Search Results for: {search_term_string}

Going Low Carb With the Keto Diet

July 25, 2017 by Michele Neylon 10 Comments

For the last week or so I’ve been avoiding carbs. When I shop I read every label carefully to see how many grams of carbs there are per 100g or per portion.

It’s a little bit annoying, but I am slowly getting used to it.

Why am I suddenly so fixated with carbs?

After trying a variety of other diets over the last few years and failing to make a lot of progress I’ve decided to try out the ketogenic (keto) diet, which is basically low carb with high fat (LCHF), but with the emphasis on the low carbs and not on upping the proteins. There’s a fairly good explanation of the differences here.

Several of my staff have been on some variant of keto diet for the last few months and from what they’re saying and what I’m seeing it’s working pretty well.

For me it’s still a little early to draw any conclusions. Over the years I’ve tried a variety of different diet types, but I always ran into issues or simply fell off the wagon..

Have I lost weight?

Yes, but my weight goes up and down quite a bit. I’ve lost nearly 3kg in the last couple of weeks, which is a positive.

I’m not sure how successful I am “going keto”, though I have been doing my best to keep my carb intake low.

I have reduced my carb intake quite a bit. Whether I’ve got it low enough to be considered “keto” or not is hard to say. However if the “average” intake is between 225g and 325g of carbohydrates I’m now aiming for about 30g a day.

In practical terms that means I have to avoid bread, pasta, potatoes and rice, as well as a load of other things. That can be more than a little annoying when you’re trying to cook or eat out.

You’re encouraged to eat fat, which seems a little counterintuitive. However sautéd mushrooms are really tasty, so I can’t complain 🙂

At the moment I’m doing my best to keep within the daily limits I’ve set:

65% fat
30% protein
5% carbohydrates

What that breaks down to in “real money” is keeping my carbs below 30g per day, which is pretty low. Basically a couple of slices of bread would have enough carbs to hit your daily limit!

So what can you eat?

Eggs
salad (just avoid root vegetables)
bacon
fish (I’m getting quite bored with tuna at this stage, though I still do like it!)
cheese (full fat)
chicken
beef
pork

The list of things you can’t eat, or drink, is quite long. No bread, pasta, pizza, breakfast cereal, toast, tacos or anything else that has a high carb count. Eating out is “fun”, unless you’re in a steakhouse or seafood restaurant.

I love beer, but on this keto diet I cannot touch the stuff. This makes me sad. Very sad.

So for the last week or so I’ve been able to drink wine and whiskey, so most of the time I’ve stuck to drinking water or possibly herbal tea.

I’ve decided that I’ll stick with it for a month. If I feel after a month that it’s working for me ie. I’m losing weight and I’m not totally miserable, then I’ll stick with it.

Roast Lamb in a Rosemary, Garlic and Lemon Marinade

November 27, 2016 by Michele Neylon 1 Comment

While I enjoy cooking it’s usually at the weekend that I’m able to set aside the time to do something a little bit more elaborate or time-consuming.

This weekend was no different and I picked up a bit of leg of lamb on Friday evening planing to cook it either Saturday evening or this evening, Sunday.

As things turned out I ended up leaving it until this evening.

I’ve done lamb roasts several times in the past. I usually slice up some garlic and put slivers of garlic into the meat and then brush mustard and herbs over it.

However I was a bit inspired after watching this video on using a mortar and pestle from Jamie Oliver, so I decided I’d try to do a marinade based on one of his recipes.

So I dusted off my mortar and pestle (literally!) and got to work.

The marinade I made used some fresh rosemary, a couple of cloves of garlic with their skin, some lemon rind and olive oil.

I’ll admit that Jamie Oliver makes it look a lot easier than it is, but like everything I guess it’s a matter of practice.

After some pounding and grinding with the mortar and pestle I got a fairly nice consistency and kept adding oil until it had enough volume to be of use. I then proceeded to coat the meat in it. For smaller cuts of meat it’d be quite easy to make up enough to let the meat soak in it for a while, but with a roast that wasn’t going to be an option.

I also decided to try and flavour the meat using some coarse sea salt and black pepper. The simplest way to do that is to put the salt directly onto your board or work surface and roll the meat in it. Doing it the other way around really doesn’t work!

To accompany the meat I had some baby potatoes and nice fresh carrots. The potatoes didn’t need any prep, so I just popped them in the roasting dish. The carrots I peeled and sliced up, so that they’d cook properly.

Here’s the entire thing before I put it in the pre-heated oven:

I let the entire thing cook for about an hour or so and then checked to see how the meat was coming along. Personally I prefer my meat to rare or medium rare if it’s beef. For lamb I like it to be bêlant ie. still quite red where possible.

Why bêlant? Over 20 years ago when I was working as a waiter in a restaurant in France one of my clients requested his lamb “bêlant” and the term has stuck with me ever since. The term comes from the French verb bêler, which means “to bleat”.

After a further 25 – 30 minutes both the meat and vegetables were done nicely and were thus ready to serve:

Plated up it was a very tasty dinner!

So was the mortar and pestle worth the effort?

Based on my experience with the marinade for this dish, most definitely. I can’t see myself using it every single day, but I’ll definitely be trying to use it more frequently in my cooking, as it does help with the flavour of the herbs and other ingredients.

Web Services To Track Your Dieting

November 23, 2008 by Michele Neylon Leave a Comment

PLANTATION, FL - MARCH 06: Howard Brown repai...

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

As I’ve mentioned before, I work in IT, so I like gadgets and web services. However I am pragmatic. If it’s going to take me hours to setup a profile on a site and keep it up to date, then I probably won’t really use it.

In my quest to keep track of my dieting and weight loss (I prefer to refer to it as “change of lifestyle”) I sought out some online services to help me.

Weight Watchers have an online service, but as it’s pay to use I haven’t assessed it as yet.

Three other sites did attract my attention:
Daily Plate
Fit Day
Traineo

There were problems with all 3 sites.

Both Daily Plate and Fit Day are very American, while Traineo’s signup page was broken on my first visit. While I did eventually manage to signup a number of the site’s functions are not working correctly at present, which is more than a little annoying.
Of the three only two sent me confirmation emails after signing up. FitDay didn’t, so I had to search my browser history to work out the site’s name.
That is annoying.

Anyway, what about the site’s themselves?

All three offer very similar functionality. The main difference is in how you can access it and add your details ie. keep track of your eating, exercise and weight etc.,

Traineo would appear to be the slickest and simplest to use, as they give you a relatively simple “portal” to work from. Unfortunately, like the other sites, it allows you to enter data in lbs or kg, but then displays suggestions related to lbs only, which is really annoying.

Daily Plate is quite powerful by the looks of things, but to be able to access any of the more advanced features you need to upgrade to a paid subscription. It allows you to track what you eat by searching their database, but unfortunately it’s very American in its bias and the display of options when you search is confusing to say the least

Fit Day is quite easy to use and doesn’t seem to want my money to access any of its features. Unfortunately, while it allows me to set targets and enter data using metric values it provides all of its advice and graphs using Imperial measurements!

After playing around a bit with all three services I’m really none the wiser.

If someone were to launch a more Euro-centric solution I’d probably be a lot happier.

Privacy Policy

In simple terms this site respect’s your privacy and we won’t sell or share any personally identifiable information.

In compliance with the EU directives and Irish law we have implemented some cookie control mechanisms that allow you to “opt out” of setting cookies when you browse the site.

Here’s the “gorey” details of what the cookies we use are up to:

Cookies In Use on This Site

Cookies and how they Benefit You

Our website uses cookies, as almost all websites do, to help provide you with the best experience we can. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile phone when you browse websites

Our cookies help us:

Make our website work as you’d expect
Save you having to login every time you visit the site
Remember your settings during and between visits
Offer you free services/content (thanks to advertising)
Improve the speed/security of the site
Allow you to share pages with social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc.,
Continuously improve our website for you
Make our marketing more efficient

We do not use cookies to:

Collect any personally identifiable information (without your express permission)
Collect any sensitive information (without your express permission)
Pass personally identifiable data to third parties
Pay sales commissions
You can learn more about all the cookies we use below

Granting us permission to use cookies

If the settings on your software that you are using to view this website (your browser) are adjusted to accept cookies we take this, and your continued use of our website, to mean that you are fine with this. Should you wish to remove or not use cookies from our site you can learn how to do this below, however doing so will likely mean that our site will not work as you would expect.

More about our Cookies

Website Function Cookies

Our own cookies

We use cookies to make our website work including:

Determining if you are logged in or not
Remembering your search settings
Remembering if you have accepted our terms and conditions
Allowing you to add comments to our site
You can disable cookies being set on the site by clicking on the cookie control icon at the bottom of all pages.

Social Website Cookies

So you can easily “Like” or share our content on the likes of Facebook and Twitter we have included sharing buttons on our site.

Cookies are set by:

Facebook – Privacy Policy
Twitter – Privacy Policy
The privacy implications on this will vary from social network to social network and will be dependent on the privacy settings you have chosen on these networks.

Anonymous Visitor Statistics Cookies

We use cookies to compile visitor statistics such as how many people have visited our website, what type of technology they are using (e.g. Mac or Windows which helps to identify when our site isn’t working as it should for particular technologies), how long they spend on the site, what page they look at etc. This helps us to continuously improve our website. These so called “analytics” programs also tell us if , on an anonymous basis, how people reached this site (e.g. from a search engine) and whether they have been here before helping us to put more money into developing our services for you instead of marketing spend.

We use:

Advertising Cookies

Cookies are widely used in online advertising. Neither us, advertisers or our advertising partners can gain personally identifiable information from these cookies. We only work with advertising partners who work to accepted privacy standards such as http://www.youronlinechoices.com/uk/iab-good-practice-principles

You can learn more about online advertising at http://www.youronlinechoices.com . You can opt-out of almost all advertising cookies at http://www.youronlinechoices.com/uk/your-ad-choices although we would prefer that you didn’t as ultimately adverts help keep much of the internet free. It is also worth noting that opting out of advertising cookies will not mean you won’t see adverts, just simply that they won’t be tailored to you any longer.

We use:

DoubleClick – Privacy Policy owned by Google
Banner Adverts

We fund our site by showing adverts as you browse our site. These adverts are usually managed by a partner specialising in providing adverts for multiple sites. Invariably these partners place cookies to collect anonymous data about the websites you visits so they can personalise the adverts to you, ensure that you don’t see the same adverts too frequently and ultimately report to advertisers on which adverts are working.

Our partners include:

Webgains, Commission Junction, WiThings

Turning Cookies Off

You can usually switch cookies off by adjusting your browser settings to stop it from accepting cookies. Doing so however will likely limit the functionality of ours and a large proportion of the world’s websites as cookies are a standard part of most modern websites

It may be that you concerns around cookies relate to so called “spyware”. Rather than switching off cookies in your browser you may find that anti-spyware software achieves the same objective by automatically deleting cookies considered to be invasive.

Dealing with Deep Issues About Weight Loss

March 1, 2009 by skinnyoninside 4 Comments

I’ve had a weight problem since I was about 10 years old. I had put it
down to bad eating habits, genetics, not exercising enough; pretty all down to everything that was my fault. I wasn’t strong enough, I wasn’t dedicated
enough and I would never be thin enough. This hit hardest a year ago. I had been on Neris & India’s Idiot Proof Diet for 8 months and had great success. I had lost nearly three stone, felt fantastic and was getting compliments from everyone about how I looked. I was afraid to think it, but I had finally conquered the weight problem I had lived with for over 30 years.

Then we went on holiday visiting my family in the US. It was so nice to show my family the new me. So I relaxed on the diet, which was nearly carb free. We had pizza, pasta, sandwiches — you name it. Didn’t bloat up straight away, but when I got back from holiday, I just couldn’t get back into the diet, so quicker than the weight came off it piled on again. I’ve tried a couple of times to get back onto that plan, but haven’t even kept on for a week.

Last September, returning from another indulgent holiday eating and drinking up the delights of Provence, I decided to hire a personal trainer. For nearly three months I worked out in the gym three times a week, in addition to 2 tae kwon do training sessions; and had my weight and body fat checked weekly. This time I was losing weight more slowly but steadily. Just before Christmas I got very sick, perhaps from pushing myself too hard for tkd competitions, and stopped the training — and haven’t got back to it yet!

I’d say that nearly all of us know what it takes to lose weight: take in less calories and burn more calories. We’ve read up on various diets and exercise routines, yet after years and years and various attempts, here we are still looking for some secret that will make it all click for us.

The truth is that inside each one of us, buried deeply, we have some need, some empty spot that needs feeding. There may be a diet that suits your lifestyle more and will help with
eating right. You may find a buddy to exercise with and that will help
keep you going and burning the fat. In the end, unless you deal with the issues that are causing the weight problem, it will come back again and again.

In my 20’s I read a book that helped give me a little insight into what it was inside me that kept me from losing weight: Fat is a Feminist Issue by Susie Orbach. At the time I started to feel that the weight was giving me some power I wouldn’t have as a petite young woman; and also protected me from men that would see me only as a sexual object. Unfortunately that weight was also keeping me from a lot of good things, mainly feeling good about myself!

This thinking went a bit further about ten years later. I was watching an episode of Oprah, yet another about weight loss, and the guests had all lost serious amounts of weight. One woman told about how her problems went back to childhood when she had been sexually abused by a relative. Once she realised that and started to deal with it, she started to lose weight. It hit me then that my weight gain started when I was 10 and at that time I had a terrifying encounter with a pedaphile. Though I escaped from actual physical abuse, the experience frightened me so much that I never told another person until I had grown up. I had pushed that experience so far back in my consciousness that it was a dim memory. It then made sense to me that the extra weight was a kind of protection and the eating was also feeding the child inside that was still afraid of whatever preditors were out there in the World.

So after 35 years of using food as a comfort and shield, I have to learn a new relationship with food and it’s a real struggle. All of my food decisions are emotionally charged and I have a great fear of passing this on to my children, especially my daughter. It’s hard to work on it without giving it too much power and let it keep hold over your life.

I’m working on building some inner strength and serenity and have found some help in the works of Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie. I don’t fancy going into psychotherapy, so am hoping that writing about the experiences I am having will be a good therapy in itself. Networking with others who share the problem should be very helpful as well.

Do you have any of this kind of deep issues about weight? What have you tried to do to deal with it, and how has it worked? Please share your experiences with us.

Spice up Your Water Bottle

July 28, 2018 by Michele Neylon 1 Comment

Whether it’s for weight loss or just for general health drinking water is beneficial. Most of us probably don’t drink enough water and we probably aren’t properly hydrated most of the time. I know I didn’t for a long time. Sure, I would drink copious quantities of liquids, but I wasn’t drinking water by itself a lot of the time. If I was dining out I’d drink plenty, but up until quite recently I wasn’t in the habit of drinking water throughout the day. Sure, I was drinking enough, but it wasn’t really a natural habit up until quite recently.

In the office we have water coolers that dispense mineral water so I’ve no excuse. So these days I usually have a glass of water on my desk alongside my mug of coffee.

So what about water?

Recently Twinings, who are best known for their teas, launched a new range of products aimed at adding a little bit of flavour to your water. They call them “Cold Infuse” and the concept is really simple, yet brilliant. You basically drop a bag of the infusion into your water bottle and give it a little shake. The infusion adds a bit of flavour to the water and before you know it you’ve probably developed a mild addiction 🙂 Okay – “addiction” is probably a loaded term, but the infusions definitely make the water a lot more interesting, so I’ve found myself drinking quite a bit more than I had previously.

Here’s a short video that explains how it works:

https://youtu.be/_xr9PpzOsXI

They’re sugar free, caffeine free and just damn tasty!

I got their “starter kit” a couple of weeks ago and since then I took the plunge and got the full range of flavours:

Watermelon, strawberry & Mint
Passionfruit, Mango & Blood Orange
Blueberry Apple and Blackcurrant
Rose Lemonade
Lemon, Orange & Ginger
Coconut, Pineapple & Green Tea

I’ve found that you can usually get three or four bottle per infusion bag, though if you want a stronger taste you might get less. I still haven’t decided which flavour is my favourite and to be honest I haven’t really disliked any of them.

You can get them directly from Twinings or via Amazon.

Getting My Chilli On

September 20, 2014 by Michele Neylon 3 Comments

I like cooking with chilli. Generally I try to grab a pack of fresh chillis once a week and use them (in moderation) to add a bit of heat and flavour to soups and pasta dishes.

While browsing the other evening I came across an article talking about a specific type of chilli. Aleppo chilli. So I went off in search of places where I could actually buy it and came across this site.

The domain name says it all – chilliesontheweb.co.uk – they specialise in chillies and related products. And their pricing, service and shipping fees are all very good.

So I not only picked up some aleppo chilli crush (pictured above), but I also got chilli drinking chocolate. I like chilli. I like chocolate and when I was in Guatemala earlier this year I got to try hot chocolate with chilli. And I was hooked.

The chilli drinking chocolate on sale comes in a variety of flavours and strengths. So, since I didn’t want to kill myself, I opted for the simplest option 🙂

Unlike the cheaper drinking chocolates sold by the likes of Cadbury, the South Devon chilli farm drinking chocolate is more flakes than powder. I’m still experimenting with quantities, but about 5 or 6 teaspoons of them added to a microwaved mug of milk seems to work.

Since I’m conscious of my “behaviour” I use fat free milk, which is probably not as tasty as “normal” milk, but it’s still very tasty.

Calorie count? I’ve no idea, but if you can’t enjoy good quality and tasty hot chocolate from time to time then there’s not much point!

Search Results for: {search_term_string}

Footer