Too hot to diet?

Dieting in Hot Weather

Does hot weather send you running to the freezer or ice cream van? Do you feel the urge to eat ice cream to stay cool?

Don't!

Just because it's hot doesn't mean you should break your diet.

Following good advice like sipping lots of water is the main thing to focus on. If it's so hot you need to keep rehydrated you will find that sipping water will help supress your appetite. It's also a great time to eat fresh salads for meals too!

A salad can be really refreshing - pick some really good vegetables like lettuce leaves, cucumber, radishes, spring onion, whole onion sliced, tomatoes, carrot cut into thin strips, cress, peppers sliced, mange tout, beetroot, cabbage shredded and whatever other veg you love raw!

Look at mixed salad bags at the shops - try them! It's often a lot less effort than buying 4 or 5 different lettuces yourself and they're ready to eat!

You can even put sprouting seeds into your salad - look out for bean sprouts at the supermarket. These add a lovely light crunch to your salad.

Add a few nuts, a little cheese or cottage cheese or some meats sliced thinly and you've got a massively healthy low calorie meal.

Make potato salad yourself. You can measure the amount of mayonaise you put on then and make as much or as little as you need. A tiny bit of onion steeped in vingear and a few caraway seeds add a lovely touch to plain potato salad.

The longer keeping veg can be chopped and kept in the fridge too for snacking on. This is a much better idea than having a biscuit or cake to keep you going.

Fresh berries should be cheap in the supermarket or grown in the garden right now and make an excellent healthy dessert - add a little flavoured or plain yoghurt to liven them up - that's less calories than cream!

Take plenty of water for your journeys to and from work. It's important to keep fluid levels up in the heat. Plus wear a hat and sunglasses and long sleeves to keep the sun off you. Put sun cream on too.

Hot weather makes it easier to diet if you've got the right stuff in the fridge at home. Huge salads will be just the thing for this hot weather.

It might be too hot to go to the gym, but check out the swimming pool! A great way of cooling down is to have a quick swim - not too many lengths perhaps, but a great form of exercise!

Wait til the evening if you're going to do anything too energetic. A walk when the sun is lower in the sky is a much better idea. Keep exercising but do it gently and keep sipping that water.

For iced treats look at the labels on lollies - find some low calories lollies or ice pops to keep in the freezer for a cold treat! Don't go near the ice cream van! Sorbets should be less calories than icecream but real the labels.

Keep ice cubes stocked up! You can buy these from the supermarket if you can't be bothered making them - its about a pound for a big bag of them - but an ice cube tray is easy to use! Add them to drinks.
Make up a bottle of low calorie squash and keep it in the fridge to keep it really cold.

If you have a barbeque then eat chicken, grilled corn and stay away form ribs and fatty sausages! If you're going to one then take lots of corn on the cob and healthy pieces of meat to cook so you know what you're having!

If you've got any great heatwave diet hints then get in touch.