The Healthy Diet Review

I’ve spent most of my career preaching about exercise, and it’s been quite a long time at that. It’s only recently that I’ve realised that it’s become somewhat of an obsession, focussing on balancing calories in and calories out to maintain what I have considered to be a healthy weight.

Having recently seen a friend an mentor start to suffer from weight problems, I’ve begun to see that my constant focus on the exercise I’ve been doing has actually created a bit of a monster. It has take a good and long hard look in the mirror, but I’m now seeing that the result has been eating more to fuel the exercise I’m doing, while I was convincing myself it was the other way around.

We’ve all seen people that spend hours a day body-building, and read about those that need to consume five thousand or more calories a day to support their physique, but we also all have our suspicions that it’s a lifestyle that’s unsustainable if a goal is old age, as our bodies simply aren’t design to cope with that level of strain day after day, month after month, and almost certainly year after year.

What I was blind to, however, was the simple fact that it doesn’t have to be the weight lifting types that need to be careful to avoid falling into the trap of overworking their body. I was doing exactly the same thing. If you’re female and consuming 3500 to 4000 calories a day, you must be putting your body under huge strain to burn off up to half of that through exercise every day. For reference, that’s because the recommended healthy intake for women is around 2000 calories a day, and that’s based on a healthy level of exercise.

It was when the penny dropped that I realised food was as much my problem as it was for someone that most of us would consider to be grossly overweight. Things needed to change, and change quickly. Another of my psychological roadblocks is that I can lose focus quickly if I don’t put things into action immediately. So, the first thing I did is I looked at my diet.

In hindsight it is glaringly obvious. Normal women don’t have regular protein shakes. If I’m honest, I have no idea where that habit even came from – probably someone at the gym that told me it was a good ideal and I blindly believed it. That was the first thing to go. Other than that, the food I was eating was healthy on the whole, i was the volume that had crept up.

Being honest with myself, I knew that I’m terrible when hungry – grouchy and miserable to be around to put it mildly. That meant the swaps needed initially to be towards low calorie ingredients, which generally tend to be vegetables. That’s when I stumbled across soup makers, and in particular the Morphy Richards 48822 here. What really appealed was the way I could just put it in the office at work, chuck some vegetables and stock in just before lunchtime and it would be ready half an hour later.

What’s even better, is I can be careful to limit ingredients per portion, then eat more if I’m still hungry. That sounds like terrible diet advice, and it would be if I was trying to lose weight. Remember, I’m not actually an unhealthy weight – I don’t want to gain much, but equally I want to slow down on the jogging and home gym time too in line with reducing my calorie intake.

What I’m finding is that while I ate enough for three people initially, over time I’m finding it far easier to eat less and less as the days fall by. I suppose in some ways that’s like any addiction – some people go ‘cold turkey’ while others find it easier to gradually cut down. That puts me firmly in camp two, and I expect my co-workers appreciate that too as on the whole my mood swings are no worse than usual!

I have to say, I’d never really paid any attention to soup makers until this episode, but they’re actually really good. I noticed the Morphy Richards ones were all on offer at the time, I don’t know if that’s a regular thing or not so do your own research.

I have to be honest, there isn’t a lot of variation in the soups I’m making so far, apart from swearing that I’m never making the pea one again. That was truly vile. Cabbage is better than I expected and I’m getting through a lot of carrots too. Next on my list it so try adding some meat in too, I suspect that might help me feel fuller quicker and for longer, so that’s got to be a good thing as well as giving me the injection of protein I’m probably lacking.

In truth, I’m quite proud of recognising and addressing the problem, and ignoring the temptation to bury my head in the sand.  I think I’m probably exercising a bit too much still, but it’s definitely all going the right way. If there’s more to say on the subject, I’ll report back in a few weeks.

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It’s no secret that regular exercise generally leads to a healthier and longer life. The problem is fitting that exercise into our busy lives. There are countless gym chains around, and more appearing each year, but until they find a magical way to put more hours into the day, it doesn’t solve the core issue that we’re just too busy. In fact, many of us are already paying for gym memberships that we don’t have time to use, so what better evidence could there be that we’re starved of the free time we need to get fitter?

The fact of the matter is that we get in from work having battled our way through the rush hour traffic and the last thing we need is to get back into the car and drive to the gym. Luckily, we have a solution! You’ll need to find a bit of space at home, but compared to the annual gym fees, we’re going to save you money. All you need to do is cancel that annual pass and tell them you’re not coming back, and divert that money into home gym equipment instead. As the name of our site implies, we’re going to help you choose and use a cross trainer at home instead. Actually, that’s not quite true, because we want you to make your choice based on the views of the experts, whereas we’ll focus on what we’re good at – helping you to use them. Those experts have written a number of cross trainer reviews to help you narrow down your choice to whatever you need, and choose the best elliptical machine based on that process.

Where we come in is to help you get the most bang for your buck, so to speak. We’re confident that with as little as half an hour a day, five days a week you could make a big difference to your life. Did you know that most people waste more than thirty minutes travelling to and from the gym for each visit? That means you’re going to be better off in terms of both time and money just by exercising at home instead.

You might be worried that you won’t get your money’s worth out of investing in your own equipment, but if you think about it, you’re not spending as much as you would on the gym anyway, so all you have to do is muster up the same level of motivation, and you’ll be well ahead of where you are today. In fact, some people even find it easier to motivate themselves to get a quick workout in before work or dinner, as there’s no-one watching like you might think in the gym.

What’s important is being active – simply doing something is likely to serve you better than doing nothing. That means if you only manage five minutes at a time to begin with, you’re doing better than letting the worry about getting started paralyse you from getting underway. Five minutes doesn’t sounds much, and it isn’t, in terms of time. What it is, though, is a critical foundation to build upon, and you’ll soon find that you’re gaining stamina, and ten minutes becomes easy and so on. Before you know it, you’ll be realising that you’ve overshot that 30 minute target while you were thinking about something else entirely! What’s more, working out is a great stress buster too – you can sweat out all the anxiety from irritating bosses and unreasonable workloads!

So, why not check our those cross trainer reviews now? Once you’ve made your choice and clicked the buy button, you can head back and read up on techniques to get started while you wait for it to arrive!

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