If I were a Thin Girl...

I will never be a thin girl.  I should know... I've tried.  Well... I have!  I know my limits, so there've been no Atkins or South Beach diets in this house.  Although, I did seriously consider the chocolate diet in my teens.  Come now, you remember this one?  It was a glorious time when fad diets and eating plans reigned supreme.  In this particular case, the idea was to eat 200g of chocolate each day, but ONLY this.  Yes, you'd lose weight, but the first slice of bread or scrap of potato was guaranteed to balloon you back to your pre-fad weight as your body rejoiced in the sight of real food.  Other variants included eating only 6 apples a day and 1 that was only oranges.  They didn't stand a chance around me.

You see - if you haven't figured it out by now - I LOVE food.  Not all food, 'cos I'm not really fond of fish amongst other things, but essentially, I love food! However, while fad or restrictive diets weren't going to fare well around me, there was a certain logic to adopting a healthier eating plan.  "This isn't a diet," I told my brain.  "It's not?" it questioned.  "No," I replied, "it's simply a way for me to ensure that I get all my food groups in."  Neither my brain or my body was fooled.  After all, no-one stops eating bread, rice, potato and pasta simply to eat "better".  After all, cake is a food group and so is toast... right? 

So the first time I tried this, it was highly restrictive and hard to do and made me totally miserable.  Needless to say, I didn't stick with it for as long as I should've.  It worked, but if I so much as looked at a forbidden food I seemed to gain weight.  Sigh.  Fast forward a few years and countless baking projects later and - well, you get the idea :-) So now we're giving this another go.  Just as healthy, but not as restrictive.  Still no bread, but at least there's some pasta and potato :-)  (Trust me, it's the small things in life)  The aim is to get healthy, but also to lose weight.  And this is where the realisation has hit that I will most likely never be a thin girl... After all, what would it say to you if your body actively rebelled against the new plan?

In fairness, some of this fat has been with me for more than 20 years and it was unlikely to just "give up and move out".  I mean, I've managed to shift some, but I think it just moved around my body in search of better scenery :-)  However, for all the fact that I appear to be stuck with the weight, at least the food is a bit more exciting.  Proof that eating correctly doesn't have to be boring as hell :-)

Take this as an example....  One of my meal options is pork and veg and I decided to try it as mince.  This is what I came up with.

Ingredients

180g Pork Mince
2 courgettes
1/2 medium onion or 1 small onion
8 - 10 mushrooms finely diced
seasoning (salt, pepper, soya sauce, garlic, etc - to your taste)
1 egg
1/4 cup cornflake crumbs
Tomato sauce (to taste)

Method

Finely dice the onion and mushrooms and grate the courgette.  Then add the mince, crumbs, seasoning, tomato sauce and about 1/2 the egg (beaten).  This is where it's going to get a bit sticky and dirty... you need to mix this with your hands!  Yes - with your hands!  You'll know when it's right 'cos it'll all be evenly mixed.

Now at this point, you can do a few things with the mix.  You can either make meat balls or like me, you can make it as a 'loaf'.  This is actually a single serving on the eating plan (I know, right?)  I press it into a small disposable dish and pour the remaining beaten egg over the top.  Then bake uncovered at 180 deg C for about an hour or until it's done the way you want it :-)

This is such a yummy way to get your meat and veg in in one go :-)  It would also be a great way to get kids to eat their veg - and yes, I know that it's wrong to hide them from your kids, but it's far more important that they eat them!

The Tipsy Tarts say that I'm no fun at the moment, but I think that's because I'm not baking at the moment, which means that there are no fun carbs for them to "pooh-pooh" at and secretly eat.  It could also be because I'm not up for a boozy lunch which starts at dawn and ends when one of them passes out.  Usually sometime close to dawn the next day lol.  I'm trying to figure out what the big deal is. After all, Miss Twinset still eats whatever she wants and I caught her lounging - yes lounging - on her new chaise with a box of bonbons the other day.  She tried to hide them behind her back when I stuck my head around her door, but her fear of dropping them and messing up her carpets overrode her desire to have the box behind her back.  I patiently explained that this is for me and that she can do what she wants.  After all, she actually - gulp - exercises.  The Other One seems to exist on food scents and pure alcohol as I've never really seen her over-indulge in anything that can physically be eaten.  You couldn't get her to eat a peanut butter cup, but you could get her to drink a 20 000 calorie peanut butter smoothie if you added some booze!

At any rate, it's time to go and make another cup of coffee to combat the desire to inhale chocolate.

Until next time...