Fat Fighters

Having put on a pound or two (or more) at Christmas and still not having shifted an ounce of the weight put on from my visit to the US, I've decided its about time I tried to lose a few pounds.

So, what to do? I've always been a bit jealous of the way the pounds seem to fall off those on the Atkins diet - although I'm not overly sure of the healthiness of it - so when I saw that Rose Elliot had released a book called the Vegetarian Low-Carb Diet promising a "fast, no-hunger weightloss diet for vegetarians" I thought I'd give it a go as I figured a veggie version must be reasonably healthy, bearing in mind that a lot of the protein intake is from nuts, seeds, tofu and eggs rather than the piles of meat that you allegedly have to eat on Atkins.

So, my faithful bloggees over the next week or so I shall regail you of my progress should I manage to keep to the diet for that long.

The idea is to eat less than 20g of Carbs a day for the first two weeks, making sure that your protein input is kept up then gradually increase over the next weeks. I'm going to see how I do over the first two week "Carb Cleanse" and then decide whether to carry on. I've got a Veggie Burns Night to organise on the 25th Jan, so that sort of spoils the continuity a bit.

Anyway, no matter - the next two weeks are given over to Rose and her cookbook - if I can last that long.

It's been two days now and it started fairly well with the first day's breakfast of scrambled egg and sausages. For lunch I had a goats cheese salad with pecan nuts. Both dishes were very nice. For the evening meal I cooked a 'crustless' asparagus and gruyere quiche which I accompanied with stir fried pak choi. It was okay, apart from the usual after effects of asparagus...

For breakfast this morning I had yoghurt with linseed and almond, and for lunch the remainder of the quiche with some salad. After this second helping of the quiche, I can safely say that it is very unlikely that I will be making it again very soon - it's not the most inspiring and tasty dish - I can think of many more ways to have asparagus that are infinitely more to my taste. For my meal tonight I had curried tofu and 'cauliflower' rice. Hmmm... I wasn't sure about the 'rice' either, but it was okay. It consists of finely grated cauliflower which is then either boiled or fried in butter and olive oil. The curry was very dry - there's another one in the book that has more of a sauce with it, so I shall try that. Before that though, I have curry leftovers to finish up.

Tomorrow morning I have scrambled eggs on a portobello mushroom, which I'm looking forward to. This diet does get through an awful lot of eggs - to keep the protein intake up - which is my only worry on the health side of things.

I shall check in again in another few days and let you know whether I've managed to last the week, and whether any flabby bits have disappeared. Wish me luck!