Hairy Dieters Book Week 1

For those of you who know me you’ll know I got married back in April and that between booking the wedding in November and tying the knott I lost two stone in weight then put about half a stone back on, which I’ve since lost and I’m now aiming to loose another 2 stone.

I did it with the help of The My Fitness Pal which logs the calories you are eating vs the exercise you are doing and keeps a log of everything . I also upped my exercise to going on my cross trainer 3 to 4 times a week for 45 minutes  and upped the setting on the cross trainer to the one with most resistance as well as trying to get out and do as much walking as possible

The hardest thing for me is keeping mealtimes interesting and filling as well as healthy, It’s all to easy to slip of the wagon and go over the recommended daily calorie intake suggested by My Fitness Pal. I seem to be doing ok most days but then  friends recent weddings and stag parties haven’t helped.

So when I saw the Hairy Bikers were launching a new book and TV series about dieting I thought I’d give it a go. The book cost about £8 and I think It’s well worth the money. It’s got loads of recipes in and a few neat tricks for making some old favourites a bit more healthy.

So this week I’ve cooked 3 recipes out of the book along with my own 300 calorie spicy pasta.

The first was the Feta, mint and pea omelette, it was really quick and easy to make, I served it with a huge side salad and we were both full afterwards,  would have been great with some chips but that’s not the point is it!

Next up were the lemony lamb kebabs, If it hadn’t have been raining I’d have BBQ’d them, unfortunately it was so I cooked them on a smoking hot griddle pan, they still turned out great, I served them with a wholemeal pitta bread, salad, lashings of hot sauce and the yoghurt and mint dip.

Finally I cooked the cajun chicken with potato wedges, It was probably the most filling of the three meals and was really easy to cook, I added some sweetcorn to the meal as it felt a little odd not having an vegetables with it. I was really surprised how well the wedges turned out as wasn’t expecting them to go very crispy without using lots of oil.

I’ve kept the left over Cajun rub for next time although I think it would work with lots of other meat especially steak. It would probably work well on the wedges too instead of the Paprika.

This was the wife’s favourite meal of the week although I think I preferred the lemony lamb kebabs

The book as a whole looks very good, I’m going to cook a few more recipes from it this coming week for sure, probably the pastless lasagne, chicken with Bulgar wheat (as I’ve never had Bulgar wheat) and maybe one of the stir fries, I’d also like to give the roast chicken a go to see how roast chicken works without the skin.

The T.V program is well worth a watch too, if you’ve missed it you can catch up on the BBC website and find some of the recipes from the show on there too.