From Dukan diet to Slimming World

So, I failed at Dukan. It was just horrible eating so much meat, and so much processed stuff such as fizzy drinks and sugar-free yogurts in some desperate attempt to satiate my sweet tooth. At the end of the day, I love carbs and chocolate, so The Dukan Diet was a killer for me.

Last month I went to stay with my friend Janette in Brighton for the weekend, and she follows the Slimming World diet. I happened to flick through some of her Slimming World recipe books, and was majorly impressed at the meals that could be eaten freely, without any kind of guilt. Indian Curried Pork Patties! Creamy Linguine with Lemon & Olives! Pesto-style Houmous! Tell me more, I said :D

She explained the concept of Green and Red Days, which is where I got horribly confused, and  struggled to get my head round it - something to do with not mixing protein with carbs on the same day? However, she then said there was a 'new' version of the Slimming World diet, called 'Extra Easy', which didn't have such restrictions. Niiiiice, I thought - I'm going to do this!

I could easily do with losing a stone, I'm not hugely overweight, but so many of my clothes that I love and adore are TOO SMALL for me now. That'll be the penchant for biscuits and chocolate on a daily (hourly?!) basis, my addiction to chocolate Feasts for pudding every dinnertime, and slices of Tiger bread smothered with lashings of butter and lemon curd. Not to mention a lot of wine. Argh... 

I clearly remember being 9 stone 4lbs in 2004, which was no doubt due to walking a lot to get to work in London, not being a huge drinker, and probably suffering a bit of stress. Things got more lax over time, and in early 2007 I started a new job outside London, and I remember my weight then being 10 stone 3 lbs. The new job involved driving to work every day instead of the daily London commute, and my weight slowly crept up to its recent heaviest of 11 stone 3 lbs.

I really was keen to battle this increase once and for all. So, inspired by what I'd heard of Slimming World, I bought their latest magazine with its free recipe book. I joined the local group in Reading. I bought 2 Slimming World recipe books with 50 recipes in each. I cooked meals from scratch. I ate bananas and nectarines. I looked up the 'Syn' value of everything I was considering eating. (You get a set allowance of between 5 and 15 'Syns' every day, and you choose what you want to 'spend' them on - for me it's usually either biscuits, or wine!). I forewent fish & chips and other such glorious dishes in the work canteen, instead choosing jacket spud and baked beans (no butter, no cheese thank you <tiny sob>). I bought FryLight (still feel a little uncomfortable about the 'processed' angle of this). I walked up/down the stairs between floors instead of getting the lift at work. And I've LOST WEIGHT!!!

I've been doing it for 4.5 weeks now, and I'm v. chuffed to say that I've lost 9lbs according to Slimming World class scales, and a stone according to my home scales first thing in the morning :D

It really works for me. I can eat pasta til the cows come home. I can eat potatoes. I even did a roast Sunday lunch for my family the other week, making Slimming World-friendly roast potatoes (courtesy of FryLight, natch), roast parsnips, carrots, leeks with creme fraiche and nutmeg, and roast chicken. And had a BIG glass of wine. All within my Syn allowance. And none of my non-dieting guests felt that it was a 'diet' meal. Winner!

I've cooked some really nice meals in the last few weeks, which has made me much more adventurous (ok, less lazy!) than usual, and has really forced me into the habit of eating healthily, thinking about what I'm eating, while most importantly not leaving me hungry. I've had days where I've chosen to spend my Syns on 5 Jaffa Cakes, or 2 glasses of wine. I'm not going without, really. I've just learned to moderate my treats, and make minor compromises. Which is really important to me as I love food so much :) I'm still eating out as much as ever, but choosing wisely. Yo Sushi, Nando's and the local Indian (King Prawn Tandoori FTW) are my particular friends, but I can still eat out in other places without guilt as long as I make Slimming World-friendly choices, which basically means lean meat or fish, lots of veg/salad, and avoiding high-fat foods.

Here are some pics of recent meals I made that are completely allowed on Slimming World. Hurrah!

Full English breakfast

Curried pork patties with mango salsa

Salmon kedgeree with asparagus

Baked figs with honey & natural yogurt

Gel nail polish - the future....!

It's official, I'm addicted. I've had gel nail polish done 3 times now since early July, and I honestly can't see myself using 'normal' nail varnish any more. Firstly it's a bore to put on and I ALWAYS smudge it half an hour after having it done, secondly it only lasts 3-5 days, and thirdly, I tend to buy nail varnishes and then get bored of them so the £18 spent on the latest 'must-have' Chanel colour ends up being a bit of a waste...

My local salon offers Jessica GELeration polish manicures, where the gel polish is applied as normal, and then 'cured' (I'm sure that's not the technical term) under a UV lamp. I'm not going to describe the process in intimate detail as I haven't paid enough attention, but they basically wipe the nails with primer, apply a base, then an optional 'build' layer which makes the nails a little thicker, followed by 2 or 3 coats of your colour du choix on top, finished with a top coat. You can walk out of the salon straight away, and the colour is rock 'ard and good to do battle with your coat zip, shoe buckles, rummaging in your handbag, whatever, without risk of smudging or flaking. Huzzah!

It lasts for 3-4 weeks on me, before my nails have grown so much that the gap between my cuticle and the polish gets too hideous for my liking. Perhaps if I stopped taking hair and nail vitamins, they might last longer...? No chips, no cracks, no smudges, no flakes. It's uh-mazing. I've done housework (well, a little...) and all sorts.

Here's my current colour - the first photo was taken 1 day after application, and today's photo on the right shows my nails 2 days short of 4 weeks after the original application:

I'd say the only drawbacks to the gel nail polish process are that the colours to choose from are limited (at my salon at least), and the removal process is a little laborious. You need neat acetone, which you can get cheaply from the chemist - I think it's about £1.20. I'd like to say 'from any chemist', but the Lloyds Pharmacy at the end of my road doesn't stock it as apparently people mis-use it...! You have to dunk your nails in it for about 10 minutes to soften it, and then scrape it off. You're supposed to use an orange stick, but I use my fingernails - ooer... I like to leave a few days between removing it and having a new colour put on, so my nails aren't going straight from one set of chemicals to another. Although my friend Gaby is horrified that I use acetone at all, as she says the body absorbs it and can't get rid of it. Hmm...

For any Reading-ites who are tempted to try gel nail polish, I really recommend Gemma at The Beach on the Oxford Road, and it costs £35 :)

My failure on the Dukan Diet

10 days til holiday. PANIC! I want to lose weight quickly (I’m about a stone heavier than I’d be in my ideal world), and not look too blobby in a bikini. As anyone who knows me, or follows my incessant tweets about the food in my life, a diet probably isn’t the easiest thing for me to follow. However, having heard friends talk about the Dukan Diet, and after reading a number of articles on it, primarily the Daily Hate one, I thought I’d give it a whirl.

I’m no expert, but the basic summary I took from what I read is that it’s a low-carb, low-sugar, low-fat diet, and it’s split into 4 phases – Attack, Cruise, Consolidation, and Stabilisation.

As I was after a quick hit, I was going to concentrate on the Attack phase, which is a meat and fat-free dairy phase. This can be done for between 2 and 10 days to jolt your body into burning fat off, before you move onto the Cruise phase, where you can introduce vegetables (supposedly on a one day protein, one day veg/protein rotation) as long as they’re low-sugar and not starchy.

Day 1 started off well, with scrambled egg (no butter or milk) for breakfast. But then had no lunch, as I couldn’t bring myself to eat smoked mackerel or salmon from M&S out of the packet at my desk. Should have planned ahead more! I went food shopping as soon as I got home, and decided to get a whole chicken to roast, so it could make a few meals in advance. However, this meant eating dinner at 10.50pm by the time I’d shopped and cooked – doh. It was good though :)

Day 2 also started well, I now had the ingredients for the essential controlled dose of carbs/fibre that Dr Dukan recommends, and made an oat bran galette. I was running late for work, so ate this hot from the frying pan, running down the road to the train station. It wasn’t a great taste experience! For lunch, my colleague suggested I hit our work canteen and plunder the sandwich counter for ingredients I could eat on their own sans bread (boo!). So I ended up with some chicken, a boiled egg, and some smoked salmon. Interesting combo! I also had a vanilla Muller Light. Apparently fat free yogurt is allowed, however not fruit flavoured. There’s a fair bit of debate online about whether flavoured yogurt full-stop is allowed, as they tend to have sugar in them whether or not they’re fat-free. Whatever. I was bored and hungry… Dinner was lumps of left-over chicken. Woo.

Day 3 (Friday) was more of the same, but I made the galette more exciting with the addition of fat-free fromage frais, and some slices of smoked salmon. Lunch was more sandwich fillings, and dinner was NANDO’S! Mmmm, peri peri chicken. Not sure if peri peri sauce is allowed, but never mind.

I also made it through the weekend, thank you Flavour of India for your chicken tikka and king prawn tandoori, and thank you Yo Sushi for your salmon sashimi and crayfish salad. I started the Cruise phase at this point, so the salad accompaniments at the Indian and Yo were a real treat. Hurrah!

This whole experience was done without any alcohol or sugary drinks – just water and diet Coke (which I don’t even really like, but it seems like a treat when you’re restricting your options on this diet).

So Monday. I got on the scales, and I’d lost 3 pounds. Woop de doo. I can lose 3 pounds by eating smaller portions and moving my arse a bit more. Disheartened! And frankly fed up of eating protein, drinking chemically-laden drinks, and not errr, shifting the proceeds, as it were….! So by the time I got to work, I thought ‘bugger it’, and ate a Haribo crocodile, swiftly followed by a mini dark chocolate Toblerone. Honestly, it was uber-mini - never seen one so small! But that’s not important right now. I was off the wagon.

I decided not to give in completely, and would continue to avoid carbs, and keep up the water/calorie-free drinks, but not obsess about whether the dressing was full of sugar, or if peas were classed as evil by Monsieur Dukan. So lunch was a salad. Followed by a Crunchie, and a packet of mini Creme Eggs. ARGH I’M SO USELESS! Dinner was 7 cheese biscuits with Emmental and mayonnaise (low fat – ha!), 16 Party Ring biscuits, and I seem to be halfway down another Crunchie?

WHATEVER.

:-)

Car boot sale bargains

Aaah Sunday mornings. Nothing better than a lie-in, followed by a leisurely and drawn-out breakfast, reading the papers. Nooooo, not me. I often choose to spring out of bed at 7.30 and jump in the car to go to my nearest boot sale. As long as I haven't rolled in at 2.30am from the After Dark (80s club in Reading) the previous evening - those kind of nights definitely aren't conducive with early-morning boot sale action.

I've been going to boot sales for years, since my first boyfriend used to drag me round them to find items of wonder to sell through his collectables business (pre-Ebay, that's how long ago it was!). One person's tat is definitely another person's treasure. However, in many cases, one person's tat is definitely just tat! But if you read a lot of books, you can pick them up for around 20p-50p each - many in mint un-dribbled-on condition and the latest titles/authors. DVDs are about a quid each - some sellers have them at more, but no-one buys them unless they're really hard-to-find ones or box sets. I've bought loads of brand new toiletries and makeup at boot sales (Philosophy, Paul & Joe, Bliss, Benefit, OPI, Lush etc) for no more than one or two pounds each. Nowt wrong with that! Cookbooks are another good buy - a couple of quid for last year's Jamie Oliver or Nigella Lawson is a bargain to my mind. I even got a Panasonic breadmaker for £12 once which has been a brilliant addition to our kitchen, along with less useful but pretty to look at items such as poncey scented candles, picture frames and other objets d'art that would cost 10 times the price on the high street.

Today's bargains were limited, as I got a bit hot and bothered by 10am (I got there just gone 8, the sun was blazing, and I wasn't really appropriately dressed), so I gave up about halfway round the bootsale. However, I did get a very cute gold-plated bracelet with enamel Beatrix Potter charms, for my 3-year old niece, which was a princely £2 (negotiated down from £3), and was the best purchase of the day really. I also got some bedtime reading books (Noddy and Little Bear) for her, some Lush shower gel (unused of course) for 50p, a cute skirt with an owl on (also for my niece!), The Sound of Music on doovde (£1) and a Star Trek book for Mr G's inner geek. Total spend £4.90.

What was I thinking - The Sound of Music? Well I haven't seen it for years, and it was only a quid :-)

Today's boot sale bargains

There was a load of other tat treasure that I could have bought - a pretty vase, some of those ceramic decorative balls (would need dusting - put them back, girl), the Bangles Greatest Hits (ahem), and a few glittery/sequinned bags from Warehouse and the like, but I passed them by - discerning, that's me ;-) There was also a CAKE STALL. Had to dash past that one quietly sobbing, as cake = not allowed on my dull Dukan Diet :-(

All in all, not the most amazing haul, but it's got me out of bed and making the most of the day - considering my slovenly 3.30pm house departure yesterday, that's got to be a good thing?

I'll do some blog posts with tips for buying and selling at boot sales soon. They're fun if you embrace the experience and come prepared!

Any other car boot sale fans with bargains to share?

Fa la laaaaa!

I fancy starting a blog. I won't be poncy and pretend it's anything amazing. It'll just be my ramblings about my uber-exciting (well, sometimes...) life and things that interest me and make me happy. Unique, huh? Blog snobs, you may exit to the left.

First up, nail varnish. Readers of a burly persuasion, you may exit to the right.

I dug out what is possibly considered a 'vintage' Chanel nail polish this morning to embrace the spring feeling in the air - the lovely shimmery peachy-coral coloured Paparazzi (No. 208, fact fans). Le voila... 

Pretty isn't it? I put it on while on a call to a client - nothing wrong with a little multi-tasking is there?