Choose health

Make a few changes to your diet and lifestyle for just three days and you'll notice a difference.

IT’S THE WEEK after Christmas and you’ve done enough eating, drinking and lounging to put the BBC’s Royle Family to shame. It wasn’t the Brussels sprouts that sank you – it was the chocs in front of telly, the goose fat spuds, the post-pub fridge raids, and those extra generous home measures of drink. But with your metabolism now now in the doldrums and the needle on the weighing scales tipping into new territory, there is some good news – what got you into this mess can, in fact, get you out of it.

If you’ve eaten yourself into bad shape in 2011, the New Year is your chance to eat yourself back out of it. Food allows us to take responsibility for our health and with some smart food shopping and advance planning, 2012 can be the year to eat yourself healthy.

THE EXPERT

“Make the effort to be organised regarding your meals,” says weight loss expert and RTÉ Operation Transformation bad cop, Dr Eva Orsmond.“The key is to be obsessed with fibre. Vegetables are the simplest way to keep portions big while still cutting down on calories.They’re low on calories, big on the essential fibre needed to keep food moving through the body, and they also contain plant stanols that lower cholesterol – so load up that trolley.” To those who feel vegetables are boring and tasteless, she begs them to branch out. “I have people in my clinic telling me they’ve never tried fennel or butternut squash – try some new vegetables.”

While all vegetables are virtuous, some are more effective than others at shifting the pounds. “If you are trying to cut down on calories and carbohydrates to give your body less energy to work with and start burning old reserves, the vegetables growing on top of the ground are ideal,” she says.

Although we may tend towards sweeter choices such as carrots, parsnips and corn, she suggests greens such as the in-season Brussels sprouts or cabbage in a stir-fry for its fibre and vitamin C. When it comes to portion size, it helps to memorise this simple rule of thumb – more than half your plate should be vegetables, a quarter carbohydrates and a quarter meat.

“Get yourself a kitchen scales or look at the packaging on meat. You really don’t need more than 500g or 600g of meat for four people if you are doing a stir fry or Bolognese.” For those dining solo, she says 150g of red meat, 200g of white fish or 130-150g of oily fish make for the perfect portion.

Although whacking a ready meal in the oven can seem appealing after a busy day, the calorie count alone should be cause for indigestion. “If you look at the prices on these ready-made pizzas, they are ridiculously low,” says Dr Orsmond. “The reason is they are using low-quality salty cheese and meat. At about 1,600 calories, they are full of fat. Home cooking is the key to weight maintenance and it can be fun,” she says, suggesting pitta bread or a wrap with stir-fried meat and vegetables as an equally speedy but healthier alternative.

When it comes to alcohol, remember it’s no more than 14 units a week for women and 21 for men. A unit equates to one small (100ml) glass of wine, a pub measure of spirits, or a glass of cider or beer. While Dr Orsmond says research shows that two units every night can actually increase life expectancy; going over that immediately starts to affect mortality.

But there is no upside to smoking and she advises smokers wanting to lose weight should ditch the fags first. “If on top of trying to lose weight you try to stop smoking, you are really going to have a hard time. I would say tackle the smoking first.”

And as those quitting tend to eat more, she advises having a war chest of crudités on standby at all times – “mushrooms, carrots, celery cut into strips with a natural yogurt dip” – to stave off unhealthy snacking. For those reaching for the biscuits after a bust up with the boyfriend or a blow-out with the boss, she says get out and pound the pavement instead. “It gets the endorphins going and they make you look at things in a different light.” To keep energy levels up, tired people tend to eat more too so for a truly effortless way to stay trim, get to bed early. “I’m not saying the change is easy but if you are able to make a plan for the first three days and stick to it, I would promise you would immediately feel better,” says Dr Orsmond.