staceywoo

Last night's dinner - Griddled honey yellow bean pork with udon noodles, pak choy, mushrooms and spring onion. All made from scratch, yum! (hopefully this image works!)

Thanks for the comments everyone, I'm glad the pics helped to offer some encouragement - I found the before and after pics on this forum so inspiring at the start. Good luck everyone!

One thing I've learnt is that a lot of the people that I thought were skinny without any effort are actually excercising and eating healthy, I just wasn't aware of it! Sure there are the people who can eat fast food all day and never gain a thing due to genetics, but most people seem to be working out or balancing their…

Unfortunately the last thing to go for me was my boobs, I thought I'd got away with it and then I dropped 2 cup sizes in a matter of weeks...!

I use lentils to either bulk out things like chilli, cottage pie, or bolognese (along with a bit of quorn mince) or in a casserole - I love sausage and lentil casserole, it's so nice and hearty! Soup is always good too :)

Wow thanks for all of your comments! i've just changed the before pic to one that is hopefully a bit smaller, as I'm really not loving seeing my 'before' face in all its enlarged glory!! To answer your question - I changed my diet in August, and kept a proper handwritten food diary until Christmas when I discovered mfp -…

I used to drink quite a bit of coffee throughout the day, but I got sick of always 'needing a coffee' whenever more than a few hours had passed since the last one - particularly on holidays. I went cold turkey and I have to say the first 10 days were hard, I had quite a few headaches and I was just so tired! But then it…

We've been making oven baked leek and bacon risotto almost every week since I found the recipe! It's so tasty and filling, here goes... NAME OF RECIPE: Oven baked leek and bacon risotto INGREDIENTS: 1 tsp sunflower oil 4 rashers unsmoked back bacon , roughly chopped 1 leek , halved lengthways and finely sliced 150g risotto…

I'm at the same point, finally hit my goal weight last weekend - 39 lbs lost. Rather than immediately changing to maintenence level calories I've manually changed my calorie goal so that it increases by 100 cals each week - last week I went up from 1200-1300 and this week from 1300-1400. It's been harder than I thought to…

I didn't have any particularly bad habits, apart from eating too much of everything! Pizza though, I could easily eat a whole medium to myself, or my partner and I would share an extra large between us. Cheese was also a big love of mine, you know when you're grating cheese for a meal, and you end up eating half of what…

Glad to hear some others have enjoyed these :) I just thought I'd bump this in case anyone else wants the free code....

I allowed myself to have a couple of treats here and there, but nothing like I usually would. I gained 2 lbs over the Christmas holidays, but I was staying with the inlaws and therefore didn't have control over what I was given to eat so I don't think that was too bad!

I took a break yesterday so really need to get back on it today, I'm on L1 day 9. My weight stayed the same this week but I took some measurements yesterday and I've lost another half an inch from pretty much everywhere in the last two weeks so something's working!

Yep they are pretty pricey so I've set mine to one per fortnight now! I still look forward to my little boxes of treats though :)

This might help! http://www.weightlossresources.co.uk/calories/calorie_content/thai_food.htm Or http://www.buzzle.com/articles/thai-food-calories-in-thai-food.html I love thai food too, so I'm glad I found these :)

Mine is open too if you want to look. I tend to cook everything from scratch so I have long lists of ingredients for dinner! I really should get the hang of creating recipes on here :) Best of luck!

I also suffer with this, and have found that as my diet has changed for the better my reflux has improved. Chilli still seems to be a trigger for me, which is a shame as I love spicy food! It also improved massively after I cut caffeine from my diet - going cold turkey and having headaches for 10 days was worth it!

Try www.bbcgoodfood.com - I find most of my recipes there! You can search by lower calorie meals (some are 200-400) and cooking difficulty/time to cook.

I usually count it all, I hadn't considered deducting any. I'd rather overestimate than under!

I love salmon, especially with a thai marinade. I vary mine depending on what I have in the cupboard, but usual ingredients for the marinade are; lime juice, chilli, garlic, ginger, a dash of soy sauce and a squirt of tomato puree. I usually spread it on the salmon and leave to marinade for at least 15 mins before…

Can I join in? I'm on level 1 day 5 today, and I'm really enjoying it. Looking forward to starting level 2 next week, though from what I'm reading here I'm prepared for it to be a challenge! I've never done any kind of fitness DVD before, and I like it a lot more than I thought I would. Hopefully it will help me to shift…

For me it's olives! If I buy a jar for a recipe or something then the jar just can't survive the week - they call to me!

I started the 30 day shred on Friday (or as I keep accidentally saying, 30 second shred - wishful thinking!) so today I'm on L1 D4. I'm really enjoying it, it's not as hard as I thought it would be - I've never done an exercise DVD like this so I didn't know what to expect. I'm going swimming tonight so think the shred…

I'll join you! I'm on day 2 today, started yesterday and it wasn't as bad as I expected :)

For me it's carrot sticks (no dip), sesame ryvita with half a dairylea triangle, or nuts. Yum! If you're in the UK, I also have a box delivered from graze.com every fortnight, with a selection of lovely snacks to pick at - calories are all clearly labelled. I have a code for a free box if you want to try it, it's CY186W6.

I've noticed that you usually eat bread for quite a few of your meals/snacks - have you tried reducing this? I found that cutting bread out for most of the week helped to get things moving for me. I do miss sandwiches and toast though!

Last night I had a creamy bacon and leek risotto - made with low fat cream cheese, heaven! Tonight I'm having a salmon stirfry with noodles, veggies and teriyaki sauce. Yum!

I like to use http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/ - there is literally thousands of recipes on there! You can search by calorie content per portion, and search through all of those for healthy ideas. You can also select the difficulty of the recipe if you're still learning. Quite often I'll take one of the standard receipes and…

I'm 5'3, currently on 1200 cals per day, and I've lost 35 lbs. For the first few months of weight loss I was sticking to a 1000 cal day, but after hitting a plateau for a couple of weeks and reading more on here I upped it to 1200. I find that if you eat healthy filling foods and cook from scratch rather than using…

I love fish and chips from the chippy too, but I haven't been since I started dieting. Instead I've started buying those Young's Chip Shop battered cod portions from the freezer section (Tesco always has them on half price or BOGOF) and baking those with a potato cut into chip size and sprayed with 1 cal spray. Cover with…