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There will always be occasions when our healthy-eating best intentions fly out of the window – not through any reckless decision of our own but just because life happens.
It was Mother’s Day and Mike and I were invited over to our daughter Dawn’s house to celebrate. Dawn is a wonderful cook and she knows my favourite treat is a scone with cream and strawberry jam. It wasn’t long before we were all eating freshly cooked scones, hot and straight out of the oven, served with home-made jam and CLOTTED CREAM! Just because I eat ‘low-fat’ usually, doesn’t mean that I don’t like butter and cream. I do. But they are a rare treat! And that scone with all its accoutrements was utterly delicious!
The next day, I went to my fitness classes as normal. It was Jennie’s birthday and her son Kevin is renowned for his cakes. He brought three (!) to the class for us all to enjoy. It would have been rude not to join in…!
Then, the following afternoon, I was speaking at a Rotary event and the refreshment provided ... was an Afternoon Tea! With plates of sandwiches, scones, jam and cream, plus cakes in abundance temptation was calling yet again. I had just one sandwich and of course, a scone with jam and cream!
By Wednesday morning I felt all out of sorts and my stomach looked like I was pregnant. Unquestionably, I had overdone the sugar, fat and unhealthy carbs. Now it was time for action. I decided to eat super healthily for one day, with smaller portions and foods that would keep me feeling fuller for longer, and I ensured I achieved 10,000 steps. I did it! The following day I felt my body had completely returned to its normal self again. I felt healthy and my energy had returned. (See my Binge Corrector Plan below!)
So, this week, we are talking about how to take corrective action after an indulgent couple of days, or maybe a holiday. How to shift that bloated feeling fast and lose the several lbs that you might have gained.
Before we start, I think it is helpful to recall what you ate and consider how different it was from what you usually eat. Then try to understand why you feel the way you do. Maybe this explanation might help. Unhealthy foods fall into a variety of categories:
- Fast food (take-aways, burgers, kebabs etc) These are foods which contain a lot of calories and not a lot of nutrients. They are salty and will not only give you poor nutrition which doesn’t ‘feed’ your body with goodness, but they won’t keep you feeling full for long either. If you want to gain weight, feel lethargic, feel unsatisfied from food, and have lack-lustre hair and skin, eat these!
- Cakes, biscuits, pies, sweets and chocolate, savoury snacks. Realise that these are habit foods. They are usually made from simple carbs like sugar and white flour (not good) and fat (and some of that is really not good). They contain a lot of calories, little or no fibre, but tend to be eaten as extras unless it is an official ‘Afternoon Tea’ event!
- Restaurant meals on holiday or dining out. Whilst not necessarily inherently unhealthy, meals out tend to be fraught with temptation to eat larger portions of more lavish food than we might have at home. The key to success is choosing wisely what we eat. We can still treat ourselves yet eat really well with healthy food. Try skipping the bread and drink water alongside your wine. Ask for two spoons when it comes to dessert and share a pudding. These little things can really help.
The problem with low-fibre, high-fat unhealthy food, as well as being very high in calories, is that our body needs lots of water to digest it. That’s why we find ourselves waking up more often during the night gasping for a drink of water. Unhealthy food often takes longer to travel through our system because it is so low in fibre and we can become constipated. When we understand all these disadvantages of eating unhealthy food, it is easy to see some of the reasons why we gain weight so quickly and significantly.
The Binge Corrector Plan:
Don’t beat yourself up. What’s done is done. Put it behind you but take action: Plan a careful menu for Day 1, Give yourself more protein as that will keep you feeling fuller for longer. This may do the trick. If the indulgence warrants further action then continue with the plan for a second day.
Day 1:
- Breakfast: 2 boiled eggs.
- Lunch: Salad with chicken and an egg.
- Main meal: Fish and vegetables.
- Get active: Go for a brisk walk. Take lots of fitness ‘snacks’ throughout the day: eg march on the spot for 1 minute. Skip for 1 minute. Stand up and sit down x 30 consecutively. Walk up and down stairs five times. It all adds up. Keep repeating them throughout the day. These really help!
Day 2:
- Breakfast: Poached egg on wholegrain toast spread with Marmite (if you like it). No butter.
- Lunch: Homemade vegetable soup 300ml (½ pint) plus 2 pieces fruit.
- Main meal: chicken stir fry with loads of vegetables plus a small portion of basmati rice or noodles.
- Keep active: Achieve your 10,000 steps.
Keep alcohol to an absolute minimum. Drink unlimited tea or water or low-cal drinks.
After those two days you will have brought your body back to something like normality and you will feel so much fresher and better and you will see that you have lost a load of weight when you step on the scales.
If you have been away for a couple of weeks and really piled on the lbs, then I suggest you follow The 28-Day Immunity Plan for a full seven days and that should get you back down to somewhere near to where you were before you went away.
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Butternut squash, as its name suggests, has a sweet rich buttery flavour which is ideal for a thick creamy soup. If you wish, you can keep the soup chunky by liquidising it only for a short time. A very fresh butternut squash is much easier to peel and cut than one that has been refrigerated for a week or more.
Serves 4
Per serving: 129 calories, 1g fat
Prep time: 20 minutes
Cook time: 30 minutes
1kg (2lb) butternut squash
3 celery sticks, sliced
2 medium onions, chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed or ½ teaspoon Easy Garlic
2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme
(Remove the small leaves from the stalks of the thyme with a knife or by hand. Lemon thyme works really well with this recipe)
1 litre (2 pints) vegetable stock or use a vegetable stock pot
2 bay leaves
Rapeseed oil Frylight spray
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons live natural yogurt and a sprig of thyme to garnish
- Cut the squash in half lengthways. Remove the seeds and discard. Peel away the thick skin using a peeler or small knife.
- Chop the flesh into small pieces. Place in a large pan sprayed with rapeseed oil (Frylight) with the celery, onions and garlic and dry-fry on a low heat for 2 - 3 minutes.
- Add the thyme, stock and bay leaves and simmer gently until the vegetables are soft.
- Remove the bay leaves. Place the soup in a blender and liquidise until smooth.
- Return the soup to the pan and adjust the consistency with a little extra stock if required and reheat. Season with freshly ground black pepper.
- Just before serving, remove from the heat and stir in the plain yogurt, reserving a little for the garnish.
- Pour into individual warm serving bowls and garnish with yogurt and a sprig of thyme.
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Fun, Facts & Fitness from Mary Morris MSc.
Rosemary's piece on dealing with a few days of over-indulgence came at just the right time for me. Since the Covid pandemic we have not entertained too much but recently we went back to hosting a ‘mate's dinner party’ where we all prepare one course each. Being the host, I prepared a main course (chicken is always a safe option) and others did starters, desserts, and a cheeseboard.
Now, I need to explain that more recently I am used to eating my main meal at 5pm, so eating at 8pm concerned me a bit. Secondly, I have not eaten a 4-course meal in a very long time and finally, as it was a celebration of three people's birthdays, champagne was consumed along with more than one glass of wine! I think you now have the picture and Rosemary's description of how she felt after eating several pieces of cake fitted the bill perfectly for me too. Some corrective eating was called for and I too just needed one day of careful eating and I recovered quickly.
For my breakfast I just had live yogurt and blueberries. Lunch was home-made Sweet Potato and Ginger soup, (ginger is excellent for the digestive system) and my evening meal was a plain piece of grilled salmon with broccoli and peas. Because of a holiday Rosemary had planned, she sent me her half of this Newsletter well ahead of time so, thank you Rosemary for directing me to the most sensible solution for over-indulgence, and I am sure there will be other times in the future when the same course of action is called for!
That got me thinking about 'corrective exercise' but it occurred to me that it is the total opposite to corrective eating. With food, we have eaten far too much of possibly the wrong things, leaving your gut struggling to cope. With exercise it is not that you have had too much of it but that you have probably lapsed and done very little! No wonder we begin to feel sluggish and out of shape. We tell ourselves on a daily basis to do more of it but we never quite fit it in or maybe, on some days, we just don’t have the motivation to do it.
It may be that at one time you were regularly achieving your 10,000 steps every day but more recently it has perhaps been more like 2-3000. Probably you have not made it to your regular gym sessions or exercise class because work or your social life has been manic, or your buddy couldn't go with you so you didn't either! Don’t give yourself a hard time about it. We have all been there. But, let’s look at 'corrective exercise' to get us back on track when this happens.
A few tips to help you...
- Planning. Very little happens unless we plan ahead. We need to have thought about our fitness plan for the week first, then we must write it down to make it happen. If our entire week ahead has a realistic schedule of activity the chances are we will actually do it. The satisfaction when we have achieved our fitness goals is immense and acts as a great motivator for the next week. It helps us to feel in control.
- Go steady. If you have not exercised for a very long time then take it gently. Remember, 10-minute walks 3 times a day is still OK - but do it every day.
- Have your fitness kit ready and in view! Once you are wearing your kit you are ready for action! Keep it in the car if you plan to go to a gym or class after work or have it ready by the bed for an early morning session, then it's done and dusted.
- Contact an exercise 'buddy'. Tell your ‘buddy’ that you need a good kick up the proverbial and can you arrange a session together? That makes it far more of a commitment.
- Gradually increase your steps. Work on building up the steps per day over a month, for example. Aim to add another 1,000 steps at regular intervals. Never feel guilty if you don’t reach 10,000 steps every day. Anything over 6000 steps per day improves our health and anything over 7,500 steps improves our fitness.
- Include Strength 'Snacks'. If you cannot manage a full body strength workout, either due to lack of time or inclination, then regularly doing a 'Quick 10' of exercises like 10 press ups, 10 abdominal curls, or 10 'sit to stand' are extremely valuable.
- Simply move more! Never underestimate the value of getting up out of a chair for just a few minutes at a time and moving around. Exercising while the ads are on the TV is ideal!
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This Week's Fitness Challenge
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This week forward plan exactly when you can do 3 Strength workouts. Choose which workouts you plan to do then write them down with the day and time you intend to do them. Then follow them through. Choose the ones you enjoy the most!
- Set a daily target of steps this week. Your daily 30+ minute walk makes a great contribution towards reaching it.
- Choose one other activity/exercise you haven’t done recently. Maybe some Pilates, Ballet or the HIIT Workout.
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Did you know... 
Afternoon tea was introduced in England by Anna, the seventh Duchess of Bedford, in the year 1840. The Duchess would become hungry around four o’clock in the afternoon. The evening meal in her household was served fashionably late at eight o’clock, thus leaving a long period of time between lunch and dinner. The Duchess asked that a tray of tea, bread and butter and cake be brought to her room during the late afternoon. This became a habit of hers and she began inviting friends to join her.
This pause for tea became a fashionable social event. During the 1880s upper-class and society women would change into long gowns, gloves and hats for their afternoon tea which was usually served in the drawing room between four and five o’clock.
Nowadays Afternoon Tea is often taken as a treat at a smart hotel or a cosy cafe and tends to be very sweet, calorific and expensive but for a special occasion (a Coronation?) there is nothing to stop you from making your own version at home which can be just as good but lower in fat and calories.
- Sandwiches should be small, thin (think fingers) and have the crusts cut off. Don't overdo the butter - does an egg mayonnaise sandwich really need any extra spread?
- Scones don't need to be layered with thick cream - try using low-fat Greek Yogurt instead. It's just as yummy on top of a spoonful of strawberry jam and, of course, there is no need for any butter!
- Instead of buying a heavy chocolate cake why not have a go at making Kim's Cake or Banana and Sultana cake, again both cut into small fingers.
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And finally...
It is really important for us to be able to relax and ‘let rip’ occasionally and enjoy indulging ourselves. The key is to moderate the number of times we do it! I hope that the advice we have included this week will help you to cope better in the future.
Have a great week
With love and best wishes,
Rosemary Conley CBE DL
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LIVE LONGER | LIVE HEALTHIER | LIVE HAPPIER
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