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I've heard a few good things about this gadget and now I've just seen the Tefal Actifry on Amazon too (at least in the Uk - couldn't find it on the .com site).

The Actifry makes a whole kilo (2.2lbs) of crisp fryer-tasting healthy fries with just one spoonful of oil.

We don't eat fries much these days and of course there are ways of making healthy fries by par-boiling potatoes and mixing (or spraying) with a little oil and baking but they are just not the same as fries from a deep fat frier.

Apparently these ones are just like that and without the hassle of boiling up potatoes or watching over them!

If you are loathe to give up eating fries you will find this a healthy way to get them - now I just need to save up the pennies bcause good health does not come cheap :)

See the video

I did an exercise/quiz the other day which brought home to me how little activity most of us actually do - and I think this has a lot to do with why the population in general seem to be getting more and more overweight in the western world.

The exercise involved filling in a section of a chart for each hour of the day - 24 in total - giving each section a diferent color depending how active you were in each of the 24 hours.

The categories were

• asleep/lying down
• sitting
• on your feet but only mildly active - tidying, shopping, moving about the office
• active - walking, vacuuming, cleaning
• exercise - running, lifting weights, playing sports, swimming

Yikes! I don't know about you but most of my hours were in the first two categories! I am on my PC rather than on my feet an awful lot!

And this pattern would be a marked difference from say 50 years ago when we used cars and labor-saving devices a lot less.

And the point of all this?

To give you a shock (same as I had) about how little time you are actually active each day and to get you to think a little more seriously about getting moving even a little extra each day.

If you give yourself a break every hour or so and get active for 5 or 10 minutes, you may be able to color another box active and save your shape (and maybe your life).

And I'd better go off and do something now too that Ive sat here writing this to you! :)

There's no doubt about it.

If you stick 100% to one of those diet plans which tell you exactly what to eat every meal you will lose weight.

You will also be pretty miserable with it.

• You can forget eating the foods you love.
• You can forget an evening out with friends.
• You can forget enjoying your birthday celebration, your cousin's  wedding or Christmas.

None of these are likely to fit in with a rigid diet.

And if you slip from your plan for one reason, it becomes easier and easier to find more excuses not to conform. So before you know it you are off the diet and NOT losing weight any more.

That's what typically happens with diets.

They are fine while you are willing to bend your whole life around the diet in the early days and then it all falls apart once you see how much you have got to suffer to lose weight.

This is why I prefer a more flexible approach to eating where you learn

• to eat modestly
• to practice restraint while eating enough so you don't go hungry all day
• to eat when you're hungry (and only then)
• to stop eating when you're full
• to choose healthy food for the most part
• to eat small portions of your favorite unhealthy foods and enjoy every calorie
• to leave aside those unhealthy foods you couldn't care less about
• to handle every occasion with these principles in mind - you don't go mad and blow your diet throwing all caution to the wind but you learn to be selective about enjoying the best of the experience

The good thing about this way of losing weight is that you get into way of eating that you can use for the rest of your life so that you never have to diet again. It becomes a habit.

So what's it to be this time?

Flexible restraint or the latest, greatest tell-you-what-to eat-diet-book?

Over to you....

Photo by Jason Rogers

Do you find yourself wandering over to the fridge when you're not physically hungry and grabbing the first tempting snack you see and then maybe something else too?

In the pleasure of the moment it's all too easy to forget our longer term more worthwhile goals of losing weight or eating healthy food isn't it? It's as if the immediate satisfaction of eating something tempting is suddenly all that matters.

What is it that you say to yourself when you're about to grab something loaded with fat and/or sugar?

"What the heck, I want it and I'm going to have it"
"I've had a bad day, I need this"
"I've been so good, I deserve to eat it"

If you want the snacking sabotage to stop, something has to change. And to change what you do, you need to change what you say to yourself.

You see, whatever you say to yourself when a snacking moment strikes, leads directly to a subconscious decision to eat or not eat.

The best way to direct your self talk is to deliberately use the following 3 simple strategies one after the other as soon as possible before the point of "no return".

1. Remind yourself of your health or weight loss goals and why you want to achieve them.
2. Think about how you felt last time after you indulged in this way (regret? annoyed? stupid? stuffed?)
3. Affirm who you want to be/what you want to do  right now ("I am a healthy eater" "I no longer eat junk" "I am working on my new shape" "I am getting closer to my target weight")

Then get yourself from the fridge, pour yourself a glass of water and go back to what you were doing or reward yourself by chatting with a friend (online or off).

Every time you divert yourself from eating when you are not hungry you strike a victory not only for your new shape but also for your feelings of self-control and ultimately your confidence in yourself to follow your plans and dreams.

As an experiment this week, try eating a piece of fruit or nibbling on raw veggies before every meal to reduce your appetite before you eat - then serve a smaller portion of your usual food.

Not only will you end up consuming fewer calories, you'll also boost the amount of healthy produce you eat.

As an example, think about eating a few strawberries or a slice of fresh pineapple before breakfast, nibbling a few sticks of carrot and celery before lunch and eating an apple before dinner. If you do that, you'll already have eaten as least 3 of your recommended 5 fruit and vegetable portions a day without even trying.