One of the biggest questions I get asked is, “what should I eat?”

Want to Lose Weight? Eat!

If you want to lose weight, ‘tone up’, body sculpt, bulk up, improve your health, then you simply need to eat fresh food. Eating processed foods, simple cards and sugars are just not doing you any flavors! This includes, pasta, rice, breads, rolls, cereals, muesli bars, cookies, crackers, and anything else that comes packaged!

Ideally you will avoid simple Carbs at all costs. However if you are just starting out in your healthy life style and feel a little overwhelmed by our nutrition overhaul, then start slowly. Start with changing how many simple carbs you eat, reducing them to only eat 1 serve per day. So instead of having toast or cereal for breakfast (1 serve), then a cookie (1 serve) with morning tea, a sandwich for lunch (1 serve),  a muesli bar for afternoon tea (1 serve) and a bowl of pasta for dinner (1 serve) a packet of chips or a bowl of ice-cream after dinner (1 serve), which equates to 6 serves of simple carbs/sugars  per day, ONLY eat 1 serve of these things for the entire day! Pick 1 and that’s it! The next day, pick a different one. You will be amazed at the difference this will make!

Aim at eating sustainable, filling, nutritious meals, and you will avoid the need to graze/snack throughout the day. If you are eating foods that are high in protein, fat and fibre, that are low GI and cooked with awesome herbs and spices such as Paprika, Cinnamon, and Thyme etc, you will:

• feel fuller for longer
• regulate your hormone,preventing sugar spikes and plunges
• prevent cravings
• prevent afternoon flatness
• prevent depression and anxiety
• increase your metabolism
• burn more calories during digestion
• improve your immune system

Break the habit of having to snack/graze. Ensure that you are eating enough food to fill you up, without going overboard. Not eating enough during a meal, sends you looking for ‘top-ups’ later in the day, in all the wrong places! Teaching your body it is going to get a ‘regular’ meal that is sustainable will prevent your body going into ‘starvation’ mode and storing ‘everything’ as fat for energy. If your body know it is going to get more food soon enough, it will burn it as it needs without storing it as fat. When your body has no idea when it is going to get food again it stores everything as fat, as a back up energy source for basic functions like beating the heart. So avoid skipping meals!

Ideas for meal times:

Breakfast ideas:

• Grilled chicken breast with avocado
• Scrambled eggs, sauteed mushrooms, spinach, handful of almonds
• Grilled steak and eggs
• Smoked salmon and 6 egg whites with spinach

Lunch ideas:

• Chicken and salad in a tub dressed with lemon/lime juice
• Beef and salad in a tub
• Chicken/beef with steamed spinach and raw almonds or cashews
• For a warm lunch can have steak and veggies
• Fish – grilled, baked or steamed (avoid having tuna more than 2 times per week due to the mercury levels)
• Kangaroo! Try it!
• Add some egg whites to any lunch meal!

Dinner ideas:

(Use these basic ingredients then cook them in many different ways; get creative!)

Chicken, Fish, Beef, Lamb, vegetables any green vegetable is great though have a variety of colors with every meal to ensure you are getting a variety of vitamins and minerals.

Tips on being prepared and always having home cooked foods available at hand:

Get about 3kg of chicken tenderloins and place them in a baking tray. I don’t season them with anything (that can be done later, depending on what you will use the chicken for). Place foil over the tray. Bake for about 40 minutes. Take tray out of the oven and allow to cool. When chicken has cooled. Using your fingers, shred the chicken and place 1 serve worth (About 100-150g for female,  200-250g males), flat on some freezer paper on a tray. Layer your chicken on freezer paper then freeze. Every evening you can take a serve out to defrost in the fridge and use it for a meal the next day. Ready cooked, easy, fresh chicken!

You can also do this with beef. Roast a beef, thinly slice it up and freeze the slices on freezer paper.

Another trick I do is hard boil a dozen eggs and put them back in the fridge in the carton marked ‘boiled’. When I need an extra meal or lunch side I use 1-3 of the eggs and you can have them whole or have just the white!

Snack ideas  (if your goal IS NOT weight loss) or ideas to serve guests during a get together:

• Raw nuts of any sort (except peanuts)
• Raw snow peas Celery, carrots, green beans, snow peas, or capsicum with Gluten free Humous dip or “Macro-natural (brand)”
• ‘Almond Spread’ or ‘Brazil, Almond & Cashews spread’
• Homemade meat balls grilled. Have them as a snack
• Natural Yoghurt (the fruit ones have too much sugar, in place of fat) if you want to sweeten it up, use honey and throw in some walnuts for crunch.

Other Tips:

• No more than 2 serves of fruit per day (Avoid fruit where you don’t eat the peel. Fruit with thin skin has more antioxidants in them) – 1 serve equals whatever you can fit in your hands when you cup the together. Nobody’s hands are the same, just like their bodies, so the serves will vary too!
• Eat avocado wherever you can, it’s good fat! Cook with organic butter (NOT margarine), or cook with coconut oil, as eating good fat promotes fat burning!!!

AND REMEMBER THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE WHEN CHASING YOUR GOALS:

If you eat something that is not in your eating plan, do not feel guilty about it! Acknowledge that you have eaten it, pay attention to how that food makes you feel, and start afresh! Tomorrow is another day! 😀

Terri Batsakis