On the first week of the Hannah-made diet

First I have to say that I like my diet. On my diet I can still eat chocolate and jellybeans and cheese and drink coffee and wine. And I’ve made sure there is a free-for-all day, which was very necessary this week as I got to go on an AMAZING wine tour on Waiheke Island for my friend Sara’s 30^th. And, on my diet you do lose weight. I hopped on the scales and I knew I couldn’t have lost much and I didn’t. I only lost 0.4 kilos.

I was a teeny bit sad because I’ve been so good, but then I realised two things:

a) I’m 30, and my metabolism isn’t what it used to be.

b) My life isn’t The Biggest Loser Australia.

My life is still my life and because I’m still 5 weeks out from surgery I can’t really work out so it’s just losing weight via diet. And I have a job and a husband and a social life, so it can’t just be about dieting and exercise and ‘me’ all the time. My diet also allows me to eat fun things, which I don’t think they do cos their trainers will blow their face off with their giant noisy face holes. I really think that treats are important even if they have no nutritional value. If I’m under my maximum KJ consumption for the day, I’m totally allowed some jellybeans!

So actually, losing 0.4 kilos is not that bad. It’s almost a whole American pound! That’s almost a whole block of butter!

What I’m really enjoying is how thinking about what I eat makes me both aware and accountable for everything I put in my mouth. It’s very easy to not think about taste testing the tasters at work, or eating a left over pie at the end of the day (waste not want not), but when you realise how many extra unnecessary kilojoules that is popping into your body it makes it easy to say no. I’m enjoying having a proper sit down breakfast with myself every morning and deciding on snacks to take to work.

I’m also learning that how I naturally cook is actually quite healthy to start with. I haven’t had to change much. The biggest change has been in being organised so we can HAVE a home cooked meal instead of takeaways. I don’t get home until just before 7pm three to four nights a week and have a husband who doesn’t cook. And I’m not one of those people who can come home from working a 9 hour day and then cook and then eat at 7.30 or 8pm. That would make me a hangry murderous kind of person. So usually about three nights a week we end up resorting to takeaway foods.

I’m finding ways around this. I made the batter for some sweetcorn fritters the night before we needed them, and had Murray cook them for dinner the following day (he can do that kind of cooking). We served it with a simple salad that I made when I got home. It took me literally about 7 minutes to prepare that batter, and we were eating by 7pm. Easy and tasty, it just shows I need to be more organised. No takeaways at all for me this week.

The bigger challenge was eating out. We went to a friend’s birthday dinner on Friday night at That’s Amore pizza. Because I was winerying on Saturday, I didn’t have a free dinner pass. Luckily, they don’t do gluten free pizza anyway, so I was restricted to eating salad even without being on a diet. I ordered an amazing salad with artichoke hearts, walnuts and parmesan and asked for the dressing on the side. It was so good that I didn’t feel left out of the fun of the pizza party. The only fail was the three glasses of wine… I almost totally drank the extra un-bought pizza.

This week is super busy and the necessity of meal planning is showing me that I do actually need to spend more time at home. Looking at it now, I’ll only have two nights where I’ll be home before 8.30pm: tonight and Sunday. This makes planning dinners tricky – but also has helped me look at how little time I get for resting and keeping sane. So all in all I think this losing weight thing may end up being helpful in other areas as I will try and trim back my social life and schedule regular time at home to cook, eat, knit and rest.

So this week coming, I probably won’t change much about this diet plan thing, apart from the free day: it should definitely be a free meal. After the wine tour I was a little tipsy and ate a bunch of naughty things. One wine tour with tipsy mistakes won’t be likely to happen again soon, so I think it’ll be easy to avoid this in future. Otherwise, I’ll keep on trucking with my meal planning and food maths – it’s seriously fun!

Monday 12^th March current weight: 62.2 kilos

Ultimate Goal Weight: 56.0 kilos

Weight to go: 6.2 kilos

OoooH! And here is a recipe along with the food math. I'll try and put one of these in every post:

Basic Stiryfry (serves 3 - 4)

2 eggs 648

1/2 tsp Chinese 5 spice 22

1 Tbsp vege oil 485

1 onion 117

1 capsicum 100

4 large button mushrooms 280

200g brocolli 200

2 cloves garlic finely chopped 60

1 red chilli finely chopped 25

3 Tbsp soy sauce 45

1 Tsp honey 267

1 tsp Fish sauce 30

2 Tbsp Japanese cooking wine 168

Total Kilojoules 2269

1) Scramble eggs with 1/4 teaspoon of Chinese 5 spice. Heat half the oil in a wok and fry the egg. Remove from pan.

2) Stirfry veges in remaining oil. I start with the onion, add brocolli and capsicum and lastly the mushroom.

3) Combine garlic, chilli, soy sauce, honey, fish sauce and cooking wine in a small cup. Add with egg to the stir fry once it has cooked.

Divide into 3 or 4 servings and serve each with 3/4 cup cooked white rice (760 kj) or with 3/4 cup brown rice (685kj) This gives you a tasty meal under 2000kj