Weighty issues

For the first time ever, the slow upwards creep of weight has inspired me to try actual dieting. The very popular (in England in particular, it seems) 5:2 diet will be given a go, and today was the first "fast" day.

To keep within the 600cal limit for such a day does take a fair bit of planning and calculating, but I seem to have done quite OK in terms of volume of food and hunger. The old diet stand bys do help - low fat cottage cheese (I like it anyway), puffed rice cakes (about half the calories of bread), beans, salad and low fat salad dressing. For what it's worth, here's how they assembled today for my 600cal menu:

 Breakfast - 2 rice cakes topped with a mashed up boiled egg and a small tomato. (I mean small: one of those mini roma tomato ones.) Coffee (using almond milk instead of normal milk) and a stevia based sweetener.

Lunch - 2 rice cakes with 100g cottage cheese, small tomato. (OK, so I like tomato when dieting.) A can of Pepsi Max.

Dinner - salad with small (95g) can of tuna in brine, 75 g of 4 bean mix, 50 g of lettuce (that was all that was left - I could've gone to double that and been OK), 100 g of celery, a couple of the mini roma tomatoes. 20ml of low fat dressing. A cup of coffee (decaf this time) as in the morning.

I've done the calculations and think this came in at 590 cal. I'm not exactly feeling full; nor am I feeling particularly hungry. It is meant to be a fasting day, after all, but as far as fasts go, that was a pretty satisfactory one. All very simple, obviously.

Normal food tomorrow. Calculating calories again Thursday. This could well provide a whole new bunch of material with which to bore readers!