These past couple of weeks with my husband home on vacation have been great! But I'm not going to lie--I'm feeling pretty fluffy after all the food we treated ourselves to. I've never been one for 'diets', though, because I don't like the word and ideas surrounding some of the more extreme ones. In my early twenties I've tried the paleo diet and the 21-Day Fix, but ended up feeling extremely hungry, irritable, and was not able to maintain it for more than a few days. When I tried going paleo, I actually cried on day three because I was so hungry and found it difficult to adjust. Maybe it's just me, but any diet that makes you actually cry while simultaneously wanting to strangle puppies is not a good one. Those experiences coupled with my love of all things sweet has meant that I normally am a proponent of eating what you want in moderation and avoiding all things with the headline 'diet'.
That philosophy has worked for me fairly well over the years, and when I find I've needed to lose weight, cutting back on the sugar has worked. That being said, I've never been great at getting a good amount of fruit and vegetables in my diet and have always eaten more meat-based meals than I'd like, so when I read through the insert included in this month's issue of BBC Good Food magazine, I thought I'd give it a go because it actually sounds great.
It is technically a diet because it restricts calories, unhealthy fats, sugar, and salt, but the recipes don't initially appear to be 'diet-y' recipes where you basically munch on cardboard-flavoured quinoa and cry over yet another helping of raw carrots. Each day's recipes are for ~1,500 calories and provides your five fruit and veg per day while staying within the recommended daily intake for fats, sugar, and salt. The insert's weekly menu is great, but if you find you need a little more to fill you up, there are loads of healthy snack recommendations on the website (link below).
I'll be tracking my progress here over the next few days in the hopes of actually sticking to a diet plan, so feel free to follow along. If you're interested in also giving this diet a go, you'll have to pick up a copy of the June 2018 magazine in stores for the recipes. However,
here is a link for the shopping list, and
here is a link to the nutrition tab on the Good Food website where you can find loads of recipes if you'd like to have a go at making your own menu or need additional snacks.
Day One:
I weighed myself this morning and didn't wince at the scale, so that's good. Also went on a 2.3 mile run and didn't cough up a lung, so feeling pretty positive on the whole. For breakfast, I had a mushroom hash with a poached egg on top from the Good Food diet plan, and oh my gosh, it was delicious. If all diet food were this good, no one would have problems sticking to them.
I also finished shopping for the first three and a half days of meals. It came to £40 at Sainsbury's, but could have been cheaper if I had gone to Morrison's or Aldi's. While I initially thought £40 was a bit on the high side, when you break it down that's for 10 meals and some snacks, which equates to about £3 a meal (factoring in the snack prices), and is still far cheaper than the one Costa coffee a day and perhaps one take-out a week that I normally buy.
I was a bit hungry after shopping, and it wasn't time for lunch yet, so I did have a snack of a handful of strawberries and a peach.
Lunch was this pepper and courgette/zucchini linguine. Believe it or not, this is all one portion for one person! I've just double checked to make sure I hadn't added too much pasta, but no--the photo is a correct portion for one. With 75g of pasta in my belly, I was absolutely stuffed and entirely satisfied, and the recipe only has 473 calories, so is appropriate for a filling lunch.
Making it took 30 minutes in total of prep work and cooking, and all the dishes were washed and put away in another 15 minutes. It's also a good meal for those that take their lunch to work as it's quick and easy to cook the night before and will store well for the next day. I bet it would also be delicious cold.
I would actually serve this to guests as well. The basil/pine nut combination gave the pasta a pesto taste. The bell peppers were delicious, and if your kids are a bit picky on vegetables, this would be a good dish to make as I could barely taste the courgette--the basil hides veggies well!
While I'm doing this diet, I have a goal of 10,000 steps a day. As I hadn't yet hit that, I went on a short walk between lunch and dinner. If you're looking to increase your daily activity, I like having a fitness tracker, and I'm a member of the #walk1000miles Facebook group run by
Country Walking Magazine. It has helped me be way more active by being a member of a community--even a virtual one.
The last meal for today was steamed trout with a mint and dill dressing. This is the meal that I was least looking forward to from the moment I saw it on the menu because I normally find steamed fish fairly tasteless.
The recipe is great though! You cook the asparagus and peas in a vegetable bullion cube and water, so there is a lot of flavour. The trout is good, especially if you like steamed fish, although while I'll likely use this method again to cook vegetables, I doubt I'll be running to eat steamed fish soon. Not pictured are some new potatoes because I forgot to put them on the plate when I photographed the fish. Ooops.
To end the day, I'm treating myself to banana 'nice' cream, which is basically just pureed frozen banana and 1TBSP of peanut butter. Sounds like baby food, but I swear it is delicious and has the texture of ice cream.
The Takeaways and Stats:
There is a surprising amount of food for this first day, and I am definitely ending the day not hungry and completely satisfied. The recipes so far are pretty full of flavour as well, and you don't end a meal feeling like you've had cardboard. There is prep work, but not a crazy amount for the meals and the ones for today can be prepped and often made ahead if you are busy. Cleanup is really easy compared to what I normally have to do. Looking forward to Day 2!
Total calories consumed: 1,400
Total calories burned: 2,189 (808 active, 1,376 resting)
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