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10 Diet Tips for WLR's Legs, Bums and Tums Challenge

By WLR Dietitian, Juliette Kellow BSc RD

1. For a flat tum, pert bum and smooth, sexy legs, concentrate on shifting the flab. While burning off extra calories through being more active will help, you can easily triple the effect by taking in fewer calories at the same time. Sticking to your daily calorie allowance recommended by WLR will easily help to shift between ½ to 2lb a week. Ditching the junk from your diet is one of the easiest ways to reduce calories so cut out as many fatty, sugary, salty and processed foods as you can and instead eat fresh and natural. Swapping burgers for chicken salad, biscuits for fruit, chips for jacket spuds, and sugary cereals for porridge is guaranteed to whittle your waistline!
   
   
2. Get rid of dimply thighs by filling up on foods rich in cellulite-busting vitamin C. This vitamin helps to strengthen the skin’s connective tissue – and the stronger this is the less likely you are to have cellulite. Unfortunately, women are at a dimple disadvantage, thanks partly to the female hormone, oestrogen. Scientists have discovered that unlike men who have smooth, continuous connective tissue, in women it’s irregular and patchy. The result: fat cells can poke through weaker areas of connective tissue into the layer of skin beneath the surface, causing dimples. Good sources of vitamin C include citrus fruits and their juices, berries, kiwi fruit, blackcurrants, tomatoes, peppers and new potatoes. Better still, these foods are also low in calories so good choices to fill up on.
   
   
3. Swap white food for the brown stuff, such as white rice for brown rice, regular pasta for wholewheat pasta, cornflakes for muesli and white bread for Granary bread. These foods are packed with fibre, which helps to fill you up so you’re less likely to want to snack on high-cal sugary and fatty foods between meals. Plus a diet rich in fibre helps to prevent constipation, which can cause a bloated tum. Good sources of fibre include brown rice, wholemeal bread and pasta, wholegrain cereals, peas, beans, lentils, jacket potatoes, fruit and veg.
   
   
4. Don’t add salt to meals and eat fewer salty foods. Too much salt makes your body hold on to water so that you potentially end up retaining extra fluid and looking puffy. To cut down on salt, eat fewer sauces, pickles, canned foods, processed foods, fast food, burgers, sausages, meat products, pizzas and crisps. The good news is, many of these foods are also high in calories so avoiding them can also help you to lose weight through lowering calories.
   
   
5. Filling up on antioxidant-rich foods may help to beat cellulite. Antioxidants ‘mop up’ an excess of free radicals, harmful molecules that whiz around the body damaging cells. Unfortunately, free radicals can damage and reduce the flexibility of collagen – a form of connective tissue. This means skin becomes less smooth and supple, and more prone to cellulite. By fighting free radicals, antioxidant vitamins A, C and E (in fruit and veg) and selenium (in Brazil nuts, sunflower seeds, fish, lean meat and eggs) come to the rescue to keep skin soft and smooth.
   
   
6. Try starting your day with a probiotic drink or yogurt such as Yakult, Actimel, Danone Activia, or Muller Vitality. These products contain ‘friendly’ bacteria to help top up levels of beneficial bacteria in your gut. In turn, this can help keep regulate your digestive system to reduce bloating and discomfort. Always remember to count the calories from these products though and opt for the fat-free or lower-fat varieties, if one is available.
   
   
7. Drink 6-8 glasses of water every day. It’s calorie free and will help to fill you up and keep you hydrated. However, drinking more water can also help to make your thighs and bum look less dimply – dehydrated, dry skin simply makes cellulite look worse. Some beauty experts also believe that drinking water can help to flush out toxins that accumulate in and around the fat cells, making cellulite worse. Whether this is true remains unclear, but drinking more water certainly won’t do any harm.
   
   
8. Don’t eat too many sugar-free products such as gum or mints that contain sweeteners like sorbitol, mannitol or maltitol instead of sugar. They may be better for your teeth and are sometimes lower in calories but they often work a bit like a laxative, potentially giving you lots of wind and a bloated tum if you eat too much.
   
   
9. For a flat tum, don’t eat while you’re racing around or drink from sport’s bottles – you’ll swallow loads of air, which can leave you feeling gassy and with a bloated tum. Give fizzy drinks a miss, too, including sparkling water – the gas they contain will simply end up in your tum. Finally, don’t eat until you feel stuffed – your poor digestive system will produce loads more air and gas as it works overtime to process all that food.
   
   
10. Slash your portion sizes. It’s the easiest way to cut calories without trying too hard. Serve meals in a small bowl rather than on a full-sized dinner plate, buy treats such as biscuits, cakes and pies, that come in individual packs and always follow recommended serving sizes on packs, especially for foods such as rice, pasta, noodles and cereals.

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