Your 1500 Calorie Purple Guide To Weightloss

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The nutrition industry has an unsung hero: the great principles of weight loss that everyone refuses to believe in.  Energy restriction coupled with increased calorie burn, truly does equate to weight loss.  You just need to believe the facts, practice and stick to it.

The trousers

If you are wondering what inspired me to write this blog post, I tried to get into my white jeans this weekend.  Sure they zipped up, but my rebellious curves made me look like a pumpkin that someone tried to squeeze through the middle.  Not pretty.  Christmas is under 3 months away so my instincts told me, “I should BE ABLE to get into these comfortably before the party / festive season hits!”

If you too have mastered the laws of nutrition but simply lack the practical tips to put together a healthy eating plan for weight loss; then dare to give this a go.  If variety is the heart of healthy eating, then I’ll be lovingly filling myself with fruit and vegetables for the much needed mineral and vitamins.

I’ll be trying vegetarian recipes and eating my favourite foods such as salmon for essential omega 3 fatty acids and proteins.  I will also be filling up on plenty of slow releasing or low GI (glycaemic index) carbohydrates to fuel my runs.  I love carbs and would not be able to survive more than 8 hours without it (and that’s when I am asleep of course). 

If you have been following me on A Light Perspective’s facebook page www.facebook.com/Alightperspective then you may have noticed that I have been posting pictures of the food I eat.  Feel free to join in and post pictures of your breakfast or lunch meals on the fan page.

So what’s next?  I’ll be posting 1500 calorie eating plans for a few days each week.  I have chosen 1500 calories as I believe that an average woman normally eats around 2000 calories a day.  To facilitate weight loss, you need to cut back by around 500 calories per day for weight loss of 500g at the end of the week.  If you want to eat more, then earn any extra calories by burning it off through exercise.

Quality control

It’s just like anything else, if you want to maintain a beautiful dress, you get it dry cleaned and store it carefully to ensure that it lasts beautifully over the seasons for a timeless piece.  Your body works the same way.  For a high quality living product, fill it with high quality foods packed with nutrition.  Remember to exercise it regularly for a toned and beautiful exterior.

Regardless of whether you want to LOOK good for your age or improve your risk factors for disease, you will enjoy feeling lighter and healthier after shedding a few pounds if overweight.  Or maybe like me, you may just be aiming to shed a few pounds to simply look good in your clothes.  Remember, as long as your weight loss goals also envelope the principles of healthy eating, then you will be on the road to a slimmer and healthy you.

So let’s get started.

Breakfast

1 cup of reduced fat milk

½ cup of cooked oats

½ small banana sliced or ½ cup strawberry halves

125g fat free yoghurt

Use this portion of milk to make a cup of tea or coffee.

Mid-morning tea

20 grapes

Cup of tea made with reduced fat milk

Lunch

Sandwich – make your own using 2 slices of wholegrain bread that’s high in fibre.  

Aim for >5g/100g or see my article Are You Carb Smart?

Fillings

60g mozzarella

Tomato slices

30g avocado to spread

Fresh / dried herbs OR salad leaves

Plus

120g pottle of reduced fat yoghurt (or save for later)

1 large orange

Cup of tea

Mid afternoon snack

Cup of tea or use the orange or yoghurt from lunch if you have saved this.

Dinner

1 portion of Aromatic Mediterranean Chicken & Courgette Rice With Smoked Paprika.

1 serving of fruit salad (for recipe ideas see Lazy Fruit Salad.

Plus

Extra vegetables on the side if still hungry such as green beans, broccoli or a simple salad of tomato and cucumbers.

Drink – plenty of fluids to stay hydrated.

Purple Tip

These are only tips to give you ideas of what a 1500 calorie eating plan looks like.

Don't forget to fit in at least 30 minutes of exercise such as walking, jogging, cycling or sport.  Whatever you choose, enjoy, have fun and remember the successful dieter continues the principles of healthy eating for a lifetime.

What are your tips for weightloss?  Do comment below lovely readers, I do love hearing from you.

How Many Calories Do You Want To Burn?

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It's Monday.  The calorie scales after a weekend of fun groan from all the delicious cocktails you drank and yet, a smart and talented woman like you dare to ignore the chime of the clock as it strikes gym o’clock!

You promptly divert all thoughts about exercise to a black hole in your head and focus instead on your list of tasks to achieve for the week.  Exercise, surely it can wait right?  After all, why bother thinking about that tempting piece of cake or that delectable 5 course meal you shared with the new boy in town when you simply have got oh so much to do.  Right?  Wrong!

Admittedly, your body looks great in that new dress but what are you going to do when you have a little wardrobe crisis after a few more indulgent weekends like so?  There’s only so much bulge that even the ‘ultimate magic secret slimming firm control knickers’ can cope with. 

So let me rephrase; how many calories do you need to burn after your weekend?  I suppose it depends entirely on how many of the extra treats that 'shall not be named' you had.  

To avoid any panic attacks over clothes in the future, make sure that you fit in a date with exercise.  On a positive note, your options for burning calories truly are endless.

For example, assume a female weighing 60kg spends 45 minutes cycling to work.  She could burn 300 calories.  Increase the tempo on the bike and you could be burning up to 600 calories per exercise session.  

Walking is also a great energy busting activity, in that you could burn up to 200 calories depending on your speed.  Choose a route with hills and this could increase up to 300 calories.  

Running is brilliant as you could burn anywhere between 500 to 600 calories depending on your weight, speed and distance.  This really is an excellent calorie burner.

Swimming is not only relaxing but 45 minutes in the pool for the same female weighing 60kg could result in an energy deficit of around 400 calories.  If a slice of bread provides approximately 100 calories, then you are not doing too badly.  The butterfly stroke is another efficient activity and for this movement you could burn up to 600 calories.

Playing sport such as tennis, squash or volleyball are all fantastic options for burning calories so why not join a team?  It's also fun and a great way to make new friends.

Alternatively, you may prefer the gym whilst we head towards winter.  Even resistance training exercise with weights burn calories when you perform the activity.  As you build muscle tone and increase lean body mass, your metabolic rate will rejoice and utilise energy in the form of calories.  

Before you commit to hours and hours of exercise, research does recommend less calories in, so make eating fewer calories from treat foods your top priority.  

When this fails, balance the energy scales with regular activity to burn excess calories after a fun weekend, but to also keep your heart ticking happy.  

For tips on how to incorporate little bite sized portions of exercise through-out the day, read Keep Your Body Moving and visit my page dedicated to Exercise 'Push Yourself'

So next time it’s exercise o’clock, think back to your long, lazy, indulgent boozy lunches and dinners with girlfriends over the weekend.  Let me remind you...did it start with something like this?  That single innocent little drink...

That's right ladies, think real hard and say yes to exercise.  Your body and heart will thank you for it.

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How To Shop Till You Drop And Lose Pounds Whilst You Do It

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Enjoy quality time with your close friends to shape your beautiful wardrobe, thighs and bottom too!  Every woman knows how fabulous a shopping expedition can be.  Yet can regular trips to your favourite shops hold the key to successfully shedding the necessary pounds?

Let’s count numbers.  It takes at least 20 minutes if not more to walk down Oxford Street after eyeing up the windows but do you really care exactly how many calories you burn as a result?  You will be having far too much fun to notice surely?  There’s all the department stores en route to visit, a new blouse to try on, winter coats to mull over, the gorgeous trousers to re-try for the millionth time, after all, you’ve got to be sure that your bottom looks small in that outfit right? 

Sound familiar?  I wouldn’t be surprised if a woman normally spends at least 2 snappy hours on her feet scouring the clothing racks in hot pursuit of the next divine outfit that will set her heart on fire.

Shopping may be an unexpected way of burning energy, but when you move your body, hey presto you use up energy.  Every savvy shopper knows that she needs both hands free for a successful shop, which means that not even a single hand can be spared for snacking when trying on clothes.  Perfect.

BENEFITS OF SHOPPING

Boost in mood

Burn calories unexpectedly

Awareness of body shape and clothing size

Can be done solo or with a friend

Window shopping is also a very enjoyable form of exercise, don’t you think?  Your purse will love you, and so will your hips and thighs for the gentle but fun workout.  Make this a regular activity and it will be impossible not to notice any weight that does creep up on you.  After all, you will be trying on clothes every week, which allows you to take control of any major changes in dress sizes straight away.  Remember, a size 10 in Karen Millen is not the same as a 10 in another store.  Different cuts and styles in clothing may require a change in dress size, but an increase from the usual size 10 to a 12 after a holiday of indulgent eating may very well indicate a true weight gain.

At this point you may need a beady eye over your usual intake and exercise regime.  For this scenario see Let's Number Crunch: How To Drop Half A Kilo In A Week.

With only a few months to go before Christmas, it’s easy to be put off by the crowds and lead you to settle for online shopping.  Although this is both effective and time efficient, shopping whilst surfing the internet reaps no rewards in terms of weightloss.  Why not try late night shopping on a Thursday or Friday night when the heaving shops might be a little bit quieter?  This promotes the opportunity for burning calories, whilst also reducing the likelihood of you heading to the shops for returns on purchases that didn’t quite fit ‘right’.

In summary, walking is a fantastic energy burner and you will do plenty of it when you spend a couple of hours on your feet exploring the shops.  You may not burn as many calories when compared to a run or a swim, but it doesn’t matter.  It’s great to mix up the type of activities that you do during the week.

Have fun and don’t forget to draw up a budget before you hit the shops!

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Let’s Number Crunch: How To Drop Half A Kilo In A Week

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 Clothes feeling a tad snug after the holidays?  If a kilo or two has snuck up on you over the holiday period, nip it straight away in the bud!  Get instinctive and reach for the fruit bowl rather than that gooey chocolate baking. 

I admit it, I do offer you many baking recipe ideas for a milk, egg, wheat and soy free diet on my blog, but anyone watching their weight must either enjoy these in what I now call ‘French like portion sizes’ or dismiss these entirely temporarily to get back on track to a lean you.

A loss of half a kilo or 1 pound per week is the recommended goal on an effective weight loss plan. This is realistic, achievable and won’t leave you starving (not too much...).

Sometimes it takes a few attempts to get it right and take ownership of your eating.  There’s no time like the present, let healthy eating grow on you and when you are ready, jump on the purple wheel of success.

Everybody else, get ready to start incorporating EASY and realistic steps.  To lose half a kilo per week, you need to cut back by roughly 500 calories from food or burn the equivalent in energy through exercise every day.  I like to accommodate a combination of the two. 

Here are a few tips to get you going.

Breakfast

If you usually eat toast with butter, not only is this meal smothered in saturated fats, two teaspoons of butter on a slice of toast provides nearly 70 calories (kcal).  If you add jam or honey sadly that’s extra. 

Purple Tip: Skip the butter or a use a thin scraping of margarine for poly-unsaturated fats only and save almost 50 calories.

Are you drinking orange juice for breakfast?  A cup of juice provides roughly 110kcal but the orange itself will set you back only 50-70 kcal.

Purple Tip: Choose to eat your fruit rather than drink it and save almost 60 calories.  As a bonus, you will also be locking in fibre, valuable vitamins and much needed minerals.

Morning Snack

Are you reaching for the biscuit tin?  Stop right there!  A chocolate digestive has at least 80 calories.  Have another with a cup of tea and that’s over 160 kcal.  There's very little fibre or vitamins and although takes only a minute on the lips, these really might end up being a lifetime on the hips.

Purple Tip: For a bootilicious bottom, choose fruit.  At most they only provide 50kcal like a cup of delicious strawberries.  These are what I call essential calories.  You will save up to 110 calories!

Lunch

If you buy lunch, read your labels.  Do you know exactly how many calories there are in your sandwiches?  Choose sandwiches with wholegrain breads and lean meat, chicken or fish.  Better still, make your own.

Purple Tip: Believe it or not, by making your own sandwiches, you will have control over how much added fats and spreads go into them.  By removing visible fats off meat, choosing thin scraping margarine and only meat or cheese and not both you can save anywhere between 100 to 200kcal depending on the sandwich.

Afternoon Snack

It’s 4pm and the chocolate monster is out.  Before you indulge in that chocolate bar, a 50g serving can set you back almost 250 calories!  Madness!

Purple Tip: Yoghurt is a wonderful source of protein and calcium.  Protein promotes satiety and that feeling of ‘fullness’.  A low fat pottle usually only consists of around 100 – 150kcal at the very most.  By choosing yoghurt you will save between 100 -150kcal.

So how are we doing?  It’s not even dinner meal and we’ve already saved at least 400 – 500 calories today.

Dinner

Eat your usual dinner but make sure you have plenty of vegetables to fill up on if you are hungry.

Exercise

Did you know that you can burn almost 500 calories from a 9K run?  This obviously depends on your body weight but running is a fantastic calorie burner.

An intense aerobic class at the gym for an hour could also burn around 500 calories though again this completely depends on the class and how much effort you invest into the class itself.

Don’t forget that walking is still a great fat burner.  The total amount of energy you burn will depend on how long you walk for and your body weight.  Good news, you can build up 10 minute slots of activity through-out the day.  They all count!  

Every time you move your body you are burning energy.

Swimming – if you can swim you’ll be bad not to race to the swimming pool at least once a week.  This really is an amazing total body work-out without the added burden on your joints.  Couple this with strength training such as lunges, squats, burpees, press ups and crunches and you’ll be one fat burning machine. 

Remember, for every kilogram of muscle you gain you’ll increase your metabolic rate and BURN calories even when you are not working out. 

Please don't get bogged down by calories and numbers.  These are only a few tips and suggestions to shave off extra calories or unwanted energy in your diet.  Use this only as a guideline and don’t forget to read your food labels and nutrition tables.  For more information read Be Shopping Savvy: Nutrition Labelling Decoded.

And so lovely readers, it's time for bed, if you have any thoughts or comments, please do share below as I love and do read all of your comments.

La Petite Birthday Celebration

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I woke up yesterday morning knowing that some of the most fearless eating would be done on this special day.  I sure was terribly excited!  I love birthdays because I get to spend time with my favourite people.  Being born in June, there’s usually sun and there certainly was plenty of it after a whole month of non-stop rain!  I really cannot complain.

My cocktail party is not till early July but I knew that I could sneak in one or two.  What is it that I hear you say – calories don’t count on birthdays?  Love it; I’ll take your advice on this.

What did the purple girl eat?

I started the day with my usual oats and brown sugar whilst I read my gorgeous birthday card from colleagues.  I considered something loaded with sugar as a breakfast option but I just couldn’t face it.  Not yet.

A few hours later, my eyes rested on a nearby box of Toblerone from France.  I didn’t even hesitate.  Two large triangles vanished whilst I chatted to a mum on the phone about potassium.

I am pretty sure that I nibbled on Irish barmbrack which is fruit bread filled with sultanas and mixed peel.  It is loaded with sugar thanks to the sultanas and heaven knows what the glycaemic index of this food is, but does one really care on their birthday?

Lunch was quite boring really – vegetable soup.  The weather behaved so I got to enjoy this on a rooftop.  Heaven. 

The afternoon is a bit of a blur.  I seem to recall a chocolate biscuit or two!  Meetings and plenty of feed manipulation for my children.  I was definitely pumping on sugar but continued to buzz about with constant chatter and number crunching.  Surprisingly, a very productive day of work after all.

At five o’clock I decided that this had to be cocktail o’clock, but had strict instructions to meet the Frenchman in central London.  I was dreaming about cocktails only to be very rudely reminded about exercise as I walked past the large Nike shop.  Decided to take a peek as I was early.  Mental note to purchase something new later to stay motivated with my running.

Ah the Frenchman arrives.  We decided to continue the shopping pre-dinner.  The Frenchman wasn’t complaining so I took advantage.  I admit it, I ended up in Dior and lingered ‘ga ga’ eyed for a very long time at the counter.  There were three irresistible pieces that wrenched at my heart.  Surely as the day of indulge, I should do exactly that? Indulge!

Alas! They didn’t have the perfect piece that I was after.  Perhaps duty free on Saturday.  Or perhaps I should settle for the more appropriately priced ‘Michael Kors’.  Tough decisions to be made on a birthday.  I talked myself out of an indulgent purchase (or the Frenchman’s purchase for me really) and mulled over it at dinner.

It was a lovely lovely meal of hummus, flat breads, salads, delicious saffron rice and grilled lamb.  I didn’t want anything rich; I knew that I had to save myself up for Nice.

I took my distended tummy home to finish the evening with cocktails.  One or two was surely allowed?  A perfect day...a perfect evening..  But wait, who is this at my door needing to crash after far too many work cocktails without me?  My naughty girlfriend. 

It’s after midnight and it was no longer my birthday so I decided to let her in.  It was lovely to see her.  More chatter and laughter and I’m soon dreaming away of Dior and holidays to Nice.  Oh I do love birthdays!  Don’t you?