My friends and family know that I LOVE ♥food♥. I eat like a horse and can be easily won over by good food. The best way to my heart is through my stomach. You get the idea. And yet, I managed to retain the weight I was at 18. Of course it wasn’t always this way, let me tell you my weight story.
About 3 years ago, I weighed about 55 kg, which was about 5 kg in access of what I used to weigh as a young girl. I mean, I wasn’t fat. But I certainly was fleshy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But a change came about in a TSUNAMI form of advice, which I was so glad to have taken.
Snack every 3-4 hours. When I heard these magic words, my world opened up to a secret garden where all things were beautiful and edible. The greedy chops inside me pondered: Can I really eat continuously throughout the day and stay slim? And then the revolution began.
The foods below are typical of my everyday diet now (I don’t actually eat everything on the list at once):
1) Breakfast (as soon as I get up)
Porridge with honey or scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and a slice of whole grain/seeded bread.
2) Between breakfast and lunch
Fruits (a banana, clementine, grape, nectarine, apple, kiwi, mango, strawberries or blueberries), cereal bars, nuts & seeds (pine, sunflower), vegetable (tomato, celery, or carrot sticks), or the occasional treat – dark chocolates (see post). Sometimes, I eat my 5 a day in under an hour, they don’t call me Snack Champ for nothing!
3) Lunch
Anything except some red or white meat. I mostly stick to fish or chicken. And plenty of salad (dressed in healthy oil) with tomatoes. The portions within my meal reduce in this order: Salad (vitamins and minerals), meat or beans (protein), rice/pasta/potatoes (carbs).
4) Between lunch and dinner
Crisps, chocolates, some leftover fruit, emergency cereal bar or one of Jackie’s amazing cakes (she takes orders).
5) Dinner
This is when you can hear J do a low moan. Being a guy, he is carnivorous. But since he is going out with me, his dinnertime meals has been reduced to fish, other seafood (prawns), lots of vegetables, and sometimes rice and brown pasta. When I am not eating with him, he indulges in what he calls the heart stopper – 10 potatoes (mashed) with a whole block of cheese (300 g). No points to whoever can guess how many calories this dish contains!
The moral of the story
When you start to eat consistently, the portions in your meals tend to decrease. However, you do not have to snack in between meals if you’re not hungry. I just tried that as a way of seeing whether I can stoke my metabolism and train my body to burn calories quickly.
What I got rid off
- Cows’ milk. I am lactose-intolerant. Only took me 26 years (!) to realise this. But here’s one interesting insight that may make you think twice the next time you lift up that pint of milk before bedtime.
[Readers discretion is advised]Taken from Skinny Bitch: Cows’ milk, by design, grows a 90-pound calf into a 2,000-pound cow over the course of two years. It allow calves to double their birth weight in forty-seven days and leaves their four stomaches feeling full.
- Chicken sold in the supermarket. After watching a brilliant documentary entitled ‘Supermarket Secrets‘, my stomach turned over and I vowed never ever to buy even free range chicken in the supermarket. You can’t touch/trust this.
- Beef. Because I am not a vampire.
Bonus Details
- Foods that keep you looking young – Broccoli (who would have thought??!), tomatoes, kiwi, oranges, grapes, raspberries, cherries, seaweed, extra virgin olive oil, rapeseed oil, oysters, salmon, brazil nuts, almond, butternut squash, green tea, bell pepper and more.
- Foods that give you wrinkles – Sadly, cakes (the sweeter they are, the more lethal). Sugar molecules bond with the protein molecules and causes protein fibers under the skin to become stiff and malformed.
- Exercise – All the food in the world will not fully equip you to fight cancer and microscopic creepy crawlies if you don’t live an active lifestyle.
For more healthy recipes that can help you prevent cancer and inject more colours into your life, check out the tips published by The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) and the world’s healthiest foods.
Very well written, Sam. Ms carby-carb-carb and a glass of milk with it, can probably take some notes from you. I’m lucky to keep weight steady with fast metabolism, but I can certainly improve my health with the foods you listed. 🙂
Jackie, I didn’t realise that what I did was abnormal until you gave me the title! Somehow this diet hasn’t failed me and has kept me relatively healthy.
This makes you sound like you eat a lot of food! esp between meals. You’re quite lucky sam, most people would be the size of a double decker bus if they ate this many snacks. hopefully your body won’t suddenly realise and go oh yeah, I’m meant to be huge! * POP * 😛
You know, I don’t eat everything on there all at once! Fruits are the only things I snack in access of, all else are taken in moderation. I hope it doesn’t give my readers the idea that they can eat as much as they can all day long! The key is in moderation, as with everything in life – too much of anything is not good for you. And it was only recently that I decided to stop eating beef entirely. Of course, unless they are steak made from lean beef…
I’m going to seriously study your diet tips! If you eat like a horse, then it must be a tiny shetland pony, while Jake eats like a super sized shire horse!!
Jenny, Jake has a very enviable skinny gene, I wish I was like that! The only thing I eat in excess of is fruit. Otherwise, I eat a variety of foods consistently, but each in moderate portions. Alas, my weakness is cookies!