I was born with the typical set of genetics for an East African.  I was skinny.   My mother would fret that neighbours secretly thought I was not fed enough. Actually, I ate like a horse, and especially loved anything that involved rice or pasta.   Yet, I stayed lean, right through  college junk food fests, lavish lunches with girlfriends and late night snacks of halwa and doughnuts. Thanks to my naturally elevated metabolism.  Ah, so true that we don’t know what we’ve got till we lose it …

Then it all changed.  I recall the horror I felt when I first stepped on a treadmill after having my first child and realized that the strange sensation I was feeling when I tried to jog was excess flesh jiggling and wobbling away with each step.

I was even more horrified when the gym trainer told me:

• it’s 70% nutrition
• you can’t spot reduce
• no amount of exercise can eliminate the effects of eating junk or overating

I already knew all of this.  After all, I was a certified fitness instructor and had regularly taught group exercise classes.  I knew all about balanced diets, and that long workouts at low intensity burn the most fat blah blah blah.

But who has the time or luxury to eat sensibly and go for hours of low intensity exercise several times a week?  Certainly not a busy working mother of two.  Especially not one whose youngest kid didn’t even sleep for more than 90 minutes at a time for the first two years of his life (I’m still exhausted …)

Seven years of trying various exercise regimes, diets, miracle foods and strange rituals, all promising quick fixes to feed my vanity and get back to my pre-babies weight, taught me two things:

1. Nutrition is key, or as Mistress Krista eloquently puts it, “It’s the calories, stupid!“
2. Strength training is the single most effective way to maintain fat loss and muscle gain.

Everything else for me is just noise. Everything else is a way to get you to part with your time and often money which will likely get you short term results, only to find that you’ve gained it all back the minute you stop doing it the miracle cure / diet / detox or whatever floats your boat.

I will focus on nutrition for this post, and the ways in which to make it possible to actually love your diet, and keep it that way.

Disclaimer: I am not a licensed nutritionist or doctor.  Please consult with your health professional before making any drastic changes to your diet or beginning an exercise program.  What follows is what worked for me.

Ideally, we should all eat a raw diet with no animal products or dairy and learn how to make nut roasts entirely from organic sources.  Since I don’t have Gwyneth Paltrow’s kitchen staff, prefer my meals cooked, and shop at normal grocery stores, it’s simply a non-starter.  But there are ways you can achieve a much healthier way of eating:

1. Have fruit / vegetables with every meal, including snacks: this is an easy one, because you are adding, not taking away, from your diet.  The only trick here is variety.  Fresh is best, but if you’re pressed for time, frozen version work just as well, and they’re a microwave-minute away from being ready for consumption.
2. Eliminate sugar from 90% of your meals, including snacks: sugar is evil, yes, but no point attempting to cut all of it out.  It’s next to impossible to sustain for mere mortals like me.  So choose wisely each morning (or better yet, the night before) what will be your sugar fix, and confine it to no more than 10% of your total intake.  That means two small pieces of chocolate.  Half a doughnut.  Two tiny bites of icecream.  You get the idea.
3. Switch one complex carb each week to its to whole grain equivalent: change your bread, pasta, rice and cereals to whole versions.  One tip here is to get wholemeal food that’s a different shape to your white equivalent.  For example, get spirals instead of penne, or rolls instead of sliced bread.  It won’t feel like you have downgraded, but rather than it’s just a new shape -  works great with kids.  Within a month or so, you will be white-food-free.
4. Get the ratio right: ideally, your plate should be one half vegetables, one quarter protein, and one quarter carbohydrates.  Start with one third each, and work up.  If you stick with the ideal ratio, it really will be difficult to overeat.
5. Change the order in which you eat: start with the vegetables, then the protein, and finally the carb portion of the meal.  Eat slowly – try to take 15-20 minutes to get to the carb portion.  By the time you get there the edge is off  and the carb might even feel like dessert.

These steps are relatively easy to take, do not require blenders or weird foods, and best of all, they are sustainable.  At the end of making these changes, you will have an eating regime (not a diet!) that is rich in nutrients from all the veg, rich in fibre from the veg and whole foods, and the best part: you won’t be suffering from hunger pangs or going into sugar spikes and slumps.

Happy loving consumption, and do share your ways of staying in love with your nutritionally healthy diet.