This Week's Menu 18th-24th Feb

Right... this week's attempt at menu planning. All going well this is what I'm feeding the family. :)

Monday

Spaghetti Bolognaise

From the 6 tonne supply we have in the freezer.

Tuesday

Chilli Con Carne Meatballs

from Jamie Oliver's 15 Minute Meals, new favourite go-to cookbook, although it should be 35 min meals when I'm cooking :)

Wednesday

Pork Marsala

from Jamie's 15 Minute Meals

Thursday

Sri Lankan Cashew and Coconut Curry

using the excellent Passage to Sri Lanka meal bases, they are all really yum

Friday

Mustard Lamb

from Mr Oliver's 15 Minute Meals...  three per week is enough :)

Saturday

Fish, Crunchy Potatoes and Salad

Fresh fish from Mr Fabulous' recent haul

Sunday

Might splash out and have take-away!

I'm also playing with the idea of doing monthly freezer cooking, I found this website with heaps of good ideas... we'll see, it's a big effort and might take a bit to get my head arøund.

Planning

This week I tried to get organised and do some planning. It sort of worked. I had grand plans to make a set menu for lunches and dinners in order to a) have only the 'right' food in the house b) try and save money by avoiding the daily - 'oh crap there's no food in the house, we better go to the shops and buy ten times what we need for dinner' trip and c) make life easier- I like the idea of only needing to think about what I'm going to make for tea once a week! I also sat down at the same time and wrote my shopping list for the week AND did online shopping, so theoretically I wouldn't need to think about food at all for the rest of the week! Good in theory, harder in practice...

I started off well, perusing my 6 thousand million cookbooks, picked out some good recipes, found a great shopping list template and 'pinterested' it then printed it, wrote out my menu and shopping list and then headed online to shop.

So, the hardest part was choosing which online shopping site... Coles or Woolies? I have tried both before and found both their websites to be quite a frustrating experience... I guess I'm just one of those crazy people who like to cruise the aisles, pick up the packets, compare labels and find the best deal, as well as stock up if something's on special, it's a bit harder online. So I based my decision on who had the cheapest meat... Woolies this week.

It was all good until at the checkout these naughty little windows popped up asking if I wanted to add some extras to my basket... roses? no thanks... 10 extra packets of baby food for the price of 6?... no thanks.... 400g of toblerone chocolate for 2.99? .... oh crap, toberlrone... 'no Mel you don't need it' 'But it's such a good deal!' oh crap I couldn't resist and into the basket it went... *sigh* even online shopping is trying to sabotage me!!

Despite my toblerone weakness, I have stuck to my menu for dinners anyway. Cooked some really yummy dinners out of Jamie Oliver's 15 Minute Meals even Mr Fabulous like them, and he HATES Jamie Oliver :)

Lunch and toblerone have been hard this week and as a result weight loss is at a stand still. Nevertheless I will try again, and again, and again, even though a bikini body is becoming a fading dream for our KK holiday, I'm going to try for 5kgs in the 6 weeks before we go!

Wish me luck!

And no, I haven't forgotten about the 'before' photos... still working on them :)

Tomorrow

Tomorrow I'll put up some 'before' pics.... be still my beating heart!!!

Fish and Beans

The 16hr fast was a lot easier than a full 24hrs... no big surprise there! So, I think that's the way I'm going to go. We have also had a little bit more of a kick in the pants to clean up our eating, Mr Fabulous has come back with raised cholesterol! Ha, I can't help but gloat a little bit, he pretty much eats what he likes and stays lean and muscly, I on the other hand am the opposite, I pretty much eat what I like and am soft and squishy...BUT my cholesterol is 3.3! Ha ha ha :) Gloating aside, I have decided as of today, we will be eating healthily, at least for dinner... let's ease in slowly!

So, today I will demonstrate my 'excellent' photography skills and share our dinner recipe and pics. I apologise in advance for the dodgy pics, hopefully I'll get better as I go.

 Luckily for me, Mr Fabulous is a fantastic spear fisherman and in the last few weeks has caught some five star fish for us- dhufish, whiting, crayfish and tonight we had leather jacket, foxfish and goatfish served with bean salad. I am trying to follow the naturopath's guidelines, hence no carbs for dinner, we had sandwiches for lunch.

My eating today looked like this:

Breakfast: fasting- cup of tea

Lunch: ham and salad sandwich

Dinner: fish and bean salad

oh yeah, and a piece of fruit and nut chocolate at mum's place, but what's a little bit of chocolate between friends... :)

Oh and a friend came over and brought some cake, so a piece of berry tea cake too.... hmmm beginning to see why the weight loss is not as great as I'd like!! :) A work in progress!

Cajun Spiced Fish and Bean Salad

Cajun Spiced Fish

Ingredients

White fish fillets, we had leatherjacket, goatfish and fox fish

3/4 cup wholemeal flour

1tbs cayenne pepper (to taste)

1 tsp ground cumin

1tsp dried oregano

salt and pepper

Olive oil

Mix flour and spices together in a large bowl.

Roll fish fillets in flour mix and put aside on a plate

Bean Salad

Igredients
1 can of mixed beans (or as my tin of Italian beans says 'Cocktail di Legumi' never seen that at the bar :)
1/2 red capsicum
1 tomato
1 spring onion
5cm continental cucumber
Optional Ingredients: (I didn't have any)
beetroot
feta cheese
parsley
coriander leaves

Dressing
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
apple cider vinegar
salt and pepper

Chop vegies into approx 2cm chunks

Chuck vegies in a bowl and add dressing ingredients, usually more vinegar than oil about 3:1 ratio and add salt and pepper to taste.

When salad is ready, cook up fish in some oil (not too much, just enough to get a bit of colour on the fish)

Then eat! Yummmm and pretty healthy too :)

Doubts

Right. 'Fast and eat what you like the rest of the time...' I don't think so. Not for this little black duck! Fast and eat what you like the rest of the time for me equals go hungry for two days a week and put on weight the rest of the time! The yo-yoing on the scales is doing my head in!

Maybe it's time to re-evaluate. I've been reading a few IF blogs and one that I really like Mama's Weeds. Her take on IF is to fast every day but only for 16hrs. So finish eating at 7pm and then start eating at 11 the next morning. This is becoming more appealing as I try and go for another fast this week and am having trouble getting motivated. So, it's 8pm and I've just finished dinner, lets see if I can go through to 12 tomorrow. See how I go...

The other option, bright stuff, is to eat properly when not fasting... easier said than done. That's what got me into this situation in the first place!! But one day at a time right? Today was good, no chocolate (there's none left in the cupboard) no Macca's, went out without my purse and didn't eat too much either. So that was one good thing :)

I also need to get into some exercise, but at the moment my options are limited to pool walking as I have a bulging disk, thanks to lugging around a 2yr old and 9mth old, often at the same time! Once I get that sorted I plan to do a couple of classes a week and maybe work up to some running... ooooh scary!

That's it for now...

xo

Hmmmm...

So I find myself wondering, to lose weight, should I just stop eating altogether? Being an obsessive compulsive scale watcher The Scales have been playing games with me since I started fasting! Typically the day after the fast the scales are 2kgs(!!!) lighter! Hardly believable, but apparently this is not only due to some water weightloss but also because you're literally running on empty there's no 'food weight' in your system! So of course being the scale watcher I am this 'massive' loss makes me ecstatically happy. Unfortunately, the next day when there is food back in my system BAMM weight is back on and mood down the toilet...

So I've drummed up enough courage to put up my stats, gulp...

After one week of two fasts and moderate 'normal' eating the stats are as follows:

Start weight: 85.7kgs not great for my height- 166cm, gives me a BMI of 30.1 which is officially and scarily in the obese category! My waist measurement is 88cm which is 8cm above the healthy waist measurement for women... oh dear!

End of week 1: 85.3kg so 400g down

Not bad considering a large part of my diet has included about 600g toblerone chocolate... thanks to my father-in-law who gave us 1.2kgs of said deliciously nutty, nougatty goodness for Chritsmas- what was he thinking! Anyway, chocolate has gone so hopefully next week's results will be a bit more promising.

It drums home to me that I really do need to clean up my eating, as I mentioned in a previous post, fasting has made me very aware of what I am eating and it has become quite apparent how much crap I actually shove in my mouth. Next week's plan is to eat more healthily, after tomorrow's bbq and toblerone cheesecake, of course...

Tweaking

This might sound crazy, but I'm finding the fasting part of this new plan much easier than the eating part! When I'm fasting I know exactly what my choices are: water, tea, mineral water or diet soft drink. There's no 'Stuff it! A bit more won't hurt'. When I'm eating, it's so much harder... hence the good intentions and not so good reality! I have found that after the fast I am much more aware of what I'm eating. So perhaps that's the secret, mindful eating- making sure that what I eat is the best option as well as chewing slowly and enjoying every mouthful, instead of my usual shove it in as fast as I can! I also discovered during the last fast that I lick food off my fingers a lot! Especially when feeding the kids!

It also doesn't help that Baby M decided last night to have a party at 1am that went for 2 hours! Then he got up for the day at 5am! Everything is harder when you're tired, especially when it comes to food. When I'm tired I crave sweet stuff and no, fruit DOES NOT cut it! Give me chocolate baby and no body gets hurt! As always having the right food in the house helps and if there's no chocolate then there's no temptation.

 I've adjusted my fast time today, I started at 12pm and am hoping that will make tomorrow easier, not so long to go hungry! See how we go, I'll keep you posted.

xo