Selfsufficientish.com

Hi Andy,

My best tip is to ensure you eat at regular intervals of small portions, containing mainly wholesome complex carbohydrates, such as oats, brown bread etc. You should be looking at 6 small meals rather than 3 main meals. This will increase you metabolism, which is your furnace, when you are just leading your eveyday life. High protein foods also take longer to digest by the body, so go for things like lentils, tofu and lean meat.

I usually have porridge and jam/honey for breakfast, snack on oatcakes/oat biscuits (nairns are good), banana, apple, sandwhiches with peanut butter and so on.

These complex carbs don't give you a low after and keep your blood sugars stable, as opposed to high sugar snacks and drinks.

Also take a jog 3x a week for 20-30mins and this will help - it works for me, but everyone is different.

hope this helps,

best wishes,

Matthew Phillips

Hey Andy,

Great to see a complete lack of wacky diet tips in the replies here!

I have tried reducing how much I eat and I can't do it - love my food too much. Get hungry so quickly and any kind of "diet-ing" makes me so focussed on food that I end up eating more I think.

I signed up to do a triathlon - which I did two weekends ago. Training nearly every day for 3-4 months got rid of at least 2 inches of flab of my tummy (which made me much less bouyant for the swim!)

Exercise is the answer for me....

Eat when you're hungry
Eat consciously (don't pick at stuff in front of the telly)
Eat what you want
When you've had enough, stop.

If you put your knife and fork down every mouthful and chew properly, you'll find you eat less and the food tastes different. You might even find you like things you didn't used to. As for quanitites, look at your proportions. I'd try to go for one quarter of the plate to be protein, one quarter carbohydrate and half vegetables. Eat puds whenever you want, if you're still hungry at the end of a meal. Don't if you're not. But if you feel hungry, have a glass of water first, because it's often the body mistaking thirst for hunger. If you don't feel hungry after a glass of water, you weren't hungry.

And drink beer if you want. Just remember there are about 180 calories in a pint of ordinary bitter. So if you're drinking one a day, that's nearly 10% of the average man's total daily calorie requirements. A regular G&T contains 120 calories and I'll bet you'd drink 2 to every pint of beer you have (I know I would). If you have slimline tonic with a single pub measure of gin, it's around 60 calories.

That's about it really. Remember, calories are energy. A calorie is defined as the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1 cubic centimetre of water by 1 degree (see Mrs Hunt! I did learn something useful in chemistry after all!) So if you're taking on more energy that you're using, you're going to be "laying it down for the lean times". And if there are no lean times, hey presto! Beer belly.

Hope that helps.
Lynne (currently 1 stone less than I was 2 months ago and falling. Only another 3 to go!)

Eat oats. They make you feel full for a long time, are low GI, decrease collesteroll and are generaly great. Make light beer to drink - callories are mostly in the alcohol, not the residual sugars i think (dont quote me)

alternatively become a teacher - ive just finished my 3rd week of real (practise) teaching and i have lost 3 kg.

Low-carb diets will do this, and as the others point out, exercise. The reason why the beergut develops in the first place is because it is full of carbs (alcoholic drinks ususally are). However, more interestingly, beer is also oestrogenic (i.e., have the same effect as oestrogen on a body) so men consuming beer will lay down fat in patterns similar to a woman (hence belly and man-boobs). Good luck with your belly-reduction programme!!

Sorry, forgot this in the last post:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... -wine.html

everything in moderation

If you cut anything out of your diet that you love, you will loose interest in the diet within a couple of weeks & when you return to eating the 'culprit' you will put on more weight than you lost to begin with.

Obviously the aim is to use more calories per day than you eat. So cut your portion sizes slightly, which will reduce your calorie intake. Drink beer, if thats what you enjoy, but drink less than you would normally have. And finally in increase the amount of exercise you do on a daily basis. Whether thats getting on your bike to nip to the shops, parking in the furthest car parking space at the shops, digging the garden, anything that would be 'different' to something you'd do normally.
Its the small changes that you make to your lifestyle that will help you to loose the weight, but more importantly will let you KEEP it off.

Ok, thought it time for a quick update. Thanks for all the advice. I have lost roughly a stone and now loads of my clothes are a bit too big for me. Exercise is indeed the key as it cutting out some of the main culprits, I have stopped walking past the fridge and eating cheese, I have even cut out milk and sugar, no longer eat a cake a day too and my beer intake has decreased. I sat and counted my calorie intake for a week and then easily worked out what I should be eating.

Belly is still there but half the size and more importanly it has stopped growing.

wow thats fab going! OK, so if I'd have known you had a cake a day habit, I perhaps wouldn't have suggested you made 'little' changes, I think cutting that out would probably do the trick! well done though, it's great when you see your efforts being rewarded. Do you feel better for it?

frozenthunderbolt wrote: alternatively become a teacher - ive just finished my 3rd week of real (practise) teaching and i have lost 3 kg.

Or work in a hotel kitchen - that was the job where I lost most weight in the shortest time... When you see and smell all that food all day, you lose your interest in eating. I mostly survived on the odd apple and glass of milk.

Working seems to help in any case; now that I'm back at a "proper" job I find I eat much better, i.e. stick to meal times (no eating in the lab!), and if I only take a salad in with me, that's what I eat. Anyway, I just got a new lab coat and it's a bit tight - that's an incentive, too...

I'm a little late to this (comes of hardly being online ever) but I might still be able to help :)

Of course, as most have said, its about both diet and exercise.
So, diet. I tend to follow the Food Doctor principles, they're all about keeping your blood sugar levels on an even keel, which keeps your energy up and hunger to a minimum.
They are:
1. Eat proteins with complex carbohydrates. This is basically to ensure that you have the slowest possible glucose release.
2. Stay hydrated.
3. Eat a wide variety of food. This is to help avoid feeling bored by food, and to get a good mix of nutrients.
4. Fuel up frequently. Eating every 2-3 hours will help to stabilise blood sugars.
5. Eat breakfast. Its a start as you mean to go on thing, no skipping meals.
6. Avoid sugar. Added sugars that is. They cause blood sugar spikes, which lead to sharp falls and messes with insulin production, which makes you hungrier. Sweeteners have a similar effect so are best avoided as well. Sugar also feeds intestinal bacteria that cause bloating and sugar cravings.
7. Exercise is essential. Obviously.
8. Follow the 80/20 rule. If you follow the principles 80% of the time then you can break the rules for the remaining 20%, if you need to. For example, if you have a party to go to, or need to go out for a meal. Or even if you just feel like it :) This stops you feeling like you're trapped by a 'diet'.
9. Make time to eat. If you take time to enjoy your food, you're less likely to want to eat more straightaway.
10. Eat fat to lose fat. You should still avoid saturated fats, but avoiding all fats is pointless. The body requires fat (in the form of healthy oils, hemp, olive, etc) in order to work properly.

For further explanation, I recommend Food Doctor Ultimate Diet and Food Doctor Everyday Diet by Ian Marber.

As to exercise, they are a few basic types and ideally you should use a combination of them.

Firstly, Stretching. This warms up the muscles and prepares the body for more vigorous exercise. It is vital. As well as the more obvious warm-up exercises, yoga and tai chi are excellent for this, plus have many added benefits.

Aerobic exercise. Essentially, anything that gets you breathing and sweating. This generally burns the most calories in the shortest time, and is beneficial to the cardio-vascular system.

Muscle training. This is self-explanatory really, but just in case, working on toning/building muscle will tighten up any flabby areas and generally strengthen both muscle and bone.

This may not be the most eco of suggestions, but I highly recommend getting a Wii and Wii Fit. There are quite a few exercise and fitness 'games' available now, and used in combination they can be very effective, and motivational too. Also, fun!

rcoe wrote:
Great to see a complete lack of wacky diet tips in the replies here!

oh in that case I'm sure we need at least one wacky one!

Volunteer to pose nude for life classes/page 3/in front of your friends and family.

I bet that gets your beer belly down!!

Problem is - I'd have to be seriously drunk to volunteer for something like that. And alcohol does so put on the weight...

Well Andy,

It sounds like you're doing good, if you detest sit-ups as much as I do, there is an alternative. sit back in a straight chair, and pull in your stomach muscles and hold for a count of 20, then slowly release-don't forget to breathe.

Something to use when you're in front of the computer and need to sit back and take a break. repeat 5-10 times a day. and because no one knows you're doing it(how many people stare at bellies anyhow) you can also do it standing up, waiting for a bus, or to cross a street with your bike, just straighten up and pull in those muscles-also very low impact, so you won't get achy muscles.


Lois

run about 2.5 miles every day.

I'm a 40 year old with moobs. I've been doing it for 4 weeks and have gone down two belt buckles and 'probably' a bra size or two after being told to exercise by my doc. All this while continuing to eat steak and drink a couple of pints a day.

It only takes 30 minutes (40 minutes including shower) and it's a short enough run to leave you without achey legs (after a about ten runs)

The trick is (apparently) not to get into a slow sluggish run, but run fast until you have to walk, then walk until you can run again then run fast unitl you have to walk again and so on until you have done your full run. It's better for the ticker and will increase your fitness twice as fast as standard jogging. The technique makes you look a bit of a prat but you can do it after dark and so won't get pointed and laughed at.

I've got a running/training app on my phone too that measures my improvement. Gadgets help a lot. it a perfect excuse for an ipod touch with nike plus attachments.