significance Member

In Australia, we use more or less the same definitions of "scones" and "biscuits" as the British. We have savoury scones as well as sweet scones, though: they are basically the same, except that sweet scones sometimes have some sugar in the mix (and sometimes dried fruit or even chocolate) and (if plain) are served with…

In Australia, the KFC box meals come with 1 chicken fillet burger, regular fries, 1 piece of fried chicken, a tub of potato with gravy, and a soft drink. My husband and I get one once every year or so and share it between us (he has the burger and potato-and-gravy, I have the chicken piece and chips, one of us gets the…

Play chasey (tag) with them, or scarecrow, or dodge, any of the active games you played as a kid. Give yourself some penalties (e.g. you have to stop and do a pushup every 10 steps when chasing them) to make it fair.

Jamie Oliver has a couple of "20 minute meals" recipe books, which are available on his iphone app, too. I find the recipes are very reliable, and good food. Unless you're super-efficient in the kitchen, they take more like 30-35 minutes, though (though he does organise the recipes to help you be more efficient, such as…

Another option once you're at goal is to track not calories, but servings. E.g. the CSIRO total wellbeing diet (http://www.csiro.au/resources/TWD-checklist.html) has recommendations for how many serves of vegetables per day, how many serves of meat, fish, milk, etc, you should be eating. Or their is the CSIRO healthy heart…

If fruit doesn't work for you as a dessert, perhaps a glass of low-fat milk (perhaps with a little vanilla essence or other flavouring) will? Hot milk before bed can be lovely in winter. Or peppermint tea?

I weigh and measure what I can, but if I'm not sure, I try to over-estimate. If I have a slice of banana bread at a cafe, I tend to pick the highest-calorie banana bread in the MFP database to log, for instance. I do this to counter my natural tendency to want to minimise what I've eaten and to counter MFP probably…

Without commenting on the wisdom of 600 cal/day, I suggest a green, leafy vegetable. Steamed bok choy or wilted baby spinach or fresh salad leaves, cucumber, or celery. These tend to be very low in calories, so you might be able to get a reasonable volume (and some vitamins and fibre, too).

Careful with that, though. It can be rewarding, but it's very easy to spend ten times as much on your home-grown vegies as you'd spend just buying them at a shop. (What with potting mix, gardening tools, fertilisers, pest control, crop losses, higher water bills, etc).

When shopping for fruit and vegies, look at the prices before you decide what you'll cook. There's usually something green in season for $2-$3/kilo, but what that is varies from week to week. If there's something super-cheap, most veges can be frozen if par-boiled first (divide them up into bags of the size you'll want to…

A substitute with an identical nutrional profile is raw oats, served with cold milk (or water if you don't like milk at all). As with oatmeal porridge, you can add fruit or nuts to make it more interesting (the result, of course, is muesli).

Steamed vegetables (or mushrooms and bok choy), steamed dumplings (not the bready kind, but the kind in a ricepaper skin), chicken and corn soup, stir-fried meat & vege dishes (cashew chicken is often good), "drunken" chicken (which is poached).

I have the reverse problem: I have a big bum, so pants that fit at the hip are usually much too wide at the waist. I often buy them anyway and get them taken in by the tailor (I need to get the legs hemmed up anyway, so it's not much of an inconvenience). Perhaps you could try this, if the men's jeans suggestion doesn't…

Reason probably won't work, but you could point out that she's choosing a definite harm (health risks due to lack of exercise) over an unlikely harm (attack while running on the track).

For some people, working out with friends helps them stay motivated - you could try that. For me, working the exercise into my daily routine is what helps most. I cycle to work and back and it doesn't feel like such a chore, since I have to get there anyway and it is just a matter of how. Listening to audiobooks and…

Carrots, celery, radish. If using broccoli, I prefer it blanched rather than entirely raw. You can also use it as a spread on your lunch instead of using it as a dip.

You can lose weight without exercise. You already know it isn't healthy, but better to lose weight with diet only than not at all, if you're overweight. But you may not be happy with how you look at the end if you don't exercise: muscle tone makes a huge difference, even for those of us not aiming to look muscular.

I think any desk job counts as sedentary, if you are going to log your cardio exercise. I sit at a desk most of the day and sit at home most of the time that I'm not explicitly exercising. I wander up and down the corridor to talk to colleagues or get my lunch a few times a day, and climb two flights of stairs two or three…

I've noticed this myself (and no, I don't pee in the shower, and no, I'm not *that* dirty. Some of it may be water loss through sweat in a hot shower, but my theory is that most of it is due to the shower warming up the bathroom, and hence the scales. Bathroom scales are generally calibrated to give the right weight at…

That's right. (Coriander the herb, as opposed to coriander seeds, of course).

Mixed nuts. If you're in Australia, HarvestBox are good (http://www.harvestbox.com.au/ and use the code 10305IY2H0I to get a free sample). If you aren't, browsing their menu might give you some good ideas for various tasty combinations of nuts, seeds, crackers and/or dried fruit - and I guess you could prepack them into…

If you really have a lot, you can use it as the base of a salad in place a lettuce. Mix it up with some rocket or baby spinach and whatever other ingredients you want (some nuts? shredded carrot? steamed pumpkin?)

I bicycle as my main exercise and it is working for me. I've never been into running - always found it much too hard on the breath. But since I've increased my cycling from 20km/day at 21kph, 4 days a week, to 24km/day at the same pace, 7 days a week, I've found that the occasional half hour jog has suddenly become quite…

Not keeping junk food in the house works for a lot of people, but it doesn't for me. When I have the willpower, I can resist what's in the pantry. When I don't have the willpower, the local shops are only a 5 minute walk away (and open late), and that's no disincentive.

Best to weigh yourself at the same time of day each time, and take a running mean (i.e. take your weight as the average of the last 7 days) rather than paying any attention to fluctuations. The other alternative is to weigh yourself only once a week or once a fortnight, so that you don't see the day to day (or hour to…

Can you move dinner closer to bedtime? That way, you'll be able to hold out in the early evening, knowing you have a meal still to come, and you won't have much time in the late evening to be tempted.

When I see something I really want to eat and it doesn't fit into my diet, I ask myself "would I rather have that piece of cake, or would I rather lose weight, look better and be healthier?" If I still have trouble resisting, I tell myself that I can eat it (or something equivalent) if I still want it after I have done…

There are a lot of myths around about how much water you should drink. There is no need to count a certain number of cups per day. If your pee is a light colour, you are getting enough. If it's a strong yellow colour, you aren't. When working out, you should aim to drink just enough water to replace your sweat (you should…

I usually just go with sandwiches. Cheese and salad is a favourite. Often, especially in winter, I have toasted sandwiches: cheese and tomato or egg and ham (you can put egg in raw and the toaster will cook it, if you press the bread into the base first so there's a depression to hold it in). I take fruit, raw veges, or…

Wow, it sounds like that 1/2" makes a big difference. I'm 5'1", but I ride an adult bike, find adult-size clothes fit better (though I do need to get them hemmed up), and rarely need to climb to reach things (I can't reach the very top shelves in supermarkets, but most of the time, that shelf is just used for storage of…