Category: Nutrition and Calorie Tips

Nutrition and Calorie Tips

Practical New Year’s Resolutions…

Dr Nancy P

Practical New Year’s Resolutions… ⭐️

It’s January which means many of us are full of New Year’s resolutions and wanting to make a fresh start at health and fitness. Often these resolutions will be things like to “lose weight” or to “get fit” or perhaps “eat healthier’. Now whilst these are all great goals they’re quite hard to achieve without some practical steps. They’re outcomes of changes you need to make rather than actual resolutions per se.

So if you are making New Year’s resolutions about your health and fitness, then instead of making generalised statements try to focus instead on small actions you can take every day that will lead to those end goals.

So instead of resolving to lose weight, perhaps instead resolve to identify where the excess calories are in your diet. Are they coming from alcohol? Extra snacks? Take aways? Portion sizes? And then you can take steps to reduce them and therefore reduce your calorie intake (leading to fat and weight loss).

Instead of resolving to “get fit”, instead focus on upping your daily steps. Rather than choosing an arbitrary goal of 10,000 steps, instead commit to increasing your steps. If you’re already hitting 12,000 steps a day then aim for 14,000, if you’re getting 4,000 aim for 6,000 etc. Also consider adding some exercise 1-3 times a week. It doesn’t matter what that exercise is really just pick something you actually enjoy; dancing, running, weight lifting, swimming cycling etc.

Rather than resolving to “Eat healthier” commit to adding a portion of fruit or veg to every meal. Aside from the fact that it will increase your overall nutrition, it will increase fibre levels, and will probably help reduce overall calories as by filling some of your plate with fruit and veg you’re going to eat less of other, more calorie dense foods.

This approach is far better than making massive changes, subscribing to fad diets/detoxes/challenges etc which may well cause you to lose weight quickly but will also see you putting that weight back on once you’re back to eating normally again. Take small sustainable steps and you’ll find you’ll hit your goals and be able to maintain it within your lifestyle too! 🙂

Xx

Nutrition and Calorie Tips

Happy New Year!

Dr Nancy P

Happy New Year! 🥂🥳

A short and sweet one today for the upcoming New Year. I’m sure a few glasses of Champagne will be raised on Saturday night after the year we’ve all had! Enjoy! And at only 95 calories a glass it’s a bargain!

Happy New year 🥳🎉🌟xx

Xx

Nutrition and Calorie Tips

Balanced Christmas brekkie….

Dr Nancy P

Balanced Christmas brekkie…. 🎄

Short and sweet (literally) today as it’s nearly Christmas! And I thought it might be good to offer a little reminder that it doesn’t always have to be about the nutritional value of the food you’re eating. Food serves a purpose beyond pure fuel – it’s also an emotional activity. We enjoy eating and we enjoy food, and we enjoy the associations we make with food.

So you could wake up on Christmas morning and have a nutritious breakfast of poached eggs and avocado on toast, and a small cappuccino. It will undoubtedly taste delicious and set you up for your day. Or, because it’s Christmas, you could decide you’d rather enjoy the perfectly acceptable breakfast of 5 celebrations, 6 Terry’s chocolate orange segments and 6 gold

coins! It’s only a day, and unless you’re eating chocolate for breakfast everyday you’ll be fine. And as you can see from the comparison – if calories are what’s important to you – there’s not much in it anyway! lol!

Enjoy! Merry Christmas 🎄xx

Nutrition and Calorie Tips

Just a quick festive drink…’

Dr Nancy P

Just a quick festive drink…’ 🥤

At this time of year all the coffee shops bring out their range of festive coffees and hot chocolates. You’re out Christmas shopping, or meeting up with friends and family, so you just grab a quick festive drink to enjoy and get you in the festive spirit. You’ll drink it in minutes, and possibly have a snack with it, without really thinking or noticing. But that’s ok, because it’s just a festive hot choc, and it’s Christmas….

These drinks do vary but are all pretty high calorie. This particular example is a Cafe Nero salted caramel brownie hot chocolate and comes in at 476 cals and 42.6g sugar.

On the other hand that selection box contains 5 chocolate bars, with less calories and sugar. Now whilst I’m sure you could eat a selection box in one sitting (I certainly could) most people probably wouldn’t . You’d probably spread it over a few hours or possibly days, rather than eating it all in one go and certainly wouldn’t have any extra snacks with it (unlike the hot choc).

Christmas is definitely a time to relax a bit on calories and certainly a time to focus more on sharing memories and happy times with people you care about. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be aware of the calories in some of the treats you are having.

Knowledge is power so being aware of the calorie content of things, and also of our own perceptions of the things we consume is always a good thing.

If you want the festive drink – have it and enjoy it. If you want to eat your way through a selection box in one go then go for it. Just be aware of the calories so you’re making an educated choice!

Merry Christmas 🎄

Xx

Nutrition and Calorie Tips

I’ve overeaten today, I’m gonna put on fat….’

Dr Nancy P

‘I’ve overeaten today, I’m gonna put on fat….’😱

At this time of year it’s quite likely you’ll end up overeating/drinking at some point. You hop on the scales in the morning and to your horror you’ve put on several kg seemingly overnight! Like most of us the first reaction is probably to feel demoralised and demotivated, think all your weight loss efforts have been wasted and assume you’ve put however many kg of fat on overnight.

However the scales are not a very accurate measure when it comes to changes in bodyfat levels. Short term, significant, fluctuations in scale weight are normal and natural – especially large ones that seem to happen overnight. These do not mean changes in body composition, so you haven’t suddenly put on X kg of fat. Rather they tend to be related to water levels – intra and extracellular hydration.

Even if you did eat an extra 20000 calories in one day then you STILL couldn’t store that all as fat. Some would be expended in physical activity and metabolic processes, including the cost of digestion itself etc. The extra weight you see on the scales in short term fluctuations is water retention and food volume.

The reasons for it may include – a really big meal the night before, especially one that might be high in fibre, or red meat (which takes longer to digest). It could be due to your workout routine recently which can lead to short term fluid retention in the muscles. General hydration levels and salt levels will also impact it – especially if you had high levels of salt in your diet the day before. Hormones play a massive role – particularly for women and can cause fluctuations of up to 5kg due to water retention. Lack of sleep or high levels of stress will also cause you to retain fluids. Carb heavy meals and alcohol do exactly the same thing too – you retain fluid – short term. Now that is NOT to say you need to avoid any of these things – you should be working out, you should be eating carbs etc but it may help to explain any fluctuations you see.

So if you overate on one day and your scale weight is up, then before you let it get you down, just stop and think about all the reasons it is probably fluctuating. Focus on being consistent with your calories over the long term instead, and use things like the way your clothes fit, or longer term trends in weight gauge progress (i.e. if you want to weigh yourself daily then take an average each week and use the trend of that average to gauge if you’re making progress). Remember it’s the average calories consumed over weeks or months that matter – not days!

Enjoy 🤗

Xx