Mistake Number One: You eat diet food!

Almost every type of food now has a diet or low-fat version. It seems like an ideal solution for the health-minded person to buy ready-made food labelled ‘diet’, but this kind of labelling can be very misleading. Yes, they might have cut down the fat content to less than one per cent, but have replaced this with more sugar or more salt. Sugar is immediately transformed into fat, so you might end up eating a lot more calories than if you had stayed with the non-diet version. My advice is to avoid ready-made meals altogether but to buy fresh food and prepare a quick meal where you are in control what goes into it.

Mistake number two: You do not eat breakfast!

There has been a huge amount of research that has shown that people who skip breakfast are more likely to be overweight than people who don’t. You think you might be saving calories by skipping a meal, but the truth is that you end up having more unhealthy snacks, because you have skipped a meal and your brain tells you that you have saved yourself a huge amount of calories. Eating a healthy breakfast does not only help you kick start your metabolism, which means your body is ready to burn more calories. A low GI breakfast, such as porridge and fresh fruit is not only a healthy start to the day, but it also keeps you going for much longer without craving unhealthy snacks.

Mistake number three: You think having a salad is a healthy option!

I eat loads of salads and I love them, but I am very careful when ordering a salad in a restaurant and I avoid ready made salads from the supermarket altogether. Mayonnaise or salad-creams, whether low-fat or not, add a massive amount of calories to your salad. So do croutons or bacon bits, which are usually deep-fried. When you make your own salad, you can grill croutons instead of frying them, you can use olive oil and balsamic vinegar or lemon juice for a delicious dressing and you can add all kinds of herbs and different leaves to make your salads more interesting. And this is only the beginning. Amongst my favourite ingredients are lean grilled chicken-pieces, a few strips of lean prosciutto if I really cannot do without the bacon, grilled salmon pieces, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, a hard-boiled egg, grilled or steamed beetroot, steamed broccoli and cauliflower, boiled sweet potato pieces,….the list is endless.

 Mistake number four: You treat yourself because you think you eat healthily and you exercise!

Very often when people eat healthily they treat themselves to biscuits, chocolates, a packet of crisps or whatever else makes your mouth water. Write down what you eat every day and how many treats you have and you will soon find out that your treats consist of more calories than your main meals. This can’t be right. Also going to the gym and burning 300 calories on the treadmill does not make up for having a burger and fries and a large coke afterwards. You need to look at your whole lifestyle to see where your mistakes creep in and of course if you want a treat what could be more perfect than rewarding yourself with one of Hulababy’s healthy treats?

 Mistake number five: You are aiming too high!

As with everything else in your life aiming too high only sets you up for a fall. If you try to change your exercise regime at the same time as your eating regime, giving up smoking and trying out three new hobbies in an attempt to boost your self-esteem, slow down! Little changes, one at a time, are far more effective and you are more likely to stick to your new regime. Changing your eating, giving up smoking and including more exercise in your life should not be seen as temporary fixes to lose weight, but the only way they work is when these things become second nature. This means you have to make them part of your life and you can only achieve this by doing things slowly but consistently. Florida State University has done some research into this issue and found that you do run out of self-control. So it is far more effective to change one thing at a time until it has become part of your lifestyle, before you attempt to change the next thing. For me this has been the key to losing weight!