WEIGHT GAIN AFTER A NIGHT OUT?

A good night out followed by a takeaway. Why not? Now and again we all like to celebrate.
Next morning, step on the scales - disaster.
We've learned from this, and now we don't step on the scales the morning after the odd night out! Whatever the scales register they rarely make sense, particularly after some takeaways.
It's a situation we have seen many times… not just when we go out, but when we have eaten certain types of food - and we know it's a temporary situation. There are many reasons for weight fluctuation, so it makes good sense to only weigh yourself once a week. Or if you are curious, as we were at the beginning, weigh more often to help recognise there can be fluctuations in weight.
Just ask yourself - have you eaten enough calories to equate to the weight gain (and we've experienced some surprising and unusual big gains).
Knowing that 3,600 calories = approximately one pound in weight, the answer has always been 'no'. Just a rough count of the calories is all you need.
By ignoring these fluctuations in weight which can often be down to water balance, we just carry on as we are. The temporary 'gain' in weight disappears over the next couple of days.
It's helped us lose weight, keep it off and … be relaxed around food, drink and celebrations.

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Do you know how many calories you are allowed each day?

We started this blog as a way of recording what we ate while losing weight. The blog is a food diary, and contains lots of recipes, tips and ideas about losing weight.

Here's the method that helped us to lose weight and how to FORGET DIETING. 

Copyright © forget dieting forever (2014), all rights reserved. Please do not copy any of this material without my express permission.

SLOW ROASTED PORK (and diets)

Slow roasted belly of pork never fails to please. From the crunch to the meltingly soft pork below - this has to be one of our favourite dishes. By the time you take it out of the oven, most of the fat will have been cooked out. It's the flavour of the meat that's left… see our recipe below.
You can make pulled-pork sandwiches later too, if you have any left that is. We've made this before with a spicy Chinese marinade, but this time we    added cider.
Now SUGAR is finally making headlines, as the

Love bread - hate diets?

Restrictive diets usually limit the amount of bread you can eat. Next thing you know, you're craving the bread you can't eat.
I love bread - and it was one of the things I really missed when dieting. There was no substitute really.  What we did about this problem is probably not what you would expect, but it worked for us and helped us enjoy losing weight.
Dieting was always a negative experience for me - can't have this, can't have that. But we now realise it doesn't have to be like that.

IS YOGHURT GOOD FOR WEIGHT LOSS

Yoghurt is good for weight loss, but…. only if you like it. Are you eating foods you really enjoy - or just filling yourself with food you are being told to eat by the latest diet you are following?
Here's what we ate today - yoghurt and fresh fruit with a drizzle of honey.
In fact we eat everything and anything for breakfast, from bacon sandwiches to yoghurt.
If you eat what you enjoy, you will feel less inclined to pick and snack. It certainly helped stop our cravings. Our philosophy: you only crave what you can't have - so if you can have it, you won't crave it.
After years of yo-yo dieting, spending hundreds of £££££s seeking a solution to weight loss, and eating food that tasted like plastic, we decided to do something different. Diets had the opposite effect on my weight - making me crave food that wasn't allowed.
I craved real tasty food.
So...

HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT

Welcome to all our new followers. We hope you enjoy looking around this blog for some weight loss inspiration. Changing the way we think (or see) has had quite an impact on our weight. If you find it difficult to lose weight, why not change the way you think too? 

If you find it difficult to stick to diets - as we once did - why not give this PART-TIME weight loss plan a go? What have you got to lose?

It's been nearly 3 years since our first blog post, and there's now so much content I thought it was time to post a quick overview. I've noticed the blog needs tidying up as some of the links are not working, so please bear with me:

Binge all weekend?

Hunger dictated this very filling lunch of SAUSAGE, EGG & BEANS with mushrooms, tomatoes and buttered toast.
The sausages were very meaty - about 95% meat content. Proper sausages!
Often we'll have salads or sandwiches for lunch, but when we've been a bit more active - as I have today - we look for something more substantial. Working in the garden is good exercise, and I would say I must have burned a few hundred calories. Enough to offset the higher calorie lunch than usual.
We aim to eat around 450-500 calories at lunch time. I can well remember when I used to follow restrictive diets where I (frustratingly) tried to survive on 300 calories for lunch, and end up so hungry (and miserable) I would eventually eat anything and quite often - everything in sight.
There was a piece in the Daily Mail today about people who binge all weekend consuming up to 10,000 calories over two days. The article, although extreme, struck a chord with me - as it probably did with many dieters. You've spent all week dieting, then the weekend arrives and you give up. Start your 'diet' on Monday, and by Friday you are so hungry you just want to eat, eat and eat. I then used to promise myself I would 'start a new diet' on Monday - and this gave me justification to carry on eating. This process was repeated year after year after year. I didn't binge like the article though. The weekend becomes a free for all food frenzy. You feel guilty. Who wins in this situation? The diet industry with your repeat business of course - not you. 
BUT, there is a way out of this destructive cycle.  
We ALL have a calorie allowance. We can eat ALL types of food. That's why OUR METHOD works. We recognised right at the beginning that we loved our WEEKENDS too. It's a time to relax, be with friends and socialise. Even during the week, we allowed ourselves MORE food than most conventional weight loss programmes. Over two years we shed the pounds quite easily, and more importantly we've kept them off. So go on, take a leap of faith, give this method of weight loss a go. What have you got to lose - except weight.

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Do you know how many calories you can eat each day?

Here's a link to our very first blog post about our weight loss journey, which we began in January 2011. We started this blog as a way of recording what we ate while losing weight. The blog is a food diary, and contains lots of recipes, tips and ideas about losing weight.

You'll find our WEIGHT LOSS PLAN here. 

Copyright © forget dieting forever (2013), all rights reserved. Please do not copy any of this material without our express permission.

Steak and onion rings

It's been a while since we ate STEAK and CHIPS. A couple of huge home cooked onion rings replaced half the portion of our mighty chips. The hot balsamic tomatoes were deliciously sweet and sticky.
We like to eat a balance of foods - and if you take a look through our recipes/diary, you'll notice we eat everything. Our weight management system does not dictate WHAT you should eat. You get to choose your own food. Hopefully, in the end, you'll learn enough about the food you eat, to make simple lifestyle choices that will help you to lose and maintain weight loss forever. Interestingly, according to some weight loss theories, you tend to eat more the more varied your diet and therefore gain weight. However, we've found the opposite to be true. Why?

2000 CALORIES ON A PLATE

This is what 2000 calories looks like (excluding the bread). We bought this large bag of chip shop chips from  a new chip shop and found it weighed 800g. We couldn't believe it. Not all chip shops dish up such a generous portion, so next time you're buying some why not weigh them and see for yourself.
Our philosophy is to eat the food you love - and we've certainly done that - while losing weight.
If you ate all these chips, you would be eating the equivalent of ONE whole day's calorie allowance for the average woman.

Chicken & avocado pasta with a mint and lemon dressing

Wondering what to have for a solo lunch and needing a little inspiration? Why not take a look around the kitchen and see what you have. Here's what I found around the kitchen/garden!
We like to grow vegetables in pots, and the peas were just shooting so I picked a few pods. There was a pot of mint. Some leftover chicken breast and a couple of asparagus spears.
Here's what I made - which will also make a great lunchbox alternative.
For my recipe below I've estimated the calories in this dish, which are incredibly low.
Our long term strategy for maintaining weight loss is to keep applying the knowledge we have built up while following our simple METHOD. Especially about CALORIES (see below), and what they mean to us. This has worked remarkably well, and we continue to eat whatever we want yet keep the weight off.
I am aiming to lose a little bit more because (annoyingly) I seem to be

Smoked salmon

Here's our quick lunch - smoked salmon with scrambled (duck) eggs. The richness of the eggs complimented the salmon perfectly. We estimate this dish at around 450 calories - including the toast.
Losing weight doesn't stop when you reach your 'goal'.
Because we have lost weight slowly, we found we learned a lot about the foods we like to eat. We know how many calories they contain and we can now roughly calculate a plate of food just by looking at it. This is helping us keep the weight off.

WALKING FOR WEIGHT LOSS

It's GET WALKING WEEK, so why not incorporate walking into your daily routine and reap the weight loss rewards?
After two years of slow and steady weight loss, we know this form of exercise has helped.
Apart from the health benefits a lot of people forget that walking translates into CALORIES. Just half an hour of walking could mean you burn 100 calories or more per day. This could equate to 10 lbs in weight loss per year.
Why not take a look at what we said about CALORIES.
WALKING is not just a social activity either, because quite often I'm on my own. Shopping is a good example.
I've got a small pedometer and can track just how far I walk and on a shopping trip I can clock up 1.5 miles easily by parking a little further away and wandering down a street or two before going into the shops. I also get to

WHY DOES MY WEIGHT FLUCTUATE

If you've been dieting for a while you will probably have experienced weight fluctuations. It's annoying if you have a weight target in mind and the scales seem to point further away from your goal. Diets can look easy on paper, but in real life they can seem impossible to follow. Diets can also impose a strict regime that may be just too difficult to fit into your lifestyle. Expectations might be high at the start, and you may feel fed up when the weight doesn't fall off. But keep in mind that weight gain didn't happen overnight, so how can you expect it to disappear in a few days. During our weight loss, we noticed our weight could fluctuate

Dieting? Choices and control

We have always said planning meals ahead will help you lose weight and keep the weight off. Once you get into the habit, it does become easier.
When you are busy socialising, it's all too easy to come home and say - there's nothing in the fridge... let's get a takeaway. Nowadays, we like to think we'll have something available, because we have planned ahead.
You never know what you might fancy, but if you are given a CHOICE, you may opt for the less calorific meal.
Just remember YOU are in control of what you eat - especially when you have something to choose from. If you decide you want that takeaway instead of something you've prepared - then eat it. If you don't want to think about calories, then don't. It's almost impossible to judge calories in a takeaway anyway. Losing weight takes time, and if you are too strict on yourself, you'll give up. If you have something prepared, then decide you would prefer the takeaway, all is not lost - you will have lunch ready to go the next day.

MEN AND DIETING - can you see yourself here?

Hi, my name's TIM and I am sitting here writing my side of this journey through weight loss, over 4 stone lighter than I was knowing that if I can do this anybody can as it is simple and easy and to be honest with you I do not know why I did not know or was not told some of this easy life changing information.

I come from a family that is on the big side, both my parents and brothers are on the big side. Personally I know that I was obese all my adult life or at least the past 25 years. I have used all the excuses under the sun I am big boned, it’s in my genes, slow metabolism and of course for a lot of men it is the alcohol. Although I was obese I was also active with golf, skiing, playing refereeing and coaching rugby so I was fit but overweight. Some weekends I would even take part in two games of rugby and 18 holes of golf without too much bother, and I was, in fact doing significantly more exercise than I do now because I no longer play. The simple fact is I am now eating more food than I was two years ago and still enjoy those chips in the canteens when I choose to eat them but learning what I know has been a real lesson.

I would say I was a fairly typical bloke

Eating out and special occasions

Enjoying life and social events without worrying about our weight is part of our philosophy - and freedom! Gone are the days when I used to feel guilty about eating food that wasn't listed on some restrictive 'diet' or other. Having the freedom and choice to eat whatever we fancy is so much more relaxing, and we believe this way of thinking has actually helped us lose weight. Why? We think it's because we stop focussing on something we can't have. Most 'diets' tend to have a negativity about them - can't have this or that. But, because nothing is forbidden on our method, then food rarely plays on our mind. How often have you eaten a saintly salad only to find ...

DIETING? What drives us eat?

Losing weight eating the food we love is important to us - why? We think it helps eliminate food cravings and ultimately over-eating. There are many reasons for over-eating, and what we see can often make a great impression on us. Do you ever see something delicious and find it plays on your mind?
The steak and ale pie we cooked yesterday is the perfect example of things playing on our mind. I saw the suet pastry in a newspaper article over two months ago - and I've been wanting to try it ever since!
Here's my breakfast and I love making this when I have time. It's one of my favourites, and really filling. The marmite soldiers are not mine of course ;o).

Today we're having the bresaola and goat's cheese salad for lunch, and I'm making a batch of chicken and vegetable soup. It's essentially the same as this 'ham with everything' soup (see photo below) but I'll use chicken wings instead of ham.
Tinned cannellini beans are a great standby, and I love using them in soups. I'll post the recipe later.
REMEMBER: We all have a calorie allowance - and we like to post our main meals to show you what we are eating.
You won’t find us posting every last morsel though – but we hope you'll see just how far calories can go!

If you would like to know more about how we have achieved our fabulous weight loss eating all this wonderful food - see OUR UNIQUE METHOD.

Copyright © forgetdietingforever 2013, all rights reserved.

Eat fast and live longer

Over the last 18 months we have been experimenting with our own weight loss idea - and lost 6.5 stone in weight as a result (as at 7 August 2012).  We believe our weight loss has been due to the eating method we discovered.
After already losing a lot of our weight, we saw a programme on television by BBC Horizon featuring Dr Moseley called "Eat, fast and live longer". Astonishingly, as we watched, we were more than a little stunned to find we had already experienced similar weight loss results. The programme described a DIET called the 5:2 - which involved fasting for two days.  BUT, we had already found we could lose weight relatively easily - without the need to fast for two days. Similarly, we were also eating whatever food we wanted.
Interestingly, we noted the programme showed two groups of people - those who ate lower fat foods and those that ate higher fat foods. Despite this, there was no difference in how much weight was lost overall. This is exactly what we are experiencing - we

Low fat - no thanks

When I say no thanks, I'm talking about LOW-FAT PROCESSED FOODS. At the very beginning of our weight loss journey, we decided to ignore low-fat foods. I had been reading the labels on some processed low-fat foods and realised the 'fat' was being replaced with 'sugar' and other chemicals. We had noticed too, that whenever we ate sugary foods - and some of the low-fat foods tasted really sweet - that we were never really satisfied. It also seemed that by eating sugar, we just wanted more... sugar. So we decided to eat food in its most natural state - for example, we would choose a normal yoghurt over a 'low fat' yoghurt. We found these foods satisfied our hunger and helped us to stop snacking.

Because we wanted to lose weight, we had to