The 5:2 Diet Made Easy with Lighterlife

Last year everyone seemed to be talking about the 5:2 Diet, where you eat normally for five days then 'fast' for two days a week. Fasting days allow you to eat 600 calories.  In theory this sounded great to me as I am always looking for ways to keep myself mindful of my weight and I admit to enjoying the novelty of trying new diets. But I was concerned about the reality of coming up with 600 calories worth of vegetarian friendly food that would be nutritious enough to sustain me. It would have made the fasting days too complicated and stressful, and that hurdle was enough to put me off giving it a go.

LighterLife has joined forces with Superdrug to launch the first exclusive 5:2 Fasting products on the UK market.  The Fastpack range includes porridge, shakes, bars and meals in a variety of flavours.  Eating four of these products on a Fast day provides all the nutrients you need in a convenient way containing a ready calculated 600 calories.  It's very, very easy and fits in with busy lifestyles.  You don't have to cook separate meals for yourself or calculate calories or nutrients.  As you use them just two days a week, it is easy to work them into your weekly eating plan.  The meals, soups, porridge and shakes are easily made up using water so you can take them with you on the go, at the office or when away from home.

I was asked if I wanted to give the 5:2 diet a try for myself.  I am always happy to give diets a go as I am never more committed to healthy eating than when reviewing a diet plan!  After the excesses of Christmas, January is the perfect time to focus on healthy eating and shedding any gained weight.  For a short term diet plan, the 5:2 diet with Fastpacks sounds really easy and I am very interested in the concept of intermittent fasting as it is said to bring its own health benefits.

So today, on the first Monday of 2014, I will be embarking on my own 5:2 diet and reporting back weekly on how I am doing and how well the Fastpacks deliver on taste, convenience and satisfaction.  As a vegetarian, I was delighted to see the Fastpacks are all veggie friendly, even the savoury meals which contain soya and not meat products.

You can follow my journey here and I'll be updating on Twitter @wendymcd83 where I'll be using the #tryfast hashtag.

Available exclusively at Superdrug stores across the UK and Ireland, the new range start at £7.99 for a box of four Fastpacks^TM – which is enough for one day of fasting. The Fastpack^TM options include:

• Savoury meals such as spaghetti bolognese and pasta carbonara
• Porridge – the breakfast favourite!
• Four delicious shakes – vanilla, strawberry, banana and chocolate
• Four tasty snack bars in nut fudge, crispy peanut, cranberry & raspberry and toffee flavours (so you can indulge your sweet tooth!)

Fastpacks^TM are easy to make up and can be used on the go. They are fool-proof packs, which take the hassle out of 5:2 which makes intermittent fasting a sustainable lifestyle choice. 

There are promotional packs featuring the chance to win prizes over the 52 weeks of 2014 by entering a unique code online!

Find out more at: LighterLifeFast.com

Diet Chef Review

Diets can be a very complicated business as you try to choose suitable food, count calories, negotiate tricky recipes, cook separate meals for yourself, measure out portions and try to keep your meals interesting.  It's easy to get bored, begin obsessing about calories or feel like you are missing out on something. No wonder so many diets fail!

Diet Chef is an online company that does all the work for you so you don't have to worry about the numbers or even think about what you need to cook.  Providing a calorie-counted, portion controlled breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack everyday, they take all the effort and thought out of dieting. You just need to pick your meal choices from over 100 dishes on the website which are then delivered straight to your door in a monthly hamper.  At just £6.43 a day, a Diet Chef plan costs little more than grabbing a latte and a muffin at a coffee shop or buying lunch out.  

Diet Chef wants to make busy mums across the UK feel good about themselves and their bodies by providing a nutritious, healthy affordable and convenient meal plan. When I was offered the chance to trial a month of Diet Chef meals as a way of giving me a boost this summer, I was all too happy to take part. I have struggled recently with my weight as I was eating a lot of high calorie foods in an attempt to boost my energy and keep me awake.  I was permanently tired and lethargic and after a bad dizzy spell and some bouts of breathlessness I went for a blood test which showed I had anaemia.  I've been given iron which has improved my condition.  I am no longer feeling exhausted all the time and I have energy again.  However the result of eating rubbish and doing nothing for months has taken its toll on my body. A month long diet plan is exactly what I need to feel good about myself again!

As a vegetarian, I wondered how appropriate the Diet Chef plan would be to me, but I needn't have worried.  There are lots of veggie options for both lunch and dinner including soups, shakes, curries, pasta dishes, salads, risotto and chilli. It was easy to pick out 28 breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks.  The variety will ensure I don't get bored eating the same thing everyday. I was honestly impressed by the range.

Ordering is easy and I found the customer service by phone and email to be good and the delivery quick.

The food is all prepared by their chefs and comes in long life packaging which means they do not need to be refrigerated.  This makes it easy to pop a lunch into your bag to take with you if you are away from home. It's all very convenient, when it comes to the meals, you simply heat and eat.

Breakfasts consist of granola, a breakfast bar, muesli or porridge.  Pink Apple and Cinnamon Granola or Vanilla and Banana Porridge make the day start well!  I add low fat yogurt to the granola. Lunch can be a hearty soup, a shake or a pasta salad.  I was extremely impressed with the varieties of veggie soup: Minestrone, Butternut Squash, Carrot & Butternut or Parsnip and Chilli to name a few.  The variety of dinners really impressed me.  Trays or pouches of calorie counted and portion controlled Macaroni Cheese, Veggie Korma, Mushroom Stroganoff, Spelt Rissoto or Tarka Dal will keep me very satisfied.  I just add a portion of vegetables, rice or salad to bulk out the meal.  It's so easy.  So far I have had two days of meals and everything has been very nice and tasty.

I'm not a big one for snacking when I'm on a diet but to know I have some cereal bars, popcorn and oat bite snacks on hand in case I ever get the urge is very reassuring.  A portion of fruit, a handful of nuts or some carrot sticks are also good for snacking.

If you follow the plan you consume 1200 calories a day (plus any extras for the vegetables, fruit, salad, drinks etc. that you add.)  This will lead to a healthy 2 lb a week weightloss.  The health benefits of even a 10% weightloss are enormous.

I really like not having to think about my food.  It's all here, ready to eat.  I know that if I stick to the plan I'll be half a stone lighter by the end.  It really is very easy and a good way to lose a few pounds ahead of a special occasion.  Diet Chef literally does all the work for you making it easy to diet however busy you are.

I'll keep you posted on my progress!

Website: http://www.dietchef.co.uk   

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/DietChef 

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dietchef  

My Psychology of Slimming

"I am someone who has previously suffered from an eating disorder.  I have starved myself.  I have pretended to eat, hidden food and felt proud of my deceit.

Over the years, my eating disorder took on a new tact...that of binge eating.  I have no stop button.  I can keep going, stuffing my face with food without ever feeling sick or full.

Clearly the binge eating was not good for the waist line and eventually the whole consumption of hundreds of calories in one sitting took its toll.

The emotional aspect of comfort eating is an easy excuse to justify why I had just eaten a family sized 200g bar of Cadbury's Wholenut, followed by a family bag of Tortilla Chips (yes I really did that).  But to me that excuse wears thin, becoming a vicious circle of  "I'm depressed so I'll eat. Oh dear I'm fat so I'm depressed.  I'm miserable so I'll hit the biscuit barrel!"  There is no escape from the spiral of destruction that goes hand in hand with that train of thought.

I've eaten because my "mouth has been bored"!  Before the days of this blog, I was a non-stop eater.  Boredom can be a complete killer in terms of calorie consumption.  The very fact I now have this little corner of Cyberspace to keep me occupied means that I would sometimes not think about food for longer periods of time.  But eventually the knowledge of the fact that my cupboards contained treats bought for the kids would filter into my conscious and the binging would recommence.

Attempting to eat healthy alternatives is just not an option.  How can a small handful of sunflower seeds and a peeled carrot compensate for not having the cream cake that you know is in the fridge?  It can't...you just eat both the healthy snack and the cake!

Not having treats in the house is unrealistic.  I was not about to deny my kids a lunchbox treat just because I couldn't control myself.  But one December I had bought selection boxes for the kids and I hid myself away and literally gorged myself on ten full sized choccie bars because I was feeling a bit down.  Shameful!

Being so tall meant I could get away with carrying extra weight, and it wasn't until I went to the doctor's and was weighed that I realised that I had crept into the band of the BMI chart that screamed OBESE!!!!  To me, obese people were those bed bound giants that lay in the prison of their own bodies.  The ones who ordered in pizzas and fried chicken as they grew their rolls of undulating fat.  Not me!  I couldn't be obese...but there I was according to the new fangled calculations of shame.

I'd diet with sterling will power and lose weight quickly, but eventually I'd tire of the feeling of self-deprivation and hit the bakery department of Morrisons with the wild abandon of Augustus Gloop in Wonka's Chocolate Factory.  It wouldn't be pretty.  I'd convince myself it was a one off glitch, but the dieting spell was broken...it was easy to 'slip' again and again until I was all slip and no diet!

The blogging journey thankfully lead me into the open arms of Sandra from Thinking Slimmer.  I agreed to do a trial of a new Slimpod.  I didn't have any expectations and although it seemed to work at first, something just made me give up and sabotage my efforts after the 21 day trial.  I thought that would be the end of my relationship with Thinking Slimmer but they don't give up that easily.  With a few tweaks of my programme, some supportive phone calls and Tweets, I was ready to try again.  I had a few false starts but when the time was right I committed to it. This time things have changed dramatically.

It was being at Cybermummy that really brought the difference in me to the fore.  All those cupcakes and chocolate bars available to munch on all day long.  That used to be my idea of heaven.  A cornucopia of sugar laden treats going begging...and all for free!  It was the ultimate temptation...but someone forget to tell my unconscious mind to crave them.  It didn't even occur to me to want to eat them.  I popped a couple in my bag thinking that my girls would love them.  I didn't pop them in my mouth!  It wasn't until 3pm when I made a conscious decision to have one because I was feeling a bit flaky due to only having a tiny lunch.  I recognised a need to eat something to keep me going and I enjoyed trawling all the cupcake displays in the main hall, looking for my prize.  I settled on Johnson Baby's offering and it was a good choice. Light vanilla sponge and not too much frosting.  I savoured my treat and no floodgate of food cravings was opened.  That to me is a huge success.

I want to be able to eat something delicious from time to me, having factored in the calorie content.  I want to enjoy it, relishing the indulgence, but confident in the fact that one will be enough.  I want to live my life without feeling that I can't go out anywhere because I'm afraid of temptation.   This door has finally opened up to me...I am at last free."

This is my Mumentum post.  Thank you to the lovely ladies and the wonderful Liska for making me not feel alone with my issues and triumphs.  Thank you to Sandra and Trevor for the opportunity to try something that I would never have considered doing myself otherwise.  My life is truly changing.