I've been eating much better and much simpler over the past couple of weeks, and it's been really good. I am starting to feel the difference overall and as a bonus I have also lost six pounds in weight. At the start of the month I dug out my old Harcombe diet books for some recipe inspiration, after all the main ethos of that diet is to just eat real food, and they've really helped.
Breakfasts have been mostly egg based, usually with some tomatoes. Sometimes they are scrambled, often they are poached in the microwave for just one minute in my little silicone pots.
And sometimes they are simply hardboiled and quartered and eaten at my desk while I work.
The days when I'm not in the mood for an egg of any description I turn to porridge. The jumbo oats that I currently have in the big storage jar on the shelf are really tasty, they are ever so slightly nutty in flavour and slightly chewy, it's a good start to a cold day.
Each week I am starting with a couple of tubs of home chopped pre-prepared salad, and usually a big pot of soup, stew or curry in the fridge. This helps take away those moments when I stand at the fridge and wonder what the bloody hell to eat when I've left it just slightly too late and my stomach is rumbling at me and screaming 'just eat a biscuit'.
I've cut right back on processed foods including bread.
Over the course of the last two weeks I have had bread just once when we stopped on the way back from the hospital after visiting Mum and grabbed a salad Subway each. I could have avoided it there too and had the salad in a tub, but I think I needed the comfort of sinking my teeth into something soft and squidgy ... so I went for it.
At home I've taken to doing what you can see in this photo, whenever I've got lettuce leaves big enough to use as a wrap. In these ones are some of the chopped salady bits and half a tin of tuna divided between the two, it's surprisingly tasty and fresh and you don't get up from lunch feeling podged.
My evening meals have tended to be something like this, a lovely homemade vegetable curry with brown basmati rice. I simply used the last of a bag of mixed vegetables from the freezer in my homemade curry sauce. This looks so innocent but gosh I made this one spicy, I need to tone down the next batch a bit. I added a tin of coconut milk to try and mellow it out a bit ... it helped slightly! 😅
If I've not had eggs for breakfast I occasionally have an omelette for my evening meal, chucking in whatever vegetables are to hand or ready prepared in the fridge. It makes for a tasty and very satisfying tea, that usually keeps me going all night.
But if I really have the nibbles I am still quite happy ... very happy ... to have a couple of biscuits and a cup of coffee an hour before bedtime.
There always has to be room for some treats in life and these Deliciously Ella biscuits have pretty good ingredients: Wheat flour (Wheat Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Coconut Oil, Beet Sugar, Rice Flour, Water, Rolled Oats, Oat Flour, Salt, Madagascan Vanilla Extract. All things that either are, or could be found in my cupboard.
So I am more than happy to still have these occasionally, and putting them two at a time on a plate stops me from mindlessly nibbling at something that tastes so very good. 😄
Although this simpler way of eating is costing me more money for the fresh things that I buying each week, especially the non-farmed fresh salmon, the other tinned fish and organic eggs, I think overall because I am not buying pre-prepared, processed food it will almost average out over time. I find myself eating less but being more satisfied and it's a good feeling.
Sue xx
