The Secret of My Success

Towards the end of last year, I toyed with the idea of sharing what I typically eat when I'm engaged in full diet mode. However, for whatever reason, my 'Diet In December' concept never really came to fruition. I was asked by a colleague earlier today share my secret on what I eat, given I've been pretty successful in getting back on track post-Christmas, and so this entry will show you.

Breakfast is typically a low key affair nowadays. In the winter months I eat porridge and with somewhat limited time in the mornings what with getting two boys up and ready, I opt for the easy option of Oats So Simple. Two minutes in the microwave and ready to eat. They come in a variety of flavours and recently introduced a Heaps of Fruit range which made a change from the Golden Syrup ones which I'd got a little bored of. Porridge does a great job of keeping me filled up until lunch, and because it is hot it can't be eaten too quickly.

Hot Breakfast

For lunch I tend to have a salad, and by salad I mean just that, not a pile of mayonnaise infested 'salad' that you tend to get offered in salad bars in supermarkets. Pictured below is a very basic lunch, comprising of baby spinach leaves with some Spanish chorizo slices to offer flavour. There is no dressing or sauce. Sometimes I'll chop cucumber or pepper to add a little crunch. The green stuff doesn't have to be spinach and I often rotate between baby leaf salad or rocket. Chorizo can be subbed for meaty alternatives, or for something a bit different smoked mackerel. Spinach is brilliant stuff and you can eat a mountain of it for minimal damage. It does get a bit difficult to eat a lot, so I like to use the chorizo slices as mini wraps.

Yes, this really is my lunch

After two relatively small meals, I need to have something more hearty for my dinner. Having already scaled back during the day, I'll be damned if my main meal is the size of one of those 'light option' ready meals. I've given two examples below. The first is spaghetti and meatballs. Nothing too fancy here, just some oven baked meatballs, spaghetti and a pasta sauce. After a day in the office and getting the kids to bed, I make no apologies for the fact that the meatballs are not home made and the pasta sauce is out of a jar. In an ideal world I would prepare both myself, but that is unrealistic on weeknights, particularly if I'm also trying to get out for a run.

Meatballs, sauce, spaghetti. Simple and yummy

Dinner number 2 here is something I might typically eat on a Tuesday night before the Wednesday Weigh In. Like anybody else who faces public scrutiny, I'm going to give myself the best chance of a positive outcome the following morning by having a lighter meal the night before. In this case, there is leftover roast chicken, served with lettuce, spinach, peppers, cucumber and on this occasion I treated myself to a little coleslaw. I wouldn't eat this more than once a week as like I said above, I need a good dinner following a small lunch and breakfast.

A lighter dinner before the Weigh-In

Other dinners I regularly have include spaghetti bolognese, ideally made with extra lean beef mince rather than the really fatty stuff, chicken curry or pan friend chicken served with penne in a carbonara sauce. I'm not averse to a frozen pizza from time to time, so long as I don't do it with extras like garlic bread.

So those are my typical meals. What do I eat in between times? Well, usually not very much at all is the honest answer. I do best when I completely cut out snacks, bar the occasional bit of fruit or yoghurt. If I feel the need for a sugar burst, a small handful of sultanas does the job rather than opt for chocolate. I don't drink tea or coffee, and my staple drink during the day is Pepsi Max. There will be nutritionists who point out the evils of aspartame, but if there is a calorie free drink that contains caffeine that I enjoy drinking, I think I'm allowed one vice. Critics of diet drinks say that people will crave sugar as a result of consuming them, but I don't really find that to be the case.

I'm not a total food nazi when I'm dieting. I don't stick to this formula 7 days a week. If I want a bacon sandwich at the weekend, or a bit of cheese on toast I will. When my other half and I are exhausted after a long week, the occasional take away is more than justified. But typically I follow this plan at least 5 days out of 7, and combined with my ongoing exercise, the results are there for all to see. 

Now, for anybody reading this and is thinking about following in my footsteps, I will provide a word of caution. To my mind, one the main reasons why people fail with their diets is because they opt for a crash diet rather than something more measured. To coin a phrase from Ed Balls, they go too far, too fast. What I have displayed above is what I eat now as a 14 stone man when trying to shed a few pounds. If I had attempted to follow this formula when I was a 24 stone man, I would have failed very quickly indeed. If your body has been used to being fuelled by a large amount of calories, it will not respond well to a dramatic reduction. Scale back your portion size gradually over time, rather than cutting off the majority of the fuel supply.

To get where I am now, I have reduced my food intake over a prolonged period. Breakfast is now a simple bowl of porridge. Previously it would have included a banana with it. Before that a large bowl of Bran Flakes.

Lunch is now a very simple salad. It started out as a sandwich comprised of 4 slices of bread with a carrot on the side. First the carrot went. Then I scaled back to 2 slices of bread. Now I've ditched the bread altogether and gone for greens.

The same can be said for dinner. If I have a curry at home, I very rarely include a naan, which previously would have been a must. The amount of pasta or rice I cook is now measured too and is less than what I ate when I was much bigger.

I wouldn't even recommend cutting down your meal portions to begin with. The place to start is all the extras that are consumed during the day. If you're eating three meals a day, with some snacks and a glass of wine in the evening, the first things to go are the extras. I only drink one night a week now, typically a Saturday night having been for a run in the morning. It is rarely more than a couple of glasses of wine or cans of beer. Snacks don't feature at all or at least very rarely, so no tubes of Pringles in front of the tv or a sneaky slice of toast when I get home from work. If you eat these on top of your usual three meals, ditch the extras and you should notice a difference. Then, and only then, you can think about where else you can trim some calories.

So there you have it. The secret of my success is less sexy than the 5:2 diet, or any of these other fad diets that people invest a lot of time and money into. I used to eat a huge amount, but slowly scaled back and continued to do so as the weight came off. Exercise helps of course, ensuring that your burn more calories than you consume, but with a little discipline and not taking things too quickly, you can lose weight through portion control.

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Guilt Free Lunch

Way back in January when I started out on this weightloss mission, I wrote an article in which I declared Subway Is Dead To Me, With the exception of a special day in February when my little one was born, I have steered clear. Today I broke with the convention and enjoyed a footlong 'Big Beef Melt' on honey oat bread, toasted with cheese, served with lettuce, cucumber, green peppers, pickles and drizzled in sweet onion sauce (for some absurd reason they didn't have honey mustard so had to go with an alternative).

Here it is in its full glory

Damn that Sub looks good!

I savoured every mouthful and scoffed the lot. Now, this isn't exactly my usual behaviour, or at least it hasn't been over the last 10 months or so. I usually get by with a pretty humble salad for lunch these days, which is just as well because making this a regular option would prove costly, both to the wallet and the diet success. The fact is though, a treat once in a while is allowed, and I think my circumstances today justified it.

I was awake from just after 3 after the little one decided he was no longer asleep. Poor little thing has been teething and plagued with the sniffles, so it has not been uncommon for he and I to get acquainted during the night. However, unlike most other nights, he really was determined not to go back to sleep. Blowing raspberries, pulling my ears, chuntering away. Any sleep I managed between then and 6 was patchy in the extreme. The alarm went off and it was action stations, needing to get the two of us out of the house quickly and on the road.

Today was an appointment with the neurosurgeon to discuss the results of a recent MRI scan on his head and spine. Unfortunately to get there meant joining the commute into London. It wasn't a good sign when I had to queue to get onto the M4 in the first place. The radio told me what I didn't want to hear; an accident further down the road causing delays. We'd set off with plenty of time to spare, but this was not what was wanted. Tired, grouchy, a little nervous about the outcome of the appointment, and with raspberries blowing at me from the back seat while pootling along at a snail's pace, I realised that I hadn't had time for breakfast. Fortunately I'd had the sense to have some cans of diet pepsi on hand to provide a caffeine boost for the journey, but even so, this was not the best way to start the day.

It took a while to get into town. Typically little man fell asleep towards the end of the journey meaning when we parked up he woke up grumpy and made pretty clear his demands for milk. Fortunately that soothed the beast and brought back my smiley boy. The appointment followed soon afterwards and there was much relief when told there was no change from the previous scan and we continue as we have been doing for the last few months. No need for any operations, just get on with life and scan again in a number of months time.

I managed to get little man to his nursery just in time for him to sit down with the other babies for lunch. Home via the GP to request a repeat prescription and then off to work for the afternoon. Still no food and by the time I reached the office I'd been awake for more or less 9 hours. Subway was calling out to me and why not. It had been a long morning. The treat was justified, Best of all, that is all it was. A treat. A one off. There will be no repeat. I'll be munching on my spinach and cucumber tomorrow. I'll have had my porridge for breakfast. I'll be returning to what has served me so well over the last year. Self control is the single most important factor when it comes to dieting. Right now I have have it, and so long as that remains the case, bad habits won't creep back in.

So here is to an occasional guilt free lunch. You served me well today Subway, bringing me out of a sleep deprived, anxiety filled morning and setting me up for the rest of the day. But having met my needx, you can go back to being dead to me once more. See you again in the future some time.