Croissants - they look nice, but won't satisfy your appetite

Following on from my previous post on the top 10 most satiating foods for dieters to eat, I thought it would also be interesting to look at 10 of the least filling foods. Not only are they are the least filling, but they’re also likely to seriously wreck your diet intentions.

This list of diet-busting, un-filling foods was compiled by Slimming World and features some of the worst foods you could eat when you’re trying to lose weight. I’ll admit that some of these items used to feature in my diet, before I got health and diet conscious, and I’ll bet that lots of you have probably eaten your fair share of them too!

Most of the foods are high in calories, high in fat and saturated fat, low in fibre, low in lean meat and low in moisture, so no wonder they don’t do you can good. Speciality coffees, such as coffee mocha, may taste gorgeous, but a large mug with whipped cream contains a whopping 490 kcal and 16g of saturated fat. It makes you think, doesn’t it?

It’s not the biggest surprise that deep fried confectionary bars, like deep fried Mars bars, are on the list, as they’re laden with fat to start with, before they’re even plunged into deep hot fat. It’s not something I’ve ever tried (have you?), but definitely won’t be now that I know it would contain 420 kcal.

I’ll admit to enjoying an occasional croissant or doughnut, but purely as a treat, which is a good job as croissants contain 400-500 kcals and doughnuts contain 200-300 kcals, plus lots of fat. With all of these foods, and dieting as a whole, eating in moderation is key – there’s no harm in occasionally having a treat and indulging in something with lots of calories in, just don’t eat it all the time if you want to lose weight!

Here’s the top 10 list of the least filling foods for you to see in full:

1. Crisps
2. Speciality coffees
3. Takeaway pizzas with cheese or meat toppings
4. Takeaway thin fries
5. Deep fried confectionary or chocolate bars
6. Doughnuts
7. Luxury full-fat ice cream
8. Cola and other sugar-laden soft drinks
9. Smoothies
10. Croissants

In many cases, there are good diet-friendly alternatives to all these foods and it’s easy to adapt to healthier options. For example, if you’re looking for an alternative to full-fat ice cream, then you could try my new low fat vanilla ice cream recipe!

Post from: Dieting Delilah

Fill up on a jacket potato

As a dieter, I’m always on the lookout for foods to include in my diet that will fill me up and keep hunger pangs at bay. So I was interested to read some new research by Slimming World that claims to have identified the top 10 most satiating, or satisfying, foods.

Research by Slimming World involved sifting through details of a massive 40,000 different foods to identify those that are the best for dieters are eat, due to their appetite satisfying ability. One of the common reasons why people abandon diets, or give in and eat the wrong foods, is that they’re hungry. If what you do eat fills you up well, then it’s common sense that you’re less likely to go on and eating binge or snack on unhealthy foods.

The top 10 list that they came up with has some interesting items on it. I’d personally expected to see some wholewheat pasta or wholemeal bread on the list, due to their high fibre content, but although they certainly are filling, they’ve not made it into the top 10.

Some of the items are a bit of a surprise – mushy peas for tea, anyone? – but there are some of my diet favourites listed. I’m a big fan of eating natural low fat yogurt, jacket potatoes and eggs in their many forms, so it’s good to see I’m doing it right with these. I didn’t know that wild boiled rice has more fibre in it than plain old white rice though, so plan to try some of this soon.

If you’re keen to get eating these filling foods, then according to Slimming World, these are the top 10 most satiating foods:

1. Lean meat
2. Mushy peas
3. Potatoes with skins
4. Noodle soup made with ramen noodles, and tofu or Quorn
5. Tuna chunks in spring water or fresh tuna
6. Mexican style three bean salad
7. Boiled wild rice
8. Eggs – boiled, poached, scrambled or dry fried
9. Natural low fat yogurt and skimmed milk soft cheeses
10. Fresh fruit and vegetables

If you’re keen to try and include other foods in your diet that help satisfy you and keep you feeling fuller for longer, then Dr James Stubbs, a Slimming World nutrition expert, recommends looking for foods which are:

* High in fibre
* High in protein and complex carbohydrates
* High in volume and low in energy density
* High in moisture content

Post from: Dieting Delilah

Low fat vanilla ice cream

I love ice cream and in the summer it’s hard to resist an ice cream when the weather is hot. Whilst most ice cream is sadly rather laden in calories, here’s a fab recipe I’ve created to cure those ice cream cravings and help keep you on track with your dieting.

A few years back, I invested in a small ice cream maker. It’s nothing fancy, just a basic ice cream maker that makes enough ice cream for a small tub. It came complete with a book of recipes and I’ve had fun trying them out. However, most of them aren’t diet friendly, as they’re laden with double cream or sugar (although they do make delicious ice cream for special occasions!).

So, I’ve been determined to try and develop an ice cream recipe that won’t wreck my good dieting intentions. I’ve come up with this low fat vanilla ice cream, which substitutes the cream for fat free fromage frais and the sugar for a sugar substitute. Here’s the recipe.

Ice Cream Ingredients

350g of fat free fromage frais
3 eggs, separated
6 teaspoons of low fat sugar substitute
1 vanilla pod

How to Make My Diet Friendly Vanilla Ice Cream

1. Whisk up the egg whites until they reach the stiff peak stage. Spoon in the sugar substitute and gently fold it in.
2. Beat together the egg yolks, then add them to the egg whites and stir lightly. Add the fromage frais to the mixture and fold in.
3. Scoop out the contents of the vanilla pod and stir it in.
4. Once your mixture is complete, pour it all into an ice cream maker and churn for the standard recommended time or until the mixture looks like soft ice cream.
5. Empty the ice cream out and either eat some straight away (I bet you won’t be able to resist it!) or move it to your freezer to freeze further.

I’ve only tried making this with an ice cream maker, so am not sure how it would work without the churning. I’ve not worked out the exact calories or fat in this yet, but I think it would be quite low, as a lot of fromage frais on the market is virtually fat free, if you choose carefully. The only real consideration is the eggs.

I tend to serve the low fat ice cream with fresh fruit – it’s the perfect accompaniment to strawberries. I’m sure you could easily adapt the recipe further to use a low fat flavoured fromage frais to create something a bit different if you prefer.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I have!

Post from: Dieting Delilah

Motivational Photos

Use photos to aid motivation

This can be a bit scary – but be brave, as it does help! Take a photo of yourself before you start your diet and keep it somewhere prominent, like on a shelf in your bedroom or on a noticeboard. If you don’t want all and sundry and seeing it (and I quite understand), then stick inside your diary or a notebook.

When you’re feeling under pressure with dieting or feel like you want to give up, look back at the picture to give yourself a visual reminder of why you’re dieting. You may like to also pair the picture up with and older photo of you when you were at a weight you were happy with.

Record Your Measurements

Regularly weighing yourself once a week is a good way of seeing how you weight is changing, but to boost your motivation further, it’s a good idea to regularly take your bodily measurements too. As you lose weight, your measurements will change and, sometimes, when your weight appears to be moving at a slower pace, seeing your new measurements can be reassuring.

Don’t take your measurements too often, but perhaps record them on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. Keep a record of each measurement and, hopefully, you’ll eventually get to benefit from seeing how much they’ve each gone down.

Set Yourself Goals

I’ve found that it helps to set myself goals with dieting and that helps keep me motivated from month to month. For example, you could set yourself a goal for losing weight ready to go on holiday, promise yourself that you’ll buy a new dress for a party when you lose a stone or have a special day out when you reach your next weight loss goal.

Little goals along the way can help, but having big or special goals on the horizon can keep your motivation going even more.

Dieting is hard work, but having all sort of motivation factors to help you on your way can make the process easier. Good luck with your dieting!

Have you got any motivation tricks that you use? I’d love to your thoughts!

Post from: Dieting Delilah

Gorgeous low fat chocolate cake

Trying to be good with dieting gets so hard sometimes, especially when other people keep offering you up gorgeous looking cakes. After being tormented by sponges and chocolate cakes at numerous events and coffee dates recently, I launched a hunt for the perfect low fat chocolate cake.

The good news is that I’ve found it!

Yes, it’s true, there really does seem to be such a thing as a low fat chocolate cake. I’ve tried out various recipes over the last few months, some that worked, and some that didn’t, and finally came to the conclusion that this one is the best for those of us watching our fat intake.

It looks chocolatey, the sponge is gorgeously light and it tastes delicious too, yet the only fat in this cake is in the eggs.  What’s more, you can adapt the filling, depending on how many calories you want to add, and it’s versatile enough to be suitable for a range of occasions.

Are your taste buds tingling yet? I hope so! Here’s the all important recipe.

Low Fat Chocolate Sponge Cake

Ingredients

Four large eggs
125g caster sugar
100g plain flour
25g cocoa
One punnet of strawberries
Icing sugar for dusting

Method

1. Sift together the flour and the cocoa powder.

2. Whisk together the eggs and caster sugar. The aim is to whisk it until the mixture becomes thick, foamy and doubled in volume. This may up to 10 minutes, but is worth it, as the more air that gets whisked in, the lighter the sponge will be.

3. Fold in the cocoa and flour, but avoid beating or whisking again, as this will disturb the air that you’ve carefully whisked in.

4. Grease and line two sandwich cake tins, approximately 18-20cm in size. Divide the mixture into the two tins and bake in a preheated oven, 180C/Gas mark 4, for 25 – 30 minutes. The cake should be light and springy to the touch when it’s cooked. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

When the cake has cooled, slice the strawberries up, leaving a few whole. Fill the cake with the sliced strawberries. Dust with a small sprinkling of icing sugar and decorate with the whole strawberries.
For occasions when you need an extra chocolate fix, drizzle melted dark chocolate inside for an extra yummy filling. Or you could add some crème fraiche to the filling too.

Eat and enjoy! Hope you love this low fat chocolate cake recipe as much as I do.

Post from: Dieting Delilah

Losing weight with baby foods

Jennifer Aniston does a Baby Food Diet

In fact, the media is going one step further in naming her diet the Baby Food Diet. Aniston doesn’t seem impressed by this media label – well, who would, when it talks about baby food? – but the fact of the matter remains that she’s said she’s eating a diet mostly made up of small portions of pureed food.

The diet idea was created for Aniston by celebrity trainer, Tracy Anderson, who’s also worked with big names such as Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow. The cleanse eating plan is based on the idea of eating up to 14 small portions of pureed food throughout the day, followed by a healthy adult dinner in the evening. The purees are all made from healthy foods, such as fruits and vegetables, although Tracy Anderson was quoted as mentioning a chocolate pudding too, which doesn’t exactly sound super healthy!

Take care of your health - don’t exaggerate!

The idea of a liquid cleanse isn’t new and is something that often crops up in detox plans, but it’s not exactly the most exiting diet regime. You may get to ‘eat’ regularly throughout the day, but the portions are small and you lose all the pleasure of eating, chewing and digesting food, as practically everything is all mushed up and pureed.

Not surprisingly, when you’re eating very small amounts, the weight does come off. Jennifer Anison reportedly lost 7lbs in a week whilst doing the pureed cleanse programme. She wanted to lose a bit of extra weight before heading to Hawaii to film her latest movie, Just Go With It.

The pureed baby food cleanse diet doesn’t sound like a healthy long term diet for me, so I think I’ll be giving this one a miss. If you want to follow Aniston’s example, don’t do it for more than a couple of days at a time and remember to eat a good, healthy balanced dinner, with plenty of carbohydrates and vegetables, in the evening.

Post from: Dieting Delilah

Me a chocoholic - never!

OK, so Easter is nearly upon us and that dreaded moment for a chocoholic is rapidly heading your way, when you simply cannot offend your friend, partner or possibly even still your mom - and refuse, oh so absolutely refuse, that simply divine looking chocolate egg that’s been bought for you. Of course you promise yourself you’ll be really good, accept the gift graciously and politely but firmly say “Oh no, I couldn’t possibly open it now having only just finished eating …”. As a recovering chocoholic you will, of course, then just take it back to your place and absolutely not ever open it, but will perhaps just save it for when some friends come round instead, so they can eat it for you.

You can resist the Easter Egg!

You have to resist ...

Having spent the last three months shedding all the weight you put on over Christmas and the New Year, having ‘taken the vow’ to forget chocolate - resisting opening the Easter Egg is going to be no big deal at all. After all, since making that New Years resolution not to even buy any candies as part of your diet, you’ve not even thought about buying any chocolate and - if you don’t buy it you can’t eat it, simple really isn’t it? So far the diets gone really well, you’ve dropped two dress sizes, feel fitter than you have been for years and all because of your new strong will. But then, as a recovering chocoholic, with chocolate suddenly back in your life, the dark thoughts start to enter your head - “Mmm I wonder if my friends fancy coming round for girl’s night in, so they can eat the chocolate for me before I feel tempted”. Why only yesterday wasn’t everyone saying how they’d love see that blockbuster movie that’s just out for rental? Oh dear, you’ve already ordered the movie, but no one else can come around tonight, what shall you do?

Now you’ve done it!

Well needless to say you’re going to watch that movie and we all know how great it is to be on your own watching a movie! Next thing you know you’re feeling like ‘Billie no mates’ and that Easter Egg doesn’t look quite as big as it did and perhaps you could open it yourself and just have a little bit of it. But, we all know where this is going - it’s going to end in tears as just the same as for an alcoholic, one drink is never enough; and sure enough before you know it the whole egg is gone and you’re heading off to the all-night store for more … and another one bites the dust!

Related: Easter Holiday Food

Yours,

Dieting Delilah

Post from: Dieting Delilah

What is hypnosis?

Hypnosis is a deep relaxation which can operates at your subconscious.

Basically hypnosis is a condition of very deep relaxation, it is also referred as trance. You are not asleep, but your eyes are closed and you have full control over your body and you notice what happens around you. Often it is compared with changed attentiveness because you are concentrated on all inner happenings and you do not pay attention to your surroundings.

Methods

Someone who hypnotizes you, is called a hypnotist. He talks to you in a very calming tone and sometimes makes you concentrate on a certain object which will help you to ignore the surroundings. Counting is also used to focus all the concentration. You may have seen that sometimes when the hypnotist says “I count to three, then you are totally relaxed” and the person falls into a trance.

Self hypnosis is also a way to fall into relaxation but it has to be mentioned that self hypnosis causes only light or medium trances but no deep ones. This method is rather intended to relax after an exhausting day a few minutes and to reduce stress. Often you imagine being in another world and sending all problems and sorrows away which causes a very relaxed condition and helps you to deal with everyday life.

Focusing an object helps ignoring the surroundings.

Hypnosis helps losing weight

Hypnosis is not a conventional diet because it operates on our subconscious. During the trance we fix a new picture of our body in our mind, we also fix a new type of nutrition and new goals. The trance works at another level of our mind: Suddenly we eat less without being hungry, we eat healthier without having the munchies for sweets or burgers and we lose weight without suffering.  Generally speaking we influence our sensation of satiety and this causes such wonderful results. Sounds a bit too good to be true or? But you are right: There is a catch. Because a hypnotist is very expensive and you will need more than one session; there is an elaborate preliminary talk and then the hypnosis sessions themselves.

Hypnosis for everyone

Hypnosis Audio CD guide you through the trance.

Concerning the aspect, that professional hypnotists are very expensive, you can try self hypnosis with the help of books and CDs. One of the most popular and successful hypnotists in the area of losing weight is Steven Gurgevich. He is a specialist in mind-body medicine and guides you through different stages of hypnosis and helps you losing weight by influencing the subconscious. Gurgevich published a lot of different books and audio CD’s on this topic and in my opinion it is worth a try and it looks much more serious to me than all these zero-calories and anti-delicious-meal diets. Damien Young is also a specialist in this area and he published some Audio CD’s.

2 Self Hypnosis CD’s for Weight Loss Empowerment and Exercise Motivation Train Your Brain for Weight Loss Price: $36.99 on Amazon

Self Hypnosis Diet CD

The Self-Hypnosis Diet: Use the Power of Your Mind to Reach Your Perfect Weight (Hardcover) Self-Hypnosis Diet Price: $14.93 on Amazon

Hypnosis Diet Book

In conclusion I want to mention that I am a bit skeptical if just hypnosis itself can cause weight losing but I really like the aspect of sustaining self-confidence and accepting your body. If any of you had tried out hypnosis to lose weight it would be great if you could talk about it.

Yours, Delilah

Post from: Dieting Delilah

Buying presents is like Bungee Jumping or Skydiving

Tomorrow I will buy the last two presents for my Mum and for my Dad and than I have finished this present-mania. Although I am always late, this year I do not have to leave the house on 24th of December to buy the last things . You see: I am getting better.

This is pure adrenaline - I need this :)

I do love my family! Yes! I promise … or at least mostly …

In my family the big Christmas party takes place every year at the house or flat of a family member, we rotate in arranging this evening. This year it is my turn and I spent hours and days and weeks of thinking of what I should cook. There is not only the question of which meal because in my family there are all different kinds of food allergies and dislikes and the meal has to factor this aspects in. This year I decided not minding calories or fat contents because you should enjoy the evening and leaving the dieting thoughts for one day behind.

Let us list all absolutely forbidden and hated foods:

My sister: allergy to hazelnuts
Daddy: allergy to celery
Mother-in-law: hates all kind of raw fish (means: no sushi … damn!)
Daughter: hates curd cheese (no problem. I also hate this stuff)
Myself: steamed carrots and bowels (iiiiihhhhh!!)

With these instructions I started browsing through all my cookbooks and the Internet, asking friends and watching Jamie Oliver’s cooking show to find the perfect Christmas dinner. It was not easy but I think I have found something very nice which satisfies all hungry guests.

Delilah’s perfect Christmas dinner

The appetizer will be wild boar bacon with rocket and garlic dressing. I will form the wild boar bacon into rolls and put the rocket inside, garlic dressing over it and ready. This can also be offered as finger food. The main dish will be salmon filet (Mommy-in-law do not worry, nothing raw will be on your plate! I promise.) with leaf spinach, some self made noodles and white wine sauce. My personal highlight will be the dessert because I will offer a mousse au chocolat made of white chocolate with hot cherries and vanilla sauce. Yes, that i what I will prepare for my family at Christmas evening. Lots of work, but I am really looking forward to this day.

This is what a perfect Christmas dinner should look like.

I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year! Enjoy the feast days.

Yours,  Delilah

Post from: Dieting Delilah

I found the ten craziest celebrity dieting tricks and want to present you these, granted, sometimes very weird, ideas and methods.

1. Jennifer Aniston: Sonoma

Jennifer Aniston uses small plates to reduce the amount of food.

Small plates, fresh products and enjoying life and eating: These are the three corner pillars of the Sonoma diet. It is named after a city in California and the inventor Connie Gutterson parts the food into allowed and forbidden food. Another important factor in this diet is the factor of plate size because sonoma says that you should use plates at the size of 18 centimeters in the morning and for lunch and dinner you should use plates at the size at 23 centimeters. These small plates prevent putting too much food onto the plate. Celebrities like Jennifer Aniston and Daryl Hannah rely on this method. Some people criticize that this diet only has one schedule for all people and that it does not adapt to the different needs of people. Seriously it is not very realistic for a man who is two meters tall and weighs 400 pounds to advise using a plate at the size of 18 centimeters but Jennifer seems to be happy with her doll plates.

2.Beyoncé: Master Cleanser

Everybody’s darling Beyoncé lost 22 pounds with the help of Master Cleanser. It is actually a drink, consisting of lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper. Sounds delicious … This drink detoxicates the body when you ingest up to twelve glasses of it, at least six glasses are essential. Subsidiary you should drink herb tea. Well, if it helps … Enjoy!

Beyoncé never leaves the house without Master Cleanser.

3. Cindy Crawford: Vinegar

She is 43 years old but is in shape like a 20-year-old supermodel. Now we have the secret behind this wonder: Cindy takes a sip of vinegar just before she eats something. Just thinking about drinking pure vinegar dislodges every feeling of hunger for me, so maybe this weird habit really works for Cindy. Her second trick is to have five meals, distributed over the whole day, because you should never be very hungry, otherwise the body saves everything you give him. That sounds sensibly, at least the thing with five meals.

You see: Vinegar works!

4. Oprah Winfrey: water-ice

The talkshow queen has had always problems with her weight and has tried out many different diets. Once she said that she feels ashamed of putting on and losing weight all the time. It is her biggest wish to lose weight and, overall, to stay slim. Her newest dieting trick: water-ice. When she feels the lust of something sweet, she eats some water-ice because this has less calories than ice cream.

Substitutional satisfaction for Oprah: Water-ice

5. Victoria Beckham: Sashimi and berries

No surprise that Mrs. Beckham has her place in this listing. After all she invented the jeans size “zero” which is the smallest existing size for adult women. Wearing size zero also shows that you have a model’s measurements  and that your body is perfectly in shape. In my opinion too many woman strive for wearing these jeans. It is said that this size corresponds with children sizes. To wear her size zero, Victoria stays extremely thin, her legs look like two thin sticks. Her nutrition includes only fish, fruits and vegetables, she never eats up, she always leaves one third of every meal over. The weird combination of Sashimi and berries play the biggest role in her nutrition. You should follow all these measures for an unhealthy, hungry and a haggard body.

Victoria Beckham wearing size zero. Worth adopting?

6. Carmen Electra: Grapefruit oil

The secret of the beauties Carmen Electra and Jennifer Lopez is the smell of grapefruits. They always carry one small bottle of grapefruit oil with them and if the craving of sweets appears, they snuffle the oil. Studies prove the effect of curbing appetite.

Grapefruit oil against hunger: Seems to work.

7. Madonna: Macrobiotics

The queen of pop is uncompromising the japan macrobiotics diet. This diet defines eating as an interaction of Yin and Yang. This nutrition advises above all grain products, steamed vegetable,brown rice, soy products and sometimes small amounts of fish. Drinking is only allowed when you are very thirsty. That sounds monotonously and indeed: it is! This way of living is not only monotonously but also one of the most contentious diets because it is restricted to a very small range of food. Additionally Madonna keeps her body fit with yoga and pilates. Children are dissuaded from this diet, because it is too one-sided and actually this nutrition is not even advisable for adults.

Macrobiotic nutrition: If it helps ...

8. Renée Zellweger: Cabbage soup

Renée Zellweger alias Bridget Jones knows how to diet, after all she had to put on 30 pounds for this role. Of course she wanted to lose this weight again and therefore she relies on the cabbage soup diet. This diet is very radical because you only eat cabbage soup and some vegetable and drink at least two liters of water to neutralize the sourness of the soup. You should not realize this diet longer than one week because the body gets very little energy from this soup and the body works only on the back burner.

During the shooting programme for Bridget Jones and 6 month later.

9. Eva Mendes: Factor 5 diet

This is the new trend, inventor Harley Pasternak developed the Factor 5 diet. Celebrities like Alicia Keys, Halle Berry, Jessica Simpson and Eva Mendes follow the rules of this diet. It says that the diet should last five weeks, you should have five meals a day (Yes, Cindy Crawford, you are right!), each meal should consist of five ingredients, the workouts should last 25 minutes and you have five days of cheating. The advantage of the diet: It is easy to memorize the rules.

Eva Mendes keeps in shape with the Factor 5 diet.

10. Heidi Klum: New-York-diet

The most popular diet, developed by Henry Kirsch: The New York diet which forbids carbohydrates and fruits but allows a lot of proteins. Therefore Heidi ate up to twelve eggs (without yolk) and drank protein shakes. We have again the advice of having five meals a day and the combination of the three corner pillars nutrition, sports and discipline. The New York diet helped Heidi to get back her great body after her pregnancy and after eight weeks she had her appearance at the legendary Victoria’s Secret Show.

Eight weeks after her pregnancy she entered the Victoria's Secret catwalk.

Post from: Dieting Delilah