Category: Challenges

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Vegetarian Experiment Days 12 & 13

Yesterday I had a very unhealthy but also quite delicious plate of chips for my dinner – with a side order of mushy peas. I didn’t take a photograph, as I was too busy eating them!

Tonight, I cooked the following random selection of vegetarian delights: potatoes (par-bolied, then bashed around and fried in splash of oil and thyme), egg noodles in sweet chilli sauce and mixed vegetable stir-fry.

I would recommend the potatoes cooked in this fashion – really delicious, but then I am a huge potato fan, so I like them cooked any way. The stir-fried veggies consisted of onions, peppers, brocolli, mushrooms, cauliflower and quorn. Pretty good. The noodles were the fresh variety  and took about 3 minutes to cook. Bonus!

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Vegetarian Experiment Days 10 & 11

Yesterday evening I ate a three bean chilli with brown rice and garlic bread which was very tasty – cooked for me by friends who are pretty hard-core veggies. They know their stuff when it comes to cooking vegetarian food! Sadly I forgot to take a photo of the dish (which is a sort of weird thing to do anyway), so you will just have to imagine it. It was very filling, spicy and I should imagine very nutritious.

Tonight I was in for another treat as my brother-in-law cooked us a creamy pea risotto topped with goat’s cheese. I thought it was very sweet of him to adapt his cooking plans to accomodate my eating plans, but he said he quite enjoyed looking through his vegetarian recipe book and thinking about what to cook. The dish arrived at the table garnished with (non-edible) sweet peas 🙂

Creamy pea and slow roasted tomato risotto, topped with goat’s cheese

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Vegetarian Experiment Days 8 & 9

Apologies for not posting yesterday. I was very tired so I decided to snuggle up on the sofa and get my weekly fix of Desperate Housewives! As I was so hungry my husband kindly cooked for us and this is what he made:

A quorn escalope with potato and tomato mash. Most of the time I do the cooking so it was lovely to have my food cooked for me. It was delicious!

 For lunch I had an oven baked jacket potato with cottage cheese. I say ‘oven baked’ because I used to cheat and put them in the microwave, as it is so much quicker, but having mastered the oven technique, I will never go back! Just pre-heat your oven to 200 degees Celcius and prick your washed and dried potatoes with a fork. Drizzle with a little oil and sprinkle over some salt (preferably coarse or rock salt). Pop the potatoes on a baking tray for about an hour (or longer if you are baking more). The salt helps to create a crisp outer layer while the inside is perfectly soft and fluffy, just waiting for some butter. It was so good that I forgot to take a photo of it!

This evening’s meal was a vegetarian lasgna – something I haven’t tried before and … it was delicious! I did not miss the mince (I usually use lamb) at all. I can feel in my body that it was a much healthier option – I am not bloated and heavy inside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To top it all off I am drinking my new Tyger Moon tea – have a look at the flower completely opened up in my glass 🙂

 My new Tyger Moon tea – Chrysanthemum, green and white tea leaves and Jasmine

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Vegetarian Experiment Day 7

Hello everyone. Thank you first of all to all of the people who have commented on my going veggie experiment, on this blog and on Facebook and Twitter. I am amazed at how many people are interested in trying out a vegetarian diet. I was just thinking about how easy it has been for me so far – I have hardly missed meat at all. I think I would miss fish and seafood before meat, although apart from my prawn sandwich faux pas last week, I haven’t indulged in either of those either. I imagine my mum’s fish curry and her lamb biriyani might be things I would miss the most, were I never to eat meat or fish again! As I am doing this experiment for health reasons rather than animal welfare ones, I do envisage a time when I will eat those delicious dishes again. However, I do think I have been thinking more about what has been going into my tummy and the rest of me, so that must be a good thing 🙂

I have also noticed a difference in my shopping habits as I have been buying a small basketful of items every few days. The benefit of this is that I am buying just what I need, I am buying fresher ingredients and I am cooking from scratch most days (- but to be fair I did that before anyway). So to illustrate this, I thought I would show you the ingredients I am using to cook dinner tonight, so you can see what is going into my vegetarian meal.

Farfalle pasta, asparagus tips, ripe avocados, fresh broccoli and light single cream

And here is the finished product:

This is not quite enough for my dinner so on the side I ate some of this Innocent Moroccan Veg Pot.

I bought these drinks the other day to try out too. I have had some of the beetroot juice, which was interesting. Not sure it’s my favourite thing, but I’m looking forward to trying out the strawbwerry bellini juice drink.

 Have you got any tips or questions for me? Drop me a line below or through my contact page 🙂

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Vegetarian Experiment Day 6

For my lunch today I had a Caesar Salad with roasted vegetable cous cous, tzatziki and an onion bhaji. I did get some help from Mr Sainsbury, as I don’t often spend this much time making my lunch every day. I am trying to get into the habit of cooking extra and putting some of my dinner aside for the next day’s lunch. This can be great, as long as I remember to take it with me!

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Vegetarian Experiment Days 4 and 5

This weekend I discovered several different things. Firstly I realised it is just as possible to have a bad diet if you are a vegetarian as if you are a meat-eater. I was away all weekend at a hen do and although we had a tasty meal cooked for us on Saturday night, Friday night’s dinner consisted of snacking on pizza and lots of other naughty foods. I suppose I have been feeling virtuous by choosing not to eat meat, and forgot that there are plenty of unhealthy and fattening veggie options out there too. It is all about what you choose to indulge in!

We had a lovely meal cooked for us on Saturday night – Asparagus and brie crepes served with a lemon butter sauce and minted crushed potatoesFollowed by a delicious lemon cheesecake with raspberry coulisUnfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the starter I chose which was a griddled aubergine and halloumi stack, with coriander pesto and freshly squeezed lime. Mmmmm 🙂

Secondly I realised just how much I love Jasmine Tea! These Good Earth tea bags really give off a delicious perfumey flavour; more than other brands I have tried. My absolute favourite brand of Jasmine tea has to be Moon Tyger Tea – delicate individual flowers which open up and infuse the water, but they are an expensive luxury. (If you fancy trying them and are put off by the price, don’t be because they are delicious, last a long time and have currently got a sale on!) 

Finally I remembered just how wonderful it is to spend time with some very dear friends 🙂

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Vegetarian Experiment Day 3

Just a quick post today to show what vegetarian delights I have been munching on, as I am going away for the weekend. I am very excited as it’s my friend’s hen weekend and I don’t need to worry as all of of meals will be catered for us, and she is a strict vegetarian! Photos will be shared when I am back!

This meal was heavenly: pea and mint salad with mixed leaves, topped with stuffed courgette flowers and a side of mash!

I grew some courgettes last year in the hope that I would end up with some flowers too. It was a partial success, but I would say if you are going to try it for yourself, the bigger the space, the larger the crop will be. (Pretty obvious really, but some plants can yield lots of fruit in a smaller space.) Also when you pick the flowers, you need to check which ones are male and which ones are female, and ensure that you leave at least one of each so that the bees can continue to do their great pollination work. This is something I did not realise and so I only had two small crops!

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Vegetarian Experiment Day 2

This is actually day 5 of eating a vegetarian diet for a month, but as I may not be able to blog every day, I thought I would give myself a head start! I was teaching today so I virtuously made my lunch last night, put it into a tupperware box, into the fridge. Then of course this morning I forgot to take it to work! At lunchtime I headed over to the local cafe to buy my lunch, and in my head I had decided to have a jacket potato with baked beans. But they had run out so I had to make a snap decision as a queue was forming! In my panic I ordered my default lunch – a prawn sandwich. Now it was delicious, don’t get me wrong, but I was teased mercilessly over lunch by friends who kept asking what kind of vegetable a prawn is! (David, you know it was you!) I guess sometimes, even when you plan your meals, things go wrong. Oh well, this is what I ate last night:

 Corn on the cob, pasta with spinach, pine nuts and feta cheese, beetroot salad and cucumber and avocado saladI also bought some of these delicious snacks today, which were recommended to me by my friend Caz (you can see her blog ‘Life is Limitless’ here). They are very natural, give you lots of energy and are super tasty too 🙂

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My 30 Day Vegetarian Experiment

I have been thinking a lot lately about what I am eating and what the food I eat is doing to my body.

In a previous post I talked about Paul McKenna’s weight loss system and how my weight has fluctuated over the years. (You can find out how it has been for me so far here.) But now I am thinking about more than just losing weight. I am looking for a way to increase my energy levels and reduce the fatigue and stodgy feelings I get inside my body, and although I don’t eat masses of meat, I am keen to see what difference this makes (if any) to how I feel. I will also monitor the effect it has on my Psoriatic Arthritis (if any). I also have some other some bad habits which I am going to work on too!

So for the next month I am going to eat vegetarian food only – all manner of vegetables, pulses, grains and fruit. As well as this I am going to try to:

 

  • cut my intake of tea from 6 cups per day to 3 cups, plus herbal tea at night
  • I am going to increase my intake of water gradually over the month from 0.5 litres to 2 litres 
  • I am going to attempt to avoid processed foods as much as possible

 

I will post as often as I can on my progress and upload photos of the new delights and recipes I discover! 

To whet your appetite, here is an example of the lunch I ate on day 1 of the vegetarian experiment:

Avocado, tomato and pepper and chick pea and beetroot dips with pitta breadFollowed by mint tea!

I would love to hear from anyone who is trying a vegetarian experiment at the moment or has tried this before. Please share your experiences or comment below. If you have enjoyed this post, be sure to subscribe so you can keep up with my progress. Thanks!

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Paul McKenna’s ‘I Can Make You Thin’

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a weight loss event with hypnotist Paul McKenna at The HMV Hammersmith Apollo. As someone who has tried lots of different diets, lost lots of weight, put on lots of weight and done it all several times, I though it was time to try something radically different. Paul McKenna has helped millions of people around the world, including countless celebrities, so I thought I would give it a go.

Paul explains his system

And his system is different. He urges you to throw away anything with low-fat written on it, eat only what you want and when you want it, and says you will never need to diet again! Paul says he has made himself very unpopular with the multi-million pound diet industry because in effect he says that no diets work forever, and his system is different because it re-trains your brain and body to know when it needs nutrition, what it needs and how much it needs. This means you don’t end up putting on the weight you lost again, because you are relearning good habits which will last a lifetime. 

Practising mirror exercises

As well as that he showed us how to retrain our brains to accept what we see in the mirror and change the negative things we say to ourselves. On the scale (in the photo above) the lady said she felt like a 9 out of 10 on the ugly scale – which we all found quite shocking. (It’s actually to the left of the photo, so you can’t see that part of the scale.) By the time Paul had spoken to her and taken her through the exercises, she said she felt like a 6 out of 10 on the beauty scale. That’s quite a shift!

Tackling addictions – in this lady’s case – chocolate!

Paul also spoke about food addictions, cravings and mindless eating. Most of the time this sort of eating is trying to fill some sort of emotional hunger, not physical hunger. We learnt how to tell the difference and learnt techniques to deal with those cravings should they arise.

Naturally as one would expect, Paul hypnotised us all several times; suggesting to our unconscious minds that we could be more mindful of our eating and stop when full. During our lunch break, I ordered exactly what I wanted to eat, savoured each bite and to my amazement, only managed to eat about half what I normally eat. I felt satisfied and for the first time in years, left some food on my plate. I was already starting to gain back control of my eating.

At break time, I had a coffee and spent some time admiring the historic building. 

The beautiful ceiling shows off the Art Deco stylings

 Many of the features are originals from 1932 when the building then know as the Gaumont Palace Cinema opened

The building was given Grade II* listed status in 2005

‘That’s all interesting but will it work?‘ I hear you ask. Well, I have only been using the system for two weeks now, and I have to say it has been really easy. I have never felt more in control of my own eating and desires for food (- I am a real foodie!) In fact I was worried about it working ‘too well’ because I didn’t want to lose my love of food. In reality I have found that this system just enhances my appetite because a core part of it is about appreciating and savouring each mouthful. And my clothes no longer feel as though they are trying to cut me in half or strangle me.

‘Will it work in the long term?‘ I would say that to have any lasting change, obviously I have to keep it up and ensure that I don’t just slip back into old habits of denying myself certain foods, skipping meals, over-eating and so on. Also Paul did say that the title of his system ‘I Can Make You Thin’ is a misnomer. No one else can make you thin; only you can. Personally, I don’t want to be ‘thin’;  I just want to feel happy in my skin, be able to wear clothes that I like and return to my natural (maintainable) weight.

Amazing Fact#1

I think this is actually going to change my life forever.

Amazing Fact #2

I can teach it to you! I am experienced in all of the NLP techniques that Paul uses and as I am not a celebrity hypnotist I am far more affordable and easier to track down!

Get in touch:

If you would like to ask any questions about this or any other post or what I do, leave me a comment or message me via Facebook, email or Twitter.