How I Lose Weight Easily Without Counting Calories, Giving Up Chocolate Or Rebounding A Week Later.

Paleo, primal, low-carb, no-sugar, low-sugar, keto… blah blah blah.

Here’s what I do when I’ve been indulging too much and want to strip off the excess weight.

I cut some carbs.

Carbs raise blood glucose and insulin levels, they make your energy go up and then down again leaving you hungry, irritable and reaching for the next hit of sugar.

I reduce my intake by choosing to just go without them more often (not cut them out completely).

Here’s what I mean:

• Pass on the toast and cereal at breakfast, no juices
• No sandwiches or wraps at lunch
• Basic dinners
• Curry – no rice, pappadum or naan;
• Steak, fish or prawns, salad with avocado and cheese
• Baked chicken and veggies
• No snacking on crackers, chips, muesli bars, toast etc
• Keep treats for the weekend
• No booze during the week

I also eat a bit less in general.

Mostly I do this incidentally via the above. I don’t measure out portions and I’ll have more food if I’m hungry – just not extra carbs.

I’ll also intermittent fast a couple of days a week if it suits which means I’ll skip breakfast if I wake up not too hungry, I don’t have a physically demanding morning and I know I can get in a proper meal between 11 and 1pm.

I might exercise a bit more if it suits. Again what I mean by this is that if I am really stressed out, have loads going on, am in the process of healing myself i.e. I’ve been unwell, run down or anxiety levels are up, I’m not going to go and raise my stress levels and heart rate any more than I need to because I know through experience and paying attention to my body, that it will burn me out and leave me completely drained.

If I’m feeling pretty good and have energy to burn I will go and do some weight lifting or cross training. No more than twice per week though.

It’s important to note that exercise for most people doesn’t result in a lot of weight loss – it’s diet that counts. I find adding in some training can make a difference for me because my diet is pretty good and I’m not consuming large amounts of calories anyway.

The thing is…

I eat this way every day. Real food, home-cooked and low-moderate carb depending on what’s going on (consciously choosing more if I’m physically active or feel I need it, and unconsciously choosing more if I’m lazy, tired, upset etc!)

My diet is dialled in 80% of the time which makes these adjustments pretty easy. I’m just turning up the dial to 90%.

Sometimes that dial slips down to 70 or even 60 % and I just turn it back up again when I notice.

For example

Pass on the toast and cereal at breakfast, no juices

…I’m mindful not to eat toast every morning and apart from oats maybe once a month I don’t eat cereals and I don’t drink juice

No sandwiches or wraps at lunch – just the fillings, add nuts, cheese, tinned fish, plain yoghurt

…I don’t eat sandwiches too often anyway and I don’t eat wraps as most are filled with preservatives and other ‘stuff’

Basic dinners

Curry – no rice, pappadum or naan;

…If I haven’t had toast at breakfast and bread at lunch then I’ll enjoy some carbs at dinner, when I’m dialling up to 90% I’ll just skip them and have a bit more of the curry

Steak, fish or prawns, salad with avocado and cheese

…staples in our house

Baked chicken and veggies

…staples in our house

No snacking on crackers, chips, muesli bars, toast etc

…we don’t buy muesli bars, we might buy crackers once month these days, we probably buy a big bag of potato chips once a week or fortnight, there’s usually a loaf of sourdough on the counter which I have for the most part stopped myself from using as a snack – partly because we buy an expensive one!

Keep treats for the weekend

…this is the big one for me – I would eat chocolate or fudge or have tea and biscuits every night if there were no health consequences! I just have a cup of tea instead.

No booze during the week

…another easy one. Andy doesn’t drink at all and I probably average 1 beer or glass of wine per week – some weeks its none, some weeks its 3. But it’s never many.

Now you might be looking at the above and thinking there’s something wrong with this girl! No muesli bars? No crackers even?

There’s a couple of things to note here.

Firstly I’m not a big potato or rice fan – I’ve never liked them much so that makes things easy. I do clearly love bread – and I used to love pasta – I just associate too much of those things with secondary effects that I don’t want such as feeling stuffed or bloated and falling asleep at 2pm.

And because I understand the science behind these things I have the evidence to back up my choices if that makes sense.

I’m not doing these things because the internet told me to follow a low carb diet.

I know the effects on insulin, on blood glucose, on leptin and grehlin (hormones); I know that the wheat we eat these days is not the same as it was 100 years ago and has a lot more gluten; I know that gluten is a large protein molecule that can cause gut irritation and slip through tight junctions and possibly trigger auto-immune disease if the circumstances are right; I know that auto-immune thyroid disease runs in my family; I know that high cholesterol runs in my family and that excess carbohydrates drive up cholesterol and triglycerides; I know that the more plain, processed carbs I eat the less room I have for more nutrient dense foods like meats and vegetables; and I know that if my days are drowned in carbs my mind is swimming in anxiety and I feel sluggish and low.

All of this knowledge is constantly backing me up in making the right decisions for my body. It’s my in-built support system.

Even when family around are giving me the “you aren’t eating very much” eye.

Even when I have to disappoint friends when they ask “are you ok if we get takeaway and just split it?” (No, usually I’m not)

And even when I really want to say f$% it and eat crap for dinner the third night in a row, I have this built-in voice of reason.

You should know that this voice used to say “don’t eat that if you want to be skinny”.

And it didn’t take 5 minutes to change that voice, it took education, practice, and tuning in and listening to my body.

But never having to worry about weight and calories – that is invaluable. And knowing exactly what to do if my weight has crept up a little – that is priceless.

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Kelly Moriarty is an online health & nutrition coach and founder of The Green Body Plan.

After 5 years as a veterinarian Kelly was unhealthy, stressed out and generally dissatisfied.

She now helps professional women make the same changes she did to beat burn out, lose weight, recover their energy and take back control of their health naturally.