Love What Is On Your Plate And Lose Weight
I am Gordon McCrorie, The Happiness Guy. In this video I tell you three essential rules to give you a great attitude towards what is on your plate. And absolutely no punishing yourself!
Imagine eating only what you enjoy and having a healthy relationship with food. Here I talk about three principles to help achieve this.
Rather than a painful diet there are other ways to lose weight. At the end I tell you how to get started with an easy to follow plan. Below the video there is a transcript if you prefer to read what I say and you can find loads more videos on my You Tube channel.
Hi there, my name is Gordon McCrorie. This is a very quick video with my favourite guidelines on how to lose weight. Before I get to them I want to tell you what they are not!
It used to be, that when I was advising clients how to lose weight and I was fresh out of university it was all about macro-nutrients (carbs and fats, proteins) and how much you should eat of each of them – very specifically. Then there was glycemic index that left clients very confused, asking questions like could they have fruit, not have fruit, when could they eat fruit?!
Now I have come full circle because nutrition should not be complicated, and if it is complicated it’s probably not the right thing for you. Life is too busy for more complexity. So instead of trying to follow these complex rules, how do you actually get to lose weight in a way that’s easy and keep it off?
Rule One: Only Eat Food That You Enjoy
To start with you should only eat food that you enjoy. Because if you are eating food that you can’t enjoy or won’t enjoy then you are not going to stick to it. And the only way to lose weight and keep it off is to have consistent habits. So you have got to eat food that you enjoy, that is going to look good on your plate and definitely going to taste good. So that’s it, Rule one: only eat food that you enjoy.
Rule Two: Put Some Focus On Eating
When you are eating it, be present (aka mindful) and make sure you are actually mentally present when you are eating. Sit down, take your time and enjoy eating your food. Simple!
Rule Three: You Must Feel Good
When you have finished eating you must feel good. That means physically good and it also means mentally and emotionally good. From the physical perspective it means you have not over-eaten and had far too much. You might need to slow down a little bit when eating to achieve this. Perhaps you might need to be careful with the portion size you serve yourself. Remember however much you put on the plate you are likely to eat, so a smaller portion might be helpful. You don’t want to feel stuffed full and lethargic after you have eaten. You want to feel good. Equally so, we don’t want to feel guilty after we have eaten. If we feel guilty for any reason after eating, we are off track. It’s not healthy to constantly associate food and guilt.
I think that with portion size being part of this, as we don’t know exactly how much we need to eat. We don’t have a fuel gauge, that flicks tells us when we have had the right amount. Therefore it’s easy (and usually habitual) to end up piling too much food onto your plate.
The smart thing to do is to try and start to eat 80% of what you would normally eat. Science has shown that the vast majority of people do not notice any difference in hunger when we reduce portions sizes by 20%. You’d still get the really tasty food but you would finish the meal feeling satisfied but not stuffed. This last point is really important. When it comes to evening meals, portion size is the thing that I see coming up again and again. It’s one of the primary causes of people feeling rubbish and piling on the pounds. So do yourself a favour and serve yourself a smaller portion.
Summary
So there, you have it. Three very simple, easy to follow rules.
- Only eat food you are going to really enjoy.
- When you are eating it you enjoy it.
- When you have finished eating it you must feel good.
I hope that you’ve found this useful. Let me know what you think and if you need any help with weight loss or need help around your eating behaviours then just get in touch.