2. Keys to Weight Loss
• Drink water
• Don’t skip breakfast
• Portion control
• Mindset - This is not a diet but a lifestyle change to get your
weight into the healthy BMI range and keep it there
• Get yourself into happy place – sort out any problems or
issues – unhappy people turn to food for comfort
• Will power needs to be strong
• Exercise for an hour a day
• Eat the balance of healthy food your body needs each day
• Do this with a friend – for support and accountability
• Plan what you will eat and when
• Plan your balanced recipes for the week
3. Reduce the size of your plate of food
and it should be comprised of ½
vegies, ¼ protein, ¼ carbohydrate.
4. Cancer Fighting Foods
• Most fruits and vegetables contain vitamin C
and antioxidants which are powerful
anticancer agents. Some essential foods to
include in your diet are: berries especially
blueberries, cruciferous vegetables such as
broccoli, cauliflower and
cabbage, avocadoes, carrots, figs, chilli
peppers and jalapenos, garlic, red grapes and
citrus, rosemary, papayas nuts and
mushrooms. All things purple!
5. Reading Food Labels
• per 100g - fat should be 3g or less, aim
for 200mg of salt or less, sugar 5g or
less, trans fats <1g.
6. White Death
• White rice/flour/bread, white sugar, salt.
Basically this means processed food with
all nutrition stripped out. These are
what are known as empty kilojoule foods.
They digest quickly and become sugars in
your system which are stored as fat. Due
to digesting quickly leave you hungry not
long after you have eaten. Salt of course
causes hardening of the arteries.
7. Wholemeal versus White
What can your body do with a piece of white bread – well it contains
carbohydrate, and carbohydrate and well more carbohydrate! Use a
little for energy and store the rest as fat for later. Wholemeal bread –
is also very processed but a slightly better option as is grain
bread, containing some protein, vitamins, fibre and carbohydrate. Use
carbohydrate for energy, protein for muscle and tissue repair, fibre for
cleaning the digestive tract, vitamins for fighting disease and essential
bodily processes. However due to processing these breads also digest
relatively quickly also and leave you hungry. The best carbohydrate to
eat is wholegrain: wholegrain rice crackers, 9 grain vitaweats, cooked
barley, brown rice and quinoa.
8. Skin!
• SKIN ON FRUIT AND VEG CONTAINS
PECTIN WHICH REMOVES
CHOLESTEROL FROM THE BODY
9. Eat Iron rich food with Vit C
Vitamin c helps the body absorb iron
from animal and vegetable sources.
10. Value of nuts and seeds
Eat unroasted and unsalted. Nuts
contain good fats and oils and many
vitamins and minerals that our bodies
simply cannot do without. Do not fear
the fats in oils and nuts when eaten in
the right quantities as the body uses
the oils, without storing them, in
various processes for daily living.
11. Nuts cont….
• All nuts are good for you but some
important ones are
walnuts, almonds, peanuts, linseeds, p
umpkin seeds and sunflower seeds.
LSA is a crushed mix of
linseed, sunflower seeds and almonds.
Very nice on fruit salad. Nuts are
good for heart health.
12. Quick/Slow Exercise
The best weight loss method is 1 hour per
day of moderate to intense exercise
(moderate being a fast walk and intense
being a mild jog) with a quick slow method.
An example is walk one block jog one
block. But check with your doctor first.
Our bodies were designed
to move!
13. Importance of fish
• Oily fish contain omega-3 fats. These are essential for brain
development, cognitive function and healthy cells. Also good
for joints. Tinned fish with bones contained are an excellent
source of calcium and vitamin D (of which Australians are
now lacking!) Sprats and Sardines are high in iron. Oily fish
like salmon and tuna are good sources of omega-3.
14. Look out for Palm Oil
• (saturated fat disguised as vegetable oil.) If the
ingredients have vegetable oil but the nutrition
panel still has saturated fat you can be reasonably
sure it is palm oil. It works in the body like
saturated fat, creating cholesterol. Not to mention
all the deforestation it is causing.
15. Exercise Fights Cancer
Exercise is now used in cancer treatment. It releases endorphins
(the feel good hormone) which promotes healing in the body and
exercise also helps reduce cholesterol. (Just ask Rod!) Not to
mention helping to keep weight in balance, your mind in a sound
state and the body in working order. (use it or lose it!) Exercise
fills the body with life-giving oxygen and builds new neurons
(pathways) in the brain for learning.
16. The connection between sugar
and cholesterol
• The connection goes like this:
Carbohydrate sugar saturated fat cholesterol
In your body carbohydrate is digested and turned into
sugar, which if not used immediately in turn is converted to
saturated fat which we all know is dangerous as it metabolises
to cholesterol! White carbohydrates are the worst enemy for
this as you tend to eat more of them because they do not satisfy
due to their high GI content or quick absorption into the
bloodstream leaving you hungry not long after you eat. Hence
much of the carbohydrate converts to fat as you cannot burn it
off quickly enough.
17. A brand New Life
• THIS IS NOT A QUICK PROCESS
WITH AN END GOAL BUT A
LIFESTYLE CHANGE THAT YOU
NEED TO MAINTAIN FOR THE
REST OF YOUR LIFE – Your goal
needs to be how to keep your weight
in the healthy BMI range. (18.5 – 25)
18. Think COLOUR!
• Think colour when you are buying fruit and vegetables. Each
colour contains different vitamins, minerals and antioxidants
that our bodies need. The great thing is there are plenty of
different foods within the colours. So if you don’t like
mandarins then perhaps you do like oranges. So choose as
many varieties as you can within all the colours.
• Blue – eggplant, red cabbage, blueberries
• Yellow – yellow squash, yellow capsicum
• Red – strawberries, tomatoes, apples
• Green – spinach, broccoli,
• Orange – carrots, sweet potato
• White – onion, parsnip
19. Think RAW!
• Eat as many servings of your vegies as you can raw.
In general with a few exceptions the cooking
process destroys vitamins and nutritional content
in vegetables. So the more raw the better. However
some vegies such as carrots and tomatoes increase
some parts of their nutritional content with
cooking. If you are a cooked veg person try to eat
salad with one of your meals and cooked veg with
the other aiming for Al Dente cooking.
20. IMPORTANCE OF FIBRE
• Fibre is vital for our bodies as it acts
like a cleaning brush for the digestive
and circulatory system.
21. HOW TO REDUCE BLOOD
PRESSURE, HEART DISEASE and
CANCER
• exercise, fruit and vegetables with
skin, water, lentils and beans, limited
red meat with low levels of
fat, fish, good fats, nuts, wholegrain
carbohydrates, plenty of salad.
22. Eat food not food products
• The more food you can eat that has
only one ingredient the healthier you
will be. For example eating an apple
(ingredients – apple!) is healthier than
eating and apple and blueberry bar
(ingredients -
25. HUNGER IS MY FRIEND
• When you have eaten everything on the
list and providing you are only doing the
exercise on the list then let hunger be
your friend. If you are still hungry it is
possible your stomach needs to shrink so
that it takes less to fill it. Thirst can be
misinterpreted as hunger. Drinking
enough water is essential.
26. WATER
• Ensure you are drinking adequate water as it boosts your
metabolism (the rate at which you burn your food), keeps you
hydrated, cleanses you from toxins and fills your stomach.
Often hunger is confused with thirst. If you feel hungry try a
glass of water. If after 10 or 15 minutes you are still hungry
then hunger it is but remember hunger will do its job if you
need to shrink your stomach.
• Beware fruit juice has just as much sugar as cordial and soft
drink. You may think it is healthy but eating the actual fruit is
healthier. It may take 5-6 oranges to get a glass of juice. But
you have missed all the fibre and satisfaction of eating. Could
you actually eat that many oranges? If not don’t drink the
juice!
27. EXERCISE AND
ENDORPHINS
• Exercise releases endorphins
(happy, feel good hormones) which
helps us to cope with life in
general, not to mention filling us with
oxygen and boosting your metabolism.
28. GLYCAEMIC INDEX (GI)
• Low GI foods are foods that take longer to
digest leaving us feeling full for longer and
giving us a slow release of energy, that can be
used at a slow pace during the day as
opposed to high GI foods which digest
quickly releasing a bulk of energy all at once
which the body cannot use quickly enough
and therefore stores as fat for later use. You
are then left feeling hungry again very quickly
as your stomach is empty.
29. • LOW GI – wholegrains, unsweetened
low fat yoghurt, skim milk and fat free
cheeses, lean red meat, brown
rice, lentils and beans, rolled
oats, nuts
• HIGH GI – pastries, cakes, white
rice, bread, pasta, lollies
30. PLATE SIZE
• Helps determine portion control. We
tend to fill our plates. A meal only
looks as if it will satisfy if our plate is
full. By having a smaller plate it
satisfies the psychology of needing to
see a full plate.
31. PRESENTATION
• If you present things nicely you are
more tempted to eat them.
• It takes a little more work, but is
worth it.
32. DISTRACTION
• Go and do something else when you
have the urge to go to the fridge.
• Have planned activities or hobbies so
you are not caught off guard when
you have nothing better to do or the
urge to eat unnecessarily sets in.
33. SPICES
• If things are spicy (to your liking of
course) you will be far more satisfied
than if you eat bland food. You will
find you can eat less and still be
satisfied.
34. PURPOSEFUL EATING
• Small mouthfuls taste just as good as big ones and make
your meal last longer. Use teaspoons, dessert forks and
chop sticks to achieve the small mouthful. Try to chew
each mouthful 20 times and put your knife and fork
down between each mouthful, as chewing is part of the
satisfaction of eating. It takes 20 minutes for your
stomach to register that it is full. Wherever possible sit
down to eat, don’t eat on the run, as you cannot
concentrate on the joy of eating. You will suddenly
realise the food is all gone and you are not satisfied
because you didn’t taste it or enjoy it.
35. GO PREPARED
• If you are going to be out and about
or near places where there are
tempting unhealthy foods take along
a prepacked healthy lunch or at least
have some healthy snacks in the car.
• These might include: nuts and dried
fruit, vitaweats (9 grains), fresh
fruit, salad sticks or homemade
muffins,wholemeal ricecakes.