule on a day you thought you couldn’t work out, you can throw on your runners for a brisk walk.
What other tips do you have to make packing for the gym easier? What are those small-but-important items you sometimes forget?
There are many reasons why drinking alcohol is bad for weight loss. Firstly, it involves a lot of sugars and calories, yet it doesn’ t seem like you’re consuming a lot of energy. And then, after a few drinks, it also lowers your ability to make smart food choices.
Fortunately you can follow a few simple rules that will allow you to continue enjoying a drink with the girls, and still fit into your skinny black dress.
- Start with good old water. You won’t then try to quench your thirst with alcohol.
- Buy sparking mineral water. Make every second drink sparking mineral water and drink it from a wine glass. It will still look and feel like a fancy drink, but this little trick saves you at least 100 calories for every glass of mineral water. Saves you a headache in the morning too!
- If spirits are your thing, choose your mixer wisely. Vodka, lime and soda has about 50 calories less than vodka and orange. Swap rum and coke for rum and diet coke, and again you’ll save 50 calories (equivalent to 10 minutes of walking).
- Choose your limit. It’s much easier to limit your number of drinks if you decide ahead of time what that number should be. My limit is just one drink on an ordinary night, maybe 3 on most special occasions. Whatever yours is, don’t leave it until you’ve got a bottle of wine under your belt before thinking about how much you want to drink tonight.
- Enjoy it! Alcohol is made to be sippped and savoured, not gulped. This is the way French women enjoy it (and part of the reason they don’t get fat.) It’s doubly delicious to drink one glass of wine with pleasure over 30 minutes than to skoll 2 wines in the same time.
Image: Graeme Weatherston / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
I love exercising. There was a time in my life when it was a chore to drag my butt to the gym or go out for a run (and to be honest, some days it still is). But usually I get a real buzz from getting my body moving and putting it through its paces.
You don’t have to be doing “exercise” to burn calories though. There are some things you can do that are so much fun you don’t even realise you’re losing weight!
Here are 4 fun things to do to make the most of your weekend and lose weight too.
- Go shopping. It could be indoors at the mall or outdoors at the Sunday markets, but spending a couple of hours on our feet and hunting down the best bargains from one end of the strip to the other will burn fat. Just keep your purchases to non-food items and leave out the coffee break.
- Get outdoors and look for adventure. You could meet your friends for rockclimbing, kayaking, abseiling or canoeing. You’ll all be talking about this weekend’s get together on Monday morning! And talk about a date with a difference – “dinner and a movie” might never get a look-in again.
- Dance. You can dance in your lounge room by yourself or in a heaving club, but get your groove on anytime you want to improve your mood and your health at the same time. Get your buddies away from the bar and on to the dancefloor and you’ll do them a favour too!
- Chill out in nature. I find nothing more calming than hanging out amongst the trees and the breeze. You could get into the gardening, or go for a bushwalk. If you’ve had a hectic week, getting active in nature may be the perfect activity for you!
