Tag Archives: lose fat

All recipes at a glance by taste/texture

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The matrix here shows the meals and snacks that met my own taste and texture cravings. Of course, most meals have a mixture of tastes and textures but I’ve just listed them under the taste/texture they had that was most dominant for me. You’ll likely come up with your own matrix but I hope these get you going. All of these foods

  • are fairly quick and easy to cook (I was a virtual novice to cooking a few months ago, having existed mainly on convenience food, so they had to be!)
  • have a lower proportion/total amount of carb (bulky green vegetables fill you up but have a low carb density so visually they will take up much more room on your plate than your protein source) than traditional meals – except for a handful (like those with pitta bread) which you can occasionally eat as part of a ‘normal’ diet when you’ve reached your weight goal.
  Sweet Spicy/peppery Savoury (salty) Acidic (sour) Bitter
Creamy Cocoa milk shakeYogurt and raspberry pudding Yogurt and cocoa
Soft Yogurt and pear pudding Avocado half
Boiled organic free-range egg
Cheesy Ryvita with cottage cheese and cucumber
Meaty Thai fish and vegetable curryThai chicken and vegetable curry AnchoviesBolognese with cauliflower

Bolognese with Ryvita

Beef/salmon with cauliflower and broccoli

Beef with sweet potato and cauliflower

Roast chicken with salad/cauliflower and broccoli

Tuna and tomato/cucumber yogurt pitta

Spaghetti bolognese
Chewy Yogurt, pear, walnut and prune pudding
Porridge and fruit		 Spinach and oil/seasoning Mussels in garlic sauce
Penne with tuna, cucumber and tomatoBean salad and chicken slices
Scrambled egg and salmon on brown toast		 Grapefruit half Cocoa powder spoon
Nutty All-Bran and skimmed milk Ryvita and peanut butter
Walnut half
Crunchy Apple Broccoli/sprouts and oil/seasoning Cauliflower and broccoli saladCottage cheese

Celery/cucumber/sugar snap peas

 Salad
Pickled onion/cucumber
Refreshing Skimmed milk Lime and soda Green tea

In most cases I haven’t detailed the ingredients/quantities and instructions however the internet is overflowing with recipes and you’ll in any case have to develop a rough understanding of the nutritional value (amount of carb, protein, calories, etc.) of the ingredients and foods you commonly eat and a feel for how large given quantities look (like 100g – for which a food scale is very useful when starting out)  to make a permanent change to your lifestyle. Generally, I made my protein source (typically cooked in a way that kept bad and saturated fats low – e.g. supermarket-rotisseried in the case of roast chicken) half the size of the plate and low carb density vegetables (typically steamed in a microwave steamer) the other half. Make up your own recipes that adhere to the general biochemical principles you’ve learnt (that apply to everybody) and are tailored to your own experiences/findings from monitoring your weight loss against the foods you eat – just keep the grams of carb below the threshold that you can tolerate without spiking your blood sugar (signified by feeling hungry again a short time later) at one sitting (typically 20 to 30g and ideally less than the grams of protein/fat) and make sure you get your daily allowance of nutrients (vitamins/minerals are OK to come from a tablet during your period of fat loss). Personally, I found my hunger following a meal was kept lowest when I kept carbs very low (under 20g/meal) but the level of carb you can tolerate without spiking your blood sugar will depend on

  1. how quickly it’s absorbed into the blood – which itself depends on (a) how the carb is exposed to the stomach e.g. diluting the carb with protein/fat/fibre/water will reduce absorption and (b) how much work the body needs to do to turn the carb into glucose i.e. the GI and
  2. how quickly it’s being taken out of the blood by your muscles – which depends on how exhausted i.e. depleted of glycogen they are.

Of course, you’ll probably break the principles from time-to-time e.g. when socializing (even then your body probably won’t want to gorge anyway if you’ve kept it well nourished) or when pressure of work means you don’t have time to cook but if you follow the principles you’ve discovered the large majority of the time and continue to monitor your weight don’t worry about it!

Enjoy 🙂

Find someone near you to chow down with!

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If you’ve read the tips section, begun to practice them by following the lifestyle and recipes and been overjoyed with your results you may, like me, have come to the conclusion that the surest route to long-term healthy eating is consuming in the main fresh home-cooked food – where you know how much of which ingredients of what nutritious quality you’re consuming.

The trouble is that if you have a busy working life then unless you make a concerted effort to plan your meals in advance (perhaps taking time at weekends or when less busy to shop for the necessary ingredients and prepare batches of meals for freezing so they are ready for you to eat when you have less time in the week) it’s difficult to maintain a healthy diet – either for weight loss or to maintain the weight and health you’re happy with.

“I don’t have time to cook!”

Well, the chances are that somebody near you will have a different work-life balance and be able to prepare home-cooked food for those times when you’re not.

Hence, if you want to find somebody who can prepare chow for you or someone who’d like to chow down on your food just post a reply here. Of course you’ll need to agree the commercial arrangements between yourselves to make the exchange worth both your whiles. This will include details of the ingredients used (e.g. 2% fat minced beef is more expensive than ‘value’ 20% fat), when the meal(s) will be collected/delivered and when/how payment will be made. All parties should satisfy themselves that adequate standards of hygiene are followed and chow makers are responsible for declaring any profits they make.

Please ‘Leave a Reply’ below with:

  • the first part of your postcode – not the full postcode for data protection.
  • your contact email/phone number – note that this will be made public to all site visitors
  • whether you want to MAKE chow or EAT chow
  • the kind of chow you’re interested in

in comma-separated format like this: SW20, myname@gmail.com, MAKE, thai fish curry

Anyone interested in finding a chow ‘partner’ can just type in the first part of their postcode (e.g. SW20  or even just SW) in the search box that you’ll find in the top right corner of this page and make direct contact with prospective partners.

GI Chow cannot endorse or warrant replies or be held liable for any losses resulting from individuals entering into private transactions, however reserves the right to remove replies where complaints about those replies supported by evidence are made known to us.