meg-made: Fast Diet - Week 18

I am now into week 18 of the 5:2 Fast Diet!! To find out more about it, read my original post here.

I have been doing a lot of reading about weight loss plateaus and the reasons for hitting them and how to get through them. In my case I think my plateau is due to my body becoming used to Fasting and also a few little health niggles that I am dealing with at the moment preventing me from reaching my goals. Whilst I slowly go through the NHS process of elimination I am determined to also break through this lull in weight loss, where I can! I am limited somewhat by my health, but at every chance I get I am trying new things and new ways to shock my body out of its comfort zone.

I've decided to reduce my FastDiet posts to once a fortnight instead of weekly, so that I can hopefully have some better results if I am tracking them less often. If I don't have any loss in one week I tend to feel quite down on myself, and that's counterproductive to what I'm trying to do. So I am going to keep fasting two days a week, keep working out as much as I can, and keep enjoying myself (within reason and calorie limits) on the other days of the week. I will keep Tuesdays as a "healthy post" kind of day, with recipes/workouts or other health-related posts. I am confident I can break through this plateau but also know it may take some time, and that is okay too.

I am keen to check out some new recipes soon, and so in two weeks I will have some new meal ideas to share. But until then, here's two meals that I enjoyed this week on the Fast Diet!

Lunch - Tuna Tabbouleh Salad

I made a healthy and delicious lunch one Fast Day which was a take on Tabbouleh, but substituting tuna for any grain. I didn't really measure anything, and so tried to overestimate on the calories just to be on the safe side.

Ingredients

1/3 tin of tuna

5 cherry tomatoes, chopped

1/4 red onion, chopped

1/2 bunch parsley, chopped

Bunch alfalfa sprouts

Squeeze lime of juice

If you combine all ingredients and let them sit for ten minutes, the flavours settle and absorb one another.

Dinner

Fish Taco's! Yummy! I have made this one before way back in week 2 and loved it, so was thrilled to find I had everything I needed already at home!! I had a double serve though, as I had plenty of calories to spare! Total for dinner 330 calories.

Drinks - Fresh Ginger Tea (Gwyneth Paltrows)

I have had ANOTHER cold again this week, which pretty much means I've had the same recurring cold for about 3 months now! I am trying a whole swag of immunity boosting techniques now, and one of them was perfect for a Fast Day - fresh ginger tea.

This is from Gwyneth's It's All Good and makes a delicious and hopefully cold-busting concoction!

Combine 1 teaspoon of freshly grated ginger, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, 1 teaspoon of honey and 1 cup of boiling water and let it steep for two minutes. Strain into a fresh mug and enjoy!!

Total calories for the day = 505

Exercise

Hooray I went swimming! It has now been three months since being to the pool, and so I was totally out of breath and feeling like I was struggling through chicken & corn chowder!! But, I did 1km and felt great afterwards so I'm excited to hopefully make it a more regular occurrence!

I also did about 5 Tone It Up routines. I'll do a summary post on my favourites in two weeks, but I think they are just amazing!!

Weight loss?

Total loss to date = 3.8kg (8.4lbs)

I'm not going to say much more about this. I'll get there!

Goals for the coming fortnight

I am feeling positive about not checking in for another two weeks and feel like I can achieve so much more in that time!