Motivational Meal Plan Mondays

Hello my lovelies!

I don't know about you, but weekends can be my downfall. It's very easy to fall off the Slimming World bandwagon when your other-half offers to buy pizza... and garlic bread... and chips.... *ahem* on a Saturday night. So today I just wanted to do a quick Slimming world Monday meal plan for you all. I know a lot of you have very busy lives and need something that is not only quick and tasty, but is also SW approved - especially on a Monday! 

When I have a lot on my plate (no pun intended) I revert back to the good old green days - for me carbs are a little gift sent from heaven to make me feel full, satisfied and full of energy.

This is my typical busy day meal plan:

BREAKFAST - HEa & HEb

Two Weetabix with sweetener and semi-skim milk

Coffee and semi-skim milk

LUNCH - 3.5 syns

Uncle Ben’s Vegetable Express Rice (2 syns)

Small can of Heinz curry flavour baked beans (1.5 syns)

Water or a Diet Coke

DINNER - 2 syns

Batchelor’s Pasta ’n’ Sauce Macaroni (2 syns)

Water or a Diet Coke

SNACKS

Muller Light Fat Free Fruitopolis (1/2 syn per pot) - I would normally have a coupe of these.

In general a busy day for me would use up more syns than if I had time to make completely free meals but I don’t think this really matters. SW is about learning how to eat healthy no matter how much time you have and it gives you plenty of options to help you do that. Of course a little preparation would help me stay syn free on these days, but to be honest sometimes I’d rather use a couple of syns and have an easy life than struggle around an already busy schedule to prepare meals in advance. 

Today’s total syn count will be 6.5, which keeps me well under the 15 syn recommendation and I’ll have used 1 HEa and 1 HEb. If I’m feeling a bit luxurious tonight I might add another HEa worth of cheese to my Macaroni… the frivolity!

I hope you are all having a happy and healthy Monday! Don't worry if you've fallen off the bandwagon over the weekend (or even with that cheeky Mc D's on the way to work this morning), every meal is a fresh start!

Big love, 

Kiki x

Chicken Curry and Veg Instant Noodles...

I just wanted to share a quick picture of the Chicken Curry and Veg Instant Noodles. I have added the little orange pouch of oil in these ones but I normally don't. I usually just put in the soup base pouch and veg pouch. They are 1 syn per pack and don't require any heating - just hot water, so they are a great low syn snack to take with you when you travel!

There is a picture of the packet on my last blog... these are the polish brand ones

I'm away to enjoy these! Warm, tasty and low syn - just perfect for a day like this!

Slim Rice...

I had read about this no calorie, no carb Slim Rice in the Daily Mail a few days ago, but only got around to getting a bag yesterday. Last night I used up the last of my Oh So Lean sauces, so I can't wait until next week when I can get another delivery! I still have three chicken breasts left though so I think I will make some low syn chicken and stuffing rolls tonight or tomorrow, we'll see how pressed I am for time today as I have an appointment for wedding dress fittings tonight and may not have enough time to cook them when I get home from work. It may just be a case of eating a couple of bananas while I take Turf a walk... multitasking at it's finest!

So last night I wanted to use the Oh So Lean speed curry pot. It was the last sauce pot I had left from the family deal and so decided to make a chicken and veg curry with it and include the slim rice as well to bulk it out without the carbs and cals.

I had frozen the speed curry and left it out overnight and all day while I was at work to defrost... now I really don't think I should have frozen the speed curry as when I tried to take it from the tub last night it had the consistency of a sponge, and I don't mean the cake-y kind, and I couldn't use it. It was my own fault really, but I'll know for next time not to freeze it.

The Slim Rice didn't resemble rice at all, it was more like noodles that had been cut up into little squares, but it really did bulk out my dinner and fill me up.

So without any further preamble, here's my recipe for Chicken and Veg Curry with Slim Rice... this makes a lovely big portion for one person.

Ingredients:

One Chicken Breast (chopped)
Two cups of Mixed Veg (I use Tesco Value)
Speed Curry Sauce (mine went funny when I froze it so I had to resort to my usual Goldfish Curry Concentrate)
1 large onion
1 packet of Slim Rice

First chop the chicken....

Spray a pan or wok with frylight and brown off the chicken....

Chop an onion (I used red as I had run out of white)...

Add it to the pan with the chicken and let it soften...

Measure out two cups of frozen mixed veg and place in a microwavable dish. Add boiling water and cook on high for 3-4 minutes...

Drain and add to the pan...

Open the packet of Slim Rice and tip it into a sieve... rinse it well under cold water until the smell has gone - it has a bit of a fishy smell, but this is just the smell of the water preserving it, it washes off really quick and it doesn't smell strongly in the first place...

Add to the pan and cook on a medium heat until everything is cooked and the Slim Rice is heated through...

Add the speed curry sauce... I had to use the Goldfish Curry concentrate as my speed curry had gone a bit strange in the freezer... do not freeze your speed curry sauce, lol!

Cook until everything is heated through and the Slim Rice has gone a bit mushy - this means it's absorbed the flavour!

Serve and enjoy!

This really was very tasty and filling. I would use the Slim Rice again in curries, but also maybe in soups instead of lentils and as a thickener in stews instead of potatoes. It would also be handy to add to a shepherds pie or a chilli as it really does fill you up! I don't know whether it would count as a free food, but at 15 calories for the whole pack and 0g of everything else, I would count it as 1 syn. It's a filling food with no carbs. A true little diet helper!

My Net Diary Weight Loss App

My cousin told me about this great new app that can help you lose weight by keeping a proper record of how much calories and fat you consume. It's called MyNetDiary and you can get two versions, a free version or the pro version which costs £6.99. I have been using the free version, and I have found everything I need on it. You can get the app for ipad or iphone, but you can also just use the online website version if you don't have an apple product.

You can see the app here on my iphone... it is the green icon of an apple with a tape measure around it

I know that it can be quite annoying to have to stand (in a shop or in the kitchen) and work out the calories of everything we eat and then try and remember how many we have already eaten, so I find that the best thing about this app is that it already has the nutritional values of most foods recorded... all you have to do is search for the item and type in how much of it you intend to eat to get the calorie and fat count and other nutritional info such as protein and carbs.

If there is a product that the app does not already have stored, you can use the camera of your iphone/ipad to scan the item barcode. The nutritional information of the product will then be stored in the app - very handy when you're on the go and need to grab a quick supermarket sandwich! 

I use this app alongside the Slimming World plan. I feel it helps me control my portions sizes. I am sometimes tempted to add a little more chicken or just a spoonful more rice to my meals, when really I don't need them. I found that this was were most of my extra calories were coming from and why my weight-loss sometimes stalls with Slimming World.

When you first download the app it asks you to type in your gender, height, current weight, goal weight and age. It then asks you to select on what date you would like to achieve your goal weight, but this is the important bit - it will only allow you to lose up to 2lbs per week and will adjust your goal weight date to fit this - this is so that your body loses the extra weight in a healthy way. Crash dieting doesn't work in the long term.

It is possible to lose more than the recommended 2lbs per week if you don't use up all your calories in one day - for instance, I am on track to lose a further 2.2lbs this week, as yesterday I was 152 calories below my suggested calorie intake for the day.

The app takes into account all the factors you type in and tells you how many calories you need to consume to stay at your current weight - this can sometimes be a shock! It then tells you the defect of calories needed to help you lose weight and the recommended amount you consume daily.  It also records the exercise you do daily and the amount of calories you burn doing each exercise.

It is also helpful for meal planning. Every morning I can type in what I plan on eating for the day and it will tell me the amount of calories that will use up and the amount that I will have left.

For instance, this is my 'overall' plan for the day -

You can see that I still have 156 cals remaining and have not factored in any exercise - I prefer to type the exercise in after I do it, as the number of calories available increases with exercise.

This is the breakdown of each meal -

I usually use most of my calories for dinner - I work in an office and sit at my desk for the majority of the day, this means I don't use a lot of calories and am often not as hungry. I usually exercise after work and do some housework etc which means I use more calories and am hungrier, so therefore my evening meal is usually more filling.

This is what my dinner will look like tonight -

As you can see I am having chicken and veg curry with boiled rice.


I would recommend everyone to give this a go as it is free and could work really well with helping you on your weight loss journey!

Slimming World Chicken Curry with Vegetable Rice...

I count this as six syns because a normal chip shop/chinese curry sauce is classed as six syns, although it could be less than this. To be on the safe side though, count it as six!

This makes three servings - dinner for me and J plus lunch for me the day after!

Ingredients:

2 chicken thighs (skin, fat and bones removed) - I buy these in Tesco for £3.50 for approx. 5/6

value mixed veg OR value stirfry veg

value broccoli (optional)

Goldfish Curry concentrate (check out my Chicken Veg Curry with Noodles for a photo of this)

value long grain rice - 40p in tesco

4 small onions

First get your wok out, your kettle boiled and your rice cooker on (If you don't have a rice cooker read the rice to water ratio on the back of the pack and use a large pot)

Next put your veg in with your rice. I used the value stirfry mix, value mixed veg and value broccoli - put an handful of each (or the veg you are using) in the rice cooker/large pot -

I used about a cup of curry concentrate... put it in a pot with some water...

Simmer until dissolved... you can always add more water to dilute it if its too thick....

Chop your chicken and onion and simmer together in the wok on a low heat... once chicken is cooked add the curry sauce and leave to simmer until the rice is cooked... you can see in the picture below that J sneekily added some peas to the chicken and onion, naughty naughty!

When the rice and veg is cooked, use a spoons to mix it all together...

Dish up the rice and veg into a bowl and put a couple of big spoonfuls of the chicken curry on top...

I gave J most of the curry sauce to try and save on some syns.

I'm not too great at writing out recipes and stuff, so I hope this is not to much of a jumble to follow. I am not too sure what is on the menu tonight in Casa del Wilkie/Johnston, but I will post a recipe shortly of the Butter Fish and Rice dish when I next make it. I will also be trying out some Oh So Lean goodies next week when they are delivering around the Bangor area and will review them on here.

Before the week is out I will do a super quick review of Governor Rocks in Donaghadee - sister restaurant to Coco in Belfast. I went there last Friday night with a girlfriend and had a wonderful dinner... but more on that later! Unfortunately we were having such a good time I forgot to take any photos of the food, so a quick recommendation will have to do!

This is quite a busy week for us, with house viewings tonight, bridesmaid dress fittings in Dublin tomorrow, a special Valentine's dinner in Pier 36 on Thursday night, cupcake baking on Friday/Saturday and a bridal fair in the Clandeboye Lodge on Sunday. I'll try my very best to squeeze in a few quick slimming world recipes that I've been cooking up - you don't have to be bad just because you're busy - and to also do the restaurant review before the weekend, and also show you all my new shoes, lol!

Slimming World Chicken, Veg and Noodle Stirfry with Curry Sauce

I wasn't meaning for this dish to be a blog post, and I wasn't expecting to be posting this regularly! I threw this in the pan last night when I got home from work, then thought, "oh, maybe I should put this on the blog" and took a quick few pictures. I don't have a picture of the ingredients list, but its really simple... here goes -

This makes enough for 2 people. 

I normally like to add frozen broccoli to this to, but I'm running low and wanted to keep it for tonights dinner.

Ingredients:

2 chicken breasts

2 parcels of amoy medium egg noodles (you can use the fine ones too)

1/2 bag of tesco value stirfry veg (frozen)

Heaped tablespoon of Goldfish brand curry paste

frylight

First I chopped the chicken and frylighted the wok - then simply cooked the chicken strips until almost done before adding in 1/2 a bag of the frozen stirfry veg mix. Turn the heat down and let the mix cook...

Next I placed two parcels of the amoy medium egg noodles in a bowl of boiling water and left them to soften...

I use this curry sauce - its a brand called Goldfish. I had read a blog (mummypinkwellies) where a lady doing slimming world used it a lot and said it was low syns. I can't find a syn value for it in the book or online, but if you read the ingredient list on the side, its basically just a whole load of spices with some dried coconut milk preserved in oil, so for one heaped tablespoon I syn it as 8 (which is 4 syns per person) - this might be a bit high, or too low, but until slimming world syn it I really have no idea! I hasn't affected my weight loss though, so it can't be that bad....

Put one heaped tablespoon of it in a pot with some boiling water and whisk until dissolved, then let it simmer...

When the noddles are softened, drain them and add them to the wok, whack the heat up to high and cook for a few minutes, mixing everything together....

Add the curry sauce to the wok and turn the heat down to a simmer - you can just pour it on top of the wok mix after you've plated it up but I prefer to let the curry simmer with everything for a bit for flavour...

Dish into serving bowls...

Dig in!

I know I'm sometimes wary about using ingredients that I don't specifically know the syn value for, so if it helps you can syn it as 6 per serving - if you type curry into the online syns finder you get this - 

Basic, Fish & Chip Shops, Curry Sauce, average portion, per serving = 6 syns