Britons Getting Fatter Despite Consuming Fewer Calories

Britons are consuming 600 fewer calories a day but are actually getting fatter because of sedentary jobs and a lack of exercise, a respected think-tank has found.

Despite consuming less fat, sugar and alcohol Britons are getting larger Photo: PA

On average adults weigh up to 30 pounds, 14kg, more than they did 30 years ago despite a 20 per cent drop in daily calorie intake.

Although they are consuming the equivalent of a burger and chips or three pints of Guinness less they are also less active than those of the same age were in the 1980s, the Institute of Fiscal studies claims.

Expanding waist-lines are also explained by the fact that as you get older it is harder to keep your weight down and you become more susceptible as to the effects of some sugars and fats, the five-year study found.

The full study is to be published later this summer, but details disclosed on Monday show that the average adult has cut calorie intake by around 600 a day.

This is almost entirely attributed to better habits in the home, as the amount of calories consumed outside has risen by 15 per cent over the same period.

At home we are opting for cereal over fried breakfast, using semi skimmed milk, eating more fish and less red meat and drinking less alcohol.

But people are also more likely to have a desk job during the day and more likely to spend time in front of a screen when home in the evening.

The average adult is putting on weight at an average of just over half a pound – 0.25kg - a year.

A man in his twenties weighs around 15 lbs, 7kg, more than a man in his twenties three decades earlier, while someone in their 50s weighs 30 lbs more.

Report author Professor Rachel Griffiths told industry journal The Grocer: "The drop in calories consumed would have been expected to have caused a weight loss of 1kg per year over the period."

The IFS will look at why certain age groups are more susceptible to weight gain.

Source:- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/wellbeing/diet/10126042/Britons-getting-fatter-despite-consuming-fewer-calories.html

Stay Off The Sad Step

Why 2016 is the year to stop weighing yourself on the scales

Hands up if you've ever come out of the gym feeling awesome after a great workout, gone into the changing room and jumped on the scales only to be left feeling deflated by the number staring back at you? We've all been there, but I'm going to explain why it's time to ditch the scales once and for all.

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to health and fitness is motivation and there’s no bigger motivational killer than scales. I call scales the ‘sad step’, because they will almost always leave you feeling disappointed.

But the truth is, when it comes to hitting your health and fitness goals, the sad step is the worst measure of success you can possible get and it’s time you threw them out the window. Because no matter how hard you train, or how well you eat, the scales cannot measure some of the most important things when it comes your body, health and wellbeing. 

Things the sad step CANNOT measure:

• Your fitness levels
• Your energy levels
• Your strength
• Changes in your body composition
• Your sense of achievement 
• Your confidence
• Your happiness 

On Cycle Two of my 90 Day SSS Plan, it’s all about gaining lean muscle, so the number on the scales is completely irrelevant. It’s all about burning fat as well as adding lean mass to your body. 

I’ve had clients who have completely transformed their bodies over 90 days and yet the scales have only dropped by 2lb. In some cases, your body can be burning fat while the scales are going up! This can be hard for some people to comprehend because we’ve become so used to measuring our bodies on the sad step. But if your training and eating right, those extra numbers on the scales do not mean you are gaining extra fat. You will actually be building lean muscle. Also when you consume carbohydrates they are stored in the liver and muscles as glycogen and more glycogen means more water in the body which can equal outrageous gains on the scales.

I hear stories all the time from my clients who wake up and weigh themselves every single morning. More often than not, this leads to instant negative feelings and this can set the mood for the rest of the day. It’s massively disheartening and can kill your motivation. This isn't the way to live and that’s why I encourage all my clients to use progress pictures rather than the sad step to measure there success.

When you start any new fitness programme, take photos of yourself and repeat this at the end of each month. If you work hard, stay motivated and are consistent with your training and nutrition, you will see positive changes in your body that the scales will never show.

Progress photos are also more reliable than the mirror, because our minds can play tricks on us, especially when we’re feeling low, and tell us that we are not making progress.

So I say throw away your scales or hit them really hard with a hammer. Focus on yourself and your journey to getting fitter and stronger. You ARE making progress everyday and you are melting fat even when the sad step tell you otherwise. So be consistent, work hard and don't give up. Fat loss is a journey not a race.

For more information and to see some of the awesome transformations from people on the 90 Day SSS Plan, visit my website at www.thebodycoach.co.uk

You can also follow me on social media at any of the links below:

Facebook: The Body Coach

Instagram: @thebodycoach

Twitter: @thebodycoach 

Pinterest: The Body Coach

YouTube: TheBodyCoachTV

Source:- http://www.thebodycoach.co.uk/blog/stay_off_the_sad_step:_why_2016_is_the_year_to_stop_weighing_yourself_on_the_scales_28.html

Body Talk: Use The Power Of Your Words To Feel Great

Talking about your weight might seem like a great way to bond with your daughter and female friends but it’s worth considering what effect that this could have. Use our action checklist to stop the ‘fat talk’ and start a new kind of positive conversation with your daughter and gal pals – and you’ll really notice how much better it makes you feel.

Talking about our bodies is like an unwritten rule in female friendship – we do it constantly and automatically. You know how it goes: "I feel fat in these jeans," "I’ve put on so much weight," or "Gosh, my skin looks awful today." We asked body expert Jess Weiner to put together an action checklist to help challenge the negative ‘body talk’ conversations that many of us get caught up in when we’re talking to other women.

Teach your daughter to talk positively about her body

If you're not guilty of these kinds of put-me-downs, then you're in the minority. A recent study published by the Psychology of Women Quarterly of college women found that 93% engaged in this type of talk – dubbed ‘fat talk’ – and a third did so regularly. And this study found that those who complained about their weight more often – irrespective of their actual size – were more likely to have lower satisfaction with their bodies. To help build your self-esteem and that of your daughter, rather avoid negative conversations like this. When we talk in this way our daughters pick up on the type of language that we use and the topics of conversation in which we engage. Eventually, to their ears it may start to sound like our physical appearance is how we judge and value ourselves. Is this how we want our daughters to evaluate themselves?

"Words can have a huge impact on our self-esteem and constantly talking negatively about our bodies can reinforce the idea that there is only one type of body shape that is beautiful," explains Weiner. "It’s a pattern we have to break if we want our daughters to grow up to be confident about the bodies they’ve got." More importantly we need to teach our girls that beauty is a state of mind. If you love yourself, it doesn’t matter what the world says, you can walk with confidence.

Aren’t you bored of all the body talk?

Body talk doesn’t just refer to body-bashing. Talking about your appearance, even in a positive way, can contribute to low self-esteem by placing undue attention on certain physical features. It’s really all about beauty psychology - by telling a friend that they look great and following up with, "Have you lost weight?" you’re reinforcing the stereotypical view that skinny equals beautiful.

By spending hours discussing gruelling exercise or diet regimes and your fluctuating weight, you’re implying that weight is the primary factor in what it means to be fit and healthy.

Less fat talk, more fun talk

A mere 3 minutes of fat talk can lead to women feeling bad about their appearance and increase in their body dissatisfaction, according to Adverse Effects of Social Pressure to be Thin on Young Women: An Experimental Investigation of the Effects of "Fat Talk". This is a study in the International Journal of Eating Disorders. So making the effort to cut it out should have a significant impact on how you feel. In turn, your daughter will pick up on the more positive language and be less likely to put herself down.

The words we choose to use when talking about our bodies can damage our self-esteem, but they can also improve it. By focusing less on weight and body shape in your conversations, greetings and compliments, you can break the habit of reinforcing beauty stereotypes.

Why not try out Jess Weiner’s action checklist and see how much better you and your daughter will feel about yourselves?

Action checklist:
How to have a different kind of conversation

Here are some tips from body image expert, Jess Weiner, to get you started:

Your words have power: use your words to show your daughter that you believe that there’s more to life than appearances. By making the change yourself, you’ll help her to do the same and show her there’s more than one way to be beautiful.

Take the one-week challenge: challenge yourself to a week of no fat talk, inspired by Fat Talk Free Week – it might be hard at first, but if you tell your friends and family what you’re up to, they can support you and even try it for themselves.

Tell your friends that you’re bored of the body talk: be on red alert next time you meet up with a friend. If she starts any fat talk, tackle the issue head on by reassuring her but also alerting her to the negative impact of her words, for example: "I adore you and it hurts me to hear you talk about yourself that way."

Focus on the fun talk: avoid the fat talk pitfall when discussing diet and exercise and rather highlight the positive emotional and health benefits of changing your lifestyle. For example, regular exercise requires real commitment and dedication, and eating a balanced diet can give you more energy. So if your friend has started a new exercise regime try asking her how it’s making her feel, whether she feels stronger or whether she is even sleeping better. This will ensure that the conversation is broadened into a wider discussion about health and wellness.

Replace the negative with the positive: if you start to fall into the ‘body talk trap’, try turning a negative into a positive. Take a body inventory and think of a replacement statement that is positive for every negative word that you usually speak.

Love your body – it’s the only one you’ve got: appreciate your body for what it can do. The first step to building your self-esteem and confidence is to love your body. Use it to feel energised – go for a walk and enjoy the fresh air, do some gardening or take the kids out for a bike ride.

Tackle your own harsh words about others: remember that how you talk about others counts too. That means no more criticisms of how other people look, like "Hasn’t Jo gained weight recently." Not only will your daughter subconsciously pick up this negative behaviour, she’ll also interpret it to mean that bigger can’t be beautiful.

What next: action steps to help

• Share these self-esteem boosting activities with your daughter. It might be just what she needs if she’s feeling negative about how she looks and could boost her confidence levels.
• Use the action checklist as a starting point for changing the conversations that you have with your daughter.
• Steer conversations away from ‘fat talk’ by changing the subject and turning negatives into positives. Instead of "I’m chubby," try positive compliments like "I’m curvy."
• Talk to her about the fact that you’re going to avoid body talk in future because there are so many more interesting things for you both to share with each other.
• Encourage her to do the same with her own female friends.

Useful links: stop the fat talk

If You’re Fat, then I’m Humongous a study by Psychology of Women Quarterly

Fat Talk Free Week website

Jess Weiner's website

Jess Weiner on Twitter

Jess Weiner on Facebook

Talk to Jess TV (YouTube)

source:- http://selfesteem.dove.co.uk/Articles/Written/Body_talk_use_the_power_of_your_words_to_feel_great.aspx

Is Worrying About Your Weight Thwarting Your Happiness?

What would you think about, do, be, create etc. if you didn’t think about your weight?

If you never worried about your clothing size, the size of your thighs, the size of your belly, what might be different?

Our Primary Distraction

I don’t know for sure that Albert Einstein never worried about his appearance, but given his long wild hair and penchant for not wearing socks (a trait I share with the man, and surely a sign of my genius, tee hee) I doubt that his appearance was foremost in his mind.

In a world where all of us are bombarded with reminders that we’re too fat, too short or too tall, our teeth aren’t white enough, our hair isn’t shiny enough, and on and on, it’s hard to not put a great deal of energy and attention on how we look.

And when it comes to fatness, we have extra pressure to contend with. Since the latest marketing ploy is that fatness means you’re unhealthy, you’re forced to put extra attention on your fatness. Fatness is seen as such a societal scourge that managing your fatness is a huge priority for many many people.

Click to tweet: “What would you think about, do, be or create if you never worried about your weight?”

Learning To Refocus Your Attention

One of the things I like most about the work I do is that I get to see this question in action. I get to see what happens when my clients lessen their worries about food and weight and begin to have more mental and emotional space to think about and experience what they want. Whether what they want is to get a new job, shift things in their relationships, go back to school for something they love, or just have the space to relax and play and dream, letting go of these struggles is a major first step.

So how can you start to do that? How can you start to create the space for more of what you want?

There are a lot of ways to go about this, but I want to share two steps here today: allow for possibilities and check out alternatives.

Allowing For Possibilities 
What do I mean by allowing for possibilities? All I mean is that in order to create shifts in your life, you must allow for the possibility of change, the possibility that you may not know right now how to think less about your weight and more about what you want, but that it is possible.

When you allow for the possible, you create space for new information to come into your life. You create space for new teachers, new knowledge, and new support. You start to feel less stuck, you start to hear things a little differently, and you start to find answers you may not have known existed before.

This may sound like b.s. to you now, but that’s okay. All I ask is that you try it. You can do something as simple as telling yourself, “I’m allowing for possibilities.” Just try it and see what happens.

Check Out Alternatives 
For those of you who read my blog a lot, you know that my work is based upon the principles of Health at Every Size® (HAES®). Very briefly, the core principles of HAES® are eating intuitively and with pleasure, moving your body in ways that are appropriate for your body, and accepting that your body is wonderful example of the diversity of bodies in the world. These practices have been proven to result in better health than dieting. Seriously. Plus, applying these principles creates that respect for your body that allows you to let go of worrying about your weight all day long.

It’s seriously powerful stuff, and it’s incredibly healing to realize that you can give up the struggle with weight and still experience health.

source:- http://www.bodylovewellness.com/2012/09/09/is-worrying-about-your-weight-thwarting-your-happiness/

Dr. Selflove: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Body

I have never been skinny. Growing up, I was pretty average-sized, but once puberty hit, all hell broke loose. I got hips, and breasts and curves that no 11-year-old girl knows what to do with. With this came a lot of attention. Attention from other 11-year-old boys, fascinated with my prematurely developed body, attention from 11-year-old girls, bullying me for looking different, and attention from my step-mom.

In my teenage years, I wasn’t really fat. I was average, if not slightly larger than average, but by no means a behemoth of a girl. I only understand that now, looking back at pictures, because the way that my weight was addressed seemed to indicate otherwise. My step-mom always made comments about my size, some backhanded, often not. It seemed like I got a daily reminder that my weight was holding me back from true happiness in life. That if only I wasn’t SO fat, I could have more friends, or more boyfriends or better grades. To her, the root of all of my teenage problems was my size.

I was discouraged from playing sports because I was too big to play. I joined color guard my sophomore year, as a way to feel good about myself and participate in a team activity. This notion that I was just too large to function as a human being was perpetuated by my color guard instructor too. Mind you, I was a size 13 in high school. So by no means was I unhealthy or physically unfit to twirl a flag.

Because day in and day out I was being told that my body was why I was unhappy, I started to hate it, loathe it even. I stopped taking pride in the way that I looked. I stopped trying to be good at school or make new friends because there was really no point since my body was apparently the problem. I started binge eating. I never got into the whole purging thing, because puke grosses me out, but I would starve myself during the day, then binge eat at night. And because I hated my body so much, I stopped respecting it. I gave in to the attention from teenage boys. I allowed myself to get into situations far above my maturity level because for once, someone didn’t care about my size.

The feeling that someone, albeit a horny teenage boy, thought I was beautiful gave me a rush. But I would sit home and cry because I still felt empty. That attention still didn’t make me feel like a worthwhile person.

Don’t worry; my story isn’t all sad. Once I got out of high school, I started to see the light. I met my now husband, and made friends who loved me no matter what I looked like. I wouldn’t say I love my body at that point, but I was on the road to recovery. Shortly after my husband proposed, I told my parents, and the first thing my step-mom had to say was that if I just lost some weight, I would find someone who really loved me. For the first time in my life I looked at her like she was crazy, and that was when I started to put the pieces of my broken teenage-hood back together. I wasn’t the problem. She was.

It wasn’t after I got married, at 285 lbs., that I realized I needed to reevaluate my life. The binge eating had caught up to me, and although I had everything I ever wanted, I wasn’t truly happy with myself. After diet after diet, I finally realized that the problem isn’t only what I eat or don’t eat, it’s in my head. I had to reverse the years of emotional abuse that related my self-worth to my pant size. That was also when I started to run. Let me tell you, running at almost 300 lbs. (on a 5’1 frame) is HARD. It hurts, and you feel like you are dying, but at the end it feels so awesome. I ran my first 5K at 285 lbs. and even though I finished in more than an hour, I finished. That was the day I started to love my body.

It really set in that my body, albeit grossly overweight, was strong. So I started to test its strength. I started running more, and faster, to see if I could do it. I started lifting weights and doing yoga and I even did a mud run obstacle course. And yeah, it was hard, but my body did it. My body isn’t perfect, but it is the one I’ve got. And it is stronger and more beautiful than I had ever imagined it could be.

A few weeks ago, I was at a high school choir concert to see a friend’s daughter perform. After the concert, a girl and her mom came up to us to talk to my friend. In front of all of us, the girl’s mom made a comment about her daughter’s weight. It struck a nerve in me and it took everything I had to not say something to that woman. It took me 15 years and 150 lbs. to repair the damage that my own step-mom had made, and it crushed me that this girl might have to fight the same fight. I refuted her mother’s comment with an awkwardly shouted “you’re beautiful!” with the hopes that she would take my words to heart.

I can’t change my past, but if I try hard enough, I can help other women change their future. I truly believe that every body is beautiful. Whether your thighs touch or you breasts sag or ears are
crooked, every body, big or small, is beautiful because its yours.

About Jess

Jess is a married 20-something living in Colorado with her husband and their dog Max. She has been writing since the age of 5 and just never stopped. Jess has always struggled with her weight and body image and is finding her way to body enlightenment through healthy living and yoga. She likes talking about movies, politics, fashion, gender issues and feminism. @skinnyjeansjess

source:- http://www.literallydarling.com/blog/2014/01/14/dr-selflove-learned-stop-worrying-love-body/

Worries About Weight And Eating Problems: Information For Young People

About this leaflet This is one in a series of factsheets for parents, teachers and young people entitled Mental Health and Growing Up. This factsheet looks at some of the reasons why people worry about their weight, and offers advice. Janet, 18, talks about her problem with anorexia Annabelle's story, aged 16

Introduction   How do I stay a healthy and normal weight? Most of us, at some time in our lives, feel unhappy about the way we look and try to change it. Being smaller, shorter, or less well-developed than friends or brothers and sisters can make us feel anxious and lacking in confidence. So can being teased about size and weight. Many of us have an idea of the size and shape we would like to be. Our ideas about what looks good are strongly influenced by fashion and friends. You might compare yourself with the pictures in magazines. The models in these magazines are often unhealthily thin. You may then worry that you are fat, even if your weight is normal for your age and height. There are a variety of sizes and shapes that are within the normal, healthy range. If you’re interested, there are tables showing normal height and weight. Ask your school nurse, GP or library. Your weight, like your height and looks, depends a lot on your build, your genes and your diet.   Our bodies need a healthy diet which should include all the things you need to develop normally – proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals and vitamins. Cutting out things you might see as fattening, such as carbohydrates or fats, can stop your body from developing normally. There are some simple rules that can help you to stay a healthy weight. They sound quite easy, but might be more difficult to put into practice. You can ask your family and friends to help you to stick to these rules – and it might even help them to be a bit more healthy! Eat regular meals – breakfast, lunch and dinner. Include carbohydrate foods such as bread, potatoes, rice or pasta with every meal. Try to eat at the same times each day. Long gaps between meals can make you so hungry that you eventually eat far more than you need to. Get enough sleep. Avoid sugary or high-fat foods and junk foods. If you have a lunch of crisps, chocolate and a soft drink, it doesn’t feel as if you’re eating much, but it will pile on the pounds. A sandwich with fruit and milk or juice will fill you up, but you are much less likely to put on weight – and it’s better for your skin. Take regular exercise. Cycling, walking or swimming are all good ways of staying fit without going over the top. Try not to pay too much attention to other people who skip meals or talk about their weight. If you follow these suggestions, you will find it easier to control your weight, and you won’t find yourself wanting sweet foods all the time.

7 Reasons To Stop Worrying About Your Weight

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I would find it so refreshing to open up a magazine and #read an article on why you should stop worrying about your weight, rather than ways you can lose it. I am sick of reading so much more about the ways to avoid food, when what I really want to be doing is eating it. I want to be healthy, of course I do - but the pressure we put on ourselves to #look a certain way and the obsession in the media with the 'perfect body' is unarguably not healthy. So, after reading another article urging me to cut out sugar, and gluten, and wheat completely (and I LIKE those things), I wanted to write a post on why it's #time to stop worrying about your weight and stop making ourselves miserable.

1. WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT

I don't think you will ever stop worrying about your #weight unless you embrace this. I think the most important thing to press here is that we all have different body shapes and sizes - so if we all subscribe to the same ideal, it isn't going to work. You have to be aware of your #body shape and work towards your own ideal. Don't start out by imagining you're going to end up with someone else's #body.

Read more here:- http://health.allwomenstalk.com/reasons-to-stop-worrying-about-your-weight

A Numbers Game: Why Your Weight Shouldn't Matter

CONTRIBUTORS

PHOTOGRAPHY BY

Andi Hatch

CONTRIBUTING HEALTH EDITOR

Rachel Waymire

She stretches as she wakes up. The amazing type of soreness from a killer workout makes her crave a hot shower. She hasn't missed a workout all week, and as she passes the mirror in the bathroom she proudly checks out her backside–the work is paying off. She's not dodging her reflection for the first time in decades, so as the bathroom fogs up from her shower she does a mental happy dance, carefully steps on the scale–angels are singing, the number blinks back at her. Check that. Angels are now shouting "WHAAAT??!!" Now, we all know far too well how this story can end. She's either up a pound, she's only down a half of a pound, or the scale didn’t even budge. She was expecting a number far different than that terrible machine spit out. Instantly she's panicking. She's rethinking her entire week.

But how could that be? As it turns out, this “she” is a “we!”  We all know this story. “She” did a 45 minute spin class after work yesterday that left her gasping for air and absolutely drenched in sweat. “She” didn't put a single grain or piece of fruit into her mouth for 36 hours. “She” is angrily thinking "How on earth did I gain a pound?!" But wait. Remember back to 1 minute ago before she got on that scale?  She was secretly admiring herself in the mirror and noticing progress. She felt some sense of satisfaction that the hard work was paying off! What happened to that feeling? It's just magically erased now because some stupid little machine spit out a number that you, I mean ”she”, didn't want to see?!

Allow me let you in on a little secret. That number is just a number and it does not mean anything.  It doesn't define you, it doesn't represent your worth, and here's the best part: no one else will ever know what that number is unless you tell them.  For all you know, other people could think you weigh 10 lbs less than you actually do!  And if they did, would that matter? No! It wouldn't magically make you weigh 10 lbs less. It's just a perception. How you feel should be only the thing that matters, right? Do your clothes fit? Are you healthy? Do you feel confident in your own skin? If you answer yes to those questions, but for some crazy reason that dreaded number controls how you ultimately measure your progress, then maybe, just maybe, you should back away from the scale. What if you just took a week off from the morning ritual of weighing yourself?  Or, gasp, 30 days?  Or even crazier, what if you threw the scale away?

Here's the thing, ladies. Our weight (the actual number of lbs we weigh on a given day) is influenced by more factors than you can even imagine much less begin to control. Maybe you did sweat your butt off at spin class and maintain a disciplined eating regimen over the last few days but you were also super stressed out about that upcoming presentation you have to make in front of your boss which sent your cortisol levels soaring and in turn abruptly halted any weight loss success. Maybe you are ovulating. Maybe you are retaining water because that soy sauce at your amazing sushi  dinner had  enough sodium for an entire week. Regardless of what it is, there are more things affecting your weight that you can't control than things you can control.  So why not just let it go and find a new way to benchmark your progress. What about measuring yourself with a good old fashioned tape measure? Because let me tell you–those numbers are real.

Or what about just eating clean and working out and learning to love the body you were given. Your body does a lot for you. It allows you to kill it in your yoga class, take those long Sunday strolls and SO much more. Maybe instead of hating your thighs or daydreaming about more toned arms you can spend some time thanking your body for all that it does. Someday, you will look back and wish you had been grateful for how you looked. Someday you will think, whoa, I wish I would have enjoyed the days of wearing short shorts. Because, damn girl, you looked good! But you were too busy obsessing over how much you weighed to actually enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Bottom line is that we are so incredibly hard on ourselves. Let's find ways to ease up. Ways to be grateful to and forgiving of ourselves. Maybe the first step for you is to learn a new way to measure your health. Who knows what will follow? Perhaps eventually we will forgive ourselves for running all of our Saturday errands in our sweaty workout clothes and ever so unfortunately running into the one that got away with his new girlfriend.  Well, maybe not.  Let's not get crazy.

 Source:- http://theeverygirl.com/feature/a-numbers-game-why-your-weight-shouldnt-matter

8 Things I Did To Change My Relationship With Food

It’s probably a bit un-PC to admit this, but the way I look is important to me. I need to be a very certain weight/size to look in the mirror and be happy with what I see.

(Feel free to roll your eyes here and talk about how sad it is that I feel the need to conform to societal norms, but honestly, I don’t care. Being happy with what I see in the mirror makes me feel good and quite frankly, I like feeling good.)

Being my ideal weight/size has a natural enemy however, and that would be my love of food. For most of my life a pitched battle has raged between those two things.

Eventually that battle got so bad that, for roughly 20 of my 35 years on this earth, I spent every minute of Every Single Day obsessing about food. I’d go for a ride in the morning and spend the whole time thinking about what muffin I would eat at the coffee shop afterwards. The second I sat down at my desk at work I’d be wondering what I might have for morning tea. I’d be chowing down on said morning tea and already casting my mind towards lunch. Most days it would be rare for me to go for more than an hour without putting food in my mouth.

Was I even enjoying all this eating I was doing? Nope, because I was also weighing myself every morning (as soon as I woke up, but after a wee of course) and living and dying by what I saw. If the numbers were ‘good’, I’d carry on my merry way. If the numbers were bad I’d get depressed and angrily tell myself to exert some self-control dammit! And by morning tea that self-control would have been tested and found to be wanting. And I loathed myself for that lack of self-control.

I thought because I wasn’t anorexic or bulimic that I didn’t have a problem with food.

I was wrong.

If you’re thinking about food all day every day, then you have a problem with it.

It took me an awfully long time to realise this, but once I did, it gave me the kick in the butt I needed to do something about it. And so started the long and slow process of re-training the way my brain looked at food.

Here’s what I did to break the rather unhealthy cycle I was in. The below isn’t intended to be prescriptive, nor it is based on anything but a sample size of one (me). But since it worked for me maybe it will help others struggling with the relationship they have with food too.

STEP 1: I stopped looking at food as a reward for exercise

“I’ve gone for a three hour bike ride today so when I get home I can eat whatever I like.”

“I did a two hour run this morning so that totally justifies eating this entire pizza.”

While I do appreciate the health benefits (mental and physical) of exercise, for most of my life exercise has been a license to eat without fear of gaining weight. I know exactly how many calories I expend for any given exercise activity and for a long time I replaced those calories almost exactly with the food I was eating. If I had a day where I didn’t exercise (rare) I would get hugely anxious about what I put in my mouth and try to restrict my calorie intake. If I was successful in restricting my intake I felt deprived, and if I was unsuccessful I would hate myself for having no self-control. It was exhausting.

In the end it was just easier to make sure I exercised every day as it beat feeling deprived or hating myself.

That made the first step in re-training my brain pretty obvious: I needed to break up the relationship between exercising and eating.

I did this simply by consuming the same amount of calories every day (the baseline amount my body needed), regardless of whether I exercised or not.

Doing the above stopped me looking at food as a reward for doing exercise and killed my obsession with calories in vs calories out. It took a while but finally exercise became all about health and well-being for me and nothing to do with food.

STEP 2: I stopped having crap in the house

Human beings are funny. We don’t just eat to fuel our bodies to get through the day. No, we also eat out of boredom and when we’re emotional.I am no different to other humans in this regard so part of re-training my brain with regard to food meant I had to stop heading for the fridge whenever I got emotional or bored. This became particularly important when I started to work from home because it was a pretty short walk from my desk to the kitchen.

So what did I do?

I stopped having crap in the fridge or pantry. It took about 100 unsuccessful forays into the kitchen looking for a (now non-existent) sweet treat, but eventually my brain realised there was no point going there anymore. Now when I am upset I go for a walk and if I am bored I go on twitter 

(I know people with kids will say but it’s a bit hard not to have crap in the pantry when you have kids. With all respect, if you shouldn’t be eating something because it’s crap, maybe your kids shouldn’t be eating that thing either?)

In short, if it’s not in your house, then you can’t eat it. Try it for a month and take note of how often you go foraging in the kitchen out of boredom.  Trust me, you will find alternate cures for boredom and emotion when you can’t sate them with food!

STEP 3: I quit sugar

I am not keen to get into an argument here about whether sugar is evil or not (it is). But I will assert with confidence that most of the Western world eats too much sugar because frankly, it’s hard to avoid it. I know that I was certainly eating way too much of the stuff and I was keen to come off it for a while and see what it did for me. So I did Sarah Wilson’s I Quit Sugar program and here’s what I found:

1. My digestive system, which had always been terrible, started to work much, much better (better poo, less popping off).
2. The stomach bloating that used to plague me in the afternoons disappeared.
3. I seemed to be carrying less fluid all over. This meant the muscles in my arms and legs looked more defined and I looked fitter than I actually was.
4. I was eating more fat yet not gaining weight.
5. My skin looked better.
6. I found it much, MUCH easier to keep my weight stable.
7. I stopped craving a sweet fix after every meal and in the evenings.

When I say ‘I quit sugar’ I mean I did Sarah’s program (which I found quite gentle and easy to do) and then once I was finished I stuck to the basic principles of it without being obsessive. I knew I really had sugar beat when I ate tomato sauce one day and it tasted grossly sweet to me. Up till that point I’d have tomato sauce on everything.

So I have stuck with the whole quitting sugar thing. For me it is a healthier way of eating … and one that doesn’t make me feel deprived.

STEP 4: I stopped eating low fat food

In line with the above, I stopped eating anything that was ‘low fat’ because ‘low fat’ simply translates to ‘we’ve replaced the fat with sugar’.

STEP 5: I changed the way I looked at fat

For years fat has been public enemy #1 and I, like everyone else, have avoided it like the plague. But fat has an awful lot of good points – the major ones being its satiety factor and the fact that our brains need fat to function. These days, instead of snacking on lollies I snack on nuts. I seem to be able to eat a LOT of nuts and avocado without gaining weight. Eating more fat also means I don’t feel hungry all the time.

STEP 6: I started eating before I got hungry

This one is pretty simple – I eat three regular meals at the same time each day. I don’t wait till I am starving before I eat because I make pretty terrible food decisions when I am starving. In between my three regular meals I snack on stuff like nuts, or avocado on toast. (I find it hard to over-eat either of those two things, but it’s super-easy to over-eat lollies.)

STEP 7: I stopped baking

If I bake it is generally something out of a packet and thus full of crap. Going by the photos I see on Instagram though, a LOT of what people bake is full of crap (sugar mainly), even when cooked from scratch. When I bake, two adults and one toddler polishes off whatever I bake in half a day. This isn’t healthy for anyone in my house so I decided to stop baking. Going back to #2 above, it seems that no-one in this house has self-control if there is crappy food at hand. Yet when the crap isn’t in the house, we don’t really miss it. So in the end there is no real hardship not having it there.

If you loooooove baking however and can’t bear the thought of stopping – then make it good stuff. Alexx Stuart has a blog full of real food/lox tox recipes. For instance check out her Anzac biscuit recipe here.

STEP 8: I started focusing on what I could eat rather than what I shouldn’t

Now I know what you’re thinking: Gee, what a deprived life you lead Kelly if you never get to eat yummy things any more. Here are two reasons why I don’t feel deprived:

1. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what I can’t eat. I focus instead on what I can. And believe me there is plenty of yummy stuff that I can eat that is healthy. As I mentioned above, I don’t miss the crap food when it’s not in my house. But if it is there and I try not to eat it, then I will  feel deprived.
2. Since I am not eating crap every day, when I am at a restaurant or a party and something yummy presents itself to me, I eat it AND enjoy it. Revolutionary! I can’t tell you how lovely it is to tuck into a piece of pavlova without thinking to myself gawd, I am going to have to run for an hour tomorrow to work this off.

So there you have it. On conservative estimate it took about two years for me to fully work through the above and break my obsession with food but now that I have, maintaining the weight I like to be has never been easier.

And honestly, life is a lot more fun when you’re not thinking about food every minute of the day.

Source:- http://kellyexeter.com.au/change-your-relationship-with-food