Fat? Thin? It's all in the mind!

How do you fancy lasagne made without meat, without pasta, without cheese and without cooking! That was one of the less than delicious sounding dishes on the menu in a TV documentary last month.

The programme followed three sets of people who had stopped eating cooked and processed foods altogether. These people hadn’t simply changed their eating habits – choosing only raw fruit, vegetables, seaweeds, seeds and so on – they’d had to undergo a complete shift in their way of thinking about their diets. Extreme? Well, probably. Coffee enemas for breakfast aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. What the case studies showed, though, was that if you put your mind to it, your body just has to tag along.

There’s lots of research to suggest that how we think about ourselves and about our food is just as important to getting it ‘right’ as cutting down on calories. Calorie debit and credit.  Take this very simple mental shift, for example, Karen Brewton, from The Methodist Hospital Wellness Services in Houston, says people could get a clearer picture of how much they ate if they budgeted calories like money. So, for example, if each calorie were equal to a penny, 2,000 calories would equal Ł20. Eating a double cheeseburger, large fries and a fizzy, sugary drink for lunch could completely blow the budget, so you’d be left with nothing to ‘spend’ for the rest of the day.

One of the best things about dietplus meals – as well as the convenience, of course! – is that all the calorie-counting and nutrition-balancing has been done for you. You only have to choose a dish – Salmon in Dill Sauce, for example, or Moroccan Chicken – and you can see exactly how many calories it contains and what vitamins and minerals it will give you. Dietplus Slimline ready meals are all under 400kcals – superbly simple. What’s more, a dietplus daily menu – cereal, tea, two snacks, lunch and dinner – works out at less than 1200 calories a day, which leaves you leeway for the occasional calorie spending spree! In Karen Brewton’s budget system, exercise puts you in credit – Ł1 for every 15 minutes of exercise.

But, a whole other kind of exercise could be just what you need if you find yourself unable to stick to a diet or if you get discouraged very easily. The things we say to ourselves – good and bad – have a real effect on how we think. If every time we look in a mirror, we say ‘my hips are too big’ or ‘I’ll never be a size 14’, it becomes a negative, self-reinforcing mantra. Mental workout keeps you in shape The answer is a regular mental workout that keeps your self-image healthy just as physical exercise keeps your body in shape. Try these simple mental exercises:

• Write down a list of those negative ideas you have about yourself – ‘I’m just so greedy’, ‘I’ve got no discipline’ or ‘I don’t exercise enough’, for example! Now, write a second list of the things you like about yourself – ‘I’m a good listener’, ‘People love my cooking’ and so on. Don’t stop with your positive list until it’s longer than the negative one.
• Now, transform the negative list into a list of potentials. So, if you’ve written ‘I always give up at the first hurdle’, you can turn that into ‘I won’t give up at the first hurdle’.
• Take your list of negatives and destroy them! Throw them on the fire, cut them into shreds or chuck them in the bin. It’s a ritual that means you’ll have nothing to do with them ever again!
• Keep your potentials somewhere you can see them regularly. Each time you look at them, you’re starting the process of reprogramming the way you habitually think.
• Finally, keep a daily diary that ONLY records the good things and the successes – however small. We’re all too keen to focus on the negative and blow it up out of all proportion. Let’s redress the balance a bit!