Taking the Challenge!

You (hopefully) read in a recent email of mine that Sally Feinerman, a local personal trainer who specialises in training women, and I have teamed up to offer an eight week nutrition and training Challenge. Our first team has started and are already seeing results. Other Challengers are starting over the next few weeks and are looking forward to reaping the rewards.

I think what appealed to so many people was the finite term (8 weeks) and the combination of having to front up weekly for nutrition and training appointments. The combination of the right nutrition and targeted, regular exercise means they will see great results.

In case you were wondering, the eight week period can be commenced at any time and you can either come with friends and make up your own training team, or you can come on your own and be fitted into existing groups, with a maximum of 4 participants per group. If you want to know more, contact either Sally or myself –

Other clients have decided that while they aren’t able to make it to the training sessions, they do want to commit to an eight week nutrition challenge with targets to meet each week. They are meeting with me weekly to keep the motivation and accountability going. Is this what you need to get you fired up again?

The Slow Creep

How easy is it to gain a kilo a year? Not difficult at all really, but have you stopped to think that if you were to gain a mere kilo a year from age 35 until age 50, that would mean an extra 15 kilos of fat you would end up carrying? Don’t let the fat creep on; actively work towards maintaining a healthy weight by keeping an eye on your nutrition and exercise. Don’t be complacent about a gain of a couple of kilos – they won’t go away on their own and unless you change the habits that helped you gain those kilos in the first place, they will soon be joined by a few more!

Nutrition is 80% of the equation when it comes to fat loss, so don’t be fooled into thinking that a few exercise sessions a week will negate what goes in your mouth.

There is never an end to staying focused about your eating. That doesn’t mean you have to be „perfect‟, but it does mean that if you want to keep control of your weight and health, you do have to consistently eat well most of the time. Don’t overlook liquid calories either. Alcohol, juice, fizzy drinks and cafe type coffees all add to energy consumed and by just having two glasses of wine and one flat white per day, you are adding in around 450 calories a day. Do that 6 days a week and that’s a whopping 2700 extra calories you have consumed. That’s more than a day’s extra food and 8 days into 7 definitely doesn’t go! If there is any mystery as to why you aren’t losing weight, then keep a 100% accurate diary, recording everything that you eat and drink.

Recently there was an interesting English documentary on TV about dieting. One lady they were following declared that she must have a slow metabolism because she had tried all kinds of diets and exercise over the years but she couldn’t shift her excess weight. To check her metabolism researchers put her in a lab where she lay on a bed and had a „hood‟ over her, so calories breathed out could be recorded and whatever else was needed to work out her calorie expenditure. At the end of the testing her metabolism was shown to be where it should be, not slow at all.

They then asked her to keep a written diary of what she ate for a week. She also had to drink double labelled water and collect her urine for the week. The double labelled water, when it is excreted and tested, reveals calories ingested and calories burnt.

At the end of the week the researchers tallied up her food diary and it averaged 1100 calories per day. However, when they did the maths using the double labelled water; the lady was actually eating 3000 calories per day! So, they asked her to do it again for another week, additionally using a camcorder to record what she was eating. This time she still under-recorded her food by around 43%! She wasn’t recording liquid calories (juices etc), sauces, „healthy foods‟ (like fruit) and her portion sizes were a lot bigger than what she was recording.

It has long been known that most dieters under-record their food intake, but this was so revealing. I guess the take home message from this is, if you are serious about fat loss and diary keeping, you need to keep a 100% accurate diary for it to be of any use. If you don’t know where you are going wrong you can’t change it and if you aren’t accountable, what is there to stop you from making the same mistakes.

Have you ever stopped to think about the statement “You are what you eat”?

The importance of what goes in your mouth cannot be understated. From sustained energy, to an optimally functioning immune system, to fat loss or gain, disease prevention, hormonal status and mood – these are all affected by our daily nutrition. If you put poor quality food into your mouth, your body will lack the nutrients it needs to keep you healthy and happy. The cells in our bodies are being renewed constantly and the raw materials for this process come from our food. Protein is the major player here, it is required for all the growth, maintenance and repair jobs in our body and it is required on a constant basis.

What you eat determines how you feel and how you look. It is as simple as that.

Remember that we all have choices. Sometimes we choose to believe that we don’t, but there aren’t too many situations when you can’t choose to make a better choice. You just need to decide that you want to.

New in the supermarket freezer

Tegel Cuisine “Satay Tenderloins”. It’s a great idea to keep a box of these in your freezer for a quick, tasty protein choice. One third of the 400g box is a serving. Serve with salad or veggies and a microwaved jacket potato and you have dinner in 15 minutes. (they can be microwaved, pan fried or baked)

Frozen peeled garlic cloves. The Mad Butcher sells one kilo bags of frozen and peeled garlic cloves for $5. This is a great buy and it’s so handy to have ready peeled garlic in the freezer. You will need a sharp knife to chop it from frozen.

Garlic is lovely roasted, either as skinned cloves as a whole bulb. If you are cooking a whole bulb of garlic cut the top off, leaving the skin on, and cook until very tender, then squeeze the lovely sweet garlic paste out. Alternatively you can throw peeled cloves into a sprayed roasting dish along with chunks of carrot, courgette, onion, capsicum, etc. Sprinkle some herbs over the top, add some rock salt and bake at 180 degrees until tender.

Nutrition4Life is not me Be careful when emailing me to be aware that there is a Nutrition4Life business (with the number 4, not the word for) in existence.

Yummy (healthy) places to eat in the city – Habitual Fix – http://www.habitualfix.co.nz/downloads/Habitual_Menu.pdf Their menu looks very interesting.

Some winter food ideas

It’s starting to get to the time of year when we are thinking about warmer foods, although do make the most of the salad vegetables while you can as it’s a long time until summer. Some people make the mistake of not including enough vegetables with their lunch and dinner. Vegetables provide fibre, vitamins and minerals, colour on our plate and they also bulk out our meals. Half your plate should be vegetables and ideally a good selection of colourful ones.

You can’t beat oats for a healthy, warming breakfast. Oats are just oats. No added sugar, flavours, fillers, thickeners, stabilisers or anything else. Real food. Real natural. If you add berries or banana to porridge while you are cooking it, they sweeten it naturally. You can also buy various natural sweeteners (made from Stevia) in the supermarkets now. I will have samples of Sweete, a new natural sweetener, to give you shortly.

Try soaking your oats in a small amount of water overnight, then add boiling water the next morning to make your porridge. The oats will be creamier if you do this.

What about Weet-Bix and hot milk for a cool morning breakfast? Add some stewed fruit and you have a high fibre breakfast.

Don’t forget jacket potatoes as a base for your lunch. Cook whole in the microwave (prick first to prevent them from bursting) then top with tuna/salmon or shredded chicken mixed with some plum sauce. Add a 150g bag of Steamfresh veggies and you have a quick, easy, hot lunch. Or add cottage cheese and chutney to your split, baked potato and put back in the microwave briefly to melt the cottage cheese.

Once it gets to winter, you might like to keep some low calorie Cup of Soups in your desk drawer. Maggi do a few flavours in the 50-80 calorie range and if a cup of soup keeps you going between meals, hey, it’s a lot better than a cup of hot chips!

Easter is coming! Just don’t let it arrive too soon at your house!!

That’s right – keep any Easter goodies for Easter Sunday itself. If you really crave hot cross buns, then swap your normal breakfast for two hot cross buns on Easter Sunday. Just go easy with the butter and don’t forget to do some exercise over the holiday weekend. And yes, leftover buns will freeze! Don’t let Easter blow your hard work by throwing you off track. There will always be more chocolate and fruit buns around.

Chicken and cashew stir fry – Serves 4

• 500g skinless chicken breasts sliced
• 1 tsp crushed garlic
• 1 tsp grated ginger (you can also use ginger in a jar for ease)
• 1/4 cup raw cashews (optional)
• 1 small onion sliced
• 1/2 red capsicum sliced + 1/2 green capsicum sliced
• 1 cup mushrooms sliced (optional)
• 1 medium carrot sliced into very thin strips
• 1 level tbs fish sauce
• 1 level tbs oyster sauce
• 1 level tbs soy sauce
• pinch of sugar
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 and 1/4 cups water
• 1 tbs cornflour
• 1 tsp chicken stock powder

Put cashews in microwave (or under grill) and quickly brown. Watch carefully as they don’t take long. Set aside.

Spray a wok or non stick pan with cooking spray and saute garlic, ginger (if using) and chicken until cooked. Remove from pan.

Spray pan again and add onion, capsicums, mushrooms and carrots, cook for about 3 minutes, then add chicken mix back to pan.

Mix cornflour with water and add to pan together with chicken stock powder, sauces, sugar and salt and pepper to taste. Stir well until sauce thickens. Sprinkle cashews over top of each serving and serve with plenty of veggies such as broccoli, cauliflower, beans and carrots.

Simple Green Pea soup – Serves 4

• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 onion
• 1 litre chicken stock (such as Campbell’s in a tetra packet)
• 500g frozen green peas, defrosted (minted or plain)
• 2 tablespoons chopped mint
• freshly ground black pepper
• 2 rindless bacon rashers
• Plain low fat yoghurt (optional)

Heat oil in a frying pan over medium heat and spray with olive oil spray, add the garlic and chopped onion and cook for 5 minutes or until the onion is soft, taking care not to brown the onion. Add the stock, peas, mint and parsley. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 8 minutes.

Remove from the heat, allow to cool a little, then puree in a food processor or blender. (hot soup into a glass blender = explosion! I did it last year with pumpkin soup, what a mess) Season to taste.

Dry fry the bacon until crispy. Ladle the soup into four warmed bowls and garnish with the crumbled bacon.

Optional: Add a swirl of plain, low fat yoghurt to the soup before adding the bacon.

This soup looks and tastes great and is so easy to make.

Mini Chicken and Corn quiches delicious for lunch with a salad – Makes 6

• 4 eggs, beaten
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/4 cup self raising flour
• 1 packet Maggi cheese, onion & herb sauce mix
• 1/2 cup grated cheese
• 1 tsp mixed dried herbs (or you could use fresh parsley etc)
• 1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
• 3/4 cup corn kernels
• 150g cooked chicken, shredded

Preheat oven to 200 deg C. Line 6 Texas muffin pans with baking paper.

Whisk together eggs and milk then add rest of ingredients and gently, but thoroughly to combine.

Pour into muffin pans and bake 20-25 mins, or until centre is firm. Allow to cool a little before lifting out.

Have one of these with a big salad for lunch, or in winter, have a muffin with some soup for a hot, tasty lunch.

Quick plug! If you are looking for a reliable, honest plumber, I can recommend a really nice young man who came to our house today. His name is Jarred Hinton, phone 021 452 334/444 1931. I like to pass on details of someone who gives good service.

Online Clients: Remember, if you have friends or family outside of Auckland who are looking for help with their nutrition, I also offer online services.

That’s about it for this month, remember the Challenge – are you up for it?

Lynda