Food fever

Hi everyone, hope your week started off well and continues to be fab. I weighed this morning as I find if I weigh on a Monday when I have been on shift all weekend I don't get an accurate result. As I don't sleep particularly well during the day and work around 42 hours between 9pm Friday and 11am Monday, I find I 'bloat' a little. This has all gone by Tuesday morning, hence todays weigh in. I have lost 2lb this week bringing my total to 21lb in 15 weeks. At this steady pace I could in theory lose 6st in a year. How awesome would that be!! It has taken over 30 years to steadily put that on and in just 1 year it can be banished forever. Mixed feelings on this, elated that I am doing so well and will hopefully continue to do so, a little vexed and sad that I have spent so many years not doing things because I was too silly to lose this blubber sooner. Just 1 year is all it can take, what a numpty I was. WAS being the operative word, not now, not ever again. BRAINS IN MOTION AT LAST.

I was making my breakfast this morning and got to thinking of what I use the most of in our family. My shopping trolley is mostly full of veggies and salad stuff, but it made me think as to what are the most eaten things now and what was the most eaten things before I consciously began my weightloss journey. So here are the top 5 food fevers in my house:-

NOW. 1. Mushrooms, we go through 2kg in a week

2. Onions, 2kg minimum

3. Salad leaves - by the bucket load

4. Skinless and boneless fish - my fish bill is frightening!!

5. Eggs - 4 dozen in a week!!!

BEFORE. 1. Bread 2. Potatoes. 3. Red meat. 4. Mushrooms. 5. Eggs.

So some things have changed and others seem to be a constant. Potatoes are rarely eaten now, bread has quartered and red meat is down to 1-2 times a week at most. The mushrooms and eggs still play a massive part in our daily food intake.

So what does everyone else have in their top 5 Now and Then Food Fevers?

🍞🍤🍣🍝🍔🍖🍑🍠🍐🌽🍏🍎🍅🍱

[Portlandprincess]

My biggest change in food .....major decline is I don't drink wine, beer....etc. and now buy sunflower seeds instead of chocolate....less meat and more whole grains...feels right for me...but it's only been four weeks! I'm eating loads so burning about a pound of fat off a week.

[Hidden in reply to Portlandprincess]

A pound a week is a good steady pace, achievable and still able to really enjoy food. It's a positive approach and will ( hopefully) help you keep the changes permanently. It feels good hey?

[linggirl]

My biggest change is the number of packets of crisps I buy (far,far less now)! My fruit and vegetable and fish bill has always been high because I don't eat meat, but im actually being far more creative in how I cook so that has been one of the big bonuses of the change in my lifestyle. I'm going to have to be even more creative now because my diet now has to be low in phosphate and apparently fish and shellfish are high in phosphates boo hoo!

[Hidden in reply to linggirl]

I used to be terrible for crisps so stopped buying them a long time ago, the basket contains things like quavers, french fries, etc... as I don't bother with them. If I put a six pack of proper crisps in the basket, they would have been all eaten by myself before the day was over!! So even before I joined this forum I cut them out, only buying the odd bag for my son which he kept in his room ( he can't have additives/preservatives so only naturally flavoured potato crisps are acceptable). You are right about shellfish being high in phosphates, I wasn't sure about all fish though - you learn something every day. Your restricted list is getting longer and longer, poor you- I hope you find something you can have that you can enjoy. I will have a look in my food practitioner handbook and see if there is anything, I hope so. 😊

[Hidden]

Congrats on losing 2lb! And great idea to take stock how things have changed in terms of your family's food use. I cut out wheat and dairy and massively cut down my alcohol so my lists will be very different.

Now

1 oats

2 salad leaves

3 tinned tomatoes

4 tinned chickpeas

5 Quorn 'chicken style' pieces

Before

1 pasta

2 cheese

3 tinned tomatoes

4 wine

5 milk

[Hidden in reply to Hidden]

Hi Ruth, it is amazing how in just a few weeks we have changed the foods that we eat. There have been things, like bread, that I would have said I couldn't live without on a daily basis. Now instead of using a full loaf and wraps n rolls every day, I use 2 loaves a week, 1 packet wraps ( if i don't make my own) and 1/2 dozen rolls. Mostly used for packups. This equates to appx 1/3 of former usage. It's quite an eye opener hey? 😊

[Hidden in reply to Hidden]

Personally, I can't believe I gave up cheese. Mature cheddar was an absolute staple for me. Not to mention getting through a bottle of wine every two days or so. I've had to keep an eye on bread for a while because of doc advice, but giving it up completely definitely needed a lot of creativity. I think the result is more balanced meals, whereas before we were perhaps just 'fuelling' ourselves with carbs, not paying as much attention to the nutrients/vits as we do now.

[Hidden in reply to Hidden]

Giving up cheese!! I take my hat off to you Ruth, though reduced usage, giving my strong cheeses up is a no no for me. I do use cheese in a lot of recipes, including soft cheeses such as ricotta, mascarpone, cottage cheese, etc... but have drastically cut the amount used. Oooh-er, I'm getting palpitations, no cheeeeeese, aaghhhhh. 😳

[Hidden in reply to Hidden]

A very small consolation has been discovering a substance called 'nutritional yeast', a bouillon-like side product of beer-making full of vits etc. If you mix it into mash/homemade pesto etc it makes it taste 'cheesey'. But yes giving up mature cheddar and the various blue cheeses I used to love has been a massive change. Hopefully they can be reintroduced gradually at some point, perhaps on a much smaller scale to before

[Hidden in reply to Hidden]

Holland and Barrett sell the nutritional yeast, I will give it a go. It may work in reducing the cheese intake a little more, cheers Ruth. 😊

[Hidden in reply to Hidden]

That's where I got it from. Not cheap, but I just keep a teaspoon in the pot, and add a little here and there, it seems to stretch a long way

[Gonti 10 kg]

Good post and good question.

Biggest change for me is giving up white rice and pasta.

I grow veg including chillie and tomatoes so the current top 5 things I pay for is

Greens- mainly broccoli of different kinds

Whole grain rice

Olive oil

Beans, tinned and sometimes dried

Dried, tinned and frozen fish. cheaper and better quality than fresh.

I can't do without porridge, lemons and ginger but they last for ages

[Hidden in reply to Gonti]

I had to give up my allotment 6 years ago very sadly, but I still grow lots in the garden. Not enough to sustain a family of 4 but better than nothing. I grow all my own garlic, summer sees plenty of lettuce, tomatoes and spring onions as well as runner beans by the bucket load. I also grow squash and turnips as well as leeks and jerusalem artichokes, my sweetcorn failed miserably this year as did the peas. I have rhubarb, cooking apples ( the tree fruits every other year) eating apple, blackberry, blackcurrant, raspberry and plum for fruit. Though will admit it is getting harder to tend to this lot too with my long working hours and no matter how much I ask/tell the kids, nothing will induce them to help ( ironically as children they would dig happily at the allotment). I love flavoured oils and make my own chilli oil and garlic oil, but the rest I buy. Porridge is a seasonal thing in my house, it'll be on the regular menu again soon with the temperature dropping and autumn rolling in.

I think it does us good to take stock of bits of our lives every now and then, makes us think. 😊

[Gonti 10 kg in reply to Hidden]

Wow I love the sound of your garden.🌻🍂

[Hidden in reply to Gonti]

Oh it can be a bit of a jungle at times, lol. The raspberry, blackcurrant and blackberries are all in large pots to stop them taking over - the drawback being you don't get so much fruit. The cooking apple tree has given a bumper crop this year, but is quite literally doing my head in ( a cooking apple hurts a lot when it bounces off the top of your head), the lawn is littered with decaying ones. I used to put a box on the front wall with the overflow that I couldn't use, but people want perfect unblemished apples, even when free!! All the salad stuff and beans are grown in pots and troughs too. The squash, leeks, etc.. are planted in gaps of the flower beds. Seems to work ok. The jerusalem artichokes are in a line along the side of the garage which acts as a bit of a windbreak. Worth growing a couple of plants as they yield a lot, need little care and save a fortune ( have you seen the cost of just 300g!!). They do however take a very long time to grow. 😊

[Gonti 10 kg in reply to Hidden]

Apple surpluses, do you get wild deer in the garden because they will be in for some. Meanwhile My 85 year old mum has just sliced up 20 bags of apples and put them in the freezer raw. I usually cook them first. 😀

[Hidden in reply to Gonti]

My grandma used to cook the surplus apples and plums. Lots of peeling, then boiling then bagging in small amounts to be made into pies etc during the year. And she only had 'miniature' fruit trees. You still get a lot though!