What to do when you overeat? 🍔

You have a meal/day/weekend of overeating and you think you’ve stuffed up. It’s tempting to react by writing yourself off, feeling guilty, or starving yourself or to try to exercise it off. But none of this actually works, so what should you do?

Don’t starve yourself but listen to your hunger and fullness signals. One day of overeating doesn’t mean you should starve yourself; this has negative emotional and physical impacts and leads to binge-restrict-binge eating. Listen to your body; you may not feel like breakfast or you may feel fuller on less food. This is your your body auto-regulating.

Rate your hunger and if you’re hungry then eat. Don’t deliberately skip meals or cut out food groups. Rate your hunger from 1-10 and try waiting until you’re around 7/10 to eat. Start to identify physical and emotional cues of true hunger such as feeling weak, dizzy, light-headed, moody, HANGRY – you don’t want to get that far.

Don’t try to earn/burn off the food you ate. It’s a vicious cycle and an unhealthy, ultimately fruitless path to follow by “earning or burning” food e.g “I’m going to workout extra hard so I can eat a Pizza”. Food is linked to social and emotional health and trying to ‘earn’ it creates an unhealthy relationship. You can’t out exercise food; it’s easy to overeat by 1000s cals but very hard to work that off! Just stay active and move as you usually would.

Don’t write yourself off or feel guilty. You can’t change the past, there’s no point dwelling on it. What you can do is reflect on it. Firstly what were the positives from overeating- emotional benefits, social benefits, taste, satisfaction etc. What could you learn from it and do differently? Could you eat more slowly? Could you have chosen a lower cal option that still gave you the enjoyment? Etc.

In the grand scheme of things overeating for a whole week is only 2% of your potential yearly meals. So don’t write yourself off for the next few weeks/months because of it.

Have a plan to get back on track with the habits you were building. Set a date, write out a plan, find someone to keep you accountable. We all deviate from the plan sometimes but it’s how you react to it that matters and determines whether it’s just a temporary lapse or a total relapse.

Enjoy 🤗

Xx

‘Healthy’ brekkie on the go vs ‘naughty’ brekkie…. 🥐

If you’re rushing in the mornings you may need to grab something to eat on the go. You may really enjoy a pain au chocolat but avoid it because you feel it’s ‘naughty’ and instead go for a ‘healthy’ nut bar.

You may view the pain au chocolat as bad as you don’t feel it’s packed with protein or ‘good’ fats, or vitamins or all those things we know we should be eating. It’s an ‘all butter’ pain au chocolat (omg!) so it is definitely evil and must be avoided at all costs…..So you avoid it. But nuts are healthy right so you can have a nut bar and feel virtuous.

Maybe you didn’t really fancy a nut bar or maybe you think it’s ok cos at least you’ve made a good decision in terms of your weight loss goals…. Or have you ?

A pain au chocolat from a supermarket multipack is 210 cals and actually has less fat and sugar than the 218 calorie nut bar (and only a little less protein). So you haven’t actually saved yourself anything by going for the nut bar.

So, if you are a fan of the pain au chocolat or need to grab something from home to eat on the go then go for it! And if you’re having the nut bar just because you think it’s ‘heathy’ and by extension lower calorie then maybe rethink that. I would add though that a pain au chocolat from a cafe is likely to be somewhat larger (eg Starbucks is 314 cals) so just be mindful to check the cals! As always knowledge is power!

Enjoy 🤗

Xx

Ways you could be subconsciously over eating… 😋

When it comes to losing weight /fat it really is true that you get out what you put in. So often we subconsciously consume more than we realise. Sometimes it’s due to lack of time, sometimes it’s because our focus is elsewhere e.g. being distracted by work and absentmindedly grabbing a snack, sometimes it’s because we perceive things to be fewer calories than they are, and sometimes it’s denial – we don’t want to admit to what we’ve eaten or it feels too overwhelming to try to track it all.

So if you’re not seeing progress maybe it’s worth just having a think and seeing if you’re perhaps subconsciously consuming more than you think. Common ways this happen include:

• Estimating rather than measuring. Are you actually weighing things or are you using estimated weights? Eyeballing things and saying that’s probably about 30g? Or you using inaccurate measures like ‘cups’ or ‘medium banana’ – how big is ‘medium’?
• Are you honestly tracking everything you’re actually eating – what about the odd bite/ spoonful here and there? The odd chocolate/crisp etc? They can really add up!
• Are you including liquid calories? If you drink a lot of coffee/tea are you including the milk?
• Alcohol – are you underestimating the calories from alcohol? It’s easy to rack up a couple of thousand calories over a weekend in booze.
• Sauces / dressings / condiments – again it’s easy to overlook these but over a week they can easily add up to several hundred/thousands of calories.
• Oil in cooking – a drizzle /slug of oil is at least 100-200 cals! Swap to a 1 cal oil spray – 30 sprays is only 30 cals so you’re still saving!
• Secret snacking / picking – are you actually snacking more than you realise? That biscuit with coffee, the sweet you grab when you pop to the kitchen to make a cuppa etc.

We all do this. You’re not a ‘bad’ person if you’re not tracking everything, but you will only make progress if you can be really truthful and honest with yourself about what you’re consuming. At the end of the day it’s your body, your goals and your decision.

🤗
Xx

Reverse lent! 😇

Today is the first day of Lent! Regardless of your beliefs or faith Lent has traditionally become a time when people give up various things they consider ‘bad’. Now whilst there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that at all sometimes it can become more of a negative rather than positive experience.

So how about instead of giving up things, you turned it around and tried taking something up or giving something to others?
You could do some voluntary work, or you could give things to charity. For example, try setting up a box and popping one item of clothing or something you don’t want anymore in it every day for each day of lent, then donate to charity at the end!
You could give your time to someone – it could be something simple like helping a friend or neighbour, or calling someone for a chat. Or you could take up a new hobby or challenge during Lent – try something new like gardening, knitting, drawing, or perhaps a fitness based challenge – trying new classes, walking every day, working out 3 times a week etc.

What do you say? 🤗
How about a reverse lent?
Xx

Best Macros for weight loss ? 📊

Clients often ask me whether, in addition to how many calories they should aim for, what proportion of macros they need to hit i.e. amounts of protein, carbs and fat. Well like most things concerning nutrition there is no one size fits all but essentially it’s whatever suits your lifestyle.

So first off why might you want to track macros? Well if you are an athlete or are trying to build serious amounts of muscle then yes it may be useful to track your macros as you may need to ensure you’re getting sufficient amounts of carbs to fuel your training or enough protein to ensure muscle building. However for the vast majority of us who are exercising for health and enjoyment or just trying to lose weight then there is no need to hit certain amounts or track them.

If you enjoy data and find that keeping track of macros helps you stay on track generally then of course go for it! If you have an interest in seeing how your body responds to different macro ratios then absolutely go ahead and track them and play around with the percentages of each one. If however you’re trying to lose weight then you don’t actually need such a high degree of control over the details. Tracking calories and hitting a specific calorie deficit itself can be enough of a challenge, and I’ve found if you then ask people to try to hit certain protein or carb ratios on top of that it can become too much. The amount of focus, concentration and planning required can mean it becomes unsustainable and ultimately leads to failure. It can also lead to burn out, disordered eating behaviour and severely limits social life and enjoyment. In addition the database in these tracking apps is often not accurate enough anyway to allow such a high degree of macro manipulation.

For most people, a balanced diet will be providing plenty of protein, carbs and fat and getting hung up on whether you’re hitting 50 percent or 45 percent protein or carbs etc is really meaningless. A focus on more protein based foods/snacks can help with feelings of fullness and therefore help prevent overeating but you can do that by simply choosing higher protein foods if you so wish.

So in short, don’t stress about the macros. Focus on hitting a calorie deficit and just ensure you’re eating a balanced diet including protein, fats and carbs, nutritious whole foods, fruits and veggies, and foods you also enjoy (even so called ‘junk’ foods).

Enjoy 🤗

Xx