5:2 Friday #2

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Another 2 fasting days under my belt, this week although I'm thinking of trying 3 for the next couple of weeks just to get me over a hump. The same hump I hit the last time I had weight to lose. Whether I do or don't try and get over this hump, though, I'm definitely feeling much better about myself and my clothes fit again.

Fast Day 1

Breakfast: 162g stewed apple (stewed with a sprinkle of cinammon and an empty vanilla pod to mellow the sharpness of the apple), 100g 0% fat Greek yoghurt and 10g pumpkin seeds - 195 calories

Lunch: 400ml of the lovely spinach and coconut soup that I made with the last of the spinach from the garden, with some chopped coriander and a squeeze of lime juice added. 119 cals

Dinner: A chunky red and yellow pepper pasta sauce served on a mound of spaghetti err cabbage. Thinly sliced and steamed, I was never going to be fooled into thinking it was actually pasta, but this meal was brilliant - the sauce was so low in calories that I could have quite a lot, and even some grated parmesan on top. Happy days.

The sauce was made by de-seeding 2 peppers (one red, one yellow), peeling two shallots and 2 cloves of garlic and slicing them all up - shallots and onions thinner than the peppers - covering with water in a pan and simmering till soft and most of the water had gone - took about 15 mins. Added a tin of chopped tomatoes, a little water (to swill out the tin mainly) salt and pepper, bubbled up a little more and then served.  1 serving of this sauce is about 58 calories. Yes really. Unless my maths is completely rubbish.

The cabbage thing is a tip I took from Steph at I'm Counting UFOs, whose 5:2 Friday I'm linking up to with this post. 150g steamed cabbage contains a mere 34 calories. That's quite a lot of cabbage for not many calories - and as long as you don't over cook it, it's quite nice.

It even looks a little like pasta - if you don't look too closely

I had 186 calories available for dinner after the other 2 meals, and the cabbage and sauce only amounted to 92 calories, so I pushed the boat out and added some capers (a dessert spoonful had about 4 calories in it) and 10g of grated parmesan (40 calories). Then I went wild and ate a passion fruit, pushing my daily total to 507 calories.

Fast Day 2:

Breakfast: As before, although I reduced the yoghurt by half to give me more flexibility later in the day: 163 calories

Lunch: Tomato and lentil soup. My starting point for this is this recipe in the London Unattached blog which is a good resource of 5:2 recipes. My version had smoked paprika rather than chilli in it as I wanted the kids to eat the soup too. Time was tight at lunchtime, so I ended up frying 2 chopped shallots and a clove of garlic in a teaspoon of rapeseed oil rather than simmering them in a covering of water. I used 2 carrots, peeled and chopped and a good sprinkle of smoked paprika. I used a Kallo organic chicken stock cube diluted in 1 litre of water, and added 70g lentils before simmering for 20 minutes then blitzing. I also served it with a 20g blob of 0% fat yoghurt but it still came in at 133 calories for a substantial 325 ml portion.

I made flatbreads for the kids to have with it, and they really enjoyed it. Worth putting the extra lentils in I think, as it kept me going for longer. That said, although it felt like a decent lunch, I was ravenous around 4.30, so I had 10g of miso paste in a mug of hot water which was around 12 calories, and the rest of the day I drank my new favourite tea - Clipper white tea with vanilla. It's pretty good if you like that sort of thing.

Dinner: A poached egg served on 150g steamed purple sprouting broccoli and 100g steamed spinach, with salt and pepper: 126 calories

I make that 434 calories for the day. Rock & roll.