Get Trimmer... The Healthy Way

The #1 reason for wanting to lose weight is to look and feel good. Another less common (but more important reason) is to be healthier e.g. to reduce likelihood of diseases (heart, cancer, etc) and to increase life expectancy plus many health related reasons.

The need to Look and Feel Good leads to people trying fad diets which are usually unhealthy and unrealistic.

Why should I drink meal-replacement shakes to lose weight (especially WITHOUT medical supervision) when I know that it definitely won't be a part of my lifestyle once I've reached my goal? Why should I go on the Maple Syrup Diet knowing fully well that  I probably won't last a week on it and if I did, I definitely won't stick to it for the rest of my life?

I know the feeling of wanting to be slimmer immediately, I wanted to go to sleep a size 16/18 and wake up a size 10/12. So any diet that claimed to strip fat in a matter of weeks would have been an amazing idea to me and I'd have jumped on that bandwagon asap. I'm really lucky I found Weight Watchers and I lost weight healthily enough but I know a lot of people have tried everything and are still trying... unsuccessfully.

While working towards your goal of your dream body, try to eat more natural/organic foods.

Most people back home (in Nigeria) don't realise how lucky they are to eat organic food - No super-chickens 'grown' with antibiotics, no genetically modified food and the many scary things I discover everyday here in the UK. For those in Europe, USA, Canada, etc - Trust me, I know food labelled as 'organic' is sometimes more than 2ce the price of the regular alternatives in grocery stores. But you need to remember that organic food isn't only sold in chain grocery stores e.g. I buy my free-range, organic chicken from the Butchers and they cost much less than the Organic chickens in fancy packaging but it costs much less :)
Another example... fruit/veg can be bought from smaller businesses who carry organic produce, my friend went to an Organic store and ONE cauliflower was £3 (what?!?!?!).

Ok back to the subject... ;-)

If any of you ladies eat/drink anything that falls under any of these categories listed below, I'd really appreciate it if you could read the ingredients and post them in the comments section:

• Meal replacement shakes e.g. Slim Fast
• Low Fat snacks

Over the course of 2010, I made changes to what I was putting in and on my body. From hair moisturisers (I now use shea butter mixed with oils) to health bars (I swapped protein bars with ingredients I couldn't even pronounce to those which contained seeds, nuts, etc). In my opinion, this was a great decision and I am loving knowing that most of what I eat or use is not full of artificial ingredients. I won't go full on in this post but will be sharing the small changes I've made often :)

PS Please keep posting your questions, food logs etc :)