Some helpful nurtitional facts picked up over many years working with food which may help you to lead a more heathly and sustainable lifestyle:


Eating a wide variety of food is important to ensure an adequate intake of nutrients required for optimal health.

Aiming to eat 20-30 different foods each day helps to achive this. Yes! 20-30. It is not really that hard - just keep count for a day.


Fat stored around your waist and your belly (abdoman) is a health risk while fat on the buttock and thighs is not. A waist measument of more than 90cm for woman and 100cm for men indicates excess abdominal fat.


Body weights builds up over time so therefore it makes sense to loose excess body weight over time too - no more than a kilo per week.


The recommended intake of carbohydratres is 7-10grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body wieght per day (i.e. 60-70% of daily energy intake as carbohydrates). The average Australian only consumes around 45% of their energy as carbohydrate. Consquently as carbohydrates are the body'e most readily available fuel source for physical activity and overcoming fatique, active people will need to eat a lot more carbohydrate than the average person.


Effective portion control is one of the most important factors in weight loss. Portion sizes have grown steadily in the past 30 years and are now two to five times larger than they were in the past. The important thing to remember is that we are not a nation of gluttons! It's just, as research shows, we finish what’s put in front of us – the bigger the portion the more we eat – so it's essential, in a world of ever-increasing amounts of food that we continually remind ourselves to cut down to healthy-sized servings in order to lose weight and keep it off.

Use the table below as a guide to portion control while at the same time being satified and helathy. Remember, it takes about 20 minutes to start to feel full, so eating at a slower pace will prevent you from overeating.