My son always says "if you can read you can cook" and I think he's right. These days everything you buy has a label that says how to prepare and/or cook it. And how many chef's are there writing recipe books these days! You don't have to buy ready meals (heat complete in the microwave) when you can buy Tesco's Finest or M & S Ready to eat meals all nicely packaged yet still fresh and top quality food. But in the same vein most meats, fish and even some vegetables have the cooking instructions on the pack so why not cook "from scratch" and save some cash?!
My saying is "if you can read you can lose weight" because my big thing is to READ THE LABEL. Checking for additives and extra sugar or sweeteners in foods has become second nature to me. Almost all packaged food is labelled with calories, fat and (most important for me) sugar levels. As a rough guideline look at the "percentage of daily amount" figures. Based on three meals and two snacks a day nothing should be more than 25% of your daily sugar or fat intake. (Why is sugar important? - come back tomorrow and I'll tell you!)
Then there's the cereal bars, meal replacements and "slimmers" foods. STOP. Read the label. Most cereal bars have as many calories - and a lot more sugar - than a piece of toast with a bit of butter on it! Get to know the calories of some of your favourite foods - and then check that you're not "giving up" something you love, to eat something that's manufactured and, in fact has just as many calories!
If you want to lose weight just cutting down on one thing a day could make a big difference - so have 3 glasses of wine instead of 4 and save 200 calories!!! Let's face it one of anything may taste nice, the second good, the third OK but the fourth? That's just STUFF going into your mouth! Think about wine, lager, pizza slices, biscuits.....3000 calories extra is 1lb in weight extra. Two weeks of "one less" a day could be 1lb lost! This is how you put it on - so this is how to take it off - slowly! And if you think 1lb every two weeks isn't enough multiply it out.... It's nearly 2 stone in a year. 2 stone lighter by next Christmas? This easily? Try it!
