Slimming Strategy

It's not called a 'slimming campaign' for nothing!  You need to plan and to be organised.

If both you and your kitchen are ready for the diet to begin in earnest your success is assured.

Where does your problem lie?  No, no, not the fat - the food!  In the kitchen?  Where the food is!  First let's get it all ONLY in the kitchen, if you have ANY elsewhere, move it!  For example sweets or nuts in a dish in the lounge, if you pass tempting goodies regularly it follows that you will BE TEMPTED.  So, MOVE IT into the kitchen let's have the possible problems in only one area.

O.K. Let's go into the kitchen, is any food visible?  Biscuit barrel - cake tin- do you keep any goodies either in or perhaps even on the bread bin?  Put ANYTHING that is tempting completely OUT OF SIGHT! We need to go even one step further.  Open the cupboards, take anything that is tempting and either move it to a less-used cupboard or up to the top shelves.

Check out the fridge and do the same thing, move the tempting items to the rear or the bottom.  Now the substitutes for those highly fattening baddies, place all your favourite foods that you know are helpful to your slimming campaign at eye level in the cupboards and the front of the fridge.

So, the first thing you see when you arrive home, usually hungry, will be the right sort of foods to assist your diet.

Some of you are now nodding your heads wisely and thinking what good advice.  You may have even heard it before!  What did you do about it when you heard it then?  Nothing?  Most of you, anyway.  This time, take heed and DO IT!  You will really find it helps.

If you're going to diet you need to alter some aspects of your life and assisting yourself with less temptation is one of the first and indeed, one of the easier ones.

Right, now your existing storage space is reorganised.  The next step is planning, some menu planning, contingency planning and shopping planning.

MENU PLANNING

Notice that we said SOME menu planning.  Successful diets depend quite largely on this, however, many dieters are resistant to mapping out a whole week's eating and sticking to it.  Schedules alter, the unexpected happens, you might just not fancy the meal that you had planned for that day.

However, to plan at the same time each week a reasonable number of meals so that you are not in the situation of arriving home and thinking  ' Well, what can I have to eat'  Foods can then be cooked or prepared in advance, sometimes even cooked beforehand, soup for example, or perhaps a casserole put in the slow cooker, if you're lucky enough to have one, in the morning to be ready for your arrival home in the evening.

Another contingency possibility, with the use of a freezer or microwave is to batch cook.  Especially useful for those of you with large families whose staple diets include certain types of foods not especially helpful to weight reduction.  Having cooked a 'pie and chip' type meal for the family  to stop and then cook a separate meal for yourself is sometimes just not on!

So when cooking next a suitable meal how about doing extra, plating them and then freezing so you can simply defrost in the microwave next time the family are eating highly fattening foods, or even for those days when you just don't feel like cooking.

Those aids we have just mentioned, slow cooker, microwaves and freezers and very helpful in a diet, weight reduction situation.  Remember when you bought them, you told your husband just how beneficial they would be to you?  Do you use them to their best advantage now?

Look around your kitchen, what else is there that would help?

Scales, the most important item, they should be kept on the work surface in a prominent position so they can be used ALL THE TIME, unless they are wall mounted which again should be in the closest possible position to your most used work surface.    It is not one scrap of good to have kitchen scales, say that you're on a diet and not use them.

Electric knives or slicers, although these do not figure in everyone's idea of essential kitchen apparatus if you do have they will really help your diet.  Food sliced thinly goes further, therefore saving calories and money!

Food Shopping.  With a LIST.  Look around you when next in the supermarket, how many people do you see with a list?  Very few!  Making a list will have two results.  Firstly, if you do it when you plan your menus and go through your food cupboards you will always have plenty of the 'right' type of foods suitable to your weight reduction way of eating.  Secondly, if you stick to it you will save money because it will stop you  making all those impulse buys which not only mount the bill up but almost always mount the calories up!