A love of food!
I love food! I love to cook and I love to cook for others. My Mum had me in the kitchen from a very young age, and as a result I learned to cook from a very young age. This is one of the gifts from my Mum I am most grateful for.
Unfortunately my love of food doesn’t discriminate; I love fine cuisine, I love fast-food, sweet food (I’m an absolute sucker for lamingtons and M&M’s), and food that probably shouldn’t even be classified as food!
Are you doing this food thing all wrong?
Maybe you’re like me and the doctor told you to lose weight. Maybe you’re sick of your mates calling you ‘big fella’. Maybe you want to make sure you’re around long enough to see your kids grow up. Maybe you’re just sick of avoiding reflective surfaces.
Whatever the reason, you’re ready to make a change!
All over the world, thousands of people make the same decision every day. To eat better and lose weight. But, every day, thousands of people set out just like I did, without a plan and no idea what they’re doing. Every day, thousands of people fail.
It’s hardly surprising. There are so many decisions to make and so much bad advice out there.
- Should I go on a diet? Which one?
- Surely I can trust the food pyramid, right? Wait, there’s more than one?!
- What about a juice diet?
- There’s a soup diet?! WTF!
Stop. Breathe, and read on.
Firstly, I think diets are crap! Mostly because I just don’t think they’re sustainable. Successfully changing your lifestyle, your habits and your eating habits is a process that happens one step at a time. Generally, diets ask you to make sweeping changes all at once. I tried that, I hated it and it was never going to last. We all have a limited amount of willpower. Every day you deprive yourself of the foods you really want and crave will be bloody awful!
Today, let’s look at the basics of healthy eating. Let’s start doing this food thing the right way.
Combine these food tips with the short walks we already talked about and you’ll start to see and feel the results in no time.
Note: Dietary advice can be a controversial topic. This information is based on my personal experience, research and the results I’ve achieved.
The 127kgs Food Philosophy
If I was to sum it up in just a few words, it would go something like this:
” One step at a time. Eat less sugar, eat more real food & find healthier snacks that you love.”
When you’re trying to lose weight, get healthy and boost your fitness, most of your success or failure will come down to what, and how much you eat. When I say most, I mean 80%!
I learned this the hard way! I spent ages busting-a-gut and pounding the pavement for very little return. Not that this was bad for me, but I didn’t lose any weight. It wasn’t until I took a hard look at what I was eating and paired those changes with the exercise I was doing that I started to see results.
Eat more actual food. Eat less crap.
Hardly a new concept but certainly easier said than done. You’ve probably tried before and for whatever reason it didn’t stick. In my opinion the secret to food and weight loss success is to make small incremental changes that slowly add up to big success.
Small permanent changes to your diet will put a beat down on crazy sweeping changes every time!
Where Do I Start?
There’s a few things that are helpful to know before getting started. Now this is the side of weight loss and food theory that I don’t really like, BUT once you get your head around it, it’ll start to guide some of your decision making. So stay with me here, coz I’m going to throw up some numbers (I’m sorry!).
- 500 grams of fat = roughly 3500 calories
Ok that’s cool. But WTF does it mean?!
According to people much smarter than me. People with white lab coats, scientific calculators and years worth of data- a healthy rate of weight loss is about 500 – 1000 grams per week. So let’s take that 3500 calories and divide it by 7 days. Thanks to my 3rd Form maths teacher (Mr Peterson, also known as Papa Smurf), I’m still able to figure out that 3500/7 = 500.
That means that if you want to lose 500 grams per week, you need to remove 500 calories per day from your daily food consumption, or burn 500 calories per day through exercise. Ideally you’d achieve this through a combination of increased exercise and decreased food consumption.
” That’s great Shane, but how? “
That my friend is a bloody good question. One that took me quite some time to figure out. What I’m about to recommend is another aspect of weight loss that I don’t really like, BUT it’ll prove to be an education in food that’ll stay with you for the rest of your life. Take a gander at this post and you’ll see what I mean- The weight loss discovery that changed my life.
I strongly encourage you to spend the next 2-3 weeks studying your calorie intake. Yup I said it. Counting calories. When I say studying your calorie intake, I mean track everything. EVERYTHING! The pineapple lump your workmate gave you, the glass of wine you had when you got home, the ice cream you ate after tea. E V E R Y T H I N G ! The point here is to build a profile of what you’re eating every day. Once you understand that, it’s a whole lot easier to see what’s going wrong and a whole lot easier to see where to start.
Counting calories sucks, but it’s made a whole lot easier with a great little phone app called MyFitnessPal. The database of foods is massive, you can scan bar-codes and the app calculates everything for you.
Do this for a few days, or for a more comprehensive picture, a couple of weeks, then take a look back and see what you’re average calorie intake is per day and where you can cut back. Look for the easy wins. Snacks will always be a good place to start. Either by cutting back on what you’re typically eating, or looking for healthier replacements. Snacks can be a calorie killer! They are easy to overlook because they’re not a dedicated meal, there’s frequently no experience associated with snacks. They are usually eaten out of convenience and are often consumed ‘on the run’ while you’re busy.
The starting point for me was the second sugar in the 6 coffees I was drinking every day. Taking that second sugar out of my coffee, plus the 10 minutes walking I was doing by getting off the bus early every day, cut my calorie intake by nearly 2000 calories every week!
Now remember, removing 500 calories from your diet every day will result in about 500 grams of weight loss every week. As I’m always saying on 127kgs ” start slow “. I’d suggest that cutting 250 calories from your diet every day is a good place to start. Remember this isn’t about sweeping changes, it’s about small incremental changes that become new habits.
So What Does 250 Calories Look Like?
Each of the following is about 250 calories:
- 1 Large Flat White with whole milk and 2 sugars
- 600ml Classic Coke
- 8 squares of chocolate
You might be tempted to dive straight in and attempt to drastically decrease your calorie intake but DON’T. You’re stomach is used to the amount of food you typically consume and you need to slowly train it to be happy with less. If you typically eat 3000+ calories every day and suddenly try and cut that to 2000, you’re going to feel like you’re starving all the time. Then it becomes a battle of willpower and you will lose. For now your strategy is to remove 250 calories at a time. Do it for a couple of weeks, make it a habit and then look for the next easy win.
This is the easiest way to start losing weight – this is how I got started with weight loss and you will see results! I strongly encourage you to couple this with some exercise, as outlined in the this article: Losing Weight. Getting Started & Not Looking Back. Or, if you’re ready for the next step up, add some strength training to your workouts with this Simple Exercise Plan to Lose Weight.
While this might be the easiest way to get started losing weight, remember it’s not your end game. Ultimately you want to transform what you’re eating, how you exercise and start building a healthier, stronger you.
Get Started Today.
Why not get started today? Start interrogating your food choices and pick a habit or two to change. Don’t worry if you stumble along the way, I stumbled plenty. Just keep getting back up until you find what works best for you.
Got a question? Hit me in the comments below and I’ll do my best to answer.
-Shane
Thank you, have found your site very helpful. I am a newby at doing this, have a very sweet tooth so started 2 weeks ago with stopping eatin all my lollies. Had one bad day but back on track again. Next were my biscuits, cakes etc only been doing that a week. But your suggestion of MyFitnessPal site had been a real insight into how much I am eating…. the fat, sugar, protein that was in everything. Food for thought and find it is helping me with this early stage
Thanks
Dianne
Hi Dianne, thanks for taking the time to comment! I’m glad you’re finding the site useful and it’s sounds like you’re off to a good start. Don’t forget you don’t have to give everything up all at once or too quickly, that was a big mistake I made. It takes time to form new habits, so don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Sounds like you’re doing really well though. Stay in touch.
Shane
What do you think about the 5:2 diet Shane? That’sa good way of cutting your weekly calorie intake isn’t it?
Hi Debbie, I don’t know much about the 5:2 diet but my loose understanding is that you eat what you want for 5 days and fast for 2? If that’s the case I think like all diets, it’s an extreme solution. I just don’t see it as a sustainable way to live your life and I can’t see how it can help people form a healthy relationship with food. In fact, I think it encourages a poor relationship with food.
Many diets will work for a period of time but they never offer a sustainable, long-term solution, and they don’t prepare you for life outside the diet. That’s where the yo-yo dieting cycle starts: Diet > Lose weight > End diet > Gain weight > diet again… We almost never learn anything from being on a diet. They put pressure on us to succeed and our focus is almost entirely on the diet. Life outside the diet is real life, that’s where we are every day and that’s where we need to learn to make healthy choices.
Hi!
Thanks so much for your post. I exercise quite regularly but don’t loose any weight and I’ve known for a long time ( 2 to 3 years!) that I need to get control over what I’m eating. I’ve never really had a plan, I always think I’m going to do better *tommorow* and it’s always just seemed to hard! But I love the idea of a small daily target and I’ve downloaded the my fitness pal app and filled it in. You’ve definitely inspired me! Thanks for being so straight forward! I love your style!
Hi Cristin, thanks for stopping by I’m glad you found the site. Let me know how you go with app, I know it really opened my eyes to what I was eating and how much. I quickly realised I’d been kidding myself for a long time. It also taught me that certain foods weren’t nearly as healthy as I thought they were and that quite often it was the little things that I didn’t even consider
Hi Shane
I’ve lost 12kgs and put on 4kgs. Mainly through LCHF . Sugar is the vice I find hard to crack. I made your porridge yesterday and loved it. I’d like to know what your typical day would be now with food? You have done really well. I’ve still got about 10kgs to go.
Thanks
Christine
Hey good work Christine! Sugar is a vice for me too, but I think I’ve learned to manage it rather than beat it. A typical day is a weekday for me and it goes something like this: A few almonds, a piece of fruit and a couple of boiled eggs throughout the morning. Lunch is usually some leftover tea, or greek yoghurt and muesli if there aren’t any leftovers. I often crave something sweet on my way home from work but instead of buying a fullon chocolate bar, or bag of lollies like I used to, I settle for a small Whittakers Sante bar. When I get home I usually snack on some hummus and a few wholegrain crackers and tea is typically some form of meat and vegetables. I’ve learned to treat food throughout the day as fuel and look forward to something delicious for tea. I eat a lot of hearty salads for tea, with chickpeas, roasted vegetables, spicy chicken, and toasted seeds etc. I also love Moroccan, Turkish and Mexican flavours so I eat a lot of slow cooked meat and cous cous dishes, as well as wholegrain tortillas packed with fresh vegetables and chicken or beef. I cook with a lot of cumin, paprika, tumeric, coriander, chili, and garlic.
Shane