I hate the word diet. You see it all the time in magazines – the beach body diet, little back dress diet and they all imply one thing. Eat like this for six weeks and you’ll look dazzling for summer, for Christmas, for weddings.

My question is this. If these diets are so effective, why are there so many and why do they all say the same thing, year in year out? And the answer is they are all only effective in the short term. We starve ourselves, we workout hard and then we have four weeks where we kind of, sort of look good. Then we go back to binging on cakes and crisps again.

So I’m trying a bit of an experiment on myself (and my dog), with a sustainable, long term eating plan.

The 3 step eating plan with a lot of science behind it [1, 2]

1. The first step is going to be to cut out the carbs, especially refined carbs. I’m not planning on going cold turkey but it will be close to it. Cutting out carbs lowers your insulin levels, in turn, leading the body to turn start burning fat instead. Cutting carbs can be tougher than it looks. Sugar is hidden everywhere and hard to avoid so snacking on the go is a big no no. Luckily I have an in house chef (also known as my husband) who’s being tasked with meal preparation 🙂
2. Replace the carbs with good fats and proteins and a lot of green veg. It’s vital to maintain lean muscle mass when changing how you eat. That’s because lean muscle burns calories even at rest. It’s also denser than fat so two people who weigh the same might still have very different body shapes due to lean muscle mass. So increase your protein intake to preserve all that precious muscle and green veg will help you stay hunger pang free.
3. Drink more…water, that is. It helps keep that feeling of being full and hydration is super important anyway!

Going to start this in the next few days so keep up to date with the blog for progress reports!