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

Fast and Furious

First fast finished! And surprisingly, it wasn't that bad... until about 21hrs in, then I got grumpy and took it out on the vacuum cleaner! Vacuuming when angry = broken vacuum! Oh well, hopefully I can stick it back together with duct tape :)

I started the fast at 2pm yesterday and it was easy enough to get through the afternoon and dinner time for kids and Mr Fabulous. Although, it would have been a bit easier if he hadn't kept asking me if I would like to try his dinner as it was so good, apparently. A gentle reminder fixed that issue :) I went to bed fairly early as I was starting to feel a bit shaky and figured bed would be the easy option. A couple of mid-night wake-ups later, thanks kiddies, I felt pretty good when I got up at 7. Not hungry at all through breakfast, I didn't start to really feel hungry until around 11 and I was definitely on a short fuse too- hence the broken vacuum!

I broke my fast at 2pm with a friend, some crackers and hummus and a few pieces of toblerone chocolate. It felt strange to eat after not eating all day, but I got over that pretty quick! I still felt pretty hungry for the rest of the afternoon and had some more crackers and salsa when the kids had dinner and then ate a normal dinner chicken, spuds and salad.

So, what did I learn from my first attempt at fasting?

Well, I think for the next fast I will start earlier in the day, maybe around 10 or 11am. I think it will be easier to miss 2 meals on the first day when you're not yet super hungry, rather than skip 2 meals on the 2nd day when you're starting to get pretty hungry. It might take a bit of experimenting to get the timing right.

I also found that if I added ice cubes to my water and crunched on those, it felt a bit like eating so that helped this morning when I felt like I might be able to chew the leg off a chair! I had something to drink every time I felt hungry and stuck to water, herbal tea and mineral water as suggested by Brad Pilon in Eat Stop Eat.

What to do next?

The big question that the few people I've mentioned my new plan to is 'What will you eat when you're not fasting?' According to Mr Pilon you should eat normally and healthily. Well that's a bit of a problem for me! If I ate 'normally' like I have been for the past year- since my lap band was removed, I really don't think I'd lose much weight. I have fallen into a few nasty habits and have been thinking about cleaning up my act for a while now, really just needing the right motivation to get my shit together.

After my son was born in April, I saw a naturopath for some advice on healthy ways to lose weight. She gave me a diet plan to follow that I found really appealing and not too restrictive or hardcore. It basically involves cutting carbs down to one serve of whole grains a day eg porridge, wholegrain bread,  brown rice etc and ensuring you eat a serve of protein for every meal, not necessarily meat protein either but combining plant proteins to ensure you get all the amino acids. Lots of beans and nuts and seeds as well as heaps of vegies to help fill you up and some fruit for a sweet hit. Absolutely no added sugar or processed food, there goes my secret Macca's habit! :)

So, at the moment my plan for the week goes like this:
Sunday- breakfast then fast 10am onwards
Monday 10am - Wednesday 10am- eat healthily, according to naturopath's plan
Wednesday 10am - Thursday 10am- fast
Thursday 10am - Sunday 10am- healthy eating

Well that's the plan, we'll see how it goes!

I'm trying to drum up the courage to put my weights and measures up... maybe next time :)

xo

Let's get this party started!

So, I was reading The Weekend Australian Magazine yesterday, and I came across an article that caught my eye, Running on Empty by Mimi Spencer. It was all about Intermittent Fasting, I'd never heard of it, but being the diet junkie I am, I kept reading. The article was very interesting and I decided to trawl the web to see what else I could find out... After all, if I could still eat normally and just skip a few meals and lose weight, well it's worth a try! Especially with 20kgs of baby weight to lose and a tropical holiday coming up in 10wks!

The article mentioned Brad Pilon and his book Eat Stop Eat, so of course I looked him up and yes, bought his book! So now that I've read about it, I think I'm ready to give it a go! To help keep me motivated I'm writing this blog, does it make me a bit more accountable? Perhaps. I figure I'll write about how it's going, any progress, setbacks and maybe I'll throw in some other stuff... recipes, ideas and any other bits and pieces that take my fancy.

A bit about me...

I'm 33, mother of two, wife of one and been overweight for most of my adult life. I've tried just about every diet known to man at some point or other, most with some success for a short time before falling off the wagon and putting the weight back on. In 2008, I decided it was time to get serious, I wanted to have kids and not do it overweight, so I had lap band surgery. This was successful, I lost 32kg in 18 months and then fell pregnant! Yippee! Finally, something that worked! Yes, it was still hard work to lose weight with a lap band, but it took away the hungry feeling and all the associated guilt I had about eating. It was great. And then it went wrong. I had two major issues- the first in 2009, the tubing got tangled around my bowel and had to be surgically untangled and then in 2011 when I was 20 weeks pregnant with my second baby the band slipped and I had emergency surgery to have it removed. Not fun. So after that I decided that although the band worked for me, I didn't want any more complications so I'm back on my own in the weightloss world. I miss the band, it really helped me and it's much harder to keep on track without it.

That's about all I'm willing to give away about myself at the moment!


Find The Weekend Australian Magazine article here:  http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/running-on-empty/story-e6frg8h6-1226555300289

Find Brad Pilon's Eat Stop Eat website here:
 http://www.eatstopeat.com