No-strain ways to shift the extra kilos

SOUTH African lifestyle and wellness expert, Lisa Raleigh, shares her tips to help shed the extra kilos.

1. EXTRA VEGGIES: If this is the one change you make to your diet, it may be all you need to do.

Our veggie quota of roughly four to five helpings is almost never met.

Focusing less on what to take out of your diet and more on reaching this quota is one of the most successful strategies for weight-loss.

You’ll be surprised how little space is left in your stomach after you’ve included all the veggies we need in a day!

Make sure veggies are always the first thing you eat off your plate and the first thing you serve more of if you’re headed for seconds.

This is a healthy approach that focuses on increasing nutritional quality in your diet, rather than deprivation.

2. SMART CARBS: Refined carbs and added sugar sneak their way into so many of our daily meals.

A conscious effort to limit these and rather take in a healthy balance of complex, low GI whole carbs – think starchy vegetables, brown rice and oats – will remove a lot of the dead weight in your diet that typically ends up being stored as fat.

3. PORTION CONTROL: Managing your portion sizes goes a long way towards managing your weight.

Saying no to unnecessary seconds, knowing what a sensible serving of food looks like and eating slowly will all help you stay in control of your calories.

Have a glass of water 10 minutes before every meal, focus on eating quality ingredients versus empty-caloric foods and opt for a balance of protein, fat and complex carbs to keep you fuller for longer.

Meal preparation is key in determining what lands on your plate, so plan your meals ahead of time and prepare them yourself where possible.

Water is the only form of hydration we need, yet we often drink thousands of calories in liquid forms. S m o o t h i e s , while delicious and nutritious, are also easy vehicles for calorie overload – so pay attention to what

goes into them. If you wouldn’t eat the ingredients in one sitting, they probably shouldn’t go into your smoothie.

4. IDENTIFYING EXCESS: Identifying the biggest contributors to your weight-gain is a must and they are usually the things we do repeatedly or in excess.

Do you have multiple cups of tea a day with a few sugars each time? Are you getting dramatically less than the weekly recommended minutes of exercise? Does every weekend include a big night out with multiple alcoholic drinks? Are you eating something sweet after dinner every evening?

These habits are going to differ sizeably amongst individuals, but it is these personal habits that have the most impact on results.

Spend some time identifying the few routine things you believe have the most impact on your weight and moderate them accordingly.

6. VARIETY: Our bodies adapt quickly. It’s essential to keep your body guessing by varying your workouts and eating routines. This breaks through fitness and weightloss plateaus – and keeps you interested and motivated. One of my favourite ways to train is on a rebounder – this is a non-impact, high resistant, circulation boosting exercise packed with benefits that also lets you choose the intensity at which you train for a varied daily workout. When it comes to food, opt for a balanced diet of a variety of foods, aiming for as many colours as possible on the plate.

5. INTENSITY: HIIT (high intensity interval training) is the most efficient way to blast fat and tone up.

This means shorter workouts of challenging, explosive sets of resistance or cardiovascular training back-to-back, with short – sometimes active – rests. 6. CONSISTENCY: Forget the all-or-nothing approach! Generally sticking to a sensible training and eating schedule will serve you far better than going flat out for a few weeks t h e n throwing in the towel for long stretches in between. Slow and steady fat-loss is also the key to keeping it off long-term – deprivation or extreme effort is always short lived. Slowly make small changes you can accept long-term, one by one, for meaningful change. REGULARLY consuming whole grain foods such as barley, brown rice, millet, oatmeal and rye may help you lose weight, as well as decrease the risk of heart disease and diabetes, a study suggests.

The findings showed that participants who ate whole grains had less inflammation, particularly in overweight people, which increases the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.

Participants were also found to eat less when whole grain products were on the menu.

Overall, the analysis did not show major effects of the dietary grain products on the composition of gut bacteria.

Tine Rask Licht, professor at the Technical University of Denmark, said: “It may well be that the individual composition of our gut microbes has an impact on the individual reaction of our body to dietary whole grains.”

For the study, described in the journal Gut, the team included two groups of adults at risk of developing cardiovascular disease or Type 2 diabetes. IANS