Hey!

Another week has passed so it is time for me to check in with my weekly review of my 6 week food challenge. I am passed half way now having lost 8.5lb in the first three weeks and more this week. At the start, I admitted that I was a fussy eater and lazy chef and I think I have also proven that I am also absolutely useless at sticking to a meal plan. This is why it is so shocking that I am still losing weight! This week is no different with a few slip-ups which I will tell you about later.

The shop

Each week, I am continually impressed that my shopping cart is relatively cheap. This meal plan is not breaking the bank. Additionally, as I am trying to follow the meal plan, I haven’t eaten out as often or spent as much money on things such as takeaways. This is a win-win as far as I am concerned. Both my bank balance and my waistline are looking healthier. (Though the waistline is slower at showing it!) This week, I spent £25 at Tesco, then a further £5 at Asda. This was to pick up a couple of bits that Tesco didn’t seem to have.

Once again, this is cheaper than my normal weekly shop. Largely, I think this is because my freezer is fuller than it has ever been. I finally finished my box of potato waffles that I bought in week 1 and things such as Quorn pieces and hash browns seem to last ages too. Perhaps the difference is portion size. Where, in the past, I would happily eat 6 or 7 nuggets in a sitting, most recipes call for only 4 or 5.

Substitutions

The main substitution this week was, as usual, meat. I am eating ‘real’ sausages (including hot dogs) and bacon. The sausages are higher in syns but Jess has kindly accounted for that and made sure I am never too close to my syn limit. Once again, I used Activita peach yoghurt in my fruity yoghurt crunch and had bananas with it this week.

I also swapped around a couple of my breakfasts, I had biscoff and banana pancakes (3.5 syns) instead of the biscoff baked oats (5 syns) and Jammie Dodger baked oats (4 syns) instead of the Jammie Dodger pancakes (7 syns). As a happy coincindence, these were lower in syns than what Jess had planned but my actual thought process involved some bananas that were looking past their best and needed using up and the fact that I forgot to pick up white chocolate spread in my shop.

Finally, (and I haven’t confessed this to Jess yet so she is just reading about it as she is publishing it) I didn’t have my roast dinner on Sunday. It just seemed like a lot of effort to make it at the time! For those of you who follow Jess on Instagram, you will know that we have been doing the couch to 5K. On Sunday, we all met up to run at 5pm. Eating a big Sunday dinner before then didn’t seem like a good idea and then when I got back (around 6pm) I couldn’t be bothered to make a Sunday dinner just for myself. I had a little look through what I had and found that I had some hot dogs leftover from the cheesy hotdog pasta, some potato waffles and a bag of veg. Basically, I had meat and potatoes with veg, so don’t think it was too bad!

The best bits

There is so much good food on this ‘diet’ it is always hard to pick a favourite. I certainly really enjoy the fruity yoghurt crunch for a simple breakfast which is quite different to the other food I am regularly eating at the moment. If I want something quick but cooked, I know in the future, I will turn straight to breakfast waffles as they take less than 5 minutes to prepare and cook. However, this week, the salt and pepper no chicken and chips was my overall favourite.

I wasn’t sure whether I would like this, and in all honesty, I didn’t think it looked like anything special from the pictures. However, I was gladly proven wrong. I have talked before about how good the chips are and how much I love Quorn nuggets. This recipe uses the vegan nuggets but by the time you have the Mayflower curry sauce on the top, you can’t tell if they are real meat, Quorn or vegan, it just tastes good!

Cheating

Yet again, I have been unable to be good for a whole week. It is safe to say, I am no angel when it comes to food and doing what I am supposed to. However, I am only human. I am off work so I have extra time to meet up with friends etc. A lot of this involves food and it is really hard to say no!

There were 2 main ‘incidents’ this week.

The first came on Monday when Jess was trying out a new breakfast / snack recipe. I won’t say what for, you will have to look out for it over the next few weeks! Of course, I was more than happy to help test it out! Who knew failure could taste so good?!

The next came on Saturday. I am not sure if I have mentioned before but I weigh in on Sunday mornings. However, this week, I was invited to my friend’s house for a pizza party and games night. Obviously, I didn’t want to miss out so told them that I would come but bring my own food. Which I did. I ate my stir fry while they had their homemade pizzas cooked in the pizza oven. Then we sat around chatting and some people were drinking. Again, I avoided the alcohol. Then, as the night stretched on, and the snacks and leftover pizza were still out for everyone to pick at, I caved. 3 slices of garlic bread, nearly half a tube of pringles and about half a dozen cocktail sausages later, I returned home dreading the weigh in in the morning.

As always, I have been snapping pics of my food this week. My photography skills are still not up to Jess’s standards, but I think I take the odd half decent shot!

The weigh in

Having eaten garlic bread, pringles and cocktail sausages the night before, it was fair to say I was absolutely dreading stepping on the scales on Sunday morning. To my absolute surprise, they said I had lost 2lb! Where normally, I would hop on and off a couple of times, needless to say, today, I quickly hopped off and didn’t question it! However, I am now wondering if I will see the results of my late-night feast on the scales next week instead.