Food, Glorious Food!

One of the main reasons I started this blog was to help keep me honest on my quest for better health.

I.  Love.  To.  Eat.

This love has inevitably resulted in some pretty decent weight gain.

In a perfect world I would weigh 25kg lighter (my weight when I was 18...).  However, I like to be realistic and set my self realistic goals.  I am no longer 18 and have spent the last 9 years since I was 18 being pretty inactive and watching my weight yo-yo.  So my realistic goal is to lose 12-15kg this year.  My goal is to not deprive myself of delicious food, but to find healthier alternatives.  I also hope to be more active - for both myself and my gorgeous dog.

I started this new healthier lifestyle (I don't really want to say 'diet') on the 3rd of January - why not the 1st of January I hear you ask?  Pay day was the 3rd, so that is when I did my grocery shopping.  I have already lost approximately 3kg in 3 weeks and hope to continue a 1kg/week weight loss.  This weight loss has mostly been attributed to healthier eating with some light walking thrown in there for good measure.  I am now sitting at a weight which I have 'sat' on in the past for quite some time.  My sister would call this my 'balance weight'.  So I'm sure I will have to work that little bit harder to get past it and stay past it.

To help me on my weight loss journey I have been using a calorie counting app called My Fitness Pal.  After inputting my weight, height, age, activity level and weight loss aspirations it has suggested I eat 1200 calories a day.  This app (it's also available for FREE online) has a daily food diary with over 3 million foods already in its database and it also has a cool scanning feature so you can scan barcodes and be told the calorie content as well as other nutritional information.  This app has been great in keeping me honest and to tell you the truth, after browsing through the calorie content of some of the foods I used to eat regularly, I must have been eating over 5000 calories a day sometimes!

I will be using this blog to share and review some low calorie recipes that I have found - don't worry, this isn't just another weight loss blog, I will also be sharing the usual musings you would find in a blog (favourite things, daily events, interesting finds, etc).

Here are a couple of recipes I tried out over the last few days.  (Click the recipe name for a link to the recipe)

Pumpkin Sesame Wontons

This was my first attempt at using a bamboo steamer (a steal at $5.99 from Woolies!)  They were YUMMY and only 144 calories for three.  I personally think I may have used too much ginger though and will use less next time I make them.

Chicken Noodle Lettuce Cups

These were SUPER easy to make and only 170 calories for two!  Today I had them for lunch without the lettuce cups and it was a very satisfying cold noodle salad.

Tonight I'm having leftover pumpkin soup for dinner (I made it a week ago and froze some).  I LOVE this pumpkin soup and have been eating it for years.  I was convinced it would be too calorie rich to continue eating, but after inputting the recipe in my app it tells me that it is only 121 calories a serve!  Yay!!