“I will not find comfort in food.”

Posted January 24, 2016

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love food.

Image courtesy of Marin at FeeDigitalPhotos.net

Sometimes this is a good thing – I love cooking fresh meals from scratch and planning healthy menus.

But sometimes, it’s not such a good thing and I find myself using food to deal with my emotions. That’s right, my name’s Fat Fighting Foodie and I’m a comfort eater.

In the past, I have let this emotional reliance on food sabotage my goals to become fitter, healthier and more comfortable with my body. But I’m currently making a big effort to address this.

If I’m honest, comfort eating has probably been both my best excuse and my worst enemy in my weight loss battle. Time and time and time again, I’ve dealt with being stressed or bored by scoffing bars of chocolate (usually family sized) and slabs of cheesecake to make myself feel better. Ironically, it’s only ever made me feel worse as I’ve usually crammed it down my neck at lightening speed (I swear I could break world records) rather than taking the time to enjoy it and have then felt guilty at having lost control. I would usually then conclude that I’d ‘blown’ my healthy eating for the week and so I’d eat rubbish vowing to ‘get back on track’ following my next weigh in.

So what’s different this time around?

As I mentioned previously, I’ve got a new mantra that I stole from the TV show ‘Fat: The Fight of My Life’:

“The purpose of food is to nourish my body and mind. I will not find comfort in food.”

Unfortunately, I’m currently having a stressful time at work and a week or so ago I had a particularly hard and emotional couple of days. I had to nip in to the supermarket on my way home from work for some cat food (for my cat – I’m not that extreme in my efforts to curb my emotional eating that I have substituted chocolate for pet food). It was cold and dark and I knew that Mr FFF wasn’t going to be home for a few hours so I’d be going home to a cold, dark house. As I walked through the doors of the supermarket, the urge to head to the bakery section was strong. I could almost taste a chocolate-covered donut. I reasoned with myself that I could work it into my points,but knew that, in reality, I wouldn’t – that’s not how comfort eating works for me, there’s no point if I’m not going to try to cheat myself; the guilt’s just not the same. So I dug deep and reminded myself of my mantra. I thought really carefully about the donut, and all the other stuff in the bakery section. Would they nourish my body? No. Actually, they wouldn’t even taste that nice compared to home-baked stuff. I decided it wasn’t worth it and would only set me back further on my weight loss journey. I still needed comfort though. So I thought about what I could treat myself to that would be comforting but wasn’t food. The result: I bought myself a nice, new pair of pyjamas.

When I got home, instead of sitting on the sofa, mindlessly stuffing my face, I ran myself a nice bath then got cosy in my new pjs and caught up with Mr Selfridge. And do you know what? I actually felt a lot better for having done that. It might seem pretty obvious, but I’m so used to the cycle of feeling fed up–>comfort eating–>feeling worse that it actually felt really empowering to not comfort eat.

So for me, so far, that mantra is working and I hope it continues. It’s going to be tricky as work is likely to be stressful for a good few months, but I’m hoping that the more I practise saying no to comfort eating, the easier it will get.

Now, I can’t rely on buying pyjamas every time I want to comfort eat as I’d soon be bankrupt (although I suppose it would be good for the textiles industry) so I’ve been trying to think of other sources of comfort. So far I’ve come up with:

adult colouring whilst listening to music
having a bath
playing a computer game
watching some tv
working on my blog
reading other blogs

I reckon I’m going to get quite a bit of practise at resisting comfort eating over the next few months though, so if you have any other ideas for alternative sources of comfort, please let me know.

Thanks for reading

FFF

Menu Planning: KISS It!

Posted January 22, 2016

Filed under All Things Weight Loss

As the name of my blog suggest, I LOVE food. I love cooking it, reading about it, shopping for it, watching programs about it and most of all, eating it!

My love of food often serves me well. But when it comes to menu planning and staying on track, it can sometimes become a bit of a hindrance: In my efforts to avoid getting stuck in the rut of having the same things to eat week in, week out, it can take me ages to plan what to have as I scour my numerous cookbooks (51 at last count. And that was after a massive cull!) for inspiration. Having spent a lot of time and effort planning what to eat and having shopped in advance for ingredients for the week, I often find myself in the situation where I can’t be bothered to spend an hour in the kitchen after getting in from work.

So I’m trying to address this issue by taking a different approach to my menu planning. I’ve decided to taking the KISS approach: Keep It Simple Stupid. My thinking is that if I plan to have meals that are simple to make in the week,

I’ll save myself time in the planning & cooking stages,
I’m more likely to stay on track rather than ordering a takeaway
I’ll throw less food away
I’ll take more pleasure in cooking fancier dishes when I’ve got the time to take my time and enjoy it.

What I’m eating

So, over the past week or so, I’ve enjoyed: a salmon stir-fry; jacket potatoes with various fillings; Tuna & Pesto Pasta (simple recipe coming soon); Bacon, Mushroom & Tomato Pasta; cheese on toast; beans on toast; bagels with soft cheese; and a variety of soups that I’ve made in batches and frozen to take to work for my lunches.

So far, I’m finding that it’s making it easier to plan meals and to stick to my plan in the week.

I also used the KISS strategy when out shopping at the weekend: I hadn’t had chance to plan the meals for the week but I knew the kind of things to buy so that I’d be able to work the points in. I nearly came unstuck when my husband said that he wanted shepherds pie for Sunday dinner. He was happy with a ready made one but I knew that would work out to more points than I’d be happy to spend and I didn’t have the time (or inclination) to make one from scratch. So instead, I got myself some pork chops and had one of those with some potatoes, veg and gravy for 8 Smart Points. Simple

What are your go to KISS meals? I’m always looking for new inspiration.

Thanks for reading,

FFF

PS The link in this post is to an old recipe with Pro Points values, it will still work out well on Smart Points as you only need to count the bacon and pasta (and oil unless using spray oil). I hope to get round to updating my recipes to show Smart Points values soon.

Progress Report: Slow & Steady Wins the Race

Posted January 20, 2016

Filed under My Progress

A week or so ago, I wrote my first blog post of 2016 (and my first for quite some time)
about how I was getting back on track and was determined to keep up with the blogging. Then nothing. Well, nothing blog-wise anyway.

Although I may have been quiet on the blog front, I am pleased to say that I have been keeping my new year’s promises to myself so far.

I’ve promised myself that I’m going to be kinder to myself. In that vein, over the couple of weeks I have been for a makeover (although I’ve yet to practise applying my new make-up for myself – here’s hoping I don’t look like Coco The Clown!), enjoyed a bath with one of my favourite Lush products and spent a little bit of time playing The Sims – a game I love but usually can’t find time for.

I’ve also promised to prioritise things that are important to me and so I’ve found myself making sure that I leave work a bit earlier on the nights I’ve arranged to go running, convincing my husband that it wasn’t too late or too wet for us to go running last Tuesday evening and choosing a healthier option when we were unexpectedly invited out for a curry last Friday.

In conclusion, I wouldn’t say I’m made a lightening start to the year, but I’ve made some small changes that I’m hoping to be able to keep up and build on. Weeks 1 & 2 So far I’m winning at the scales too: I’m two weigh-ins in to 2016 and I’ve lost 2.5lb. Again, it’s nothing incredible, but slow and steady wins the race.

This week, I want to try to prioritise my blog. I’ve got a couple of posts that I’m looking forward to sharing with you so watch this space (hopefully you won’t be watching for so long this time!).

Thanks for reading,

FFF

What are you doing to be kinder to yourself this year?

My New Year’s Promise

Posted January 10, 2016

Filed under All Things Weight Loss, My Progress

Happy New Year!

Image courtesy of Heavypong at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I’ve been away from blogging for quite a while now but it’s already starting to feel as though I’ve never been away.

As we are already half way through the second week in January, it feels a little bit weird to be saying ‘Happy New Year’ still but I think I’ll keep things a bit traditional for my first post of 2016.

The reason for the delay is that I’ve been given a LOT of thought about the theme of my first post. Last year, I spoke about not wanting to make resolutions because they’ve previously left me feeling like a failure. But clearly that didn’t have the intended effect and I sit here around the same weight as I was last year, if not a few ponds heavier, and I’m still unhappy with my body and fitness levels.

So what went wrong and what am I going to do differently?

Firstly, I let too many things get in the way of me achieving my goals last year. Some of these things I had control over and some I didn’t. To cut a long story short, last year was Hectic (and yes, that IS Hectic with a capital H) and looking after myself pushed off my priorities list.

So this year I’m making myself a couple of ‘promises’ as I think this sounds a little bit more positive than making some resolutions:

I promise to be kinder to myself
I promise to prioritise the things I actually want to spend time on rather than the things I think I should be spending time on

That’s it. Short and sweet.

This week, I was back to work after a two week break for Christmas. In order to keep my promises to myself, I made sure that I left work at a reasonable time each night. My plan was that I would go for a walk in the evenings to make sure that I clocked up 10,000 steps each day. I did this on every day except for Saturday (when I forgot due to it not being a work day and by the time I remembered, it was raining so heavily that I think I would have drowned if I’d gone out in it – note to self, check weather forecast in advance in future!) and I even found myself agreeing to restart the Couch to 5K training plan which I did on Thursday & this morning. I must admit I was a little bit nervous at first as I can’t remember the last time I ran, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought and I felt really good after doing it.

Although I was back to Weight Watchers for my first weigh in of the new year last Monday, I haven’t been very focused on my food this week. However, I have made up 6 batches of different soups to take to work for my lunch each day and my goal for this week is to be more focused on my food choices. I’m not going to promise myself that I’m going to stay on track 100% for the entire week but I’m going to aim for that. If I can track for 5 out of the 7 days I’ll be happy with that.

I’m looking forward to getting to grips with the new Smart Points plan too. I’m motivated by the way it seems tailored to encourage healthier food choices. To help me, I’m stealing an affirmation that I’ve just seen on an episode of Fat: The Fight of My Life (I find these programs massively inspirational):

“The purpose of food is to nourish my body and mind. I will not find comfort in food.”

I also aim to get my blogging mojo back this year. I really enjoy it and I find it really motivating – I just need to make sure I prioritise it.

Now, in the interests of being kinder to myself, I’m off to enjoy a lovely, relaxing bath.

Thanks for reading,

FFF

P.S. Have you made any ‘promises’ to yourself this year? I’d love to hear how you’re getting on with them so far.

Easy Red Lentil Soup

Posted September 17, 2015

Filed under Recipes, Soup Kitchen, Vegan

An easy to make soup that’s perfect for autumn

Servings: 6

Smart Points: 2

No Count

Cooking time: 5mins prep + 30mins cooking

Ingredients

1tsp healthy oil
2 medium onions, finely chopped
250g carrots, finely chopped
110g red lentils
3 vegetable stock cubes made up with 1.7l boiling water
salt & pepper

Method

Heat the oil in a large saucepan. Add the onion and carrot and cook gently until soft, without browning.
Add the stock and the lentils. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
When the lentils and vegetables are tender, blend until smooth.
Reheat. Season to taste and serve.

Fresh Start Statistics

Posted September 9, 2015

Filed under All Things Weight Loss, My Progress

So, I braved the scales last night for my post-holiday (which was 2 weeks at a Gourmet Inclusive hotel) weigh-in and I was astounded to find that I’d only put on 1.5lbs! I nearly fell off the scales!

Whilst I’m not happy with having let my weight creep back up to its current reading, I’m not going to dwell on it – there’s no point: I can’t change the past. What I can do is learn from it and move forward.

So here are the starting statistics for the next leg of my weight loss journey:

Current weight: 13st 5lbs

Waist: 36in

Hips: 44in

Bust: 42in

Arms: 13in

Thighs: 25in

These are the targets I’ve set based on my current weight:

Goal	Amount to lose	Target Weight	Date to be achieved by
Mini-goal	4lbs	13st 1lb	05/10/15 (loss of 1lb/week for 4 weeks)
5% of current weight	9.5lbs	12st 9.5lbs	16/11/15 (loss of 1lb/week for 9 weeks)
10% of current weight	19lbs	11st 13.5lb	25/01/16 (loss of 1lb/week for 19 weeks)
Goal Weight	40lbs	10st 7lb	20/06/16 (loss of 1lb/week for 40 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.

It was actually a bit disheartening to calculate how long it will take me to get to goal – 9 months!! However, I’m trying to view this in a positive way – I definitely don’t want it to take any longer than that so I need to stay focused. And who knows, if I stick to the plan, I might even get there a bit quicker. After all, I know from experience that when you stick to the plan, it works.

Here are my current pictures – taken on the last day of my holiday. I plan to update these and my measurements every month or two to help show my progress. Although in subsequent pictures, my skin is likely to be even pastier as, believe it or not, these show me with what is a pretty good tan for my Irish heritage, so apologies in advance for that!

Me, September 2015

Thanks for reading,

FFF

Minestrone Soup

Posted September 8, 2015

Filed under Recipes, Soup Kitchen, Vegan

A filling yet summery soup.

Servings: 4

Smart Points: 4

No Count (if made with wholemeal pasta. If made using white pasta, allow 1SP/serving)

Cooking time: 10mins prep + 35mins cooking

Ingredients

1tsp healthy oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 medium carrot, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 leek, sliced
1 small potato, diced
400g tin chopped tomatoes
1tbsp tomato puree
1 vegetable stock cube made up with 600ml boiling water
2tsp dried thyme
1 bay leaf
30g soup pasta or macaroni
200g tin baked beans
salt & pepper

Method

Heat the oil in a large saucepan. Add the onion, carrot and garlic and cook gently until soft, without browning.
Add the leek and potato and cook gently for 5 mins. Add a splash of stock if the vegetables begin to stick to the bottom of the saucepan.
Add the tomatoes, tomato puree, stock, thyme and bay leaf. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 20mins.
Add the pasta and baked beans then simmer for a further 10mins until the pasta is just cooked.
Season to taste, then serve.

Top Tip: Sprinkle with a tablespoon of freshly grated Parmesan before serving for an extra 2SP per serving (dish will no longer be vegan).

Happy New Year!

Posted September 6, 2015

Filed under All Things Weight Loss, My Progress

Happy New Year!

No, I’m not totally confused and neither have I been through some kind of time-warp. But I am celebrating the new school year.

I’m looking forward to starting the next chapter in my weight loss journey (in fact this book was actually filled with puddings so I was REALLY excited about starting it!)

One of the advantages of working in schools is that every September you get that ‘new year’ motivation that everyone else only gets in January. Remember when you were at school and you had new teachers, new classrooms, new books? You would vow to keep your books pristine and complete your homework diligently as soon as it was set. It was such an inspiring and motivational time. Well, even as an adult, I feel the same way at this time of year. So I’m going to use that positive feeling to focus on the next stage on my journey to goal.

For some people, losing weight is a simple, straight forward process: They decide they want to lose weight, change their diet and exercise habits and lose weight. However, for many people, it’s not that simple and straight forward. I fall into the latter category (see here, here, here and here if you’d like proof).

Ordinarily, I like to use the long summer holidays to refocus on healthy eating and exercise following a long and tiring school year. This year however, we ended up having to go on holiday at the end of the summer instead of the beginning when we normally go. This made it difficult for me to get motivated with my food and exercise as I felt like I’d just undo the hard work I’d put in when I went on holiday. I did try for damage limitation initially, but that didn’t last long as I kept telling myself that I wasn’t going to worry about my weight loss journey until I was back at school.

What I did do, however, was take the time to begin decluttering my life. I have a demanding job with long hours, various other commitments outside work and a large family to keep up to date with. The result is that I often feel as though I’m living at a million miles an hour and I find that my living space can easily become cluttered and chaotic (I’m astounded at how much ‘stuff’ I have amassed in the decade since I left home). I reasoned that by focusing on getting my house in order, I would feel calmer and would find it easier to focus on the other areas of my life that I want to improve, including my health and fitness goals.

I’m not completely decluttered yet – I’m about halfway through so far – but I’ve already started to see improvements such as not letting paperwork stack up. So I’m hopeful that the positivity I’m feeling from this will help me to focus on what I need to do to achieve my weight loss goals. I’ve spent today preparing my food for the week. I’ve made 2 batches of soup for my lunches (recipes to follow later in the week) and a thai beef curry for dinner one night. I’ve got the rest of my meals for the week planned and the ingredients are all bought. I’ve stocked up on some tasty fruit to snack on and I’ll be making some bircher muesli tonight ready for my breakfast tomorrow.

I’m really looking forward to tackling the next stage in my weight loss journey. I’m even actually looking forward to my weigh in tomorrow night to find out what my starting point is! Here’s hoping the motivation will carry through to tackling my workload for the term…

Thanks for reading.

FFF

PS – I’ve been following a process for decluttering after reading a book (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying by Marie Kondo if you’re interested). While I don’t agree with everything in it, I have found it to be a very useful tool so far. I’m hoping to be completely decluttered by Christmas, maybe sooner, and I’ll write a review of the process then.

Ratatouille with Chicken

Posted August 1, 2015

Filed under Pasta, Recipes

A tasty, versatile sauce that makes and excellent accompaniment to pasta, rice or potatoes.

I served mine with 60g wholewheat pasta twists for an extra 6pp.

I served mine with 60g wholewheat pasta twists for an extra 6 Pro Points.

Servings: 6

Pro Points: 2

Filling & Healthy: 0 (if using oil from your daily allowance)

Cooking time: 40 minutes

Ingredients

4tsp healthy oil
1 red onion, roughly chopped
1 aubergine, cut into large chunks
1 large courgette, cut into thick semi-circles
1 red and 1 yellow pepper, cut into large chunks
large handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
1tsp chilli flakes
1tbsp mixed herbs
5 cloves garlic, 3 unpeeled, 2 peeled and finely chopped
2 medium (165g each) chicken breasts
2x 400g cans chopped tomatoes
2ooml chicken stock made with 1 stock cube
2 tbsp tomato puree
large bunch fresh basil, torn roughly

Method

Preheat the oven to 200c/fan 180/Gas Mark 6.
Put all of the chopped vegetables into a large roasting tin. Lightly crush the 3 unpeeled cloves of garlic under a large flat knife or using the heel of your hand and add to the tin.
Drizzle 4tsp of the oil over the vegetables and sprinkle with the mixed herbs, chilli flakes and a good pinch of salt and pepper. Toss the vegetables well until they are all coated with the oil and seasoning.
Lie the chicken breasts on top of the vegtables and put the tin into the oven to roast for 30mins (after 15mins, toss the vegetables again).
Meanwhile, heat the remaining oil in a large pan over a med/low heat. Add the chopped garlic and gently stir fry to 1min.
Add the tinned tomatoes, tomato puree and stock to the garlic and bring to rapid simmer for 3mins before adding the chopped basil.
When the vegtables are soft and the chicken is cooked through, chop the chicken into bitesize pieces before adding the whole lot, including any roasting juices, to the tomatoe sauce.
Bring the sauce to a rapid simmer for a few minutes. Check the seasoning and serve.

Top Tip: Leave out the chicken and use vegetable stock to make this a 0 Pro Points, vegan/vegetarian dish.

Time to Break a Sweat

Posted July 30, 2015

Filed under Fitness

I’ve invested in a personal trainer. Well, when I say ‘invested’, I actually got it for free. And when I say ‘it’ I mean a

I like that you can workout to your own music (Image courtesy of Nike+ TC)

new training app that I’ve downloaded.

Inspired by last week’s Weight Watchers talk about using regular exercise to help improve health, fitness and appearance, I decided to take the bull by the horns and get my, rather wobbly, backside moving. I reasoned that I’ve got about a month before I go on holiday and in that time, if I work really hard, I could see good results. After all, celebs can do it when they’ve got personal trainers beasting them daily.

Now, I can’t afford a personal trainer but I thought back to when I was on a mission to fit into my wedding dress and I’d downloaded a free Davina McCall fitness app. I really enjoyed using it as the workouts were short, needed no equipment and because they were on an app I could do them to different music or even whilst watching TV so they didn’t get too boring.

Unfortunately, it seems you can no longer get this app. But I didn’t let this put me off. I looked for an alternative instead. There are quite a few decent looking free apps out there, but after a bit of research, I eventually went for the Nike+ Training Club app .

I’ve been using it for a week now and so far I’m really impressed with it. There are loads of different workouts you

My Program (Image courtesy of Nike+ TC)

can choose from. They’re split into different categories depending on what you want to achieve: Get Lean, Get Toned, Get Strong or Get Focused. Within each of these sections you’ve got a selection of workouts at beginner, intermediate and advanced level and ranging in time from 15 to 45 minutes. You can also edit the workouts to suit you by choosing alternative exercises.

The bit that I’ve mainly been using is the ‘Programs’ feature. This allows you to choose a fitness goal from same categories and intensity levels as the workouts. I went for a Get Lean Beginners program and was given the option of adding in running to boost reach my goal quicker, which I took. The app then generated a 4 week program for me to follow. Each week it gives me 2 different ‘Get Lean’ workouts to do, 2 runs starting at 5km and building up to 8km, and a yoga session. It schedules these across the week along with 2 rest days.

When completing the workouts, you get the option of using an album, playlist or all music on your device or of using a separate music source. The app them guides you through the

My Program (Image courtesy of Nike+ TC)

workout with clear instructions and time reminders. There’s the option to look at photos, written instructions and videos of all the exercises either before or during the workout. The workouts I’ve completed so far have been really challenging and have really got my heart rate going and have definitely had me breaking a sweat. The yoga was particularly challenging, in a good way, even though I’m relatively experienced at yoga.

I’ve been impressed at how the app has pushed me. Whilst I’d started running again a couple of weeks ago, I was only running about 3km and wasn’t finding it easy. Left to my own devices I wouldn’t have increased the distance to 5km for at least a couple of weeks. I must admit I was a little apprehensive about my ability to complete the distance but I decided to give it a go. I knew from previous experience that it would largely be down to mind over matter and pledged to keep going. And I did. Admittedly it was at a slow pace but I kept going all the way around and I’m actually quite looking forward to increasing my distance this week.

Apparently there is also a Nike+ running app that you can download that links to the Training Club app but I haven’t had chance to look at that yet. There’s also an option to

Clear instructions with photos and videos (Image courtesy of Nike+ TC)

link with other users as a way to motivate each other but I haven’t explore this either.

All in all, if you’re looking for a free app to work you hard, this is a good one to go for (for beginners at least). Here’s hoping I can keep my motivation up and continue enjoying using the app. Please let me know about any apps you’ve come across that are worthwhile as I find that mixing things up a bit can help to sustain motivation.

You can find a promotional video about the app here Nike+ TC Video

Thanks for reading,

FFF

(This is NOT a paid review. Please see my disclaimer page for more information on my product reviews)