Читать книгу Sugar Addicts’ Diet - Nicki Waterman - Страница 39

Here’s an example of Nicki’s food diary to help you see how it might look. You’ll notice that in some boxes she puts just one word and in others she puts more. This is down to personal choice – do what you think will help you most.

The times listed reflect Nicki’s routine at the time. Yours might be different – for example, you might have breakfast at 6am or perhaps you don’t have it at all! If you skip a meal, you should still write it in because it will provide you with important information about how this makes you feel physically and emotionally. Don’t forget to put the date at the top of each diary day. And if you’re feeling lazy and are tempted to let the whole diary thing slip, remember this: weight management experts say that people who don’t keep a regular food diary don’t tend to lose weight. One study found that heavier women were also more likely to under-report their daily food intake than those who were lean, so if you’re reading this book to lose weight, the diary will help you stop kidding yourself about how much you’re eating!

From this we can see:

• When Nicki didn’t eat, she felt dizzy, weak and edgy.

• When she ate something really sugary, like pick ’n’ mix, she felt happy and full of energy. But just 15 minutes later, she felt tired, edgy and a bit sad (as soon as the sugar ‘high’ has worn off).

• When she didn’t eat a proper lunch, she needed another sugar lift within an hour, suggesting that her blood sugar levels were low. The result? She went for the sweets again.

• When she grabbed a lunch, it didn’t satisfy her for long and she ended up having crisps and chocolate to stave off her hunger mid-afternoon.

• It was only following a proper meal at 7.30pm that she felt ‘contented’ – and continued to feel happy a couple of hours later.

• We could also see that she wasn’t eating enough fruit and veg.

• On a more positive note, she was getting some exercise, wasn’t watching hours of telly and wasn’t having fizzy drinks.

This was Nicki’s eating regime before she started the Sugar Addicts’ Diet. By looking at this diary, Nicki was able to see exactly how the foods she ate affected her physically and emotionally. By filling in your own diary, you can do the same. You don’t have to do it forever, but try to keep it going for at least the 21 days of the plan.

Nicki says, ‘I’ve eaten like this for years, and until I wrote it down, I had no idea of how food could affect how I felt. Now I can see how certain foods affect me – for good and for bad – I can decide what to go for and what to avoid. I hate feeling ‘low’, ‘edgy’, ‘grumpy’ and all those other negative words. I only ever want to put positive words in the diary!’