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Thursday 3 April 2014

Portion Sizes - do they matter?

3rd April 2014
If you don’t like where you are, then change it – you are not a tree!

WOW it appears people have very mixed beliefs and thoughts about Simple Start and Filling & Healthy ‘rules’, I was involved in an interesting discussion yesterday online and all I can say is what I believe, my own experience with my members and what I’ve been trained in. 

As soon as you open the first book you receive in week one of joining, on the first page of the Simple Start booklet it says, “No counting, no set portions”.  Then on page 4 it says things like “without the distraction of weighing, measuring or counting this week” & “there are no portion sizes to think about”.  On page 6 it says again, “there’s no need to weigh, measure or count any of these Filling & Healthy foods.” 

There is further on in the booklet a page on portion control that starts “even thought you don’t need to think about portion sizes when you’re focusing on Filling & Healthy foods….”
So that first week in January when my members tried it, I told them to “fill their boots” so to speak, not to be shy of putting food on their plate and to trust that the plan would work, of the 500 plus people I weighed, only a handful didn’t lose weight and they admitted they hadn’t followed the plan 100% so weren’t surprised. 

Well surely that can’t work, eat as much as you want and still lose weight – what’s that all about! 
Yeah, how does it work!  It’s mad I could easily sit and eat a Big Mac meal, followed by a share of a KFC bucket and a couple of slices of pizza washed down with a few pints!  But hold on, I can’t can I if I’m following Simple Start or Filling & Healthy because NONE of that would be on the list.   How much does a Big Mac weigh and those fries, not a great weight, I bet they wouldn’t even be equal to the weight of a jacket potato with half tin of baked beans on yet the big mac and fries is costing 26pp (my entire daily allowance!) and the spud and beans less than half of that.  If I eat the spud I won’t eat again for a few hours because I’ll be physically satisfied, if I eat the big mac and fries I’ll be emotionally satisfied for the duration it takes me to eat it, but then I’ll be physically hungry again in half hour, I can and have sat and eaten two big mac and fries in the past when I’ve had a coupon giving me a bogof offer!

The Simple Start / Filling & Healthy food list is not only really healthy but it’s satisfying too, because they are bulky foods, often containing lots of fibre or water, which are low in energy density.  Most people tend to eat a similar amount of food each day rather than a certain number of calories.  By eating plenty of bulky, low energy dense foods (i.e. from the F&H list) you should fill up faster without overdoing it. (And yes there will always be the exception – if only so they can prove me wrong). 

My belief is, if you join a group like Weight Watchers you want to lose weight, you want to change your bad habits into good ones and feel healthy and happy, therefore why would you want to sit there eating ten crumpets with a couple of tins of beans and poached eggs on?
Having said that if you did sit and do that, you wouldn’t be eating anything else for a good long while, and you might be spending more time thinking about how your tummy now felt and how close the nearest toilet was!

The majority of my members including myself who follow SS or F&H and don’t get a weight loss that week, know it’s more likely to be because they didn’t stick to the list 100% or that they went over on their 49 weeklies, than it is because they had an extra crumpet on their plate, or two chicken breasts!

Personally I’ve found my finances help to keep me in check with sticking to F&H, even if my stomach could cope with the copious amounts of food my eyes/head wished it could on occasion, my purse can’t afford to buy that amount of food!  My shopping bill is already large enough without doubling up on the quantity I buy of F&H foods!

I eat to my appetite most of the time, I listen to my body, and if I overeat my body feels sluggish.  I know what a plate of food “should” look like! However some days, such as when I’m hormonal, my appetite is through the roof and I have no concept of how much and neither do I can what I SHOULD eat, I just want more, I’m like an Hormonal Oliver Twist in the kitchen but instead of talking to  Mr Bumble, I’m talking to myself!  If I wasn’t following F&H, I’d probably whom I kidding with probably, I mean definitely go off track, I’d start by having a bag of crisps and a bar of chocolate to satisfy my mind, a little of what you fancy and all that, so there’s 10 or more ProPoints gone, then I’d go back in the kitchen for another bag because now I’m physically hungry too, so I’d add a couple of slices of bread and butter to it, oh dear that’s just took me well over 30pp.  My brains telling me I can have anything I want as long as I ProPoint it, so I want junk food, any logic that’s trying to tell me that’s not going to fill me up is being bitch slapped by my hormones and told to shut up! 

Now if I was following F&H on that same day, yeah I’d have started the day with 2 crumpets, 2 eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes and bacon medallions.  For lunch I’d have had Salmon, boiled potatoes and roasted vegetables then for tea I’d have gone for a couple of brown Warburton thins with a pile of ham and salad on it.  Then I’d have gone to bed physically satisfied and a little bit more hormonally balanced because that food has helped to balance out my blood sugars! 

Funnily enough this is kind of how my week has been!  That F&H day was yesterday, whereas Monday and Tuesday, I thought I could do F&H on hormones, it didn’t work out very well, Monday I ended on 58pp and Tuesday 48pp and that was me TRYING to stay on track, however fighting a huge appetite and a bitch load of hormones – I lost as you can tell.  Yesterday even if you were to ProPoint it, comes out at 26 – spooky and that was without even trying!  Now normally I struggle to stick to 26pp a day – what’s that all about?

When I eat good Filling & Healthy food, I get full up faster, I feel better for it and I don’t seem to be thinking about food all the time and craving all the junk. 

That’s my take on it all anyways, of course I’m always more than happy to hear your views….
Have a great day BeYOUtiful and remember to Eat Gorgeous.

Healthy and Happy all the way. xx


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