My first health entry will be on the topic of starting a longterm healthy lifestyle as opposed to dieting. After a few years of traveling and enjoying far too many Guide Michelin stars, my weight was unfortunately soaring so I decided to seek advice from a recommended dietician, Esther hence the name of the posting:-).

So effectively my challenge was:

• I didn’t want a “fad” diet, i.e. starve myself to a good weight or go for a carb only diet or similar. With my lifestyle of at least 100-150 travel days a year I need to make the right choices as opposed to controlling my food intake to specific nutrition
• I need to lose 15kg minimum however I don’t have the luxury of taking a few months off work to do so
• I want to stay in strong physical form, although I sometimes live by the device (nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” (thank you Kate Moss), I would always prefer a good six-pack to losing another couple of kilos

So I trotted down to my dietician de jour, appreciating this may be the first day of a challenging journey however also committed to reaching my goal. After a weigh-in and a run through of the principles of the diet, I called my boyfriend and said…Saturday is the starting day. I forgot to mention my boyfriend was the one who recommended me to see her. The principles are very simple, I need to stick to a diet of around 1250 kacl every day with a varied choice of carbohydrates, fats, protein, greens and fruits. This is broken into units, so I’m keeping a log on my iPhone to take note of all the units I consume in a day. It sounds pretty simple, but I’ll be the first to admit, if you’ve been logging perhaps 1800-2000 kacl a day, a cut to 1250 is a steep change of lifestyle. Additionally to this I’ll maintain my training routine with my personal trainer, making sure I work out at least three to four times a week.

The first meeting was three months ago…and it’s been as they say one of those long roads…but I’m almost there!! Since I’ve started I’ve now lost 13 kilos and I’ve decided I have another 7 to go before I’m satisfied. Granted I said 15 kg to begin with but I think 20kg in total would just have been a step to far! I haven’t done any before or after picture yes but I’ll be sure to post it!