6 secrets to beat diet boredom
Diet boredom? Just follow these tips for success
1- Stop thinking of your favourite foods as ‘forbidden’
If you restrict yourself every night to poached fish while you long for pizza, you’re setting yourself up for a binge. Instead, include a healthier version of your favourite on your weekly menu and that binge will be a thing of the past. Have a ‘good’ pizza once a week or once a fortnight, or a snack-sized chocolate bar once a week. It’s better that than having a mighty blowout after a miserable week, which will only make you feel worse.
2- Dare to experiment with breakfast
Who says breakfast has to be cereal or toast? If these options don’t float your boat, don’t give up on breakfast altogether. If you’re pushed for time, take a cereal bar and a carton of fruit juice on the train. Take a tin of fruit to work with you, get a wholegrain scone with your coffee or have a carton of rice pudding if you fancy it. Remember, breakfast really is the most important meal of the day so no matter what you eat, make sure you do.
3- Variety really is the spice of life
If you limit your vegetables to carrots and peas you’re missing out on essential nutrients and exciting flavours. Take a fresh look around the fruit and veg section of your supermarket or your local greengrocer and try something new this week.
4- Blend it, Baby
Smoothies aren’t just for breakfast. Pulp together fruit, fruit juice, yoghurt, flavour extracts, spices and whatever else takes your fancy for snacks during the day. Or try a glass of milk blended with a shot of coffee (caf or decaf, as you wish), a dash of vanilla extract, a sprinkling of cinnamon and some crushed ice. You get calcium, great taste and no guilt, for considerably less money than you’d spend at Starbucks.
5- Forget the old rule about three-meals-a-day
Snacking between meals is fine, just as long as you calculate it into your food plan for the day. It can even help you stay with your weight loss, especially if you work in an office where it seems as if every birthday, anniversary and special event is celebrated with cake. It doesn’t have to be a no-no, just be flexible and cout it in.
Best Snacks: those that combine proein with a carbohyrdate. For example, cottage cheese with crackers, yoghurt and muesli or peanut butter and banana.
6- Never say ‘never’ to dessert
Just like the ‘forbidden foods’ above, cutting out dessert forever will only make it all the more attractive. Dessert doesn’t have to mean chocolate mud cake. It can mean fresh fruit sorbet, frozen yoghurt, lower calorie fruit or chocolate mousse.
