So I am a few days in to my 3 week ‘Body Blitz’ and so far it’s going pretty well.
I’m managing to stick to around 1750 calories while still getting all the protein, nutrition and healthy fats that I need, and have fitted in a couple of good weights training sessions. Already starting to feel lighter 🙂
Whenever I try to reduce calories in order to lose body fat, it’s important to me to feel like I’m still eating as much as possible and not ‘on a diet’. Because I love food, I enjoy eating food, and feeling constantly deprived of food would make me miserable.
So I make a real effort to go for foods that are nutrient dense – high in nutrition – without being calorie dense. Generally, this means eating a lot of vegetables. Vegetables should be one of your best friends at all times, but particularly when on a diet! You can pack out your plate with them and feel like you’re eating loads while taking in hardly any extra calories at all.
And they don’t need to be bland and boring. There’s so many different ways you can cook them, and so many different herbs, spices, dressings and marinades that can give them flavour and make them taste really good.
If you’ve got time, roasting them in the oven with a bit of olive oil and some herbs is a great way to do it. I usually go for things like peppers, tomatoes, aubergine, carrots, broccoli and courgette, but you could try it with anything.
If you’re short on time, just chop up any veg you’ve got, pan fry it in coconut oil, and throw on some balsamic vinegar at the end. Delicious!
Have your veggies with a quality source of protein such as chicken, organic steak, salmon, sea bass, cod, tuna steak, turkey steak etc and you’re laughing (and losing fat).
This is how I adapted a meal I had with my partner on Tuesday, so I could have a plate full of yummy nutritious food for hardly any calories:
We did a chicken and chick pea curry – amazing recipe that is already low calorie and tastes delicious (link below)
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1233/fragrant-chicken-curry-with-chick-peas
I made 50% more of the curry sauce than the recipe states, and used that extra amount, along with some water and a vegetable stock cube, to create a vegetable curry using aubergine, broccoli, carrot, courgette and pepper.
And instead of rice, I used a whole cauliflower to create 3 portions of cauliflower rice (if you haven’t tried it, do, it’s really good!) see link –
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/cauliflower-rice
So I ended up with what you’ll see in the photo below – a nice big plate of cauliflower rice, topped with chicken and chick pea curry, and a portion of curried vegetables. It was a bit spicy, so I topped it with some Yeo valley 0% fat natural yogurt to cool it down as well. DELICIOUS meal, really filling, packed with protein and quality nutrition, and still easily under 500 calories.
We were also left with an extra portion of the chicken and chick peas, and two portions each of the curried vegetables and the rice, so lunch the next day was sorted as well. Winner!
May 23