Progress report

Went for my monthly weigh-in this morning and have lost 2kg (4.5lbs) in my first month on the 5:2 diet. Hurray!

Our approach to cooking

We're a family on a budget. And not just a financial one either, we also have to spend our time wisely, and restrict our calories.

My first post on this blog tells you more why I'm rationing the calories. As for time and money they both come down to the same thing: we have two kids!

My OH and I decided when we got pregnant with my daughter (now 6) that we'd do what we could to avoid having to pay for childcare and that one of us would give up full time work to look after the kids. So now I'm at work full time during the day, and when I get home from work, OH leaves for his part-time evening job. This means we don't eat our tea together during the week, and the only time we get to spend all together as a family of four is at the weekend, and it's really precious to us.

So we're short on time together, and until OH goes back into full time work when our son (3) starts primary school Sept 2014, we're also conscious of the pennies.

This impacts on how we like to shop, cook and eat.

We don't like to spend hours in the kitchen chopping and prepping - we're happy to take shortcuts when we can, so we keep the freezer stocked with bags of frozen ingredients like sliced peppers, casserole veg and diced onion. Morrisons do a fab range of frozen chopped herbs and spices like garlic, ginger, chilli and parsley. These items work out way cheaper per lb than their fresh counterparts and there is much less wastage, as we've had an awful tendency in the past to let our fresh veg go past it's best before we use it and end up chucking it away; a terrible waste of food and money.

We keep a well stocked spices cupboard, and always have tins of chopped tomatoes and various legumes in, as well as the usual store cupboard basics like rice, pasta, couscous, and more recently quinoa.

So we've always got enough in to cobble together some kind of filling stew, casserole or slow cooker dish. Which brings me on to how we like to cook....

We cook an awful lot of bung-it-all-in-a-pan-and-leave-it-for-a-while-see-what-happens kind of dishes. OH often bungs a load of stuff in the slow cooker in the morning then goes out for the day with the youngest to his various playgroups and whatnot (howcome my 3 year old has a better social life than me?!), so I often get home from work to a house that smells of yum and a slow cooker full of something delicious.

More often than not, it'll make up 4-6 portions. Our children are extremely finicky and rarely eat what we eat (a whooole other story which I might blog about at some point!) so when we cook up a pot of something, it'll usually do us for 2 or 3 days. 

 We've got a healthy collection of tupperware and takeaway type containers to freeze leftovers in. It's brilliant for me when I get home from work to be able to get a portion of sommat out of the freezer that is yummy, healthy and home cooked.

So one of the reasons I'm writing this blog is to get a collection of these dishes together that are all around the 250-300 calorie mark - perfect tea for a fast day!

Feel free to share your thoughts with me. Have you got any shortcuts that save you time and money in the kitchen?

About My Journey

I've been on a weight loss journey for almost three years now. At it's peak, four months after my son was born, my weight reached 113.55 kg. That's 17 stone 12 lbs. Or 250lbs. However you express it, thats a whole lotta Rosey!

With a BMI of 39.1, a shade under the borderline into morbidly obese, I knew I had to make a change. Looking to start keeping a food diary, I signed up to My Fitness Pal on 1st August 2010 and I have never looked back. I asked the nurse at my local GPs surgery for help keeping me on track and started going to see her once a month to get weighed and talk about my progress.

I managed to get down to 72kg by Christmas 2011 (that's 11 stone 5 lbs in old money) a total loss of 6 and a half stone, well over a third of my starting weight. I'd made it just into the 'normal' BMI zone. Hurray!

Unfortunately, I've then struggled to keep it going. After 18 months of calorie counting, I felt like I needed to give myself a break and took 6 months off. I gained half a stone back. Starting back on it again in September 2012 I lost the half stone I'd gained back by February 2013 and got back to 72 kg.

During March, despite pretty much sticking to 1400 calories a day, I gained a kilo. I found this really dispiriting and over April, I fell right off the rails, baking cakes for 4 different events across the month and scoffing most of it. At my weigh in at the end of April I had gained another 5kg and was back up to 78 kg, almost a stone gained in two months.

I felt really disheartened and like I'd never be able to eat 'normally' again. Trying to stick to 1400 calories a day was no longer working for me, and I felt like there was no light at the end of the tunnel. I needed to try something different.

I'd seen some chat on MFP about 'intermittent fasting' and following a '5:2 diet' so I thought I'd give it a try. The principle of the Fast Diet is that you eat a very low calorie diet on 2 days of the week (500 calories for women, 600 calories for men), then eat 'normally' for the other 5 days. Once you've reached your goal weight, you continue to fast one day per week.

As well as weight loss benefits, this diet is also said to have other health benefits as well, improving cognitive function and staving off Alzheimer's, and extending life span, although research into this is still quite limited at this stage. For impartial info about the Fast Diet, have a look at what the NHS has to say about it here.

I decided I'd still track my calories every day to make sure I don't just go nuts on my non-fasting days. Using this calculator, I worked out that the total calories I need just to maintain my current weight is 1860 per day, so I have set my allowance to 1800 for my non-fast days, giving me a total calorie allowance per week of 10,000, so about the same as my previous 1400 calorie per day diet.

I'm just starting my fourth week of following this eating pattern and I must say I've found it quite enjoyable! Strangely, I look forward to my fast days, and relish the challenge of trying to create exciting meals within a strict calorie budget. It's also nice to know that even though you're having to deny yourself treats, you can look forward to treating yourself tomorrow. I can't even tell you if it's working for me yet, as my first monthly weigh in isn't until next week, but I'm feeling pretty hopeful as my clothes feel less snug!

I'm starting this blog to keep a bit of a recipe book for all my favourite fast day meals, and to share them with others who are trying a calorie controlled diet. If you're one of those, I hope you find this blog useful, please share your stories with me.