Steve’s Choose To Lose Blog: Week 6

June 17, 2019

Steve’s Choose To Lose Blog: Week 6

Steve, our Marketing & Communications Officer, has joined our latest fitness and weightloss course Choose To Lose, to learn more about one of our most popular classes and hopefully feel the benefits for himself…

Exercising regularly is, of course, only part of the Choose To Lose plan. There’s no point putting in the hard work if you’re then going to eat away all the progress.

Snacking is one of my major weaknesses. I know I need to learn to only eat when hungry – rather than anticipating hunger – and not reach for the wrong sort of snack.

The Choose To Lose Nutrition Workshop proved a great education, and a stark reminder of how easy – and unnecessary – it is to let your good intentions wander. Thanks to Louise Jones, this is what we learned…

Daily Intake:

Calories: 2000 women, 2500 men

Fruit & veg: A minimum of five portions, where one portion = 1 apple/banana/orange, a handful of berries or vegetables, or 3 dried apricots

Carbohydrates: Eight portions of complex (wholegrain & high-fibre) carbs, where one portion = 1 slice of bread, 1 medium potato, 2 heaped tablespoons of cooked rice or 3 heaped tablespoons of cooked pasta

Dairy or alternatives:2-3portions of low fat and low-sugar diary, where one portion = 200ml milk, 125ml yoghurt, 30g hard cheese or 75g cottage cheese

Protein:beans, pulses, eggs, nuts, fish and meat – basically, eat more beans and pulses, whether it’s baked beans, lentils, garden peas, runner/broad beans, kidney beans or chickpeas. If you eat fish, include two portions per week, one of which should be oily. One portion = 2 medium eggs, 1 small tin of beans, a handful of nuts, 140g fish or 70g meat

Drinks: 6-8 glasses per day of water, low-fat milk, tea, coffee or sugar-free pop. Limit fresh fruit juice or smoothies to 150ml per day.

Alcohol:14 units per week – approximately 7 pints of beer or glasses of wine, or 14 spirit shots – spread across the whole week. With an average pint containing over 180 calories, alternating alcohol and water on a night out can help avoid too many ‘liquid’ calories.

Weekly meal planning, including preparing batches of fruit and veg beforehand and saving leftovers for the next day’s lunch, is a good way to ensure you stick to these guidelines. Louise provided a few ideas…

Breakfast: porridge, milk, yoghurt & fruit; overnight oats yoghurt & fruit; eggs on toast; smoothie; high-fibre, low sugar cereal

Lunch: wholegrain-bread sandwich, protein filling & salad; pasta/rice, veg & protein portion; jacket potato, protein, veg

Dinner: lean beef chilli, kidney beans, veg, brown rice; stir fry, vegetables, potatoes, protein; roast vegetables, potato, protein portion

Snacks: fresh/dried fruit, low-sugar snack bars; nuts / nut butter on toast; smoothies; carrots & houmous; Greek yoghurt with fruit

All easier said than done, I agree. But it also doesn’t sound too onerous, and with a bit of thought I should be able to stick to it. We’ll see. The proof will be in the (low-fat) pudding…