Smart Swaps from Change4Life

How is your post-Christmas diet shaping up? January is supposed to be a time for fresh starts – healthy eating, wholesome walks in the countryside, that sort of thing. Not so for me. We get given so many food related Christmas gifts that the first half of January at least is awash with sugar in a veritable sea of fudge, fruit liqueurs and violet creams.

Thursday was a particularly shameful day for me as I was entirely alone and so had no one to look at me, eyebrows raised, as I reached for the seventh biscotti.

Here’s roughly what I ate (in chronological order):

  • Half a packet of wasabi peas
  • A two inch square piece of brie that I found on the coffee table that I had forgotten to put away the night before
  • Beans on toast
  • Beetroot and feta risotto
  • Half a dozen cheese biscuits
  • Some more wasabi peas
  • Two large pieces of fudge
  • Six cocktail flavour chocolates
  • Eight biscotti
  • Two large gin and tonics
  • Two satsumas

I ate the satsumas just before bed in an act of desperation, hoping they might undo everything that had come before them.

They did not.

I thought about typing it all into some sort of calorie counting programme, just out of curiosity, but predict the screen would just flash red with a warning – ‘You are about to have a heart attack! Seek help immediately!’

It’s not good.

Excellent timing then that I have just been sent the Smart Swaps pack from Change4Life. Anyone can sign up for a free pack, and you’ll be sent money off vouchers, fridge magnets and a Smart Swaps wheely thing, giving you ideas for simple swaps you can make to your diet. In my case the advice should probably be ‘swap everything you would normally eat for anything else at all, seriously, come on now’.

Smart swapper wheel

That’s not quite the spirit of the campaign though. The idea behind Smart Swaps is that you can actually make a big difference to your health by just taking small steps to swap a few simple things – it doesn’t have to be expensive of complicated. There is even an app to help you come up with recipe ideas, plan your shopping and generally inspire you.

Smart swaps

It’s all completely free, so if your Christmas has been anything like mine – please tell me it was – then it’s definitely worth a try. (After all, who could failed to be inspired by a bit of old school sausage?) So, put down the fudge, step away from the gin, and sign up for your free pack now.

Disclosure – this is a sponsored post. I wish that meant that it was all fabricated, but unfortunately everything is true. I really did eat that squishy coffee table brie.

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5 Comments

  1. 4 January, 2014 / 1:42 pm

    If it makes you feel any better the biscotti are fat free… I’d say I’m easing myself back into the new year diet. Gentle steps away from the booze and cheese. The sausage swapper looks cool though x

    • 4 January, 2014 / 8:06 pm

      That does make me feel better! They were delicious :-)

  2. Sarah Loftus
    4 January, 2014 / 2:12 pm

    No thank you!! All they’ve done is swapped real food for chemicals!

    I’d rather have sugar than the nasty aspartame in the sugar-free drinks and I would never, ever swap real butter for the chemical toxic waste that is low fat spread! Our bodies know how to deal with real food but all those chemicals can do is harm.

    I usually think Change4Life is a good idea but this latest campaign is total rubbish.

    • 4 January, 2014 / 8:08 pm

      Ah yes, that’s a bit of a tricky issue isn’t it – like ‘low fat yogurts’ that just get packed full of sugar instead. I guess for me it’s not necessarily taking every single piece of advice word for word but more about just stopping to think about what I’m eating and considering alternatives. I agree though that simply swapping for chemicals isn’t terribly productive.

  3. Polly
    6 January, 2014 / 9:57 pm

    I’m a bit disappointed that you’re working with change4life. Being sponsored by Nestlé and Danone I don’t believe they are capable of any impartial advice.

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