How I lost 35kg in 12 months. Coffee & Junk Food -Part 3
Let us be honest. At one point or another in your life you craved junk food, whether that may be chocolates, cookies, cakes or other delicious treats. And for some of us like myself the cravings can often get the best of us. There are also so many opportunities to eat junk food. Birthdays, weddings, Christmas celebrations, work, the list goes on and on. So can someone who cannot help themselves but eat junk food deal with it and change things around?
I always had a massive sweet tooth. For one of my birthday’s I got a whole Tiramisu cake and ate it all by myself! Now that I think about it, it scares me to think that I was able to do that without hesitation. It’s not just birthdays. I work in an office filled with people who love their tea and biscuits. I don’t think I have ever met a bunch of people who enjoy anything else more than that. So with tins filled to the brim with cookies it was very hard not to go and binge on them and I soon developed a horrible habit of eating several cookies every hour.
When I finally realised that it was time to change to loose all that weight, this was truly the hardest part. I couldn't go cold turkey and I couldn't carry on like this so, I started changing one thing at a time until eventually I changed enough to make a real difference in my diet.
During office hours and even at home, the hardest part was not eating those biscuits, chocolates, doughnuts and big slices of cake that people kept bringing into the office. Unfortunately, there is no quick fix when it comes to these cravings or a substitute that I could have. If someone would bring something in, just like everyone else I just had to have some.
I found that a good way to cut down on the junk food like cakes and chocolates, was counting how many I have eaten or downsizing the slices I would get. If there was a box of chocolates or cookies, simply count a maximum number you could have. My maximum number was 5. At first, things were hard and more often than not I would eat 6 or 7 and feel guilty afterwards, but with time it became easier keeping to the set number.
With cakes and all those Krispy Kreme doughnuts, I could not have a maximum number, no matter how much I wanted one! So the doughnuts, I cut in half. I would eat one half there and then with a cup of tea and leave the other half for later. Cake slices were a bit more difficult. I knew the piece size that I wanted but if I were to eat it, then my hard day’s work would be wasted. So I started cutting pieces that were roughly the same thickness as my index finger.
Once I had all those treats, instead of munching on them like a hungry gremlin, I would place them on my desk next to me or in my desk drawers and see how long I could go without eating it. Once my craving for the treat became too great, I would eat them. I found that the longer I waited to eat them, the less I wanted more afterwards. This of course may not work for everyone, and I am speaking from my own personal experience.
Coffee
A lot of you might not think that coffee is that unhealthy. We have it every day sometimes more than once a day. But what we do not realise is that there is a lot more things in coffee than we are aware of.
In part 2 of my story I wrote about how milk was a massive part of my diet. The reason milk was such a big part of my diet, was because I was in love with lattes. I still am to be honest. I was purchasing 2 to 3 lattes a day from places like Starbucks without even realising the kilos I was gaining from just one of those.
I did not want to completely give up lattes so I changed how many I drank. Over a period of about 1 month I went from drinking 3 a day to drinking 1 a day. To further my diet, I started making my own lattes with skimmed milk. I would purchase ground coffee beans and make my own whether I was working from home or from the office. This didn't just help with my weight loss, it also helped with my health.
Side note: I also started exchanging my chocolate bars with chocolate cereal bars. There is so much choice out there and especially with Fibre One now being on the market, it was a no brainer. I then stopped eating my blueberry muffins with my morning coffee and instead exchanged those for the Go Ahead morning biscuits. When I wasn’t having my morning coffee, I would have some very sugary breakfast cereal which I then changed to plain porridge with a dash of honey on top. During lunch, I would always have a pack of crisps which I then exchanged for a pack of popcorn.
So to sum it all up, I did not completely cut out junk food and coffee. I swapped what I could for healthier versions, counted or measured the pieces I ate and gradually reduced the amount of coffee I drank over a period of about a month.
Stay tuned for part 4!
Meile xoxox
