Healthy Living PTSD Community Group
This is a group to share healthy living tips and ideas, recipes, physical fitness tips, meditation tips and support our healthy living goals. It is a private group.
My best tips for gradually slimming down... I shared these tips on Rizen's "Walk a Day" thread in the PTSD Support Group but thought they might be of interest here too. I've added a couple of extra comments
1. Get or use SMALLER plates and bowls... makes it harder to over do it if the food won't fit ON the plate... no second helpings allowed, lol
2. Eat a small meal every 2 - 3 hours that is mostly fresh vegetables (1/2 of the meal), a portion of protein (1/4 of the meal), AND a portion of carbohydrate (1/4 of the meal). Try to make sure the carbohydrate you choose is whole or "complex"... So that limits white flour, white rice but you can use wholemeal flour and brown rice... The fibrous outer slows down carbohydrate absorption and makes you FEEL fuller for longer as well as being much better for you anyway : ) Do NOT eliminate carbs from your diet... carbs are your body's primary source of fuel... too little carb and you will get mega GROUCHY!! lol
3. Gradually wean yourself off having added sugar (sucrose) in your diet. For example, if you have sugar in your coffee cut back little by little... Your taste buds will adjust and your pancreas will DEFINITELY appreciate some time off from having to pump out insulin to mop up too much blood sugar arriving all at once. A person can usually only handle around 30gms of carbohydrate in one serve over a two hour period before the body just stores the excess carb, which includes sugar, as fat... mostly around the middle.
4. Swap to having fruit... apples, oranges etc... as your "sweet" treat. Bananas are really healthy BUT they do contain more than a 30g portion of relatively simple carbohydrate so... half of one... yum! A whole one... ooops! Definitely EAT fruit but
5. Drink... water or herbal tea... not juice.However, quite a few herbal teas are sweetened with stevia which may not be a good idea...The sweet taste confuses the body into THINKING sugar is arriving... when it doesn't you can end up with a sharp drop in blood sugar, hypoglycemia. Basically fruit is good, it has vitamins, fibre... a lot of which are in the skin which juicing discards. So, juice is a TREAT. It is also missing most of the fibre that would have filled you up. For example, a glass of apple juice probably contains about the juice of five apples... you probably wouldn't try EATING five apples in one go!
1. Get or use SMALLER plates and bowls... makes it harder to over do it if the food won't fit ON the plate... no second helpings allowed, lol
2. Eat a small meal every 2 - 3 hours that is mostly fresh vegetables (1/2 of the meal), a portion of protein (1/4 of the meal), AND a portion of carbohydrate (1/4 of the meal). Try to make sure the carbohydrate you choose is whole or "complex"... So that limits white flour, white rice but you can use wholemeal flour and brown rice... The fibrous outer slows down carbohydrate absorption and makes you FEEL fuller for longer as well as being much better for you anyway : ) Do NOT eliminate carbs from your diet... carbs are your body's primary source of fuel... too little carb and you will get mega GROUCHY!! lol
3. Gradually wean yourself off having added sugar (sucrose) in your diet. For example, if you have sugar in your coffee cut back little by little... Your taste buds will adjust and your pancreas will DEFINITELY appreciate some time off from having to pump out insulin to mop up too much blood sugar arriving all at once. A person can usually only handle around 30gms of carbohydrate in one serve over a two hour period before the body just stores the excess carb, which includes sugar, as fat... mostly around the middle.
4. Swap to having fruit... apples, oranges etc... as your "sweet" treat. Bananas are really healthy BUT they do contain more than a 30g portion of relatively simple carbohydrate so... half of one... yum! A whole one... ooops! Definitely EAT fruit but
5. Drink... water or herbal tea... not juice.However, quite a few herbal teas are sweetened with stevia which may not be a good idea...The sweet taste confuses the body into THINKING sugar is arriving... when it doesn't you can end up with a sharp drop in blood sugar, hypoglycemia. Basically fruit is good, it has vitamins, fibre... a lot of which are in the skin which juicing discards. So, juice is a TREAT. It is also missing most of the fibre that would have filled you up. For example, a glass of apple juice probably contains about the juice of five apples... you probably wouldn't try EATING five apples in one go!
Portion control for me is fairly easy, If I don't have it I don't eat it and if I make only enough to eat that is all I will eat. LOL>
'Oats, for instance, with a glycemic index of 55 compared to table sugar’s 59, still sends blood sugar through the roof. Likewise, quinoa with a glycemic index of 53, will send blood sugar to, say, 150 mg/dl compared to 158 mg/dl for table sugar–yeah, sure, it’s better, but it still stinks. And that’s in non-diabetics. It’s worse in diabetics.'
This is only for my specific eating troubles, I have a very sensitive body.