DIET TIPS, TRICKS AND PRODUCTS

[Darkstream]

As some of you know, I cannot stand the taste of aspartame in diet drinks. And I cannot drink fruit juice in the quantities that I used to. So here is what I do:

TRICK:

Half fill a glass with fruit juice. Then top up with a diet tonic (Schweppes). This makes a light, semi sparkling and refreshing drink, and the aspartame is masked by the tonic.

Useful Product:

Whole eye bacon. This is just back bacon that is completely trimmed of all fat to leave just the loin. It can then be grilled, fried lightly in olive oil, or used in cooking. Probably contains less than 8% animal fat.

Hope this is helpful.

 

[kitchenelf]

Darkstream - good tip on the fruit juice.

 

[Darkstream]

OOOOPPSS!!!

I meant, the aspartame in the TONIC is masked by the fruit juice, so it just tastes like fruit juice and tonic. I have found it successul with grapefruit juice or orange juice.

Following Wasabi's comments, I think I will have a try at a diet Coke Cuba Libre.

 

[KathyD]

My tips for reducing calories without feeling too deprived...

Pop (soda as some call it LOL) was something I had a hard time giving up completely and some diet pop is just plain awful. Coke came out with a product, C2 and it has way less calories than the regular Coke and tastes nearly the same.

Crystal-Lite has several flavors and with little or no calories.

I like ice water with a few drops of lime or other juice

Use less of any fat for cooking or baking and the results are pretty much the same. This may not hold true to all recipes, but you have to experiment.

Rice cakes are a good low-calorie snack

Reduced-fat Pringles are satisfying, yet don't have a lot of calories

Sugar-free preserves (especially blackberry or raspberry) tastes great on an English muffin or bagel.

Sugar-free Jello with lite Cool Whip tastes great, but has few calories

I've found the best way I can stay on a diet is to eat the foods I generally like, but in a reduced-calorie way and limit my portions and increase vegetables and fruit and decrease fats. This may not work for everyone, but it has for me.

~Kathy

 

[PolishedTopaz]

As some of you know, I cannot stand the taste of aspartame in diet drinks. And I cannot drink fruit juice in the quantities that I used to. So here is what I do:

TRICK:

Half fill a glass with fruit juice. Then top up with a diet tonic (Schweppes). This makes a light, semi sparkling and refreshing drink, and the aspartame is masked by the tonic.

Useful Product:

Whole eye bacon. This is just back bacon that is completely trimmed of all fat to leave just the loin. It can then be grilled, fried lightly in olive oil, or used in cooking. Probably contains less than 8% animal fat.

Hope this is helpful.

I used to give that to my daughter, only with seltzer and fruit juice. I called it fuzzy fruit due to the carbonation from the seltzer. She still [6 yrs old] is not allowed to have soda, too much crap in it. When soda is an option she gets seltzer instead.

 

[digigirl]

I've been fighting my weight since I was about 12. I've done Weight Watchers, liquid diets, Atkins, you name it. Consequently, I really know what I SHOULD be eating, but I go through phases where I don't, I gain some weight back. I get sick of it, then I start being good again and lose it again. Then the cycle repeats. lol. Ugh. For me, dieting success is much more about my mindset than what I physically do (although low-carb didn't work for me AT ALL).

Anyway, the most and easiest success I've ever had employed the following components:

Remember - slow and steady wins the race. A strict diet may help you lose 10 pounds quickly, but statistics show you will almost certainly gain it right back, and usually some more on top. Look to the long term, make smart changes you can live with and lose slowly and permanently.

Don't go on a "Diet." Choose something small that you can change for the better - permanently - and do that for a while before you choose another. For instance, decide to reduce your intake of sugary sodas (my major downfall). Don't cut it completely out, but reduce it down as much as you can without feeling deprived. Do this until it becomes habit to order water instead of soda at the restaurant, or whatever. Once that one is in place, choose another change to make a habit (i.e., eat more vegetables daily).

Exercise, exercise, exercise! I can't stress this enough. Your body was designed to move EVERY DAY. This speeds up your metabolism, and there is a whole host of reasons why it is good for you, even besides weight control. Exercising regularly makes a HUGE difference in how difficult it is to lose or maintain. If you don't have time to do a full-on workout, find other ways - add a walk after dinner, take the stairs instead of the elevator, do some situps while you're watching TV, go ride a bike. Remember, even 15 minutes a day is better than the nothing you're doing now, so when you feel tired and don't want to do your workout, tell yourself you only have to do your 15 minutes. If you are still tired after the 15, you can quit. Most times, this gets you to at least get started and you'll find yourself doing your whole workout instead. And if not, it's still true - 15 minutes is better than nothing.

Find something low-cal that you like and can snack on and make sure you have it around the house for those "snack attacks." It's all fine and good to say "I'm not snacking anymore" when you're full, but when the attack hits, you will eat whatever is there, so make sure it's something acceptable. For me, it is no butter or light butter microwave popcorn. Find whatever works for you.

 

[purrfectlydevine]

You can use applesauce to replace oil in many cake recipes. I think it would work in muffins and quick breads also. I use egg beaters instead of eggs. You can substitute Splenda for some of the sugar in cookie recipes. (Haven't tried anything but cookies yet.) I've used applesauce to replace fat in oatmeal cookies and they turned out cakey instead of crisp. They weren't bad, just different, but my husband didn't mind that change because he liked the softer cookie.

Eating more veggies helps fill you up. If your family is anti-veggie, perhaps you can sneak some into you cooking if you run it through the blender. My husband has eaten more zucchini in homemade veggie soup than he'll ever know.

If you like recipes that call for meat like sausage, look for turkey sausage. Around here it is pretty easy to get and my husband prefers it because it is less greasy. Buy the leaner ground beef. It may cost more when you buy it, but after it is cooked and drained you have more meat than you do with fattier ground beef.

I still weigh more than I want to, but, by eating foods lower in fat, my cholesterol and triglcerides and in great shape

 

[Swifty]

I think the most common mistakes that alot of people make when it comes to dieting is crash dieting and deprivation. Eating barely anything makes your body think that there is a starvation and will change as much energy it gets into fat so that you can "survive" this starvation. People often try to cut out too many things too. Then when the urge becomes too powerful, they'll end up inhaling 2 pints of ice cream!
The best advice I can give you are these:

Get your daily calcium intake up to speed,
-Eat slower(I used to time myself to eat 30 minutes)
-If you are eating 3 square meals, try to divide all of that into 5 meals and eat every 3-4 hours. The mroe often you eat, the less often you'll get the urge to graze,
-Never skip breakfast. I don't care how busy you are. Get something in you within 30 minutes of geting up.
-Don't fall for the low-carb, no fat fads and products. They are not your oasis for treats.
-Finally, get exercising!


I lost 20 pounds of fat and I'm only a teen so I think you can do it too!

 

[Paint]

Well, I have never been overweight - in fact I'm on the skinny side at 112 lbs and 5' 6" tall. However, I do like to watch my diet as there is heart-disease in my family, and occasionally (like at Christmas), my weight can creep up a bit and then I diet to get it down again before it gets out of control. Here are my tips....

1. Use the best, leanest meat you can get for any recipe, and steer clear of high-fat, high-calorie foods like sausages (unless it's a special treat).

2. Bulk out recipes with lots of veggies - for instance, in my ragu bolognaise, I will use only around 1/2lb of 97% lean ground beef, and bulk the sauce out with chopped celery, onions, mushrooms, bell peppers, eggplant, squash, carrots etc., This easily feeds a family of 4.

3. No food is banned - if you ban yourself from eating a certain type of food then you just crave it even more. I LOVE eggs benedict - but limit myself to only having it when we eat out for breakfast, about once every 3 months, so I don't need to feel guilty about eating it. Same goes with my favourite supper - gourmet cheeses with crackers, Branston pickle, pickled onions and crisps (potato chips). I only generally eat this as a Christmas Eve treat, or as a cheese course after a dinner party. I love chocolate, but when I'm dieting I save it as a Saturday night treat.

4. Trick your body by NOT dieting at weekends: as someone else said, your metabolism slows down in response to dieting - but it takes a few days for your body to realise that less food is coming in and respond, so if you eat 'normally' every few days, you can trick your metabolism into staying normal. It also helps you stay on track if you have the promise of some treats at the weekends!

5. My favourite 'diet' foods are just a whole big bunch of stir-fried veggies, with a little sauce for flavour - served on their own (no rice or pasta). I also love the lean-cuisine frozen meals for lunch when I'm at college.

6. As a nurse, I don't believe in any of the fad diets that are going around - your body needs certain amounts of fats and carbohydrates to function properly, and if you pour too much protein into your system you are at increased risk of osteoporosis (protein is high in phosphates, which is absorbed by bone more readily than calcium and can actually cause calcium to be leached from the bone. Soda contains a high level of phosphate too - so people who drink lots of soda are also at great risk of osteoporosis in later life). If you follow a low-carb, high fat diet, then you are at great risk for developing heart disease, atherosclerosis, PAD and high blood pressure. Fad diets effectively 'ban' you from eating certain foods and increase cravings for that food - so they are harder to follow. Counting calories is the thing to do - eat a wide variety of foods, increase fruits, veggies and fibre and lower your saturated fat intake (including trans fats and cholesterol), and you will lose weight and be much healthier for it.

7. Always enjoy yourself when you go out to eat (as long as you don't eat out more than once a week). I have been in the situation myself when I've scoured the menu for the least fattening item, and ended up eating something that I have not enjoyed or wanted, just for the sake of 'dieting'. It just makes you miserable and you start to resent the diet - the diet becomes a negative experience instead of a positive way of improving your health. Don't be a prisoner of your diet - for many people dieting is a long-term or even life-time change that MUST be a positive experience in order to work. Food is a basic pleasure that everyone deserves, and you will NOT 'ruin' your diet if you gorge on double chocolate gateaux once in a while. Dieting is a cumulative thing - it's what you have eaten over a period of weeks, not hours, that will make you lose weight.

8. Beware of salads....most salad dressings are really high in calories, and some salads can contain more calories than a Big Mac & fries! Choose fat-free, low calorie salad dressings, and go easy on them.

9. Take your favourite recipes and think about how you can make them healthier - low fat margerine instead of butter, low-fat sour cream instead of full-fat, less salt, more veggies, more herbs, leaner meats, low-fat cheeses - it's easy to make just about any recipe healthier.

10. Set a goal weight of, say, 10lbs below your current weight (depending on how overweight you are, if you don't have much to lose, then 5lbs is a good goal, if you have a lot of weight to lose, then 15lbs maximum - I know this seems like too little, but I'll tell you why in a minute). The reason for this is that this is an easy goal to reach - you should lose 10lbs in 3 or 4 weeks, so you reach your goal quickly and it gives you confidence....you then SWEAR that you will NEVER go above this weight again in your life. Have a little break from dieting - but continue to eat healthily and maintain your new weight. If you find yourself creeping above it (even just 1lb), then start dieting again. When you are ready to continue, give yourself another goal of 5 or 10lbs and diet again. When you reach this weight SWEAR that you will NEVER go above this weight again in your life....and so on, until you reach a reasonable weight. When we first moved here to the USA, 6 years ago, we ate out a lot and my weight rocketed up to 136lbs. I had to diet for the first time in my life! I now have my 'lifetime limit' set to 112lbs and I weigh myself every week - if I find I'm just 1lb over this limit then I diet for a couple of days to maintain my weight. With this method, I know that I will maintain control because I have promised myself not to go over that weight, and 1lb is easier to get rid of than 24lbs...

Best wishes,
Paint.

 

[Bee]

Here are a couple of recipes/techniques that might be of interest:

Curry Sauce

So often low fat and fat free curry sauces are thin and disappointing - it's a texture thing! This one works nicely...

Basic recipe:
One large onion sliced
1/4 pint fat free stock
Curry powder (or your own spice mix) to taste
Tin of chopped tomatoes
Chopped leaf coriander (cilantro)

Put the sliced onion and curry powder in a large non-stick pan (a wok is ideal), add the stock and bring to the boil. Simmer gently, stirring frequently until the onion is soft and slightly brown and it and the spices are 'frying' in a syrupy glaze. Add the tomatoes and the coriander and simmer for about five mins. Blitz with a stick blender or put in a food porcessor or jug blender until smooth.

This is the basic sauce - to this you can add veggies, chicken, seafood... whatever you like. I like to play around with different spices to make my own 'curry powder' and often add a chilli pepper along with the onion at the beginning.


Salad Dressing

Even I like this (a died-in-the-wool mayo lover!)

You need:
1/4 pint Fat-free yoghurt
1 tsp Mustard (I like Dijon)
Pinch of sweetener of choice
A splash of cider vinegar or white wine vinegar

Put everything in a bowl and whisk together with a fork. If you are having fish it's nice with some fresh chopped dill mixed in. With chicken I like to add lemon zest and finely chopped parsley. I bet horseradish would be nice with some thinly sliced rare roast beef too....


Instant Ice Cream

This makes an instant soft ice cream which does not keep and will not freeze successfully - it is, however, rather fabulous. For this you need to open freeze some prepared fresh fruit. I most often use one of the following:

Chunks of banana
Cubed mango
Raspberries
Peeled, stoned, nectarines or peaches

Put a handful or two of frozen fruit into the goblet of a food processor. Add a pinch of sweetener of choice if you wish then add three or four large tablespoons of fat-free buttermilk and blitz until smooth. Eat immediately with a large spoon. Utterly delicious.

(it makes a great low calorie, fat free banana split with some fruit and skimmed milk foam btw)

 

[TheLemonSong]

Let's be clear: There are no diet "tricks" or miracle-products.

Diet is different from "a diet" or "dieting". "Dieting" = longterm failure. If you want to successfully get in shape, you must change your lifestyle to one that is healthy and LIVE it.

I highly suggest checking out www.johnstonefitness.com (no one is making any money off of that site, and I post on their forums as well..this isn't like spam or anything) if you're interested in how to get in to better health. There is a wealth of information out there, but I found personallyt hat the forums there were among the most friendly and helpful on the internet.

Consistency is key.