Diet Food

....in which I talk about food. Again.

If you're anything like me, your image of diet food is probably something like this:

I don't know about you, but eating that stuff all the time would get pretty boring pretty fast.

Now, here's some pictures of things I have actually made and eaten in the last 6 months:

(From left to right: Penne with rich beef & tomato Ragu, Five-spice chicken with noodles and steak with wedges and garlic mushrooms).

The point is you don't have to eat like a rabbit to lose weight. There is some element of the first set of pictures in what we eat; I do quite often have baked potato for lunch, but I usually cook it as wedges and have it with a mushroom omelette (or whatever other veggies I can find to put in an omelette - cooked with Frylight, omelettes are free), and wedges are much less boring than a jacket potato without butter (you can add herbs and spices to them to keep them interesting).

Of course, if you've gained weight and want to lose it you can't just carry on as you are, assuming that you've gained weight because of your diet; something has to change. In my case, that's meant that we no longer use jars to make any meals (everything is cooked from scratch, and generally nicer for it), we use leaner cuts of meat (more expensive but you need less of it to fill you up) and fat is removed from pretty much all meat when possible. If something is fried we use Frylight, which is a 1-calorie spray that you just spray on the frying pan/wok before cooking.

I have started exercising as well, but that is not a necessary part of being on Slimming World; it certainly helps the weight drop off more quickly, but you will lose weight whether you do or not.

I'm sure there are people that will look at the above and say something along the lines of "you can't possibly lose weight eating like that." I'll remember that next time I get on the scales, since they don't seem to have got that message.

Today we are having a barbecue, so there will be lots of (lean) meat later. Avoiding bread is a bit of an issue when there are burgers out (I will make my own for the 3 of us on Slimming World that will be there - these will be free, and I've also found some frozen ones that are 1 syn per burger), but I'll save my healthy b so I can have a wholemeal roll for one burger. I'll do wedges and pasta salad as well as a vegetable salad, and I may do something in the slow cooker...we shall see.

Right, I need to go and change the strings on my guitar.

Saturday 21st June

Breakfast

Satsuma, nectarine, apple, fat-free Greek style lemon yoghurt

Lunch

Mushroom & red onion omelette with beans and a baked potato.

Dinner

Lean meat (pork/chicken/beef) cooked on the barbecue; pasta salad (pasta with vegetables stir-fried in frylight with garlic & paprika). 1 wholemeal roll (healthy b), potato wedges, salad.
3 Sainsbury's "be good to yourself" burgers (1 syn each)

Snacks/Drinks

Fruit, yoghurt.
Err, okay, this didn't quite go to plan....
750 ml of wine (27 syns)
4 cans of cider (38 syns (9.5 syns per can))

68 syns today...but I'm still under for the week.

Exercise 

30 minutes on exercise bike