Forget dieting forever: October 2012

Monday, 29 October 2012

Chinese style pork

We smothered 450g of pork in hoi sin sauce, garlic, ginger and a little soy, marinated for an hour, then after browning in a pan we cooked in the oven for 20 minutes. The result was succulent and tasty - not dry at all. A good serving of stir fry veg, our home made delicate egg fried rice and our dinner came to approximately 550 calories.
We cooked some basmati rice earlier on in the day then left it to cool. The cold rice was cooked in oil (we used groundnut) together with one beaten egg and peas.

Read OUR IDEA - to find out how we are eating fabulous food and losing weight.

Sunday, 28 October 2012

Our beef dish - French style

Boeuf bourguignon made with brisket of beef. We couldn't get hold of chuck, blade or shin of beef, which seem to be the usual cuts of meat in this powerful dish.
We soaked the beef in about 300ml of red wine overnight. Dried it then coated in a little flour and browned in the frying pan. This went into the slow cooker with the usual stock veggies - celery, leek, carrot, garlic, bay leaf and thyme. Just to be different we added one piece of star anise!
When the meat was tender, I added sliced mushrooms, large chunks of carrots, small onions and some fried smoked bacon bits. Cooking continued until the carrots were soft.
The liquid was removed, sieved and reduced by about half its volume. It was absolutely delicious and very very rich.
If you would like to know more about how we have achieved over 6.5 stone weight loss eating all this wonderful food - see OUR IDEA

Saturday, 27 October 2012

SEA BASS

The blackcurrant base was a perfect foil for the wonderfully creamy risotto and sea bass. For the risotto we sweated some shallots until translucent, then added some crushed garlic (to your taste...). The rice was added to the pan and cooked for about 2-3 minutes until the edges were translucent. We added a glass of white wine and waited until that was absorbed then added the vegetable stock. The stock was added slowly during the cooking time until the rice was the right consistency. There are tons of recipes online for cooking risotto - we tend to use our judgment, and this varies according to the amount of rice used. Believe it or not, the blackcurrant base was

Saturday lunch - chilli pasta and prawns

A quick and easy lunch made with fresh king prawns. The spicy tomato sauce was freshly made and delicious.
This dish is no more than 400 calories.
The sauce can be made with tinned chopped tomatoes, but we used fresh. Take the skin off the fresh tomatoes - put a small cross in the bottom of the the tomato and place in boiling water for up to 30 seconds. Remove skins and chop the flesh.

In a frying pan, add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and fry the tomatoes with some chopped garlic (if you like) and some chilli flakes for about 2 - 3 minutes. Add uncooked prawns to the pan and continue until they go pink. Add the cooked pasta to the frying pan and mix. After adding the prawns and pasta we noticed the mixture looking a bit dry so we added a couple of tablespoons of the cooking water from the pasta. Don't forget to season well with salt and pepper - once we added the right amount of salt in particular, the whole flavour of the dish just intensified so much.

Losing weight eating the food we love!

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 this gives you an idea of how far calories can go!

Read about OUR UNIQUE METHOD of weight loss and find out how we have lost weight eating the food we love.

Weekend plan

Here's our breakfast - full fat greek yoghurt with toasted oats, blueberries and honey. The toasted oats were delicious and added a bit of crunch. Followed with a slice of buttered granary toast breakfast was a respectable 300 calories.
Lunch is going to be pasta - with our own spicy tomato sauce (to use up some tomatoes).
Dinner is going to be fish. We have a new recipe we fancy trying out. So I'll be looking into the ingredients for that.
TOMORROW: We're planning a beef bourguignon using brisket of beef. We tried to buy some chuck steak, but couldn't find it. So we are using brisket instead - poor man's version I suspect. The brisket from the butcher looked good - so we'll give it a go. Recipe to follow.

If you would like to know more about how we have achieved over 6.5 stone weight loss eating all this wonderful food - see OUR IDEA.

Friday, 26 October 2012

The great weight loss debate

With so many debates on the best way to lose weight, we believe we have found a great way. If you look along the top of our blog, you'll see some main TABS - these contain a lot of our thoughts on the diet debate.
Take a look at OUR IDEA - a simple eating METHOD which we think can be adapted to suit most tastes. I've often wondered why it was so difficult to lose weight whenever I followed a 'diet'. Now, after following our method since last year, I realise that diets are not the answer to long term weight loss. I used to think it was impossible to lose weight, after constantly regaining all the weight I had lost through 'dieting'. Not any more.
Take a look at our blog - which was started in June 2011 after we had already lost quite a bit of weight. Most of the foods we ate are all documented here.
Everything we have written is our own opinion, and backed up with a 6.5 stone weight loss. We are convinced we have found a way that will be with us for life.
I'm working on the weekend menu at the moment. Unfortunately the internet hasn't been available in the last couple of days, but finally it's here! I usually keep our blog updated most days, taking pictures of our food. While the pictures show the majority of the food we eat, it is not always practical to post everything! We hope the photographs inspire and show that eating real food while losing weight is actually possible (that was the reason we started this blog anyway). So if you need recipes, ideas or inspiration, then feel free to come back and see what we are up to.

Sunday, 21 October 2012

Toad in the hole

This was our Sunday 'roast' today. Toad in the hole - that's sausages in Yorkshire pudding batter. We used pork sausages. We were a little naughty eating this with roast potatoes and roast parsnips, when we would usually eat it with mashed potato.
The cabbage was a January King - and I found this to be delicate and soft with a sweeter taste than most other cabbages.
It was all very filling, especially with our own onion gravy. Eat enough calories with fresh vegetables like this and I generally find I don't want to eat much later, so doubt if I will go over my 1900-2000 calorie allowance for today. We may have a calorie limit - but we still eat whatever we fancy within that boundary! That way we are never deprived. Tomorrow we will return to 4 'good' days of eating and our weight loss should continue.

If you would like to know more about how we have achieved over 6.5 stone weight loss eating all this wonderful food - see OUR IDEA

Read how we put 'our idea' to the test - Our Experiment

We keep mentioning CALORIES - see why!

Saturday, 20 October 2012

Beef teriyaki

BEEF TERIYAKI

We marinated a sirloin steak in a teriyaki sauce overnight. The sauce contained: equal portions of MIRIN, Sake, soy sauce and sugar. We used 2 tablespoons of each.
The sirloin steak (together with the sauce) was fried according to our taste - then the steak was removed and rested. During the cooking time, the sauce reduced and caramelised nicely.

RICE

We cooked some basmati rice earlier on in the day then left it to cool. The cold rice was cooked in oil (we used groundnut) together with one beaten egg and peas. This was absolutely delicious and so very delicate in flavour. We are certainly going to eat this again - perhaps adding a few fried onions and mushrooms maybe.

SAUCE

The side dish was pak choi cooked briefly.The sauce for the pak choi was the same as we used for the steak (uncooked).

Each steak was around 175g (approx 260 calories). The fried rice amounted to approx 250 calories each - no more than 300 calories, so we estimate the whole meal to have been somewhere around 550 to 600 calories.
NOTE: We can understand why teriyaki salmon is popular now, and plan to make this next time. We also think the sauce will could work with a slow cooked piece of meat, so we might experiment with that another day.
If you would like to know more about how we have achieved over 6.5 stone weight loss eating all this wonderful food - see OUR IDEA

Read how we put 'our idea' to the test - Our Experiment

We keep mentioning CALORIES - see why!

Friday, 19 October 2012

Weekend plan

Here's our lunch - ham hock soup. As fabulous as ever and very filling at around 200 calories for a portion this size. I added some grated cheese to mine and ate with a chunk of really fresh white bread and butter (nothing better).
The recipe is here - and can be adapted to suit.
For the weekend we've decided on beef teriyaki tomorrow and on Sunday we'll have chicken chasseur. So there are a couple of new dishes for us to try out.

If you would like to know more about how we have achieved over 6.5 stone weight loss eating all this wonderful food - see OUR IDEA

Read how we put 'our idea' to the test - Our Experiment

We keep mentioning CALORIES - see why!

Thursday, 18 October 2012

Bresaola beef

We've been away - taking advantage of a few days brighter weather. We seemed to have missed the rain completely and were able to explore under Devon's sunshine.
Today we return to our weekly weight loss routine - and Thursday is a 'good' day, so we had a delicious Bresaola beef salad which had been suggested to us by one of our readers. We thought we would give this a try, and agree that it's a great alternative to the parma ham we would usually have had with the figs and goats cheese. Still exceptionally low in calories, yet very filling at around 400 calories.
Using our own home made delicious goat's dressing we assembled this salad quickly and easily.
For the goat's cheese salad dressing (to serve 2) we used 30g of soft/crumbly goat's cheese and mixed this with 30g of full fat creamy greek yoghurt, then we added enough milk to loosen the mix to a consistency we wanted. Depending on the type of cheese/yoghurt used the milk needed could be more or less, but for us we added 30g milk. Add salt and pepper to your liking. This dressing came to just 120 calories (60 calories each) - and tasted very luxurious.

If you would like to know more about how we have achieved over 6.5 stone weight loss eating all this wonderful food - see OUR IDEA

Read how we put 'our idea' to the test - Our Experiment

We keep mentioning CALORIES - see why!

Saturday, 13 October 2012

Crisps and brisket of beef

Saturday lunch was a sausage sandwich, what more can I say.

We had some cheese and biscuits with parsnip crisps before dinner. Here's the parsnips crisps - about half a parsnip worth. Just grease a baking tray and lay out the sliced parsnip (using a potato peeler). You could slice carrots too. Spray with oil and bake until brown - about 10 mins at 180 degrees.
We said we would be cooking our slow cooked beef brisket again. We added more onions to the pan this time because they caramelise nicely and taste delicious. We smothered the meat with almost the same rub as before, also adding some garlic powder this time. We removed the foil for the last hour of cooking, when we added the potatoes.

The only difference between this meal and the last one was the quality of the beef. This time we had a much leaner piece - with less fat and marbling - so the result was much drier. We perhaps should have cooked it for less time after removing the foil. Despite this, the flavour was exactly the same! It was very very tasty.

If you would like to know more about how we have achieved over 6.5 stone weight loss eating all this wonderful food - see OUR IDEA

Read how we put 'our idea' to the test - Our Experiment

We keep mentioning CALORIES - see why!

Friday, 12 October 2012

What have we learned?

So what have we learned so far about eating and weight? The last 19 months have been a learning curve for both of us and we feel confident about the future. We've ditched our larger sizes and swapped these for much smaller clothes. Our bodies have changed shape dramatically and I'm continuing to do so. Most importantly we both realise why we were overweight, why we were slowly gaining weight and finally how to put that right - without going to extremes and following silly diets.
Having the confidence to spend money on a whole new wardrobe of clothes in smaller sizes is our commitment to staying at this lower weight. We cannot see that we will ever put the weight back on, which was something that would happen after EVERY previous weight loss attempt when following a 'diet'.
Dieting never worked in the long term for us because we couldn't take control - the diet did that not us. As soon as the 'diet' was over, we had to take control of our eating once more - so returned to our normal eating habits. The diet was written in a different language to the one we associated with on a daily basis. Sometimes the diet would have a strange set of rules, which, if followed could result in weight loss. If I desperately wanted to lose weight, I would follow those rules rigidly - but the minute I returned to my normal eating habits, the weight piled back on.
To take control of our eating (and weight) we needed to understand the formula for weight loss - that's how we came up with our method - OUR IDEA. This formula / method will stay with us forever. We found success by eating all the foods we love - no diet foods were necessary. Understanding and taking control has been the key to our weight loss success.

Thursday, 11 October 2012

Mixed salad

It seems ages since we had a salad like this. I love the hot new potatoes with butter - I think it 'makes' the dish. We had some chicken, leftover pastrami, egg and cheese.

I'm thinking of making a vegetable curry for dinner later, so I can use up the cauliflower.

Why not search our blog for other meals and their calorie count. Just type in the number of calories and the meals will be listed. Or type in an ingredient, and the recipes will come up.

Read how we put 'our idea' to the test and lost over 6 stone in weight - Our Experiment

We keep mentioning CALORIES - see why!