Fast food? No, speed food!

...in which things get a little more complicated

But not that complicated, honest. Read on, Macduff...

In addition to free, superfree, Healthy As and Bs and synned food, there are further classifications of food in the slimming world books; some free/superfree food also counts as speed or "superspeed".

These are foods which, for their type, are particularly low in energy density (i.e. they have lower calories than other foods in their group - e.g. Chicken is a speed food, minced beef is not, but both are free; Melon is a superspeed food, and a lot of other fruits are speed food).

You don't have to include speed or superspeed foods in what you eat, but I have found that when I have focused on including these in the food I make I tend to lose more weight and feel fuller. I usually now choose vegetables on the basis of a) do the kids like them (although it's almost impossible to find something that all 3 of them like) and b) is it speed/superspeed?

Unfortunately a) boils down to sweetcorn, which is free rather than superfree and is not a speed or superspeed food*; the daughter loves broccoli (superfree and speed) , but the boys won't touch it, so I usually end up doing sweetcorn and some other vegetable that counts as a speed food (thank goodness for frozen vegetables).

I choose the fruits I have for breakfast (nearly always apple, pear and satsuma) on the basis that they are speed foods - if I can be bothered I sometimes have melon because it's a superspeed food as well as being superfree.

A lot of varieties of fish are speed/superspeed foods; unfortunately we do not eat much fish, but I will try to make an effort to include some in the menu over the next couple of weeks.

*Baby sweetcorn is superfree and a speed food, but normal sweetcorn counts as a pulse and is free (not superfree) and not speed.

Saturday 7th June

(Planned menu - I'm posting this in the morning so things may change).

Breakfast

"Overnight oats" (a recipe from a lady in our Slimming World group) - 35g porridge oats (Healthy Extra b) soaked in a Mullerlight (Raspberry & Cranberry, but you can use any flavour) overnight - first time I've made this and I'll definitely make it again; also quite good if you've overindulged the night before...(who, me? Nah...*cough*).

Pear, satsuma.

Lunch

Saturdays tend to be a bit hit and miss as far as lunch goes, but it's important to make sure I get some food at lunchtime so I'm not tempted to snack later.

Mushroom omelette, jacket potato wedges (baking potatoes cut into wedges and the cooked on a baking tray with frylight and sea salt in the oven for 30 - 35 minutes turning every 10 minutes or so) and baked beans. These were some of the best wedges I've made.

Dinner

Penne with rich beef Ragu (recipe from the extra easy cookbook -  there's a similar recipe here for Slimming World members), with broccoli and sweetcorn.


Snacks

Pickled onions, melon, mullerlight.

Oops...on a trip to Shrewsbury I ended up having a muffin in Masseralla's - I'm not sure of the exact Syn value but I'm going to assume it's pretty high and put it at 25. Ouch! (Still inside my syns limit for the week though...)

And...then the evening came and there was football on and I may have sort of perhaps accidentally drank 4 cans of a certain brand of cider that's not spelt right (because being tipsy is better than actually watching football) at 11 syns each that's 44 syns.

That's a grand total of um...69 syns today, which puts me on 104.5 syns for the week so far, with 2 days to go (weigh in is Monday). That probably means I'll go over my 105 syn limit this week....oops.

Exercise

45 Minute run (4.9 miles according to Runkeeper). Ow my legs, but that's what our consultant would call a "non-scale victory" - I haven't run that far since the half-marathon and I feel pretty damn good about it. Hopefully that will help make up for the cider...

Healthy letters of the alphabet

...in which I discuss healthy As and Bs

It's not as boring as it sounds, honest.

On Slimming World's Extra Easy plan you are allowed 1 "healthy extra A" and 1 "healthy extra B" per day. (You may have noticed that most days so far I've had a wholemeal roll as my healthy b with bacon and tomatoes, because bacon is awesome and it's a free food as long as it's lean, you cut the fat off and either grill it or fry it in frylight). 

On some of the other plans you're allowed more than 1 of each per day, but then there are more restrictions on meat and that's not going to happen.

The healthy A is generally something that involves calcium (milk, cheese etc); since I always use this for milk I rarely eat cheese any more, which is one of the only things I miss eating because cheese makes everything better (except possibly chocolate cake, and even then it's debatable). 

I could have cheese and apply syns to it, but then I'd have to drink less wine at the weekend (so it's my choice to go without cheese - it doesn't matter what diet you're on, there are always going to be choices like this, and Slimming World is very upfront about the fact that you will not lose weight if you don't change how you're eating).

Healthy extra B foods contain fibre; e.g. crispbread, wholemeal bread, cereals, nuts. A tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil can also count as your healthy B, which I did not know until just now when I looked up some examples.

Foods that count as healthy As/Bs have a syn value if you don't use them as a healthy extra or have more of them (e.g. if you've had a wholemeal roll as your healthy b and then have another the second one has 6 - 8 syns in it, depending on the brand, or if you've had your milk allowance for the day and then have cheese you have to count the cheese as syns).

Healthy As and Bs are the only items you need to specifically measure on the Extra Easy plan, and it's really not that bad to get a measuring jug and put 250ml of milk in it each morning (350ml for skimmed and I usually allow 300ml of 1% milk); weighing out cereal is more tedious, but you can get things like this cereal scoop, which lets you easily measure it out. 

Personally I usually stick to things that I can count, like crispbread and bread rolls, because it's easier, so I will either have a wholemeal roll with bacon and tomatoes (because bacon is awesome. Yes, I know I said that already, but it's worth repeating), or 4 crispbreads with Marmite and some pickled onions (pickled onions are superfree and have largely replaced crisps as my snack of choice; Marmite is free. If you don't like Marmite, there are probably other options).

However, tonight I think I will try "overnight oats", which is 35g of porridge oats stirred into a mullerlight and left overnight and used for breakfast (I'll probably add fruit) - the 35g of porridge oats counts as a healthy b.

If you're a Slimming World member, you may have noticed that there are 2 options for "healthy B" when using Ryvita - one is 2 slices and one is 4. I am told that the 2 slice option is the "speed" choice (more on speed and superspeed tomorrow). 

Friday 6th June

Breakfast

Apple, satsuma, pear (Yes, I know, I've had the same thing most days. I really like fruit, plus all 3 of these are classified as "speed" (very low calories for their type of food)).

Morning Snack

4 Rye Crispbread (from Aldi's - Healthy Extra B) with Marmite

Lunch

Pasta salad (onions & mushrooms stir fried in frylight with chopped garlic & crushed chilli peppers, mixed with a chopped tomato and 2 slices of wafer-thin cooked chicken and all stirred into cooked pasta. This would be nicer with a red pepper instead of the red onion, but it was OK), and a pear.

Dinner

Sirloin steak (fat removed), fried in frylight with fried onions and mushrooms and spicy potato wedges (0.75 syns for the mushrooms because they're cooked with a Laughing Cow Light blue cheese triangle, 1.5 syns, shared between 2 people).

Evening snacks/drinks

Mullerlight (strawberry)

750ml Red Wine  (27 Syns)
200ml Rosé Wine (7 Syns)

34 Syns today. Oops! (But I've had very few syns for most of the rest of the week, so I'm not over my Syns limit - this is how I choose to use my syns for the week, but you can have a little treat each day instead; I would think for most people that's a better option).

Exercise

Exercise bike - 15 minutes

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's superfree!

...in which I briefly ponder the meaning of "super".

Superfree foods are food that Slimming World describe as "very low in energy density". What this means in practice is that you can eat a lot of them without consuming a lot of calories, and they fill you up so you can't actually eat too much of them. 

Basically they are fruit and vegetables (but not all vegetables - e.g. a lot of pulses/starchy vegetables are free rather than superfree).

They won't turn you into superman/woman and they won't make you fly, but they do help fill you up and stop you eating too much, plus they help you feel full for longer. 

The Slimming World guidance is that 1/3 of your diet should be superfree foods. The easiest way to make sure you do get 1/3rd superfree is probably to have some with each meal, but there are other options - e.g. most of my breakfast is super free as I always have fruit because the amount of cereal you can have for a healthy extra b is minuscule; this helps to make up for the fact that I don't usually have a lot of superfree food at lunchtime, and I rarely feel hungry in the afternoon. 

5th June 2014

Breakfast

Apple, Satsuma, Pear, Mullerlight (Orange with dark chocolate sprinkles)

Lunch

Bacon & Tomato on a wholemeal roll (healthy extra b)

Dinner

Vegetable & Quorn chilli
My own recipe: 1 courgette, 1 red onion, 1 onion, 1 green pepper, 4 - 6 closed cup mushrooms, 3 cloves garlic (finely chopped), 1 400g tin of tomatoes, half a tube tomato puree, ~1/2 a pack frozen Quorn mince, 250 ml vegetable stock, 3 tsp chilli powder (choose your heat)!, 1 tsp paprika.

Roughly chop all of the veg; fry the onions, peppers & garlic for 5 - 10 minutes until the onions are softened. Add the mushrooms and stir fry for another 2 - 3 minutes. 
Add the tomato puree, chilli powder and paprika and stir to coat the veg; add the tin of tomatoes, stock and courgettes and stir to mix. Simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

This was the first time I'd made this using this recipe - in future I think I'd use passata instead of the vegetable stock as it didn't taste as tomato-ey as usual. I'd usually put baked beans in a chilli too but I forgot!

Serve with boiled rice, peas & sweetcorn (optional but middle child wanted them)

Evening Snacks

Fruit. Lots of fruit. So much fruit it's not even funny. Seriously, it was like a small mountain. 2 apples, a pear, a 1/4 of a melon and some strawberries. Plus a satsuma.

Exercise

15 Minutes on exercise bike
30 minute run

Of Syns and Slimming

...in which I talk about syns and list what I ate today

On Slimming World, syns are effectively a way of letting yourself have treats that would be out of bounds on most diets (or would make you feel horribly guilty if you ate them). Any food that is not free or superfree (see yesterday's blog) has a syn value (e.g. a bag of crisps is around 6 syns on average), and you're allowed 5 - 15 syns a day. 

You can save the syns up for the week if you want to, and you don't have to use them but they are a good way to stay on the diet without feeling deprived.

The bad news is wine is not a free food, so I tend to save my syns for the weekend and have a couple of bottles of wine; the good news is that because this sort of thing is built into the Slimming World plans I don't have to worry about it.

4th June 2014

Breakfast

Mullerlight yoghurt (smooth toffee), strawberries, satsuma

Morning Snack

60g Wholemeal Roll, lean back bacon with cherry tomatoes

Lunch

Home made savoury rice (boiled rice mixed with stir-fried onion, chilli pepper and mushrooms and cooked frozen sweetcorn and mixed with soy sauce and a little 5-spice powder).

Chicken Fillet cooked with crushed chillies & garlic (1.5 syns - chicken is usually free, but these were bought from Aldi and when I checked the Slimming World app they have 1 syn per 100g; I'm not sure if this is just because it's supposed to be cooked with oil (I used frylight)).

Dinner

Speedy Chicken Jambalaya (from the Easy Express cookbook - the recipe is here, but you'll need to be a slimming world member and log in to see it).

Evening Snack

Mullerlight (vanilla with dark cherry and chocolate sprinkles), Melon

Syns for the day: 1.5.

Exercise

30 minutes on exercise bike - 400 calories burnt (according to the bike's display).

Cutting myself down to size

...in which I have joined a slimming club and not blogged about it for 6 months. Yes, really.

Wow, is this blog still here? I really need to use it more often, there's dust all over the place here.

So, first I should probably do that disclosure thing; I have no affiliation with Slimming World, nor any commercial relationship with them, other than the fact that I pay them every week.

This year I decided that I would lose some weight. Not because I was unhealthy (although I was) and not because anybody else told me to (although I'm sure my wife wanted me to), but because I decided that I wanted to be thinner and a bit more healthy. 

So I joined Slimming World just after Christmas because it was the "diet" that my wife lost 3 stone on last year (and has so far kept off, and looks fantastic). Thus far this has been a fairly spectacular success. Since joining in January, I have lost 2 stone and 9.5lbs (17kg according to Google, and nobody argues with them, right)?

 I still have about 8.5 lbs to go to get to my initial target, but that really doesn't seem that much compared to how much I've already lost, especially if I have a couple of good weeks.

This has meant that I am slimmer, and I also feel much better for it and have started running again; I don't get out of breath on brisk walks now, and I have much more stamina for certain other activities. (Like gardening. What? What were you thinking of? Really? Get your mind out of the gutter! But yes, that too, since you ask. Ahem).

I've also discovered that I really, really like cooking. Since joining, I have done almost all of the cooking, which I find very satisfying; Slimming World meals are not what most people would probably think of as diet food, since they focus on letting you eat as much as you need to satisfy your appetite while keeping the calorie count low.

One of the things that happens every week when I stay to the group is that the consultant (who is lovely - hi Claire!) asks me if I've made anything nice that week. Because I have the memory of an amnesiac goldfish I can only ever remember what I made that night, so I nearly always end up saying "err...." and then saying the same thing as I said the previous week.

So I thought this week I would blog what I am eating in the hope that it will jog my hopeless memory.

All of the food below is "free" or "super-free" on the extra easy plan unless I've put a Syn value by it or it's a healthy a or b option. This means you can have as much as you like of it. No, I'm not joking. Yes, I have lost weight eating like this. Yes, this is a fairly typical day for me. No, it's not a prank. Honest.

Note for Slimming World members: I follow the Extra Easy plan and have no idea how many syns any of this would be on any other plan. Sorry about that.

Tuesday 3rd June

Healthy A: 250 ml Semi Skimmed Milk for coffee. You can assume this every day, because I'm a developer and we can't write code without coffee. Seriously, it's true. Find a developer and take their coffee away and see what happens.

Breakfast

Apple, satsuma, pear

Morning Snack

Lean back bacon (all visible fat removed, fried in fry-light) with cherry tomatoes in a 60g wholemeal roll (Healthy b)

Lunch

Mushroom omelette with crushed chillies & spicy potato wedges (2 baking potatoes chopped into wedges, coated with paprika, oregano and sea salt and cooked in the oven for 30 - 35 minutes, turning occasionally).

Dinner

Lamb Rogan Josh (from the "Fakeaways" book - I can't find the recipe online unfortunately) with boiled rice and sweetcorn.

Evening Snacks

Muller Light (Vanilla), 1/4 fresh pineapple.

Exercise

I suppose the picture isn't really complete without a record of the exercise I'm doing too:

~5 miles walking

~2 mile run

15 minutes on exercise bike (200 calories, according to the bike).