Eatbetterers part 3 -gather around healthy people !

[DameDiazepamTheDramaQueen]

Third thread of healthy eating, no calorie counting just good, healthy food for us and our families.

Hi Girafodil, great to see you.

Still, have a great birthday when it comes. Take it easy, depression is hard on your confidence levels I find.

Eaten quite well this month but far too much booze so working on that!

Another venison lover here, especially the sausages.

Happy birthday Still.

Far too much snacking here this week. I really struggle when life gets hectic. At least I'm taking plenty of steps running around!

Thank you all - I wanted to take myself to my local 3 hour gong bath but dp overruled. It is in the morning so would have given me times to celebrate with everyone else. But we do have a hectic weekend as ds is in the studio so I would not have been on hand to get people in the right place and be a good host to the producer (who is famous and staying at my crappy house! eek!).

Last night DP offered me a beer, but we both settled on tea!!! I had pukka night time which is a bit odd and flowery but I am really liking it.

I've just polished off hunners of Quality Street....

Hello, may I join you please? . I have always eaten well but have started changing things a bit in the last couple of weeks. Am really eating clean. Have cut out dairy and wheat and sugar. Am testing various alternative juices (milks). Have tried oat and rice so far and they are really nice. Even on my granola. Loving the gingerbread recipe and will be definitely trying that. Its full of loads of lovely things.

Hi milllii welcome! Loving Jamie's 15 minute meals book just now. Just had his lovely chicken salad tonight. Also did his greek chicken. First time using preserved lemons and and bulghur and also making tzatziki. Away to roast veg for lunches at work, and also try the Hairy Bikers tabouleh(sp) I'll let you know how it goes!

Thank you shortaris. Your foods sounds lovely. Shall have to have a look at Jamie Oliver. This week I purchased red camargue rice, wild rice and quinoa so will be finding exciting things to do with those.

Hello Eatbetterers! I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that, while Eating Better is definitely a Good Thing, it is too vague a notion for me to stick to. I am still considerably heavier than I should be, and my seeming inability to do anything about this is getting me down. As some of you may recall, my main problem is snacking on sugary stuff.

Now... I know that the whole point of this thread is that dieting is A Bad Thing, so I am about to try following a diet that isn't a diet! It's called the No S Diet and it goes like this:

No Snacks (i.e. no eating between meals AT ALL)
No Sweets (i.e. sugary stuff)
No Second helpings

...except on days that begin with 'S' (i.e. Saturdays, Sundays and Special Days).

That's it. No forbidden foods or restrictions other than those rules.There's a helpful (and rather amusingly-written) website here if anyone's interested.

I'm still going to hang around on this thread a bit, if that's ok, as I'm still going to be Eating Betterer - these rules are just an add-on - and it's nice to share recipes and stuff!

Is this it? are we done?

Holmes how is it going? I am too heavy too. Although I lost a stone last year thru this thread and have kept it off according to the dr (who says I must lose another two). Are you running? I have hit another exercise slump - other stuff and the heat got in the way. I need to look at my schedule again to lighten my load!

I have gone back to Vegan. I had too many vegans knocking on my conscience and my actual door (as it happens!). It makes me feel more like me. Made myself a vegan birthday cake the other week and it was devoured by hungry musicians and I just thought why I am resisting this? Oh, the producer was completely down to earth and relaxed so that was great (in my crappy house).

Milli I use almond and hazelnut milk. I cannot find an unsweetened hazelnut milk in the supermarkets. It is lovely in coffee and cake but do not use in your porridge as it is like making it with milkshake!

I'm doing kind of ok thanks, Still, but had a bit of a false start with the No S Diet! But I'm so convinced by it that I am not going to let that put me off. Glad that going back to vegan is suiting you. I'm not sure I could go quite that far, but we've definitely decreased our meat intake over the past few years.

I think it's the perfect plan for me because essentially I eat really good meals and only ever eat crappy stuff when I snack. Healthy snacks just don't seem to hit the spot! But really I am perfectly capable of getting from one meal to the next without starving, if I try hard. And the knowledge that I can have cake etc at the weekend makes it much more doable.

Anyway... I have just succumbed to the inevitable and finally ordered a spiralizer don't tell dh .So what exciting things can I make with it? Courgetti, obvs, but what else?

I wont tell your dh! It is a bit naughty but I sometimes think if I have coveted this for this long I must neeeeed it!!

I am the same as you with healthy meals and actually my snacks are reasonable - its not biscuits or crisps etc, but its extra food that I dont need and that is my downfall. I might give it a go too.

I tried corgetti and cauliflower rice this week for the first time and really enjoyed them. I'm 6 weeks in of eating better and down 20lbs

Hello eatbetterers! I hadn't posted for so long that you fell off my "threads I'm on"!

I'm doing okay, still eating better, with a few lapses like the drinks party I went to on Friday and hoovered up canapés (why is there no blushing face on the app?!)

We are off to France in a couple of weeks and I'm feeling a bit nervous about eating there. It isn't the easiest place to avoid wheat....

But there's all that amazing cheese

Psst Holmes and anyone else who thinks they need to shift some extra on this non diet thread this podcast is about low carb diets (about halfway in). The key info is that the diet does not really matter provided it is balanced. But you need to restrict calories in a way you can stick to - for some the easiest thing is low carb, others low fat, other 5:2 and others finding the most helpful mindset.

I would say this is what happens when I am in the throes of eating betterer - I enjoy cooking new recipes or trying out new combos at mealtimes; I don't have a rubbish lunch and then try to make up for it with yet more food later in the day etc etc. So it really does come down to all those things we all go in and out of eg motivation, treating ourselves well, getting organised enough, getting in the right mindset etc.

sorry about the 'diet' talk people - but as someone said upthread or last thread for some of us it is a tangled knot.

Hello! Sorry I disappeared again

DH back to work today after his holiday and the healthy eating starts again .
Did much better than last year on holiday. Had healthy breakfasts again but managed a few egg-based lunches and even a salad or two. Lots of sugar and alcohol too but not to the dreadful extent of last year.
Back to upping the nutrients and good stuff now. Going to make myself a raspberry, banana and spinach smoothie with almond milk in a minute and I'm planning an egg and avocado salad for lunch with some sort of vegetable and chickpea curry for dinner from a recipe I haven't found yet

Off to read back and see what I've missed.

Totally agree with the tangled knot idea and I think we have to remember that we have spent decades of our lives being told that some foods are naughty/sinful/a guilty pleasure/a taste of paradise etc. It will take real time and effort to change that mindset. Plus the UK is set up for unhealthy eating. You only need to drive through a town and look at all the take out places that there are. Sadly it is also far cheaper to eat unhealthy foods. As a family of 4 on holiday we paid twice as much for scrambled egg on toast/freshly made sandwiches in a cafe as it cost us for a McDonald's on another day. Yes the cafe food was much better quality but actually for what we had there's no need for it to be so expensive. Whilst less healthy food is more accessible and less expensive in this country we will always have an uphill struggle to eat better, especially outside of our own kitchens.

Adding to the diet talk. I have used mfp for a few weeks to make me better aware of portion sizes. I lost ten pounds on the back of that despite only using mfp for the first couple of weeks.

Tangled knot indeed! I was reading some comments on another site the other day by people who had been clean eating and had put on loads of weight! Obviously avoiding processed foods and nasty additives is great, but stuffing yourself full of clean versions of Nutella or chocolate brownies, or grabbing a big handful of nuts every time you feel a bit peckish, is never going to be good for your waistline!

That's why I like the No S thing, because it largely focuses on WHEN and HOW MUCH you eat rather than tediously micro-managing WHAT you eat.

It's actually the first time in aaages that I've been able to fully enjoy desserts etc (at the weekend) without any feeling of guilt.

Yep, this is a bit of a vegan thing I think too - you start baking because it is harder to grab a cake if you fancy one, then you get into it a bit trying to improve your recipes, and then you get into it a bit too much. (big handful of nuts holmes? are you in my house?)

My house too, Still! It's the nut butters I find hard to resist. Looking back, I think that's why low carbing messed me up so much. Although I lost lots of weight while doing it, I got used to eating lots of high calorie fatty stuff (not nuts though, as they are quite carby), which I then carried on eating once I'd fallen off the low-carb waggon. Hence the weight gain afterwards. It's hard to keep reassigning different foods as 'good' and 'bad' when you change diets! Which is yet another reason that diets are crap!

I made an improvised soup with spring greens last week that was so powerfully unpleasant that it went straight through my system in 30 minutes!! Maybe I should patent it as a diet food ...

Definitely Brahmshott! 30 mins is pretty spectacular.

Nots are eaten by the handful here too. Apparently you only need 3 Brazil nuts a day but who can stop at three?

Nuts!!!

Dd has been begging me to make granola again. Trouble is, I can't leave the stufff alone! Another example of something that seems 'healthy' but... I make a version without loads of oil and sugar, but it's still not exactly something to be consumed by the cartload.