One simple trick to staying on your diet

It's week 4 of the diet, and both I and Jim are probably going to extend it further as it's going so well. I'm in the process of writing an ebook with plenty of recipes and tips on how to follow the diet. If there's one tip I had to give for staying on diets, it would be this: buy your food online.

Meal planning
To ensure that I didn't get sick to death of the food, and that I wasn't constantly nipping to the supermarket, I've had to plan meals for the entire week - shopping online really helps get everything together quickly and easily, and I can look up recipes depending on what was on offer there that week, which also helps with budgeting. Meal planning is a pretty integral part of sticking to any diet - if you fail to do this, you may well end up having to rely on takeaways or grabbing a bite to eat from the local cornershop (which isn't going to stock fresh sandwiches and fruit).

Resisting temptation
This is the biggest reason I tried not to venture into supermarkets this month; it's all to easy to accidentally wander into the biscuit section, or the bakery, or see the offers on the end of the aisles and just 'accidentally' buying it. It sounds odd. but I manage to get a lot of confectionary without meaning to if I'm not concentrating (damn that sweet tooth!). Without the temptation of BOGOF offers, the smell of freshly-baked croissants and the lure of the chocolate section, keeping healthy is a lot easier.


Budgeting
Cutting out additives, simple carbs and adding in more lean meat, fish and fresh fruit/veg/nuts is surprisingly expensive. Online shopping just helps to keep an eye on the price for the weekly shop without having to put too much effort into it.

Thanks to Phenuncle for the image

Great Ways to Get More Fruit in Your Diet

Which fruits should I eat more of?

Apples and bananas are generally the most popular fruit - they're easy to eat, easy (and cheap) to buy and are generally fairly convenient. However, there are other fruits that are more easily incorporated into different parts of your diet, and more beneficial for you.

Melon, grapes or citrus fruits are great to blend into salads, or go nicely as a dessert, whereas fairly starchy or solid fruits are really better eaten on their own or with nuts to ensure that you digest them properly.

Some fruits are very well known for their antioxidant properties, such as blueberries, plums, kiwis, apricots and strawberries. Some of these need to be in season to ensure that you get the full nutritional and flavour benefits from them, so look out for them when they are! Strawberries are just so much sweeter when you get them at the right time of year.

When should I eat it?

As already mentioned, it's really best to eat fruits when they're in season. It varies your diet and ensures that you're eating foods when it's natural for you to do so. It also lessens the environmental impact of your diet, and ensures you're getting the most nutrients from them. Here's some info on a few of the fruits' seasons:

January: Apples, pears
February: Apples, pears
March: Pears, rhubarb
April: Rhubarb, strawberries
May: Rhubarb, strawberries, raspberries
June: Blackcurrant, blueberry, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, cherries, tayberries
July: Blackcurrants, blueberry, gooseberries, cherries, loganberries, pears, plums, raspberries, redcurrants, strawberries, white currants, tayberries
August: Blackcurrants, blackberries, cherries, elderberries, grapes, gooseberries, figs, mulberries, loganberries, peach, pears, plums, raspberries, redcurrants, rosehip, strawberries, tayberries
September: Apple, blackberries, blackcurrants, damson elderberries, figs, grapes, peach, pears, plums, raspberries, rosehip
October: Apple, blackcurrants, pears, plums
November: Apple, quince, pears
December: Apple, pears

Some ideas to get more fruit in your diet

Munching on fresh fruit is refreshing, but it can get a little tedious if that's what you predominantly snack on. Here are some ideas to get more fruit into your diet without having to eat piles of it by itself:

• Apple pies (wonderful in winter, when they're in season)
• On or in pancakes (banana and blueberry are particularly good for this - try wholemeal pancakes to make them healthier)
• In salads (apples and plums are wonderful in leavy salads - or add walnuts and lettuce to apple to make a waldorf salad)
• Baked into granola bars (make your own to regulate the sugar content, and put in as much fruit as you like!)
• Add melon to cured meats for some extra protein and a wonderful starter - melon and parma ham is a classic for a reason!
• Teas (swap your usual black tea for a lovely fruit tea, and use honey to sweeten)
• Smoothies

Bananas 4 Ways

Bananas have a lot of health benefits - they're high in fiber and potassium, fructooligosaccharide (a compound that nourishes 'good' bacteria in the digestive system), as well as vitamins such as B6 and B12. They're also low in sodium, and can help reduce your blood pressure, treat heartburn and are even said to help reduce morning sickness. Here are 4 ways so serve bananas so you can get more of their benefits, while varying your mealtimes.

Banana Porridge
A favourite of bodybuilders and children, this porridge is slightly sweeter than the plain stuff, without adding artificial sugars. Just mash up a banana with a fork and add the oats and milk to it and mix, then cook. Very quick, and contains around 12g of protein.

Banana Bread
Absolutely delicious! Try it with fruit and yoghurt with your tea. This is my favourite recipe:
125g butter
175g muscovado sugar (or any soft, unrefined brown sugar)
2 eggs
270g self-raising flour
salt
120ml milk
3 bananas (ripe)
splash of vanilla extract
any nuts you'd like to add

Preheat the oven to 180C, then just blend together the sugar and butter. Add the eggs, then the flour and the milk. Finally add the bananas (mashed) and nuts. Pop it in the oven for about an hour and you're done!

Healthy Banana Split
Instead of using ice cream, try frozen yoghurt. Add a sprinkling of nuts for yet more protein and you have a great pudding.

Boozy Banana (not really that healthy, but everyone deserves a treat now and then)
Definitely one for the adults, and just as quick as the banana porridge. Put a few tablespoons of caster sugar on a hot frying pan and stir it until it begins to caramelise. Add a splash of Amaretto, and slice the banana down the middle. Put the banana on the frying pan and move around a little to ensure that it gets covered in plenty of Amaretto and sugar.   Don't cook for any more than a minute and a half, and eat immediately.

Thanks to Luis Condessa for the image.

Eating: You're Doing It Backwards

So you're going to drive somewhere, and you need to fill the car up. Do you put in 5 litres, then another 10 and then add another 30 when you're nearer the end of the trip, or do you fill up the tank straight away and go? Stupid question, but we don't seem to fuel our bodies the same way. Because of jobs, late nights (and mornings), alarm clocks, the time it takes to cook and quite a few other factors, in the west we tend to eat a tiny (and nutritionally useless) breakfast, a medium lunch and then a comparatively huge dinner, right before we settling down for the night and spend 6-9 hours sleeping.


Good News - You Need a Bigger Breakfast
To eat heathily, and fuel our bodies when they need it, rather than when it's convenient, we need to balance the size of our meals; we need to increase the size and nutritional content of our breakfasts, have better lunches and actually decrease the size of our dinners so that we're not trying to digest them when we're about to go to sleep. Remember that it's also the nutritional content of the breakfast, not just the size, so eating a second bowl of Special K in the morning just isn't going to cut it.


Even More Good News - Have Some Bacon!
Many nutritional experts believe that we also need to increase the amount of meat we have in the morning to ensure a balanced diet throughout the day. It also gives us plenty of time to digest it properly and make good use of the energy it gives us; meat is digested slowly, releasing a slow and long-lasting supply of sugar into the blood stream which will keep you going, and full, for longer. If you fill an empty stomach with carbs and no proteins, you're triggering insulin overkill which means your sugars will drop more quickly. Eggs are also a fantastic addition to any breakfast - you can even get toasters that boil your eggs while your toast is toasting! If you're not going to need a lot of energy for the evening, or if you're having a late dinner, it's a good idea to try to eat as little meat as possible, and reduce the size of your dinner to suit.


Protein is also instrumental in creating and maintaining muscle mass - the rate at which you can build muscle stays constant throughout your life, but lowering your protein intake has a larger impact on your muscle mass as you get older, which is why you need to maintain a decent diet throughout your life time, to ensure that you can stay active and strong for as long as possible. The average person eats around 10g of protein during breakfast, around 15g at lunch and then 25-30g at dinner - not only does it usually fall below the recommended daily amount (roughly 1g per kilo of weight, or 1.4g per kilo if you're active), but it's also very uneven. Aiming for equal amounts, spread throughout the day is far healthier, and will help you maintain constant levels of sugar and muscle mass.


If that hasn't convinced you to have an egg or some bacon with breakfast, then this should; experts investigated the impact of increasing protein on muscle mass; when increasing protein intake by as much as 300%, the ability to make muscle did not increase by much at all. It actually stayed pretty much the same. More protein doesn't necessarily lead to more muscle - that depends more onwhen you eat the protein and how you eat it – higher quality sources like eggs and dairy are more efficient than vegetable sources such as soy. Eating it throughout the day has a larger impact than eating a lot of protein once a day. 

...And Try to Eat More Often!
Ideally, you should be eating 4-5 smaller meals throughout the day instead of 2-3. This will help increase your metabolism by ensuring that your body gets a steady stream of sugar into the blood, and doesn't feel the need to hold on to any extra fats in case of starvation.








It can be difficult to make healthy meals first thing in the morning, or even after a long day at work, or to think of quick snacks that don't make you pile on the pounds. I'll be posting healthy recipes and ideas on this blog to give you a bit more inspiration! If you'd like to receive these direct to your inbox, just subscribe using the box at the top right.

Thanks to Knick for the image.

The 1 Change To Your Diet That You Have To Make

I'll admit that I'm not obsessed with food - I'm not someone that counts calories or obsesses over whether or not to have a biscuit with my tea. However, I am someone that doesn't want to die early because of what they eat, and I don't think I'm alone in that. I believe in eating healthily, and there's a single step that you have to take if you want to do that, which is fairly easy and doesn't even involve depriving yourself of treats or anything that you enjoy, and that's cutting down the additives that you eat.

I've never been a fan of processed food - my parents always cooked fresh food when I lived at home, and it just tastes better. Whenever I eat a ready-meal now I feel slightly sick because I'm just not used to the amount of salt that they put in them. However, when starting to research some of the additives they put in food for this post, I realised that salt is fairly low down on the list of issues with ready-meals and additives in bread and sweets. I'll list some of the most common additives and their effects further down.

Luckily, there's a fairly easy way to cut down the additives that you eat, and really just involves an element of common sense and maybe spending a little extra time cooking. Just eat fresh food - the only thing in a potato is a potato, the only thing in a fresh chicken breast should be a fresh chicken breast. If you pick up a pack of cheese, and you get a list of 20 ingredients there's clearly something wrong here - it doesn't take 20 ingredients to make! If there are more than 3 ingredients in something that I don't understand (or can't pronounce), it goes back in the shelf (especially if they're near the top of the list, meaning there's more of them). Using fresh ingredients does mean that I have to spend a little more time cooking, but it isn't much - it very rarely takes me more than 30-45 minutes to make dinner, and I don't have to stand watch over it the whole time. Trading that vs. ingesting carcinogens every dinner time, I know that I choose.

Here's a list of some fairly scary additives and their effects on your body:

• FD&C Blue: Previously banned in a lot of EU countries (who later lifted the ban), this colorant causes cancer in rats and further studies have found it to be a skin and eye irritant and allergen.
• FD&C Red Dye: Derived from coal tar, researchers reported hat this additive may interfere with transmission of nerve impulses in the brain. In 1996, researchers conduected studies that found that even low doses of this additive caused cancerous changes in human cell cultures.
• BHA (Butylated Hydroxyanisole): used in cereals, crisps and chewing gum as a preservative, this additive accumulates in the body fat and is thought to disrupt the body's hormone balance. It's also been shown to cause cancer in mice, rats and hamsters, and it's considered a carcinogen by the US Department of Health and Human Services.
• Sodium Benzoate, Benzoic Acid: this additive is added to fruit juices which also contain ascorbis acid, which react to create small amounts of benzene, a chemical that causes leukemia. A 2006 law suit forced Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and other companies to reformulate affected drinks - that means you've probably drunk the original (harmful) recipe at some point. 
• Nonyl Alcohol: in experimental animals, this additive caused central nervous system and liver damage.
• Polysorbate 80: used in a dairy products and various medical products, this additive causes changes to the womb lining, hormonal changes, ovary deformities and degenerative follicles in mice.
• Trans Fats and Hydrogenated Fats: These raise the bad 'LDL' cholesterol levels, which increases the rish of coronary heart disease. There is no 'safe' intake level determined.
• Other colourants such as Tartrazine E102, Quinoline yellow E104, E110, E122, E124, E129 (and plenty of other E numbers) have been linked to hyperactivity and mood disorders in children.
• Acesulfame K: has been shown to stimulate dose-dependent insulin secretion in rats, and may be carcinogenic. 

There are quite a few more, but I'm sure that gives you a decent idea of the consequences - they don't just make you put on weight; some could potentially cause serious diseases (and have). A large problem with additive testing is that it's often done in isolation, so they will test the effect of that single additive...but that's not how we eat them. They're coupled with dozens of others in ready meals, in sweets and will be eaten again and again throughout the day.

If buying fresh ingredients and making food from scratch will reduce your intake of carcinogens, fats that increase your risk of heart disease and other additives that could accumulate and react to cause various cancers, surely it's worth the extra 10 minutes a day?


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Since I've been researching nutrition and diets for this post and others that are still scheduled (such as 'Eating: You're Doing it Backwards' - published on 8th April) I've realised that my diet could do with a bit of an overhaul. As such, both I and Sensei Jim are going to be doing a Food Challenge, starting next week and lasting a month (possibly more). We're going to be:

•  Eating more protein in the mornings, and ensuring that we have roughly equal amounts of protein in each meal
• Eating more frequently - 5 times a day instead of 2-3
• Decreasing carb intake, particularly in the evenings
• Having a meat-free day each week
• Allowing ourselves a 'cheat day' on Sundays
• Cutting down on sugar
• Cutting out additives/preservatives

At the end of the month, I'll let you know how easy it is, let you know if we feel any better/lose any weight and I'll even give you the best and easiest recipes to try out for yourselves. If you'd like the news and info in your inbox, just subscribe to this blog using the box at the top right of this page, or join our facebook page.

Image courtesy of Joe Pitz

Healthy lemony chicken recipe (25 minutes)

A quick and easy recipe, that's full of protein and perfect for a post-workout meal. 

Chicken breast fillets (1-2 per person)
Rice
Chicken stock
4 Lemons
1 can sweetcorn
1/2 white onion
1/2 red pepper
3 eggs
Olive oil

Begin by setting your oven to 200 degrees C and wrap your put your chicken on a baking tray. Cut one of your lemons in half and squeeze out some of the juice onto the chicken, drizzle on some olive oil and wrap in foil. Put into your oven for about 20 minutes.

While the rice is cooking, half your lemons and squeeze all of the juice out into a bowl. It helps if you get a fork and push it into the flesh to get more of the juice out. Put the stock into a saucepan on a medium heat and add the lemon juice - leave to simmer until it reduces down to a jus.

Finely chop the onion and the pepper. Add both to a frying pan with some olive oil and the sweetcorn. Cook until softened, then add your rice. Stir in your eggs, one by one, until the rice is coated.

Take the chicken out of the oven and check that it is cooked through. Chop into chunks and add to the frying pan with the egg-fried rice mixture. Mix together and pour the jus over the chicken and rice, and serve!

Thanks to Moyan Brenn for the image.