“Dieting” for life.

As all of us know, Singapore is a food paradise, everywhere we are surrounded with a large variety of food. From our ever popular local snacks like peanut pancakes to artery clogging epok epok, one indeed needs to summon a whole lot of courage and self discipline to go on a diet. People’s idea of a diet = nothing but fruits for 5 whole days; 3 day fast; cabbage soup diet and all those shizz and fad diets that are still hanging around (god knows why) which don’t do a tad good to one’s body.

Think about it,  food contains calories, which are units of energy. And it is this energy which is needed by our bodies to maintain bodily functions from sustaining our muscles and even to keep our heart beating. Even if we did nothing the whole day but just to lay in bed, that would already need calories to fuel us! That is basically called the Basal Metabolic Rate which differs from person to person based on their height, weight and genetics. When you go on a crash diet, the sudden decrease and drop in the input of calories is just going to make your body system go into a state of frenzy, the lack of calories would then force your body to feed on your muscles for energy. After your whole crash dieting is over, you’re missing all your sweet treats and carbo and steak, thinking that you have already lost weight (which is basically just water weight), you allow yourself to an extra portion for being “good” the past few days. Sooner or later, you find yourself back to square one, or maybe a few pounds heavier. Then the vicious cycle begins.

Why torture your body like that? Much as we are love our deep fat fried foods, our sugar laden doughnuts and chocolate treats, wanting to slim down whether for the sake of our health or for a better outlook, that doesn’t mean we must give them up all together. The main thing is about portion control. That is what I practise. I have a hobby of taking shots of all the food I eat when I go out, whether to cafes, dessert bars or anywhere and instagramming it. Many have asked me how I manage to keep slim after seeing the crazy amount of sinful foods I seemed to ingest. Well, that is partly true only. Here are some of the tips my family and I use to control our intake while making sure we don’t deprive ourselves too.

• Share your dessert. Going out for a dinner at a restaurant doesn’t necessarily mean that you are to eat one starter, main course and dessert all by yourself. What we do is we order a variety of dishes to share instead of one person to one main course. This not only gives you variety, you also do not need to go back again after trying out so many of their dishes. Usually, the 3 of us would order just 1 dessert to share, and that is often too much for us too. Granted that we are small eaters, then bigger eaters can still do the same thing, but fill up more on healthier choices of main course. The idea of communal dining also saves us quite a lot of money as not one morsel of food is left behind, different from the case where each individual leaves behind some food untouched.

• The idea of a little bit of everything. Now, you’re at a party, and all around you are things from pastries to chocolate fudge cakes to bread and butter pudding and cream puffs. They are all calling out to you to eat them. And unluckily or luckily to yourself, you have a major sweet tooth, so what to do? -Succumb to temptations and grab everything off the trays or don’t get anything and sulk in the corner while you eye’s peoples plates despondently while they munch their way through your ultimate favourite fudge? Both will do you no good in the long run. What you can do is get a little bit of everything, say instead of the usual 1/8th slice of cake, try sharing a slice of cake with your family or friends, even sharing a bite of chocolate with someone else works too. A little bite saved here and there can really add up! This way, you will feel satisfied and not feel like you are letting yourself down and at the same time not bust your calorie budget by too much.

• Put down your cutlery in between bites. Don’t scoff down everything in minutes. It takes some time for our body to register that it is full so by eating so quickly, we are not giving out bodies adequate time for it to respond to food, and by the time we do realise that we are full, we would have already ingested more than what our body needs.

• Drink water during meals. Rather than your sugary and fizzy drinks, plain old water can never go wrong. Drinking water also helps to give your body enough time to respond to food. The water also helps to drive away thirst which one might mistake to be hunger. Water will also help give the feeling of fullness which stops someone from overeating.

 
My guilty pleasure, macarons. (A shot I took)

Hope this was useful! Hmm, Chinese New Year is coming, time for more feasting, but of course, who ones to pack on the pounds? Let’s do some smart eating!