Your favourite veggie/ Pesci meals please?

[OReli]

Hi,

Ok it’s time to get healthy, the sun’s starting to show itself and I’m ready to get myself and DH out of our carb -heavy lifestyle.

I’d love to hear your most delicious, healthy recipes please.

We are mainly eat vegetarian/ pescatarian but both hate cooking, we’re not very good at it even when we try hard. We have a takeaway once a week where I usually refrain from anything deep fried(DH doesn’t my unfortunately).

I think our main downfall is that we eat too many carbs, rice cakes (the salty ones), crackers, potatoes, bread, bread and more bread. The thing is our jobs pre pandemic forced us to be quite active, 15-20k steps a day, now I’d be lucky to get 5000 steps a day (DH gets much much less, he is quite lazy and won’t walk unless he really needs to).

Any advice on how to get DH on board with me would be great too. He goes through phases of healthy eating /exercising which don’t last more than a week and he’s definitely packed on the pounds. I stay away from sugary/ salty snacks but he eats way too much sugar like Nutella, full fat 7up etc.

I look forward to hearing from you healthy mumsnetters

One thing I should add is, I eat a lot of sugary cereal (9g sugar per serving) but really don’t know what else to eat for breakfast, oatmeal is so boring to me.

We had a lovely dinner last night. Halloumi and peppers in one of those bake on the oven bag things. I want to say maggi? Anyway they come with the seasoning and my fussy ds14 loved it! We had it with salad and pitta bread.

Stop buying Nutella and sugary snacks, reduce your portion of carbs with meals and up your portion of non-carby veg. Eggs or fruit for breakfast, or even better - do 16:8 fasting and skip breakfast altogether. After a few days you won't miss it. Eating sugary shit for breakfast makes me much hungrier by 11am than eating nothing, and sets me up on a peak/crash cycle for the rest of the day, making it much harder to resist further sugary snacks.

Jamie Oliver has some great veggie and fish dishes. There are a selection of veggie ones here and fish ones here.

Dc1 is veggie so we’ve been eating far more meatless meals. Favourite and easiest are tray bakes - we roast/bake a load of veg and then put fish/halloumi on top for the last 15 minutes.

I prefer med type veg (courgette, aubergine, peppers etc), DH prefers green veg (asparagus, purple sprouting, green beans etc).

We don’t use any fancy bags or seasonings, just a drizzle of olive oil with a bit of salt and pepper.

Yeah we need to involved with these tray bakes I think. I don’t buy sugary snacks but DH does, can’t really force him to stop unfortunately. The breakfast thing might be a good idea, I’d never skip breakfast but could def try have a more healthy one.

I lost (and kept off for 2 years) 3.5 stone mainly by eating far more vegetables. If you aim for at least half your plate vegetables, preferably more, then there just isn't as much room for the other stuff. So for spaghetti bolognese I have a small portion of spaghetti, a slightly larger portion of sauce (which has lots of veg in - I do a large onion, a large courgette, 2 leeks, a pepper and 2 sticks of celery in 500g of mince) and then a big pile of veg. Things like broccoli and cauliflower are filling so you won't need lots of carbs to feel full. I roast most of my veg because I prefer it. Breakfast I have porridge with frozen or tinned fruit - my favourite combination is tinned pears and a teaspoonful of peanut butter. Very filling, I don't need anything else until my lunch break at 1pm. Another thing that helps me is to plan a treat or two into the day, so I will have a bit of chocolate or cake in the evening. That makes it easier to say no to things earlier in the day because I know I am getting something later. I also order something to drink (herbal tea or sugar free fizzy drink) when the children are having an ice cream or cake so I don't focus so much on missing out. I have fallen off the wagon somewhat during lockdown and put a stone back on (too much comfort eating) but I am getting back on track (Easter aside!)

I realise I didn't recommend any meals. I like the Green Roasting Tin for easy, mainly quick ideas.

Thanks, these are great ideas. I am def comfort eating more since lockdown. Is the Green Roasting Tin a recipe book @bluechameleon?

Hi @OReli I have recently been having overnight oats for breakfast. I make it with milk, maple syrup, vanilla essence and peanut butter, then in the morning I add a banana. It is delicious and really filling.

There are also plenty of there things you can do with it instead. Yogurt instead of or as well as milk, different fruits. But I tried this one and it's stuck. I just amended it to reduce the amount of maple syrup and peanut butter (reducing calories) and I love it!

@ScottishBeth I’ve thought of overnight oats before but do you eat it cold? I’m not great with cold food at the best of times, something to try though, I have looked at some recipes and they do look good.

@OReli I have it cold. You could warm it in the microwave, just need to add some more liquid.