Metabolic Balance diet: day 7

Today was going swimmingly well until I made one fatal mistake: I didn't have all of my lunch.

It's not a rule that you have to abide to, you don't have to eat everything on your plan but today I probably should have stuck to my menu. I was supposed to have a chicken salad for lunch and, as part of my plan, I'm also allowed 4 slices of rye bread a day and normally have one with my lunch but today I wasn't that hungry and I guess I wanted to see whether I was eating it because "I could" or because I really needed it.

Turns out I needed it.

By 5.30pm I was really hungry but I didn't want to break the 5h rule so I was becoming more and more ratty as I was handing out lovely plates of food to my boys. Between 5.30pm and 7.30pm when I had my dinner was hard and I properly felt like I was on a diet. In my head I was like a 3 year old having a tantrum: I'm hungry, I'm hungry! It's not fair, they get to eat and I don't! This is rubbish, I don't even want to lose weight!

I "cheated" I suppose and had a cup of chicken stock, which to be fair I had skimmed of most of the fat. I just needed something warm to carry me to dinner and prevent me from shouting at everyone (well, I may have shouted, a bit).

I guess it was especially hard because I wasn't at all looking forward to my dinner: cod and vegetables en papillotte. I would normally like that but without any butter?! Dull, dull, dull, my head said. Yet this is what I had and guess what? It was delicious, absolutely lovely, so much so that I'm definitely having the same tomorrow for lunch. It was just perfect and the absence of butter was almost a good thing, it tasted fresh and clean. Lovely.

I can't wait for tomorrow's lunch, although I think I'll have some rye bread with that...

Metabolic Balance Diet: day 6

What to say about today?

Well, Tuesdays are super manic days for me: a bit of work at the crack of dawn before everyone wakes up, getting everyone ready (could you put your shoes on darling, have you put your shoes on yet?, please put your shoes on now, SHOES!!!), school run, 3h to myself to do work, DIY, housework, prepare stuff for dinner etc., pre-school pick up, play date with youngest son, school pick up, 45min drive to go to french school, 1.5h french school, 45min drive to go home, bath, stories, cuddles, more cuddles.. and FINALLY sit down for dinner.

A normal Tuesday then, except that I only slept 5h last night because of the kids, and that really I'm on a diet. A full on day when tired and on a diet is quite hard it turns out.

I knew it was going to be manic so I was organised and boiled some eggs while in the shower, then  made my lunch while preparing my youngest son's packed lunch. Organisation is key on any diet. Set yourself up for success not failure.

So that part was easy but what was difficult was timing. You're supposed to leave 5h minimum between your meals and you also need to fast for 12h overnight. Not too hard once you get the hang of it but today eating before pre-school would have meant breaking the 5h rule and eating at the right time (around 1pm) was tricky because we were off on a play date. My option were: 1) eat quickly in the car between pick up and play date (not really in keeping with my philosophy of mindful eating), 2) eat at the play date (a bit awkward as, although the mum is super nice, I don't really know her that well so I didn't feel comfortable turning up with my egg salad), c) eat later. I chose option c and that meant remembering to take my salad in the car before doing the pre-school pick up and then eating it in the car in the school car park, in peace while my son was asleep, waiting for my eldest son to finish school. It worked but I was pretty hungry by then as it was 2.30pm.

I was really hungry but interestingly it wasn't particularly difficult to go 7h without eating even though my breakfast was quite small. I was hungry but not crankily desperate for food; it's almost as if my body has been re-setting itself.

The afternoon was pretty plain sailing, just a bit tired but I think it's to do with the last of sleep rather than the food. I'm looking forward to going to bed now and also to reaching the last day of my first week on the Metabolic Balance diet. Almost a week already! It's a lot easier than I thought.

Metabolic balance diet: day 5

This morning we woke up to find that a sparkly dust of frost had been sprinkled over all, it was beautiful but my Goodness it was cold!

Like the perfectionist that I am, I was very organised at the start of it all and designed myself a menu plan for the two weeks ahead so that I would be prepared and wouldn't end up messing the program with rushed decisions. So on the menu this morning was yoghurt and blueberries and I made the mistake of actually sticking to my plan... I don't buy fresh blueberries in the colder months (i.e., most of the year, part from 2 weeks when the sun does make an apparition), it's just not worth it: they're extortionate, tasteless and probably devoid of nutrients since they've come from the other side of the world. Instead I buy frozen blueberries and this was my downfall today.

I suffer from Raynaud's syndrome, which means I'm pretty intolerant to the cold and so the combination of the temperature having suddenly dropped overnight and eating yoghurt from the fridge and blueberries barely defrosted was enough to tip me over the edge. I was shivering for hours, my fingers and toes were completely numb and even my attempt at warming my hands with the hairdryer miserably failed.

Tomorrow, I'm having porridge, I don't care what the menu says!

This morning I also woke up to find that my face had been adorned with a few spots - I know Christmas is lurking but I could really do without that type of decorations, thanks. It was to be expected though and it probably shows that the "diet" is working. I'm quite possibly releasing toxins as a result of fat loss. Did you know that toxins loved fat? Although we do excrete toxins via our urine and faeces but don't get rid of them all and because toxins are lipophilic, when we lose fat we also open the gates to toxins. Nothing to worry about, it'll soon pass.

Got to go, a baked apple is waiting for me...

Metabolic Balance diet: day 4

Today's breakfast was porridge made with just oats and almond milk. Although I don't normally have any sugar or honey I would add a mashed banana to porridge to sweetened it a bit, so I was approaching this breakfast with a pinch of skepticism (that's allowed...).

To my surprise it was perfectly fine and actually quite sweet, it's funny how when you remove sweetness entirely you get to discover the real sweetness of food. Of course porridge on its own is sweet, it's a bowl of starch! Starch is a molecule that plants make in order to store sugar and it's made of long chains of glucose. Try it at home and chew some bread for a bit, instead of gobbling it like most of us do, and you'll start tasting a certain sweetness: that's glucose that results from the starch molecules having been broken down into pieces by the enzyme amylase.

So breakfast was good, even though I was drooling a bit when I handed hot buttered bagels to the kids. A nutritionist who admits to liking bagels?! Shock horror! I'm sure I'll go to nutritionist hell for that but hey ho, I'll probably end up in hell anyway. The only thing about this breakfast is that it crucially lacked protein for my liking, hence why I don't tend to have porridge for breakfast, so by midday I was pretty hungry.

Lunch at our friends' was lovely, despite me lonely eating my soup while the others tucked into tarragon chicken and chocolate cloud cake, courtesy of Nigella. It just made me realise how much of our social life revolves around food and that actually the food should be secondary to the event, not the event itself. Today was great, not because of the soup, not even inspire of the soup, it was great because I got to spend some time with lovely people, because I got to laugh and rest and because all of that gave me a real sense of fulfilment. Friendship, family and love can also be very nourishing.

I wonder: how much of the overeating we do is linked to a sense of emptiness brought on by our hectic lifestyle?

Metabolic balance: the start of the journey

No new recipe today, even though I have lots to post, just rambling...

Over the years, I have seen many clients and, as they said at college, after a while you realise that you end up seeing more of a certain type of clients and that you end up "specialising" in that area. For me, despite what I initially planned, that area has been weight loss.

I didn't particularly want to do weight loss, I wanted to do more technical stuff like sports nutrition but it's almost as if I was kidding myself, almost as if I was always meant to deal with weight problem. After all, isn't that how I got into nutrition? I struggled with my weight, then lost weight and struggled with my body in general, then got better (I make it sound easy here but it really wasn't) and decided to help others - that's 20 years of my life summarised, just like that.

My calling was to help people with their weight, either losing it or putting it on, so it's only natural that without even trying, the bulk of my clients come to see me with weight problems. And over the years, I've grown to like it: it's both the easiest and the hardest thing to tackle. It's easy because when you know about physiology, you know what it takes to make people lose weight and yet it's hard because you're not dealing with machines but humans and that humans are super twisted and complex and that they generally don't do what they're expected to do!

Anyway, I've seen my fair share of weight loss clients and usually it goes pretty smoothly but now and again I encounter cases that just stump me. You know, people who are quite big and you just don't know why. Most people are big because they eat too much (why they eat too much is for another post) but some people come to see me and floor me with their diets, they hardly eat anything!

I can already hear some of you, sniggering that those people just lie on the food diary and that in reality they spent their days munching on crisps and chocolate bars, but I'm skeptical. I see these people, I see the desperation in their eyes and I believe them. What do I do with them? How can I help, I ask myself? They're already doing what they're supposed to do and yet they're way bigger than they should be. Could it be their genes? Is it that they have big bones? Their hormones? Perhaps, but I've always suspected that the problem was to do with their metabolism. That they have a much slower metabolism than they ought to have, perhaps brought on by years of yo-yo dieting. And so my question was of course, how (apart from telling them to do more exercise, which they often hate or can't do because they're too big) do I change their metabolism? How to kick start a slow metabolism?

This is what brought me to Metabolic Balance, a programme for healthy weight management, which was developed by doctors and nutritionists in Germany.

It’s a tailor made programme that uses blood analysis to generate an eating plan designed especially for you. And before you ask, no it's not a blood type diet, it’s not based on your blood type but on an analysis of your own blood.

It is not a fad diet; it is nutritionally sound and uses real food no shakes, creams or bars. You eat three nutritious meals every day and choose the foods from your personal food list. With the help of the right foods and a few simple rules you establish a new regime that enables you to achieve and maintain your perfect weight.

It works by promoting hormone balancing (so it is do with our hormones after all!) and primarily by regulating the amount of insulin your body produces. Fat burning and weight loss occur almost as a side effect of restored hormone balance.

Sounds good, doesn't it?

So off I went to London a few weeks ago to learn about the program and how it could help my clients and there I became a Metabolic Balance coach.

The science behind the concept is makes sense and the results of the program sound amazing but I really felt like I had to try it on myself before being a true convert.  So I had my blood taken, which was interesting in itself (all good but signs of being a bit frazzled - for the mums who know me, you'll know why!), and from there I got my plan, my bible of what I should and shouldn't be eating.

What first struck me was that a lot of the food I'm supposed to be eating are foods that I normally eat, would that be why I'm "naturally" slim? 

My second thought was that I was going to have to reschedule my social life for the first 2 weeks!

The programme starts with a gentle 2 days detox, which I was dreading but actually was pretty easy. Then you move on to the second phase, which I won't lie is pretty strict at first sight (remember it's German) but not nearly that bad. 

Today is day 1 (out of 14) of phase 2 and I've eaten pretty well, I had a wobble at lunch time because I was sooooo cold and really wanted something hot and comforting but had planned and already made a tuna salad. I wasn't what I wanted but it was still nice and amazingly it filled me up until dinner time without a mere hunger twinge.

Tomorrow we're going to see some friends but I warned them that I would be bringing my lunch... I wouldn't normally do that but for the sake of the experiment it has to be done (plus they're German so they'll understand!). It was that or re-scheduling but that meant not seeing them before Xmas and as you all know, Xmas is that very important deadline by which everything has to be done!

Off to fast for 12h now...

Chicken bolognese style

Here is a staple in our house, which takes very little effort to make and which feeds an army. It freezes really well so I always make sure to put is a couple of portions for those evenings when all you want is something warm in your belly and curl up on the sofa. 

If you're Italian, forgive my liberal interpretation of a "bolognese sauce", I've never actually been to Bologna and in my little French head of mine this is the best I could come up with.

Feel free to use other meat, I'm still mustering up the courage to branch away from poultry...

Ingredients: (serves 4)

• 500g chicken breast or thighs (skin and fat removed) – you could use turkey, pork or beef really. Cut the meat into very thin strips, I use scissors it’s easier.
• 1 yellow pepper, cut into strips
• 1 red pepper, cut into strips
• 1 large onion, thinly sliced
• 2 sticks of celery, thinly sliced
• 2 tins of chopped tomatoes
• 1 heaped tbsp. tomato puree
• 3 garlic cloves, grated
• 1 tbsp. smoked paprika
• ¼ tsp. cayenne pepper
• 1 tbsp. dried oregano
• 1 tbsp. dried thyme
• 1 tbsp. marjoram
• ½ tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. pepper
• ½ bunch of fresh basil, finely chopped
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Method:

Heat up a large saucepan over medium heat, add 1 tbsp. olive oil then

the garlic cloves, the onion, celery and peppers. Move vegetables around

until the onions become translucent. Remove from the pan.

Add 1 tbsp. olive oil to the pan, then the chicken and cook over medium heat

for 4 min or so without stirring. Add all the herbs, spices, salt and pepper and

stir well to coat the chicken for another couple of min.

Return the vegetables to the pan, pour in the two cans of chopped

tomatoes and the tomato puree. Reduce the heat and let it simmer until the

sauce has thickened a bit - you want some sauce but you don’t want it to be

too runny.  Stir in the fresh basil before serving.

I often have this with cauliflower rice or leek “pasta” (like on the picture) with a little parmesan on top.

Sorry, the pic is a bit rubbish...





With a mix of greens ans broccoli.

  

Instant chocolate ice-cream

Yet another recipe involving chocolate, I know... In my defence I've been asked for this recipe time and time again, so really it's not just me that likes chocolate, you too apparently!

I promise to put more savoury dishes soon, my problem is that I make lovely things but only remember to blog about it after scoffing half of my plate and then what's the point of taking a picture of half a chicken breast with three florets of broccoli and four bits of pepper - some of you might accuse me from eating nothing. Tonight my dinner will be pretty uninspiring as we're waiting for our food delivery, so my meal will consist of all the dry and withered stuff from the fridge cobbled together to make something decent - not exactly something that could win the Master Chef finale.

So, in the mean time, let's go back to chocolate. This ice-cream is ridiculously easy, quick and everyone loves it. With three ingredients and a blender you can make a pudding in 5 min max, which you know it's not full of rubbish and not loaded with sugar.

Ingredients: (serves 1)

• 1 frozen banana cut in slices - I tend to buy more bananas that I will need for the week and then I slice them up and freeze them in individual portions so that I always have some at the ready. Freeze them flat, it'll be easier for your blender to go through them. 
• 1 heaped tbsp. cocoa powder
• A splash of milk or dairy alternative - I use oat milk.

Method:

Put the banana and cocoa powder in your blender, blitz until the banana resembles chunky bread crumbs. Add a splash of milk, blitz again for 1 min or so - depending on the size of the banana you may need to add a bit more milk, what you want is to reach a creamy consistency but not too liquid unless you want a smoothie.

This was made in my new Kenwood multi-pro blender, which I have to say is nowhere near as good as the old one. It looks more jazzy but struggles a bit with the banana at the start. One day I'll buy a Vitamix, one day...

I added another splash of milk to get to this consistency.

There is is, deliciously chocolatey and creamy!