The Christmas rules

It may seem a little early but the reality is that many of us will start the Christmas party season very soon, and hence we need to be on top of things if we are going to prevent weight gain over the next 5-6 weeks. So, here are the rules, guaranteed to keep your weight under control if you want it to be.

1) No mince pies until Christmas Eve. With more than 250 calories and at least 10g of fat per pie, these Christmas treats need to be consumed sparingly.

2) Under no circumstances are you to skip training – in fact, if you can afford to you should be doing extras to compensate for the extra calories you will be consuming.

3) Eat light if you are going out – this means soup or salad for the other meal of the day.

4) Always eat a snack before you go – a Body for Women protein shake or bar, nut bar + 1 vegetable will ensure you do not arrive at any function starving.

5) The 5 canapé rule – 5 canapés equates to a meal worth of calories so make sure you are counting.

6) An alcohol limit – it may be just on weekends or for the very special Christmas parties but create your own rule and stick to it.

7) Christmas foods at Christmas only – this means all the extra chocolates, nuts and other Christmas foods be kept until…..Christmas.

8) Quality over quantity – commit to enjoying it if it is very good quality but don’t waste calories on poor quality party snacks, chocolates and lollies.

9) The extra walk – for any big parties, commit to an extra walk the next day to compensate.

10) the 2 vegetable rule – this is not just a Christmas rule but munching on 2 vegetables a day will help to keep you full so you are less likely to overindulge in rubbish.

Why adding salad is futile

Whenever I am woken by the telephone at 6am usually it is the radio calling for an early morning interview, inevitably because one of the fast food chains has promoted a new initiative and yesterday it was McDonalds starting to offer salad as well as fries when you order a burger.

There are so many things that run through my dietitian’s brain as I contemplate this to decide if it is indeed a good idea. Surely any promotion or initiative that encourages the consumption of more salad and / or vegetables is a good thing, ultimately giving consumers the option to make a healthier choice should they want to? Hmmmm, maybe but offering one small good thing as part of a much bigger bad thing ie eating a fast food meal, does not make the fast food meal any better. In fact, it could actually make people feel better about eating the fast food meal, which is not a good thing.

Then, while having the option available to choose salad instead of fries may result in some people ditching the fries in favour of salad, I would be more inclined to think that the majority of people who are going to a fast food chain are not looking to swap their order of fries for a salad. If in real terms this means that McDonalds sell 1 salad for every 50 serves of fries, it would suggest that such a tactic from McDonalds is merely ticking a box of ‘looking like” they are trying to do go by the health of all Australians as opposed to actually doing any good at all – there is a big difference.

And then we have the issue of quality. If you have seen a healthy choice at a fast food chain recently, you may have noticed they do not tend to be the most desirable looking menu options. A minuscule serve of soggy lettuce and chopped tomato costing more than $3 hardly appetizing compared to sizzling meat patties, melt in your mouth burger buns, sugar twists of fat known as a McFlurry and the far more affordable $2 lunch deals. I am a dietitian and I would not pay the money for the salads that are served in McDonalds.

So while another marketing executive is likely to be patting themselves on the back this afternoon as McDonalds has again grabbed the headlines with its “salad offering”, here are some things to consider next time they really want to grab a health headline properly. McDonalds sell 1 million meals a day in Australia. All that would be needed to improve the nutritional quality of the current McDonalds menu items and indirectly the health of all Australians would be to add more salad to all the burgers on the current menu, improve the quality of the bread the burgers are served on and for the fifteen year old servers to stop asking everyone to upsize their order and buy more the high fat, high carbohydrate foods they do not need. It is not rocket science McDonalds and you are also likely to save a whole lot of salad that no one is going to eat in the process.

Why am I not losing weight?

Why am I not losing weight? - Perhaps the most common question from clients who appear to be doing everything they can to support weight loss. They are going to the gym, cutting back on carbs and not drinking during the week and yet the kg won’t seem to budge. Here are the most common reasons that you may not be losing weight with the good news is that all of these factors are very easy to adjust and get things moving the right way on the scales.

You are eating breakfast too late in the day
One of the most important things you can remember when it comes to weight loss is “the earlier you eat breakfast, the better”. Waiting until you get to the office to enjoy the first meal of the day is a little late when you consider that breakfast fires up the metabolism for the day ahead. So if you are waiting until 8 or 9 to enjoy your eggs, oats or shake, shift it forward an hour or two and get that metabolism firing.

You are training inefficiently
It may sound harsh but the longer you have trained, the more you are going to have to push yourself in order to achieve the same calorie burn you did initially. Change things around with your training as much as you can and focus on working out intensely for just 20-30 minutes burning 200-300 calories in this time. Change the settings on the machines, swap the order in which you do your cardio and/or weights and swap between different machines and classes. When you have trained for many years, sometimes all you need to do is change the type of training and intensity to get things moving again.

You are having too many extras
An extra coffee or two here, a biscuit there and there you have the difference between losing weight and not. If you doubt what is really going in your mouth spend a day keeping a record of everything you eat or drink. Sometimes the simple act of becoming more mindful is the difference between a few extra hundred calories a day or not.

You are sitting down too much
While it is great to commit to regular training, if you then spend the remaining 14 hours of your day sitting, you are completely negating the benefits of training completely. Start to wear a pedometer and become more aware of how much (or how little) you really are moving. Try and avoid hours sent lying in front of the television at night and get outside at lunchtime and move around because the more you move, the more you burn.

You are overdoing the coffee.
There is nothing wrong with a coffee or two each day but if you find yourself constantly sipping on a latte for most of the day, therein lies the problem. Not only are liquid calories a nightmare when it comes to insulin release and weight gain, but we rarely compensate for them, which means they become extras that many of us do not need. Enjoy your milk based coffee with your meals or as a snack and drink only water or herbal tea inbetween.

Why I prefer people eat vegetables instead of fruit

It may surprise you to hear that I, even though I am a dietitian,hate apples. I am not sure if I hate them because my mum sent me with one for recess on my first day of school when everyone else had potato chips, or because I find them sickly sweet, but whenever I see a dietitian’s logo featuring an apple, I feel slightly nauseous. In fact, whether it is an apple, an orange or even a mango, give me a vegetable in its place any day. It is not that I do not like all fruit, I simply prefer vegetables.

Now, you do not need a science degree to work out that fruit is very healthy. Packed with fibre, vitamins and minerals as well as being low in calories, fruit is a great snack choice. But the truth be known, if it came to choosing between fruit and vegetables, I would go for veges any day.

Before you get outraged that a dietitian would dare not talk about apples in anything but glowing terms I want you to consider this. Fruit, whilst being healthy contains far more calories and sugars than vegetables, with fewer health benefits. It is much easier to eat numerous pieces of fruit each day than it is to eat too many vegetables, and most clients I see for weight loss are eating far too much fruit, and far too few vegetables.

Vegetables make the perfect snack. They are generally not sweet, so you are not tempted to eat more and more of them. They are bulky, so they fill you up. They have virtually no calories but are so rich in nutrients that they are one of the few types of food that are actually linked to a reduced risk of developing some types of cancer long term.

So next time you go to grab a piece of fruit as you try to be “healthy”, grab a vegetable instead and your health, your weight and your tummy will benefit long term.



Vegetable/Salad (per cup, raw) Total Carbs (g) Total Cal
Broccoli <1 20
Pumpkin 1 70
Carrot 7 45
Tomato 4 30
Red capsicum 4 30
Cucumber 3 16
Peas 10 100
Green beans 3 30
Beetroot 10 60
Celery 1 15

Why it is irresponsible to sell Cheezels for 95c

We all love them, and if you are as old as I am you are likely to have grown up with the brightly coloured, extruded party snacks affectionately known in this country as “Cheezels”. I love these tasty little treats as much as you do, memories of childhood birthday parties and all things 80”s triggered at the mere thought of these little morsels, but my 7 year science degree still tells me that there are few foods as nutritionally nasty as the humble Cheezel. Packed with colours, flavours and a hearty dose of saturated fat, Cheezels are usually featured on my “worst supermarket foods” list which is why I was horrified to see them on sale at Woolworth stores last week for just 95c a box.

Now, before you tune out under the heading of “diet Nazi” I am the first to agree that there are times when we all eat foods that are not the best for us nutritionally and there is nothing wrong with this. At the end of the day we are all in control of our own destiny when it comes to our body weight and our health long term and the food decisions we make on a daily basis are no one’s business but our own. The issue I have with this situation is that there is a big difference between choosing to take home a packet of potato chips each week and one of our biggest supermarket chains actively encouraging their customers to buy a food that is of extremely poor nutritional quality by selling it at an exceptionally cheap price as well as giving such a product enormous exposure by placing it on eye catching stands at the front of the store. And it was not just one Woolworth’s store, from my research I am led to believe that Cheezels were on sale last week for 95c in numerous city stores throughout the state.

Whether the government will admit it or not, our two largest supermarkets have enormous power when it comes to influencing the health and nutritional intake of the country. If Woolworths sell Cheezels for 75% less than the cost of a punnet of blueberries, which do you think people buy? Similarly, supermarkets do not advertise 2 for 1 deals on chocolates, chips and biscuits because sales do not increase, what our supermarkets choose to discount, advertise and locate in prime store position absolutely influences what we buy when we visit the stores.

Given that 60% of Australian adults and up to 30% of Australian children are overweight or obese, aggressively marketing high fat, low nutritionally quality foods in such an overt fashion are completely irresponsible. It is ignoring the health battles of Australians, it is putting parents in the challenging situation of having to deal with the kids demands for these foods and it is leading us to eat much greater amounts of bad fat and calories than we would have if the foods where not placed directly under our noses, costing next to nothing.

Wollies, it is not the Australian peoples fault you bought too many Cheezels and now you have to get rid of them so please think about the health of your customers and stop trying to pass the crap onto us. Oh, and lift your game altogether when it comes to your 2 for 1 deals which encourage your customers to buy more soft drink, biscuits, confectionery and chocolate and your advertising campaigns that portray you as holier than thou, ignoring these other blatant opportunistic tendencies. You know you could use your power to really help improve the health of the Australian people, so why not give that a go, and leave the Cheezels out of it.

Should we have a fat tax?

As our very own PM knows all too well, nothing can alter public opinion as quickly as talk of another tax can, and as expected after the relatively fit and health Danes announced this weekend that they would be adopting a “fat tax”, it seems that many thin and fat Aussies are more than happy to share their thoughts on the subject.

A “fat tax” is not a simple concept, it involves closely examining the nutritional profiles of all foods that are relatively high in fat, whether it is full cream milk, processed snack foods or fried fast foods to determine what is the best and fairest way to isolate those that are contributing significant amounts of “bad fat” into our diets. The tax has to consider natural sources of saturated fat such as those found in dairy foods and meats, as opposed to those simply used to process and make high fat foods as well as considering foods that may be high in fat but which may be made using “better” types of fat. What has resulted is a tax that targets foods which contain >2.4% saturated fat, and only the saturated fats that result from processing the food, as opposed to that which naturally occurs. This means that in the case of a burger, the saturated fat of the meat is not taxed, only the oil used in making the burger.

At this point in time, bureaucratic groups step in and argue that such a tax is unfair to those from lower socioeconomic groups, as they are the ones who end up paying relatively more for foods high in fat. It is the point in which consumer advocates hop on their high horse and argue that we should not be making unhealthy food more expensive rather healthy food cheaper. It is also the time where anyone in general starts to complain about all of our taxes including the more than 10 year old GST and of course, the carbon tax.

So here is the newsflash. Australia is one of the fattest countries in the world and high fat, fast food is cheap and readily accessible. Despite slightly increased government spending which has targeted obesity in this country, we are no thinner. Public health messaging is not working, we need more drastic action and we need it now, and most importantly, we need some $ to pay for the health costs associated with obesity long term.

In case you have not heard, it is almost impossible to make healthy food cheaper, if you want that food to come from Australia. Our farmers are already doing it tough and with two major supermarket chains monopolizing the food market, there is little room to move in terms of the cost of fresh and healthy food for the bulk of the population. On the other hand, increasing the price of high fat, calorie dense, nutrient poor foods including fast food, pastry, snack food and full cream dairy is a viable option. It makes unhealthy foods less accessible as well as creating an income stream to pay for the enormous long term health costs of a diet high in saturated fat. Indirectly, it also encourages our major manufacturers and ultimately food controllers of processed and fast foods to consider the quality of the ingredients they are using to make our food, and ultimately shift towards ingredient options that are lower in saturated fat.

We could talk forever about how unfair it is, how a fat tax ignores the health effects of sugar, and how disadvantaged groups are being unfairly targeted but at the end of the day, life is not fair and perhaps it is worth remembering that you are only taxed if you buy the crap food, simple as that.

To Dukan or not to Dukan?

Any bestselling diet whether it be Atkins, South Beach or the Dukan will create headline news, as the millions and millions of overweight adults around the world search for the elusive answer to their long term weight issues.

In turn, any heavily marketed diet will also warrant much criticism, from both health professionals who revert to their standard line of, “you need to eat healthy, low fat food and exercise if you want to lose weight long term”, as well as from unsuccessful losers who love nothing more than to blame yet another program for their failed attempts at weight loss.

The Dukan Diet has sold more than 3 million copies worldwide, which would suggest there may be something we can learn from the program when it comes to weight loss. A closer look at the 4 phase regime reveals that it is simply a high protein plan initially followed by the gradual reintroduction of a small amount of wholegrain carbs and plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables – basically a French style of eating with a couple of cheat meals in which you can enjoy your wine, pastries and dessert. The novel factor is of course the weekly return to a protein only day, very similar to following a day of low calorie eating. So if it is so basic, why has the program gained such popularity?

I have worked in the area of weight loss for both children and adults for more than 10 years, and all that weight loss talk has taught me a few key things about human beings and their approach to weight loss. The first thing being that even though you and I both know that weight loss comes down to calories in versus calories out, this message does not sell. To be able to win the attention and adherence of our clients we have to be able to sell a quirky “product” which is exactly what Dukan does. Next, the diet must get results immediately or our fast based, instant gratification fuelled clientele will nto be back – again Dukan uses the protein only approach to kick start weight loss. And finally, for anyone who works in weight loss, you will know that in a number of cases the calories in versus calories out approach to dieting does not always work. In fact, for a large number of metabolically challenged clients, those with insulin resistance, PCOS and pre diabetes, if anything a high carb, low fat traditional diet approach is perhaps the worst thing we can offer. A diet such as Dukan does give you an opportunity to significantly alter the profiles of carbs, protein and fat and often induce weight loss in individuals who thus far have been unsuccessful in losing weight using a more traditional approach.

So, what do I think as a nutritionist about the Dukan approach? Personally, I could think of nothing worse than eating only protein for a day and would rather carry a few extra kg than put myself through this deprivation. For my client though, it is a different story. I have used more extreme diets including Dukan in my practice, particularly for clients who have severe metabolic issues after years of dieting with good results. It is not the only answer but can be an option for those who have tried a range of other approaches with no results. They do not necessarily do it forever, but compared to some of the diets and detoxes out there, Dukan is a viable option, at least in the short term to shift weight initially.


Whenever a new program comes out and health professionals step onto their soapbox whining about the issues with the latest diet craze, without proposing any other viable options for those people who need to lose weight quickly, I always keep in mind that it is not my job to tell them how to lose weight but to help them lose it and if Dukan can help in times, so be it. It is a diet, not a political empire and as long as it does not cause undue damage what is the big issue?