5:2 Meal Plan (week 13)

My husband has reached his target and will now be aiming to maintain his current weight – which is 16 kilos less than he started the New Year with. Really amazing progress! I still have a little over 3kg to go before I can join him on maintenance, but am very pleased with having lost 9.8 kg so far.

So this week is going to be interesting. We will still both be doing 5:2, but he will need to be eating more on normal days than he has been used to recently. Will he still have the motivation to do fast days? As we are both doing this for long-term health benefits, the answer is yes. 

In any case, the strategy I have used up to now – to make our meals totally delicious and not like we are being deprived of anything, means that we both enjoy and look forward to eating every day, how ever many calories we are allowed.

So normal days now will be 1200 for me and 2500 calories him, with fast days of 500/600

Off to the market tomorrow, to see what seasonal veg I can add to the menu – asparagus, swiss chard, carrots, maybe some broad beans….. and better buy some potatoes too! 

In the freezer I have some plums that I want to use up, so I’m going to try a few different things with them. I need to make some room in the hope that this will be a good year for cherries….

Saturday ~ 

  • lunch:
    • thin crust wholewheat pizza with rocket salad
  • dinner – leftovers from last night’s dinner party
    • Hummus and Baba Ganoush with Seedy Flatbread and Crudités
    • Spanish style Meatballs with Quinoa and Bulgur Tabbouleh
    • Apple and Quince Paste Filo Feuilletes with Vanilla Ice Cream

Sunday ~

  • lunch
    • Smoked Herring Caesar Salad
    • Fresh Fruit (plus Cheese and Crackers)
  • dinner
    • Herb Crusted Lamb Cutlets with Skordalia, Beetroot Relish and Green Vegetables
    • Poached Plums with Custard and Amaretti Biscuits

Monday ~ Fast Day

  • breakfast:
    • Scrambled Egg with Smoked Trout
  • dinner
    • Mushroom and Celery Soup
    • Marinated Tuna with Pumpkin and Asparagus stir-fry
    • Poached Plums with Fromage Blanc

Tuesday ~

  • Lunch
    • Sausages with Leek and Carrot Gratin
    • Fresh Fruit
  • Dinner
    • Lentil, Coconut and Spinach Soup
    • Sardines on Toasted Grainy Bun
    • Mirabelle Plum and Ginger Brik Pastry Cups

Wednesday ~

  • lunch
    • Tofu and Green Bean Curry with Brown Rice
    • Fresh Fruit
  • dinner
    • Lentil, Coconut and Spinach Soup
    • Thai Beef Salad (with Noodles)
    • Plum Oaty Crumble with Ice Cream/Fromage Blanc

Thursday ~ Fast Day

  • breakfast
    • Natural Yogurt with Prunes
  • dinner
    • Simple Vegetable Soup
    • Fish baked in a Spiced Masala Sauce
    • Cabbage, Green Pepper and Caraway Salad
    • Plum Kulfi with Plum Coulis

Friday ~

  • lunch
    • Veggie Burgers (with/without bun) with Salad 
    • Fresh Fruit, Cheese
  • dinner
    • Sticky Ginger Chicken (with Jacket Potato) and Light Cole Slaw
    • Fromage Blanc with Plum Coulis and Pistachios

5:2 My Flavourful Meal Plan for week 9

This week I went to the market in Montaigu-de-Quercy. Lots of lovely fresh seasonal local produce to choose from!

 Montaigu de Quercy _MG_0370 

_MG_0399

I came home with my bags laden :-

lettuces, endive, bean shoots, swiss chard, leeks, brown mushrooms, young turnips, carrots, jerusalem artichokes, watercress, beetroot, radishes, goats cheese, pears, apples and satsumas – and the first asparagus (from Spain).

 

Each week I am trying to feature seasonal produce, but I’m also trying to use up food that I have stored in my freezer, much of which is home-grown.

So my actual plan for the week, updated with calorie counts, designed with flavour in mind for healthy, satisfying  well-balanced meals, which will work for an intermittent fasting and weight loss lifestyle. I’m not showing cups of tea or my standard breakfast, but numbers are included in the daily totala:-

_MG_0375 Sunday ~ 1300 kcals 

  • lunch: leftovers – Pizza and Spanakopitta, Veg Stir Fry with Satay sauce (370); satsuma (30)
  • dinner: Herby Roast Chicken (Alain Ducasse) with Roasted Roots, Braised Turnips and Peas (410);
    Raspberry Cinnamon Meringue (75)
    + 200 kcal of treats (wine and chocolate)!

 

_MG_0368 Monday ~ Fast Day 490 kcals

  • breakfast: Scrambled Egg with Smoked Trout – (140)
  • dinner: Watercress Soup (60); Tuna Steak with ginger and garlic, steamed Asparagus, Beanshoot, Mushroom and Radish Salad (200)
    Baked Pear with Amaretti (100)

 

_MG_0386

Tuesday ~ 1185 kcals

  • lunch: Watercress Soup (60) with cracker (30); 2 Chipolata Sausages with Cauliflower Mash and leftover braised vegetables (360); Satsuma (30)
  • supper: Asparagus Filo Pastries (150); Coronation Chicken Salad (260); Roquefort and digestive biscuit (150); Raspberry Cinnamon Meringue (75)

 

_MG_0387 Wednesday ~ 1275 kcals

 

 

_MG_0388 Thursday ~ Fast Day – 500 kcal

 

 

_MG_0381 Friday: tbd!

    

I’ve updated last week’s meal plan with what we actually ate and the calorie counts. You’ll find my recipes here

I hope you find some of my ideas inspirational and useful.

As always, if you have any questions, please ask. 

Body Mass Index – BMI

I weigh myself in kilos, which I can understand for bags of flour and portions of fish or piles of vegetables, but they mean nothing to me in terms of body weight – maybe one of the reasons why mine crept up so steadily the last few years! It was a shock when I realised that my 68.4 kilos was about 10 stone 10 lbs – a healthy weight for me is a good way under 9 stone!

How do you know what a healthy weight is for you? Well apart from your own sense of what weight you should be to look good and feel good, you can use a BMI calculator. This will give you an estimate of your body mass. There are some new weighing machines on the market that will calculate percentage body fat, but I think unless you have a lot of money to spend, these are unreliable. BMI will only give you a range of healthy weights for your age and height, it’s up to you to decide where you need to be in that range for your body frame.

My BMI today

My BMI today

My starting BMI was 29.45 – right towards the top end of overweight  – and would have been set to continue into obese unless I had taken action.

We started on 2nd January on cutting out alcohol for the month, reducing our calorie intake and increasing our activity levels . Then fortuitously my husband saw Michael Mosley talking about the 5:2 diet on TV, as his The Fast Diet book was about to be launched. After doing some researching we both agreed it would be a fantastic way to change our lifestyles and something that we are both enthusiastic about for the long term health benefits. Being in my early 60s I am optimistic that it is not too late to reverse the trend towards diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, high blood pressure and whatever other ailments I was heading for.

The first thing though is to get rid of this excess weight  – and the 5:2 way of eating is really helping with that. I’m still calorie counting as I need to re-educate myself about portion size, which foods have hidden or surprise calories and to know that even when I am eating on a non-fast day that I am not going overboard in adding calories that my body can’t burn off.  I’m really enjoying the challenge of finding interesting, flavourful food that is filling but not fattening.

I know this is a popular diet with foodies, as it can give you the leeway to indulge yourself a little and still maintain a healthy weight. But whilst I don’t want to exclude anything in particular long term, in the short term it is worth saying NO to the wonderful French patisserie, the rich buttery pastry, the rich creamy sauces and so on, while I am working on getting to a maintenance weight.  So I am being careful, but not entirely restrictive. Weekends and the occasional night out can still include a couple of glasses of wine and something sweet. If I have burned calories by cycling or Zumba, then that gives me some spare calories that I could use. But I don’t want guzzle a whole handful of chocolates and ruin everything I have achieved so far –  and thanks to the changes that are happening to my body and brain, I don’t want to! How brilliant is that?

Yes there is some willpower required to keep going on a fast day, to wait another 15 minutes before having something to eat, to say NO to a cream cake or whatever is your weakness – but the goals of being healthy, looking good, and best of all, feeling good – well those are worth working for, worth a little short-term discomfort.

The act of fasting twice a week helps to reduce your stomach size, reduce your appetite and reduce your cravings. It makes you more mindful about what and when you eat and to not mind being a little hungry occasionally.   If you combine this with steps towards avoiding junk food, cutting back on snacking and sweetened soft drinks and replacing processed and refined foods with home-made and wholefoods wherever you can, then you will be well on the way to a really healthy lifestyle, even if you don’t take any more exercise.  It’s a journey, not an instant fix. I’m lucky to already have a lot of knowledge about food and I enjoy planning meals and preparing things from scratch, but I’m still learning about nutrition. I’m happy to share to help others to get healthy and it  encourages me too.

So keep at it. If you have read this far – I hope you will find some useful and inspiring ideas here to help you to keep going with 5:2 in the long term, along with me and my husband.

My current BMI is 27.04 – I still have a further 5 kgs to lose to get me into the healthy zone and my target is to get a little under that, to allow for a little fluctuation.

Let’s all get to a healthy BMI and keep the cost of medical care down!

You can calculate your BMI here on the NHS website.

Focus on Flavour – Keeping it Light

Since early January we have been working on evolving our lifestyle with the aim of getting our bodies back to normal, i.e. not ‘overweight’, improving our fitness level and hopefully increasing our chances of living to a ripe old age in good health.

We are following a 5:2 diet (5 days eating normal, healthy meals: 2 days restricted calorie intake – 500 for women/ 600 for men), inspired by Michael Mosley’s “The Fast Diet”

With this in mind I am preparing a lot of our meals from scratch and trying to eliminate unnecessary calories.

I’m going to start trying to photograph our meals, especially when it is something new.

Each week I am planning our meals for the week, so I’m going to share those meal plans here and link to recipes or include my own as and when I can.