Proactol Blog

Staying Trim This Christmas

Christmas… New Year… it can be hard to stay in shape and lose weight over the holiday season when supermarkets are ram packed with naughty puddings and mountains of chocolate. Read more »

Are you sabotaging your diet through emotional eating?

Even the best of us, sometimes turns to food to help distract us from emotional or stressful events. And the scary thing is, most of the time we don’t even realise we are doing it.

The number of times I have turned to chocolate when work or even my weight loss has got me down is astonishing. Almost absentmindedly I would reach for all my favourite naughty foods and begin munching away before I even realised what I was doing.

The problem is foods such as chocolate are ripe with ingredients that promote mood elevations, which – even though temporary – can makes your mind associate it with comfort, calmness and happiness.

Now if like me you too are fed of sabotaging your diet by giving in to emotional eating, then being able to recognise your triggers can be the first step to stopping them: Read more »

10 Tips to Creating Leaner Abs and Preventing Stomach Fat

We would all love to have flatter more toned stomachs, but the problem is no matter how many sit-ups we do or how much we cut our fat content, our stomachs won’t always completely tone. Read more »

Thin-heritance – is it real?

I was reading an article the other day about a mother who put her 8 year old daughter on a diet to help her slim back down into a pageant dress, and this really got me thinking about how much of an influence we as parents have on our own children’s eating habits.

Now I am not so much talking about the meals we feed them every day – although showing them good eating habits is always important as it teaches them how to take care of their bodies when they are older.

No… I am on about how our eating habits end up being reflected in our children – to the extent where our eating obsessions, become their eating obsessions.

What is ‘Thin-heritance?’

I was reading another article in the Daily Mail – I know I read too much lol – about a mother who regretted passing on her obsessions about being thin to her daughter.

In this article she was able to trace all her own self image fears back to her mother and over the course of her self analysis came up with the theory of ‘thin-heritance’. A trait where as role models we pass on our eating habits and fears directly onto our children.

And I have to say that I agree with her analysis.

Think about it a moment…

Surely it is not good for our children to see us flicking from one diet to the next and obsessing about our bodies. Surely, it cannot be healthy?

For this reason I thought I would blog about ways to diet without actually having to go on a diet. I know it may sound like a contradiction ‘how can I diet without going on a diet?’ But there are a number of tricks you can use that will promote natural, healthy eating within your family, and make you the role model you want to be: someone who is not preoccupied with their body image.

Come take a look:

1. Don’t make exercise clinical – going to the gym isn’t the only way to ensure your body remains fit and healthy. Going for a walk, a swim or a bike ride can help you to achieve a healthier body whilst keeping exercise fun.
   PLUS you can do any one of these activities with your children – helping them to comfortably take care of their bodies in the future.
2. Bring variety to the meal table – the key to healthy weight loss is following a balanced diet. This means not cutting out fats, proteins or carbohydrates, but maintaining an equal equilibrium that keeps your body functioning at optimum capacity.
   One trick to keeping your diet interesting, fun and varied is to experiment with your meal choices. This ensures your children are open to the idea of trying new foods and do not get into the mind set that carbohydrates or fats are bad.
   As long as you show them how to maintain a balance and eat healthily, they will too.
3. Don’t make food a sin – when you are dieting it is easy to label certain foods as ‘sin foods’. That is why from the offset it is important that you do not remove the value of the food you eat, but simply put into perspective which ones need to be limited.
   For example, we all know that it is not healthy to eat bars upon bars of chocolate, biscuits or cakes every day. However, this doesn’t mean that you have to cut them out of your diet completely. Simply eat them occasionally and you can reduce the temptation to binge eat or yo-yo diet.
   Make chocolate into what it is meant to be: a treat.
4. Don’t judge eating habits – one of the biggest things I learnt from this article is to not be judgemental about the foods you or your family eat.
   It is here where ‘thin-heritance’ really kicks off. Where criticisms of our own bodies become reflected in our children’s own eating habits. Now, I know this is incredibly hard, after all we too have had it drummed into us that this, that and the other will make us fat, but it is essential that you remain unbiased towards food and don’t start categorising them into ‘comfort foods’, ‘ naughty foods’ etc…
   It is only when we make food into a ‘problem’ that our children do too.

Okay, sorry for the rant today, but both of these articles really put into perspective the impact ‘dieting’ can have on our children and I felt it was important to get this information out there.

I hope you find it useful.

Rowena xx

13 Ways to get your body moving and losing weight

If I have learnt anything over years is that you cannot successfully lose weight without making credible changes to your diet AND your exercise routines as well. Read more »

Create your own weight loss plan

Trying to lose weight independently can be hard work when you haven’t got a weight loss plan to support you.

It is not that they are the be-all and end-all of dieting – far from it – you don’t have to hire a health advisor in order to be successful in getting healthy. But the truth is, when it comes to attaining credible weight loss many of us don’t have a clue where to start or even how to lose weight.

Ask anyone and they will tell you that ‘diets’ equal eating less food. But this is not strictly true. To achieve healthy, lasting weight loss it is essential that you eat the right foods in the right quantities.

So how can you do it? By creating your own weight loss plan. Read more »

Secrets to weight loss success

We have all got our own weight loss ambitions. Whether it is to lose 5lbs, 20lbs or even 100lbs, we all begin at the same point: wondering what to do first.

After having both my children I was determined to 36lbs. I tried everything. From practically starving myself on 500 calories a day, to following ridiculous soup diets that only helped to make my sugar cravings even worse. Nothing worked!

The problem was, after making the decision to lose weight I didn’t have a clue where to start or how to maintain the momentum. I would lose 5-6lbs and then relapse whenever I hit a hurdle.

Now my goal today is not to tell you my life story – sorry I did go into memoir mode a minute ago lol – no, what I wanted to discuss in this blog was all the different weight loss tools that are available. The market is flooded with them, but which ones work? Read more »

Top Weight Loss Tips

You are bound to have heard countless weight loss tips over the years, but how many can you name that actually worked? That is the problem with a lot of the weight loss tips currently floating around the web. They either don’t work, or they only work on certain body types.

It is a frustrating business and can easily deter you from continuing in your weight loss journey, but don’t let this stop you! Read more »

What does ‘Calorie Free’ actually mean?

You have seen the food labels… you know the ones which quote the famous lines of ‘calorie free’, ‘low calorie’ or ‘fat free’.

These phrases are every slimmer’s dream when you are struggling to find nutritious, delicious foods that won’t dampen your diet, but have you ever stopped to take actually note of what these phrases mean? I know I am guilty of not paying attention to everything I buy.

The problem is look around the supermarket these days and you’ll discover that most products are falsely throwing out these terms in a bid to get your attention. Read more »

Transform Your Snacks into a Second Lunch

Snacking is just one of those sins that are impossible to ignore when you are always on the go. According to recent studies, snacking makes up to 20%-50% of your total calorie intake, and unfortunately for many of us it is these very same calories that lead to weight gain. Read more »