Sam Pease: weight-loss tips

Losing weight is one of the most common New Year’s resolutions people have, but making your diet stick can be tricky. Here Sam Pease, author of bestselling diet book Eat Less Crap Lose That Fat, shares a couple of tips to kick start your weight loss...

Do any of the following sound familiar? ‘Today I’m giving up cake, sweets, bread, cheese, chocolate, coffee, fast food, chips’, ‘I’m going to exercise three times a week’, ‘I’ll lose 5 kilos this month’, ‘I’ll train for a marathon’ . . . We’ve all made statements like this to ourselves. We set unrealistic expectations of what we, mere mortals, can achieve, and then, when we don’t meet our goals, we feel guilty and sad. Then we eat. At high speed. This is usually followed by a period of self-hatred for not having the discipline to do something as simple as not eating chocolate. It’s a very dangerous self-loathing cycle.

Apparently, most women think negatively about their body at least 13 times a day. Some women despise their shape up to 100 times each day — that’s hardcore fat shame. Wouldn’t it just be easier to spend that time making conscious choices? I’ve learnt, through research, trial and error, that minor simple adjustments to the way I eat and move can result in weight loss. I don’t like to exercise, and I need to eat carbs, chips and cheese most days, so inventing a plan to incorporate my reality was essential.

Eat Less Crap Lose That Fat will finally get your body back into shape – without the demanding sacrifices of traditional diets, because nobody wants to give up their guilty pleasures, exercise three times a week and start food-elimination diets. That’s not fun. Or sustainable. It’s also totally impractical for people with busy lives, jobs and children. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve tried and failed in the past; my book is a fun, easy-to-read guide to weight loss that will give you the tips and confidence to finally shake off those extra kilos you’ve been lugging around.

Here are just a couple of tips to get you started . . .

Take a body mugshot

Seeing yourself on camera is a weight-loss wake-up call. Mine came on the day of my son’s fourth birthday party. I was uploading photos from my camera and thought, ‘Who’s that fat woman in the red top?’ I honestly had no idea. I looked at what she was wearing. ‘That’s odd . . . we’re wearing the same top.’ I leaned closer to the computer and took a good look. ‘Well, it sort of looks like me,’ I thought, ‘but it can’t be – that woman is huuuge.’ Then my heartbeat sped up, my lips crumbled and I choked, ‘That is me – and I’m fat!’ I wept for a day and a half. Then I mopped up the tear-puddle around me, and developed this diet.

Before you do anything else, you need to take a body mugshot – a photo of yourself in your underwear. Not your fancy keep-it-all-in underwear either – put your ugly knickers on, the unglamorous ones you wear when you have your period. Now, take a deep breath and take a full-length, front-on photo. Take one from the side as well. Don’t suck your gut in and don’t even think about adopting flattering selfie-style poses. Upload it to your computer so you can see yourself in all your glory. Are you happy with the way you look? Probably not, but that’s okay. Understand that this is what you look like. Cry. Be angry with yourself. Deal with it. Move on. Whatever this body mugshot makes you feel, accept that the before shot is crucial to achieving the after shot. Now, weigh yourself. Memorise this number . . . in a few months, it will be a thing of the past.

Watch your mouth

I have a confession to make: I’m a carb junkie. A bread monster. A bakery beast. I can eat bread until I burst. Well, I used to. We all have comfort-stuffing foods.  But you know that it’s ridiculous to eat a whole tub of ice-cream, and you know that you don’t need to eat an entire pizza. Put the giant bar of chocolate down. Back away from the chips. I’m not saying you have to give up your comfort foods completely (there’s no way I could survive without them), but you do need to eat less if you want to slim down. This diet doesn’t prohibit any of the comfort foods you crave, it just limits them.

If it’s a crap food, just eat half. If I’m eating cake, I eat half of what I’d normally scoff, then I quickly throw the rest in the garbage. Immediately. I even make sure that it goes underneath other rubbish so that I’m not tempted to fish it out and finish it. Not that I’ve ever done that . . . I’m sure I’ve been tempted, though . . . If you don’t want to exercise (and I sure as hell don’t), then you have to start nibbling the foods that you know make you fat. Nibbling is key. Practise nibbling at your next meal. It feels weird to begin with, but it works. My guilty pleasure is a modest amount of nutty or passionfruit chocolate, which I eat on 5 out of every 10 days. I either nibble miniature chocolate bars that are about the size of two to three pieces of chocolate, or I eat a few bites of a snack-size bar and throw the rest away. There’s no point ‘saving the rest for tomorrow’ – that will never happen. It’ll be demolished within an hour. Do yourself a favour, and ditch it before you finish it.

So where do you begin? You begin right now. This is not a diet that you begin ‘on Monday’, or ‘tomorrow’, or ‘after my birthday’ — you start today. It’s easier than you think. Truly. I lost 28 kilos creating this diet, so I know it works. Whether you want to lose 5, 50 or 500 kilos, it’ll work for you, too. You just have to eat less. And get off your fat ass.