Simple Salmon Stir-Fry

Posted January 16, 2014

Filed under Recipes

One of my favourite, quick and easy mid-week dinners is a salmon stir-fry.

Servings: 2

Pro Points: 6 (+ extra for rice)

Simple Start: 0

Preparation time: 0mins

Cooking time: 25-30mins

Ingredients

2 lightly smoked salmon fillets
A selection of prepared stir-fry vegetables
Brown rice to serve
Thai 7 Spice or Chinese 5 Spice
Soy sauce
Olive oil

Method

Preheat the oven to 170˚c/160˚c fan/355˚f/Gas mark 3. If using, cook the rice according to the instructions on the packet.
Meanwhile, wrap the salmon fillets in foil and place on a baking tray in the oven. Cook for 20mins.
Heat the oil in a wok or large frying pan. Add the vegetables and stir-fry for 2-3mins.
Sprinkle over 2/3tsps of the Thai or Chinese Spice and 1/2-1tsp Soy Sauce according to your taste.
Serve the salmon on top of the rice surrounded by the vegetables.

Top tip: If you’re counting Pro Points, exchange the rice for boiled noodles and add them to the vegetables before adding the spices and soy sauce.

The Results Are In – Week 1

Posted January 13, 2014

Filed under My Progress

Weight loss: 0.5lb

Current weight: 12st 6lb

Weight loss since start: 0.5lb

Lbs to go to reach next target: 3.5lb

I’ve got to admit that after a full week on Simple Start, with 3 gym sessions, no alcohol and no chocolate, I was hoping to lose about 2lb. However, as I’m always reminding the other members in my meeting when they’re happy with a small loss – it’s a step in the right direction and it all adds up in the end. Time to heed my own advice!

What’s gone well?

I’ve been really motivated this week and so I’ve found it pretty easy to stick to the plan. Even when I visited my Nan at the weekend and was faced with a table full of chocolate, chocolate biscuits and mince pies, I didn’t cave. This was helped by the fact that I’d planned ahead and taken some soup and an orange with me.

Panzanella with Bacon

I’ve been loving cooking and eating fantastic, flavoursome food including several new recipes from the Simple Start and Your Week materials. My favourite new recipe was the Panzanella which I added some bacon to for a protein boost after my box fit session on Sunday. I made extra so that my lunch for work on Monday was taken care of and added chicken and extra mixed salad leaves.

I’ve also enjoyed sharing a couple of my own recipes for Beef Rogan Josh and Cottage Pie with my followers.

I was delighted to find that one of my old favourite recipes fits perfectly into the Simple Start programme: Baked Sweet Potato with Spicy Mince and Beans (The Smart Cook p.88). I had some of this in the freezer and had it twice this week!

I’ve also managed to stick to my new fitness regime attending 3 classes over the course of the week : Body Pump, Spinning and Box Fit.

Baked Sweet Potato with Spicy Mince and Beans

What’s been difficult?

My lunch break at work has been shortened from 30mins to 20mins. I previously often relied on taking in and heating up leftover dinner for my lunches. I won’t have time for that now so I’m going to have to think about some cold meals I can take instead and how to factor in the time to make them in my already busy week.

By the time I’d finished work, been to my Spinning class, come home and eaten dinner on Friday, I really didn’t feel like sitting down to plan my meals for the following week and do my online shopping. I just wanted to flake out in front of the TV. However, I reminded myself that for me, planning ahead is crucial to staying on track. I did it and, though it wasn’t my favourite way of spending a Friday evening, at least it stopped me from having time to think about wanting a glass of wine!

The week ahead

I have a meeting to go to straight from work on Wednesday and then the photography course I’m doing has been moved from Thursday to Wednesday as well this week so Wednesday is going to be a particularly busy day. To help me survive it and stay on track, I’m going to order a baked potato with beans for my lunch at work and take a sandwich with me to eat when I get to college. I’ll also make sure I’ve got some extra fruit to snack on too.

I said last week that I thought it was important to reward myself for reaching my goals and that I was going to write a post about this. While I didn’t get chance to write about this last week, due to getting back into the swing of balancing work with eating properly and exercising, I have been thinking about this and will post about it tomorrow so keep an eye out for that.

Thanks for reading.

PS If you’ve got any tasty, easy, cold lunch ideas for me, please share!

Cottage Pie

Posted January 12, 2014

Filed under Recipes

Cottage Pie

I adapted this from the recipe in the Simple Start material as I don’t like Quorn mince.

Servings: 4

Pro Points: 8

Simple Start: 0

Preparation time: 15-20mins

Cooking time: 50mins

Ingredients

900 g Potatoes, peeled and quartered
Spray oil
350 g extra lean beef mince
1 large onion, chopped finely
1 medium leek chopped finely
1 medium carrot, chopped
225 g swede or turnip, chopped
Beef stock cube, made up with 500ml hot water
2 teaspoons Dried Mixed Herbs
3 tablespoons skimmed milk
Salt and Pepper, to season
Vegetables to serve

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 190˚c/180˚c fan/375˚f/Gas mark 5.
Put the potatoes into a large pan of water, bring to the boil and cook for 15-20mins until tender.
Meanwhile, soften the onions in a large non-stick pan with the oil spray.
When the onions have softened, add the mince and stir until browned. Then add the leeks, carrot, swede or turnip cook gently for 5mins to soften the vegetables. Stir frequently and add a splash of water if necessary to stop the mixture from sticking.
Add the beef stock and the herbs. Stir well and simmer for 10-15mins. Season the meat mixture to taste. While the mince is cooking, mash the potatoes with the skimmed milk.
Spoon the cooked mince and vegetables into a large oven proof dish and top with the mashed potatoes.
Cook in the oven for 25-30mins until piping hot throughout and browned on top. Serve with cooked green vegetables.

Top tip: If you’re not a fan of peeling potatoes, use New Potatoes to create a ‘rustic mash’: cook and mash them with their skins on.

Starting Statistics

Posted January 7, 2014

Filed under My Progress

I’ve been back in the fat-fighting frame of mind since 2^nd January now but I wanted to wait until I’d had my official weigh-in at my Weight Watchers meeting before posting my stats and targets.

Although I was actually looking forward to my first meeting of 2014, I was still (even after all my years of experience) a little bit apprehensive about getting on the scales and taking my current measurements. But I took the plunge and this is what I found:

Current weight: 12st 6.5lbs

Waist: 36in

Hips: 43in

Bust: 42in

Arms: 13in

Thighs: 25in

So now I know what I’m dealing with, these are my targets:

Goal	Amount to lose	Target Weight	Date to be achieved by
January Target	4lbs	12st 2.5lbs	03/02/14 (loss of 1lb/week for 4 weeks)
5% of current weight	9lbs	11st 11.5lbs	10/03/14 (loss of 1lb/week for 9 weeks)
10% of current weight	18lbs	11st 2.5lb	12/05/14 (loss of 1lb/week for 18 weeks)
Goal Weight	27.5lbs	10st 7lb	21/07/14 (loss of 1lb/week for 28 weeks)

I have based the dates for each of my targets on a weight loss of 1lb per week which falls well within the Weight Watchers plan’s recommendations (of between 05-2lb per week). I’m sure there will be some weeks when I do better but I want my targets to be realistic and achievable.

As I achieve each of my small targets I will be setting another one to help break my final goal down into more manageable chunks.

I was initially planning on my 5% being my first target. However, as I was writing this post and calculated when I would achieve this, I realised that’s quite a long way off. I’m hoping that setting a smaller goal for this month will be a good motivator in the meantime.

Here are my current pictures. I plan to update these and my measurements monthly.

I think it is important for me to reward myself with non-food incentives for reaching my goals so I’ll give some thought to what these could be and will post about them later on this week.

Slow-Cooked Beef Rogan Josh

Posted January 5, 2014

Filed under Recipes

Beef Rogan Josh

This is incredibly easy and makes a delicious alternative to a takeaway on a Saturday night. The spice level is medium-hot but this can be altered by adding more/less chillies as desired.

Servings: 4

Pro Points: 3 (+ extra for rice)

Simple Start: 0

Preparation time: 10mins

Cooking time: 4-6 hours

Ingredients

2 medium/3 small onions
4 cloves garlic, sliced
1tsp ground ginger
1tsp turmeric
6 green cardamom pods
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 stick cinnamon
1 tbsp coriander seeds
1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes
2 tsp paprika
1 each red & green pepper, cut into strips
400g lean braising beef
400g tin chopped tomatoes
200g passata

Method

Finely chop half of the onions and cut the other half into wedges. Put into slow cooker with the sliced garlic.
Crush the coriander seeds and break the cinnamon stick in half. Add all the spices to the slow cooker and stir to combine.
Cut the beef into large chunks and add to the slow cooker along with the peppers, tomatoes and passata. Stir well.
Cook on low for 4 hours or high for 6 hours until the meat is cooked through.
Season to taste and serve with brown rice.

Top tip: Make extra and freeze the left-over portions for a great homemade ready meal.

My Journey So Far

Posted January 2, 2014

Filed under My Progress

So I thought it might be an idea to share my where I’ve come from and where I’m hoping to get to.

As a teenager I was extremely slim. At one point I was probably actually underweight having developed some issues around food following the break-up of my parents’ marriage. At this time it felt like I didn’t have control over much that was happening in my life, but I had control over what I ate. A typical daily intake for me would be a small bowl of dry cereal, a dry bread roll or a bar of chocolate for lunch, followed by a small ready meal such as a frozen lasagne or packet of Super Noodles for dinner.

Paradoxically, I would also binge eat being easily capable of polishing off half a large pizza, a quarter of a cheesecake, 2 donuts and some chocolate on my weekly visits to my dad.

I continued this eating pattern until I was about 16 years old when I began to adopt a more healthy approach to my diet, eating, on the whole, 3 meals a day. I always made sure I chose low fat options, never chose creamy sauces or used butter and rarely ate chocolate or drank alcohol.

The weight started to creep on when I got together with my boyfriend. We would regularly go out drinking heavily at the weekend and get a pizza on the way home then have a McDonalds breakfast to help cure our hangovers the following morning.

When we moved in together, the scales crept up further. I cooked meals for us and dished up equal portions even though he had an active job and took part in martial arts while I worked in an office and did very little exercise. We also lived over the road from a convenience store and so it was all too easy to pop to the shop for a chocolate bar or a bottle of wine.

In 2004, I saw a picture of myself on holiday and I was stunned gobsmacked Although my clothes size had gradually increased from size 10/12 to size 18, I was shocked to at how big I looked. Coupled with this was the fact

that I was now struggling to do up my size 18 jeans. I vowed I wasn’t going to go up to the next size and decided to do something to tackle my weight.

The photo that made me realise I needed to do something about my weight.

I started off doing my own thing, doing a bit of exercise and going back to eating more healthily. I lost 6lbs but I was finding it difficult. Then one day I saw an advert for Weight Watchers on TV and thought it was worth a try. I phoned up to find my nearest meeting and found there was one nearby that night so I went and joined.

I was horrified when I stepped onto the scales and found I was heavier than my home scales told me. I’ll never forget seeing that figure – 13st 9lb. And I realised that, having already lost 6lbs, I would have been over 14st at my heaviest.

Initially I had great success and soon achieved my 10% target. Feeling confident that I had all the tools I needed, I stopped attending meetings and decided to go it alone. Before long I veered off track and put most of the weight back on. This led me into a cycle of re-joining, losing, stopping and gaining which lasted for a couple of years. I knew that when I stuck with the plan it worked but I just couldn’t find the motivation to keep going.

At about my slimmest since joining Weight Watchers

Two years after first joining, I’d been back at Weight Watchers for about 6 months. I’d lost some weight again and was feeling good. However, I was just about to give up work to go to Uni full time and I was facing having to stop my membership again as I wasn’t sure I’d be able to afford it. At this point my leader was looking for a clerk and so I on this role. I was able to attend meetings for free and being a clerk meant that I would attend every week, even if I’d had a ‘bad’ week.

I’ve attended consistently since that time and although my weight has fluctuated and I’ve still not yet got to my goal, I’ve never put all the weight back on.

In December of 2011, my boyfriend proposed. Of course I was excited to be marrying my soul mate but I was also excited that the wedding would give me the motivation I needed to finally get to goal. Or so I thought. In reality, between the proposal and the wedding I lost a grand total of 3 lbs!

So, that pretty much brings me up to date. We got married in August 2013 and although I had a great day and felt amazing, I am a little disappointed that I wasn’t at my goal weight for it. So I’ve decided to really go for it this year. No more messing about. No more excuses. I AM going to get to goal!

Thanks for reading.

My wedding but not at my goal weight.

Another New Year, Another New (Simple) Start

Posted January 1, 2014

Filed under My Progress

As is typical with the ending of one year and the beginning of another, I have been thinking about what I achieved during 2013, and what I would like to achieve in 2014.

In many ways, last year was a great year for me: I landed an exciting new job which has brought career development opportunities along with an improved work-life balance and I finally married my partner of 12 years.

While the wedding was fantastic, I must admit to being disappointed that I had failed to reach my target weight (or come anywhere close) in time for the big day. I still had a fantastic time, and I did feel every inch the blushing bride. But I wasn’t completely happy with how I looked.

So I have decided that this year, after almost 10 years as a (mainly) devoted follower of the Weight Watchers plan, I WILL reach my goal weight.

To help me do this I have decided to start this blog to document my progress and share with you some ProPoints friendly recipes along with my musings on the Weight Watchers plan and weight loss in general.

I’m going to try the new Simple Start programme for my first 2 full weeks back on track so I’ll post about my plans for that following my weigh-in on Monday. In the meantime I hope to post in more detail about the small, specific goals I’m going to set to help me on my journey. I might even get time to post a recipe or two before I have to head back to work on Monday.

Thanks for reading and Happy New Year!