Weight Loss Tips: Quantities of Food

I think that we all lie to ourselves about our food intake; so today is about how much we eat, and next week will be about what we eat.

One thing I can definitely tell you is that if you need to lose weight, then at some point you are going to need to eat less.  However, I’m not into faffing around with calorie counting either, it can be pretty simple to work out how much to eat.

BUT be warned, too much less and you will put your body into a panic, so it will try to hold onto everything or even worse you will reduce your energy and stamina too much, or even even worse you will make yourself ill. So don’t think, ‘aha, thats easy then, I will just stop eating and nearly kill myself in the process’.  What I’m saying is ‘less’, rather than ‘nothing’!

So here is are a few easy tips to start you off, and getting you going …

Smaller plates

That’s it.  Smaller plates.  When you start your weight loss regime, just use smaller bowls and smaller plates.  For e.g. I use a cereal bowl, not a pasta bowl or a medium sized plate rather than a big dinner plate; what are those medium sized ones called that are larger than a side plate, those are the ones I mean?

Food Diaries

Now, lets face the music and be honest with yourself.  Get a notebook (hmmm, heard that one before in these blog posts about weight loss, I should open a notebook shop!), and write down everything you eat and drink each day, plus how you feel at the beginning and end of the day.  This will highlight to you the uneccessary foods you are eating.  The stuff you don’t even remember tasting.  Plus the times that you ate just that little too much.

If you keep this food diary going during your diet, it will help you to stay focussed and true to yourself.  You can’t fix a problem unless you know what it is!

Fat Pants

You know what I mean, the pants that go from under the bra line to your thighs that Gok Wan always recommends (I love Gok Wan, I’ll love you forever if you know anyone who can introduce me to him!)  They will not only help you to look like you have lost 7 lbs, but you will also not be able to eat as much.  Perfect!

If it’s summer time and you can’t bear them, then go for a tight belt on your waist, it’ll do the same job.

Lunch box

I remember Eamon Holmes doing this one just before his wedding (however, he obviously stopped just afterwards!).  I googled it and apparently it was created by a guy called Simon Lovell.  I haven’t bought his book or system, but pretty much I think the idea is that you pre-prepare your food for the day and pop it into the lunch box; then you can only eat food from the lunch box.

I think that this is a great way of you seeing what you are eating during the day and reducing your snacking.  Are you the kind of woman who grabs a biscuit, shoves it in her mouth and has forgotten it 30 seconds later?  Well, put only 1 biscuit in your lunch box, and you might just savour it a load more than the 10 you normally eat!

I know that you might say you don’t have time to do this, but you do have time to grab the food during the day, so all you are doing is putting it into one time slot.  Also, you can always miss out dinner, and just do the obvious of two snacks and lunch.  Or if snacking is your problem, then just do a box for snacks.

Regular Snacks

Do you sometimes over eat, because you don’t know if you will get hungry later?  Or do you run out of energy and get a bit swimmy headed and grumpy?  I’m a big fan of a mid-morning snack and a mid-afternoon one.  This way you can eat less for breakfast and lunch, knowing that you don’t need to worry because something will be appearing in a couple of hours.  I’m talking about a glass of water, and an apple/banana/piece of fruit in general.  But I don’t ban biscuits or chocolate from my life; what would be the point in that heh!

So when you first start to lose weight, you can keep eating the same for a bit, just eat less of it.  Coming next week are tips on how to change what you eat as well.

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