Tag: healthy snacks

Nutrition and Calorie Tips

Ice creams / Lollies for 100 cals or less …

Dr Nancy P

Ice creams / Lollies for 100 cals or less … 🍦

The weather has been extremely warm lately so Ice creams and lollies have certainly formed a large part of mine and my client’s diets! There’s a perception that ice creams / lollies are ‘bad’ and something that is a bit ‘naughty’ so if you’re trying to lose weight you might deny yourself these cooling treats believing them to be ‘bad’ (aka high calorie). However, there’s no reason you have to give up ice creams and ice lollies to lose weight as it ultimately comes down to whether you’re in a calorie deficit.

Obviously there are many frozen desserts out there which are high calorie and some can be 300 cals or more. So if they’re on top of your main meals then you might end up racking up unwanted calories. However in this weather everyone needs a cold snack or dessert right? So if you do fancy an ice cream or lolly, but want to stay within your calories then here are a selection of lower calorie options at 100 cals or less. This list is by no means exhaustive – but it’s just a range of the options out there.

Oppo Salted Caramel balls 22 cals each
Mini milk 32 cals
Rocket lolly 39 cals
Mini twister lolly 39 cals
Fruit pastille lolly 57 cals
Little moons mochi balls 70 cals each
Fab lolly 75 cals
Regular twister lolly 76 cals
Jude mini ice cream tubes 70
Jude mini ice creams 94 cals
Exotic Solero lolly 98 cals
Calipo Lolly 100 cals

So you can fill up on ice lollies to stay cool this summer without worrying it’s going to derail your progress!
Enjoy 🤗
Xx

Tuesday Tip

Tuesday Tip: Do diet breaks work?

Dr Nancy P

Tuesday Tip: Do diet breaks work? 🤔

Diet breaks are quite a common thing for people to encourage and are often purported to ‘reset’ your metabolism and therefore increase fat loss long term. But do they work?

A diet break is a strategy in which you take planned breaks from a calorie-restricted diet, during which you consume calories roughly equivalent to your maintenance level (so it’s not a free for all to eat as much as possible).

This temporary pause from the calorie deficit provides a psychological and potentially physiological relief, allowing individuals to experience a break from the rigors of continuous energy restriction.

Studies have looked at the impact of diet breaks on both body composition and metabolic adaptation. The findings show that although the diet breaks did result in an increase in resting metabolic rate it was less than 100 calories a day and temporary. So in real terms they have very little impact on your metabolism and very little impact on fat loss. That doesn’t negate the fact that they may provide psychological relief of course.

So what does this mean? Diet breaks are fine if they help you and make it easier for you to stick to your diet long term. However they won’t have a significant impact on your metabolism or boost fat loss. In addition you have to ensure you are still tracking calories and only going up to maintenance calories on such a break otherwise you will actually end up putting fat back on.

Happy Tuesday 🤗xx

Nutrition and Calorie Tips

Stop doing… and start doing ….

Dr Nancy P

Stop doing… and start doing …. 🙌🏼

Short and sweet today and a bit of tough love. There’s a lot that goes into reaching your goals – both physically and mentally. On some level you just need to accept that it will be hard. There will be bad days where you eat way more than you planned on eating – but you can’t throw in the towel every time it happens. You won’t linearly make progress every week and if you rely on the scales to determine whether you’ve progressed or not then you will forever be setting yourself up for disappointment. If you expect to reach your goal in a few weeks you’ll also be setting yourself up for failure.

It’s tempting to follow the latest diet fad, or whatever trend everyone is talking about on social media, or to cut whatever the latest ‘demon’ food group is. This won’t work – unless you learn to incorporate all the foods you enjoy in this process you’ll never succeed long term. You need to try to be as consistent as possible, stay active, and play the long game.

Ultimately, you face a choice: remain stagnant in your current situation or just move on past those “off” days or weeks when the scale doesn’t drop etc and get back on track. Whether it takes a few extra months to attain your objective is inconsequential, what truly matters is reaching it. If you give up, you will never reach it. So keep on keeping on!

Enjoy 🤗

Xx

Tuesday Tip

Tuesday Tip: Diet Mistakes

Dr Nancy P

Tuesday Tip: Diet Mistakes 🫣

Whatever dietary approach you choose MUST be sustained in order for you to get and maintain the results. If the approach is unsustainable then so are the results.

Here are some common mistakes:

# Choosing a diet that doesn’t align to your lifestyle.

No diet is inherently ‘better’ than any other as long as it creates a calorie deficit and fits in with your lifestyle. Choose a diet that is sustainable for you.

# Expecting fast results

You didn’t put the weight on in a few weeks, you won’t lose it on a few weeks. It takes time. Stick with it and you will see results.

Consistency is key.

# Food restriction

Excluding certain foods or food groups instead of incorporating them into your calorie targets is a recipe for unsustainability. Instead focus on healthy moderation to reduce the risk of cravings and binge-eating episodes and help you maintain long term.

# Adding back calories burned from exercise

Never ever eat back the calories burned from exercise. Aside from the fact that our bodies adapt rapidly to activity levels devices that measure calorie expenditure have been shown to overestimate calories burned by 28-93%! That means if you burned 500 calories, your device might tell you that you burned anywhere between 630-1000. That would take you out of your calorie deficit if you eat that back. Separate the exercise – view it as something for mental and physical well being, not weight loss.

# Setting unrealistic goals

Make your goals realistic and achievable – e.g. losing a stone in 3 weeks isn’t realistic.

Remember, you are working to build a new lifestyle and not a quick fix!

Try to avoid these mistakes and focus on making your dietary approach a lifestyle that you can sustain for the long term if you truly want life changing results.

Happy Tuesday 🤗xx

Nutrition and Calorie Tips

A day of snacks…

Dr Nancy P

A day of snacks… ☕️ 🍫

There are lots of strategies you can use when trying to stick to your calorie deficit to lose weight/fat. Being aware of the calories in the foods you choose to consume and swapping to lower calorie foods which you also enjoy is an obvious option. As well as the calories though it’s worth considering the quantity and volume of the food you’re choosing.

Snacking is a common problem and an easy way to extra calories to sneak in. It’s not hard to accumulate over 1000 cals of snacks in a day. A coffee when you get to work with a couple of biscuits (medium semi skimmed latte and chocolate digestives), a ‘healthy’ snack mid morning of 30g cashews and an apple, a Mars bar to give you a bit of an energy boost in the afternoon, and a small bag of kettle chips when you’re waiting for dinner. None of that will seem excessive at the time, in fact you may not even notice much if it. You can see, however, how easily it could take you over your calories for the day.

There are some easy swaps you could make that won’t impact too much on your satisfaction, still allow you to follow your preferred pattern of eating but save 500 cals. In this example you could swap the coffee to a flat white and the digestives to a couple of lotus biscuits. You could just have the apple for your ‘healthy’ snack, swap to a curly wurly to give you an afternoon boost and some pop chips pre dinner and you’ll save over 500 cals, and it’s still a lot of snacks so you won’t feel deprived.

Obviously you may decide instead to cut a few of the snacks and have the higher calorie options, but that’s where knowing the calorie content comes in! You can have whatever you want, if you can fit it into your calories, this is just another strategy to add to your toolkit to help you stick to those calories.

Enjoy 🤗
Xx