I am not a doctor, nor a nutritionalist. I am however, a 45 year old woman who has struggled with my weight all my adult life. I am now totally in control due mostly to Dr. Bernstein’s diet about 2.5 year’s ago when I lost 25lbs! I have discovered some easy techniques on helping maintain my perfect weight! I love to cook and I love to eat; so there is NO SACRIFICING flavour, I’ve just modified some techniques to minimize calories and get the best bang for your buck! I will be adding to this pages as time goes on so keep dropping by. I hope my tips help.
- Consider your diet as your budget, you only have so many calories a day so spend them wisely! (for example, if you are planning to eat out for dinner, try to eat lighter on all your other meals).
- Eat mainly fish and chicken, limit fatty meats like pork and beef to once a week. Minimize your intake of processed meats (these are so bad for you!)
- When you eat out, try to share a meal so you only eat half! If that’s impossible, order something that is easily separated into two portions so you only eat half and take the other half home – you really need to make a decision NOT to eat both halves! (I read once about an actress who actually cut her meal in half and poured an enormous amount of salt on the other half to make it impossible to eat – DO what you NEED to do).
- Portion control. A normal portion of protein for a woman my age is 4-5oz.
- Eat a lot of vegetables (not potatoes, carrots, corn or peas as they are carbs!) I always keep fresh clean celery sticks in a baggy in the fridge and if I feel snacky, that is what I snack on. It’s great!
- Make sure you get a lot of fibre (literally keeps things moving!).
- Oatmeal without sugar in the morning is a fantastic start, plus it really does help minimize cholesterol!
- Vitamin supplements are good if you are limiting your intake…you really do need them.
- Exercise, exercise and exercise! Exercise helps jump start your metabolism. So eventually when you hit your goal weight, you will be able to load back in the foods you didn’t eat and it won’t make much of a difference.
- In Canada, prepared meats labeled “seasoned” really means that they are plumped (usually with salt water) this gives them a fleshier look but they are NOT good for you. So limit eating prepared foods.
- When you look at the nutritional label, calories and fat are not the only important things to note: check sugar, salt, carbs as well as these things help weight gain!
- Drink 8 glasses of water a day – this really helps with the weight loss. Eventually, the more you drink the less frequent you will have to visit the girl’s room. If you have to flavour, lemons and limes are great.
- Cut down the carbs. This is seriously a huge issue in my weight gain – carbs will actually make you hungrier and as soon as you cut them out, you will find that far less will satisfy you (to be honest, I don’t even miss them – I used to be a carboholic!)
- Avoid sweets as they really work against your metabolism and they will slow things down and make you gain weight not only from their calories, but the other calories you are eating!
- Celery sticks are a wonderful snack. They are crunchy, which helps with the psychology of snacking and they are virtually calorie free (I read somewhere that the energy it takes to eat celery cancels out the calories…who knows if that’s true – they are better than carrots!
Order an appetizer portion of the food, most high end restauants will do this for you!
Cooking Tips and Techniques
- Don’t sacrifice flavour, but be wise with it.
- Use butter only if it really enhances the flavour (for example, sautéed mushrooms need a small pat of butter, but you really don’t have to use it if you are making mushroom soup or mixing mushrooms into a stir fry). What I am really saying is pick your battles!
- Use plain fat free yogurt instead of sour cream – I actually prefer this taste as I find sour cream too rich! To thicken, let strain in your fridge through a coffee filter overnight (you will be surprised at how thick and creamy this becomes (also known as yogurt cheese!)
- Use miso paste instead of chicken or beef stock, it has more flavour so, you use less and it has far less fat (note that the sodium is quite high in miso paste, so be in control!
- A couple of squirts of Pam instead of oil helps reduce the fat.
- Sweating onions is easily done with a squirt of Pam and small quantities of water to get them translucent.
- Flavour with spices and not prepared sauces. You will find the more flavourfull your food is, the less you need to satisfy you.
- Use parchment paper when baking, you won’t need to squirt pam on the sheet!
- Thicken sauces and gravies with roasted puréed vegetables such as garlic, onion, celery root, parsnip (careful, it’s a carb) etc…these really make a great thickener and enhance the flavour immensely.
Hi,mam i am jeneth from Nepal. I liked ur tips so much i am going to try it out this tips i hope it works. But i can not control eating habits how can i control it plz help me?
Controlling your eating habits is a mind-set. You must make up your mind to do it. No one is perfect, so if you fail, promise yourself to do better next time. Drinking a lot of water helps curb the appetite. Good Luck.
Found your blog while browsing Google. Bookmarked. Looking forward to more nutrition tips.
Eva, these tips provide an excellent guide. Any suggestions to minimize wine intake? It’s not an option to omit wine with my meals…on weekends. Sometimes I pour myself a wine glass of water in between actual wine, and that seems to work well.
Wine is actually my downfall. We are trying to limit our wine to Friday, Saturday and Sunday only (unless something special comes up), no drinking on weekdays. For the last few months we have switched to smaller glasses (it makes you aware the number of times you have to refill), also I have reduced the quantity of wine per MY glass and (shamefully) added San Benedeto (a lightly carbonated Italian mineral water — I drink white wine). By doing this, I have reduced my wine intake, sip my wine a wee bit longer and have water which I so often forget while drinking wine. Some will say a spritzer goes to your head faster than regular wine, but I haven’t noticed a difference, other than quantity. Although if JT may have a difference of opinion. Hope it helps.
Eva,
Im 15 years old and trying to take a nutritional outlook on life and this blog is AMAZING! Your tips just logically make sense. I also follow the “if it has more than 5 ingredients in it, its not real” rule… but that one is tough! Any ideas on where else there are tips AKA other blogs that have ideas? Such good ideas; thank you thank you!!
Anna
http://www.cheap2eat.wordpress.com
Thank you for the compliment, Anna. It’s great that you have the good sense to start eating healthily at such a young age. Moderation is key, but also is choosing the right foods. I often think of eating as a budget, of which calories play a roll, but so does bad fats, sugars(carbs) and sodium. You will learn what foods cause weight gain and to limit them. But remember that life is to be enjoyed!
I’ve found some great gluten free recipes on http://www.elanaspantry.com/
Dear Eva,
Love your blog!!!!!
Have currently gotten the whole family on a healthy eating meal plan but it has no evening snacks and I’m afraid it will be their downfall. Personally I HATE celery. Have any other fixes for the 9pm cravings??
I Lisa, welcome to my blog, to glad to have you on board! I’m not a nutritionist but I do have a couple of tricks.
Snacking is really a mental thing rather than a hungry thing, so it’s a matter of training yourself not to do it. Drink lots of water (I like San Benadetto, lightly carbonated) with a splash of fresh lime juice, or lemon. If your belly is full with water, you won’t feel like snacking. I like to drink my water out of a wine glass so it still feel fancy and not like I’m guzzling a jug of water! Cucumber is also a good low calorie alternative, but be careful, it can cause acid reflux for some people. Choose vegetables that are low in carbohydrates (carrots are high!).
But if all else fails, I find a snack of high fibre cereal, such as Fibre 1 is a good option, but not too much (1/4 to 1/2 cup). And if you’re concerned about sugar, just pour a little water on and not milk (milk contains sugar, as does unsweetened yogurt). The sugar may not be great at bedtime. If you can’t stand that, try 5-10 almonds (unsalted), the trick is to control the quantity and not bring out the whole bag. If you can ‘save’ a fruit portion for your late night snack, cut up a small apple into quarters, it will make you think you’re getting more than just biting into it.
Hi Eva,
This is great useful info! My husband and I have changed our eating and drinking habits for the last four weeks. We have cut out alcohol through the week (which we have found hard during cooking stage – always nice to have a glass of…), leaving fri/sat or sat/sun to drink wine or cider. The other changes have been going vegetarian during the week abd treating ourselves to slow cooked sauces, pastas (what we love!) across Sat and Sun. But reading your above info I see we have been doing it all wrong
. Our weekly dinner meals have been vegetarian but have consisted of potato, sweet potato, peas, carrots, as well as eggplant, capsicum, cauliflower, pumpkin, chickpeas, beans….too many carbs right?! We love potato 
. We are walking an hour a day, but yet to notice any change. We are only carrying about 8 kilos more than what we would like to be. Any suggestions? Best, Kristy
Hi Kristy, I’m no nutritionalist but the ‘diet’ that’s really worked for me really restricts carbs and sugars (did you know that corn, peas and carrots are carbs? And milk has sugar?). Protein is paramount but volume is too! This has worked for me, if you try it, I’d love to hear your feedback. It’s a tough one at first, but once you’re into it your cravings stop and the weight slides off, up to 2kg per week. You need to take a multivitamin too, and sometimes a potassium supplement; we need a prescription for it so we need a dr.’s ok to do it in Canada.
This is the list of what you must eat per day:
100g protein 2x per day (lean beef or salmon 1x per week, all other meat/fish ok, except below)
230g raw weight veg 2x per day (see exceptions)
Water 2L per day (no juices or diet drinks, may have lemon or lime)
Fruit 2x 100g per day (see exceptions). Lemon and limes are unlimited.
Dairy very limited 2tbsp per day any type milk.
Drinks: no alcohol. No diet drinks. 1 cup caffeinated coffee/day. Caffeine free is ok. No fruit juices.
Condiments: read the label, sweetened even w/o sugar is off the list.
Breads, there are some brands that are OK, but it’s a brand thing, but it’s limited to one small slice per day, high fibre choice.
I can send you one of our week menu if you’d like.
What is forbidden:
Processed meat. Ready made foods (have you seen the sodium in some things? Even ‘low sodium’ is a farce!)
Sugar/honey/agave/sweeteners etc.
Carrots, potatoes, ochre, corn, peas, any squash, egg plant, avocado, rice
Bananas, cherries, grapes, qiwi, mangos, pineapple, honeydew, plums, pears, watermelon
Diet drinks (they make you crave sugar)
Clams, mussels, ground meats, lamb, Pork (except tenderloin is OK), fake crab legs, squid, sardines, herring, processed or flavoured is out (plain tuna in water is OK, 100g), duck.
The list is actually quite extensive, but it’s copy written so I can’t send it, sorry.
Hope this helps.
This is the first time I’ve read this section Eva, and the tips and tricks are fantastic. It’s really wonderful to see someone giving sane advice on weight control, and a realistic view of “dieting”. I really HATE that word! If people focused on the LIFESTYLE as you have, they would be so much healthier, and wouldn’t risk great detriment to their health with fad “diets”. Thank you for being a voice of reason!
Tami
Great tips and strategies. Thanks for posting this. A couple of thoughts: Weight Watchers counts carrots as point-free vegetables because their carbs are from sugars as opposed to the starch found in potatoes, peas, and corn (which are not free). So they’re equal to other sugary veggies such as beets. And I often sauté in chicken broth although I often do Pam as well.
Thanks Claire, very kind of you to say. Welcome to my blog.
First, I am no Doctor nor nutritionist.
I would like to point out that this diet is quite different than Weight Watchers: while carrots are indeed a veg and not a starch, they are still a carb (as are peas, corn and beets to name a few). For this diet, the doctor want to regulate your insulin which is of course triggered by carbs and sugars which are turned into carbs – that’s why I referred to them as lower glycemic index. I am no doctor, but I know what works for my body (mid-late 40′s woman, 5″ 4″).
The chicken stock is indeed a life saver when it comes to lowering fat in cooking, but it’s always important to check the nutritional panel on the back. Just because a product says Low Sodium, it only means it is low-ER in sodium than that particular brand’s other products, so it may not be that healthy after all. The CFIA recently has mandated a more comprehensive labelling system where a consumer can be guaranteed that a product meets a minimum criteria when they state something like low sodium.
I’m going to check out your blog. Nice to see another Canadian here!
Aha…I’m not at the stage (and hopefully never) where I have to watch my insulin so closely. Rather I’m keeping Type 2 diabetes at bay by keeping my weight down (hence the WW program). And you’re right about watching out for the salt in chicken stock…good to hear about the new labelling requirements.
Thanks Claire, I am not diabetic, but do have it in the family as does my husband so we generally do keep an eye out. I just find the lower glycemic diets keep my weight in check by keeping hunger at bay. Glad you are able to keep your diabetes in check by watching your weight. You may wish to take a look at Dr. Bernstein’s diet for diabetics that he developed when he showed signs of diabetes himself. A nice little bi-product is that you can also lose weight with it.
Very nice tips! Thank you
You are most welcome.