Stop Press: Crisps Update

Stop press on the crisp front: I've just found a new record holder of the lowest calorie count per multi pack packet:

Golden Wonder Ringos: Salt & Very Vinegar While the individual packets are 22g and contain 105 calories the multi pack ones are 14g and contain a record breaking 67 calories! They have an odd texture (they're made of Potato, Wheat and Rye) and they can best be described as "sticky", they're a bit like the Onion Ring crisps but without all of the dust on them.

I think I'm going to split my evening crunchy snacks between these and KP Skips on alternate evenings from now on.

**The full post on crisps can be found here: Crisps

Tesco Healthy Living Range

Tesco have rather handily got a range of healthy food options that cross nearly all of the product ranges that you require and it seems like when ever I go into my local Tesco a new product has been added.

The full range of products can be found here: Tesco Healthy Living

At the start of my diet the ready meal range of these products was a god send as they clearly display the calorie content in big letters and numbers on the front of the box and the calorie count is easy to decipher, for  example on products like salad cream it will tell you that it contains 20 calories, 1.2g of fat, 0.1g of saturated fat, 0.2g of salt and 1.4g of sugar per tablespoon. If only more products made it so easy to measure out your portions in this way!

As a side note My Fitness Pal has an annoying habit of not using the simple measure, so when I scanned the barcode of the salad cream the only measurement options were 1g, 100g or a whole container which is really that helpful! Thankfully there is an easy way to deal with this: in the search function there is a tab called "My Foods" which lets you create your own searchable database of nutritional information for food and once you've created it you can select it from the "My Foods" tab or it will show up at the top of any typed searches you perform.

I'm not going to list all of the products available in this line, I'm just going to highlight some of the ready meals, cooked meats and other things I've actually purchased:

• Braised Beef and Root Vegetable Mash contains 291 calories (!) and tastes really nice, the mash is particularly good.

• Ham And Mushroom Tagliatelle contains 394 calories and is pretty average if I'm honest, it's flavour is quite bland, but you liven it up with some pepper or other spices.

• Sausage and Root Vegetable Mash at 316 calories this was a game changer for me as I love sausages but until I found this ready meal I'd resigned myself to not having them for a long time. The sausages are not bad at all for low fat versions and the mash is very nice however it's not very substantial and I'd advise against having this for a main meal as it won't satisfy your hunger.

• Minced Beef and Potatoes contains 244 calories, again like the sausage and mash it's not very substantial so having it for a main meal isn't advisable.

• Chilli and Rice has 422 calories and is very nice indeed, I found that this needed to have spice added to liven it up a bit, but all in all it's not bad.

• Cheese and Bacon Crustless Quiche (160g) this mini quiche has 258 calories and is really great, it tastes like regular quiche but due to the lack of pastry you get a lower calories count. Can be eaten hot or cold.

• Quiche Lorraine (400g) is a normal quiche size but only has 196 calories per quarter.

• Roast Chicken Slices contains 29 calories per slice and there a four slices in a container so you could have all four slices with a salad and the meat would only be 116 calories.

• Honey Roast Ham contains 28 calories per slice, again you get four in a pack, so if you had the four slices with a salad the Ham would only be 112 calories.

• Toffee and Vanilla Yoghurt  each of the four pots contain 65 calories and are quite sweet, so it's good for a treat if you have a sweet tooth, or you could add some fruit to make a bigger dessert.

• Strawberry Trifle at 154 calories per pot this is not too bad at all, but my advice is to only get one a week as if you start eating too many of them you are defeating the object of eating healthily!

• Vanilla Big Pot Yoghurt I like a big pot yoghurt or two in the fridge to have with fruit for dessert and at 64 calories per 100g this is nearly perfect.

So as you can see if you have a big Tesco near you you really have some good healthy options open to you and keep your eyes peeled as there always seem to be new things just around the corner, today I spotted boiled sweets (Not a good idea for me!!) and little two tub packs of ice cream that looked rather favourable!

Rice & Noodles

If you like stir fry then no doubt you also like rice or noodles with it, I have discovered one problem however: they're crammed with calories! For example:

Uncle Ben's microwave Basmati rice has 183 calories in a 125g serving, but the actual packet it comes in is 250g so that's 366 calories in total, unless you're happy to decant it and use it in two separate meals, which I'm not as I'm a bit funny about that sort of thing.

Sainsbury's Free Range Fresh Egg Noodles weigh in at 341 calories per half of a 410g packet, now I'm happy with using a half of a packet here but I'm not happy with the calorie count and a quarter of a packet is not really enough.

The solution I found to this problem is don't have rice or noodles with stir fry, just have a whole bag of stir fry vegetable mix, a single portion packet of ready cooked chicken pieces or a packet of King Prawn and a stir fry sauce.

Problem one with this solution is that you exempt yourself from the stir fry meal deals in Sainsbury's and Tesco where you get a stir fry sauce, stir fry vegetables and stir fry noodles for £3, but I learned to live with it. Problem two is that "you can't have stir fry without noodles or rice", this being a psychological problem was easier to battle because as I've discovered you can in fact have stir fry without noodles or rice!

So an example my new healthier living stir fry is:

• Sainsbury's Mixed Vegetable Stir Fry - 325g = 112 calories
• Sainsbury's Fresh Teriyaki & Ginger Stir Fry Sauce - 175ml = 152 calories
• Sainsbury's Taste The Difference Jumbo King Prawns - 175g = 118 calories

Total calories for this meal: 382 which is much better than 565 calories if you add half a bag of Uncle Ben's Microwave Basmati rice or 723 calories if you add half a bag of the Sainsbury's noodles and because you have used a whole bag of the vegetables the meal isn't insubstantial.

A recent discovery I've made is that in Asda and Tesco you can get a three pack of microwaveable Uncle Ben's Single Serve Basmati Rice that are 130g each and have 199 calories a bag, there is also a whole grain rice version that has 215 calories a bag. The only problem is that I've become so used to not having rice and noodles that I hardly ever use them even if they're in the cupboard.

Another good alternative is Tesco Frozen Sweet Chilli Noodle Stir Fry which has 393 calories per 380g packet and has the blessing of having noodles included along with the vegetables and sauce so if you add in a Tesco Chunky Flame Grilled Chicken Snack Pack which has 107 calories per 100g pack near the end of cooking you've got a meal total of 500 calories which isn't too bad for a stir fry with noodles, but you'll find that the portion size is smaller than if you use the first example.

If you want to bulk up your stir fry even more try adding 100g of sliced mushrooms, this is about four average size mushrooms and will add around 13 calories to your meal (depending on the type of mushroom).

These modified stir fry meals became a main stay of my dinners at the start of my health drive because they are quick to cook and taste really good and the key to success when trying to loose weight is to find healthier options that taste nice and that in all probability you will carry on eating after you've got to your weight loss goal and when you realise this you suddenly recognise that you're not on a diet, which implies that you will stop at some point, but you have in fact made a sustainable lifestyle change.

A Quick Reminder

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with the makers of the website and app "My Fitness Pal" or any of the products or supermarkets mentioned in my posts.

Sweet Tooth

The biggest problem that I've always had food wise is that I love sweet junk food: chocolate, sweets, cakes, biscuits, trifles...you think of a sweet food and I love it. So as you can imagine this was always going to be the biggest hurdle I had to get over in order to loose weight.

In December 2013 I had to mentally prepare myself for the absence of sugary food, it had to be a choice and it had to be something that I wanted to do otherwise I was bound to fail, it would be like trying to give up smoking but not really wanting to give up.

I had one minor hiccup in early January where I had one chocolate coated ginger biscuit, but fortunately I felt so bad about it that was the only lapse I have had. I now only have sweet food as a dessert when I'm out for a meal with my partner and we will always share it rather that have one each, but day to day my sweet food after dinner is fruit and low fat yoghurt and it's amazing how well it satisfies the sugar craving and it's also good for you.

The main fruits that I eat are:

• Banana: on average 105 calories.
• White seedless grapes 100g: 66 calories
• Strawberries 100g: 40 calories
• Cherries 100g: 115 calories (I'm never sure if this calorie count is with or without stones, so I weigh them with stones).
• Navel Oranges: on average 69 calories

Now it's always nice to have something with the fruit and I find low fat yoghurt is a good solution, while they do have sugar as long as you don't go over 100g the calories content isn't too bad:

• Yeo Valley Orange, Carrot and Mango 0% Fat: 100g = 74 calories /12.4 g of sugar
• Onken Fat Free Vanilla: 100g = 75 calories / 12.2g of sugar
• Rachel's Organic Low Fat Vanilla: 100g = 87 calories / 13.1g of sugar
• Rachel's Organic Low Fat Raspberry: 100g = 92 calories / 14.8g of sugar
• Total 0% Greek Fat Free: 100g = 86 calories / 6g of sugar
• Tesco Fat Free Greek Style Natural: 100g = 55 calories / 4.2g of sugar
• Sainsbury's Basics Low Fat: 100g = 62 calories / 7g of sugar

Also a lovely surprise was discovering that Hartleys produce ready made no added sugar jelly that tastes fabulous and has very few calories, depending on the flavour and size of the pot they have between 6 and 10 calories, they are fairly well hidden in the supermarkets as they are in the dried food section, not chilled, in my local Tesco they are with the cereal bars.

If like me you have a sweet tooth like any addiction you will need to break it first and for me cutting it out completely to start off with worked well and now I rarely think of sweet junk food and can be offered chocolate, sweets or cake and happily turn it down. How you do this will be down to your own mindset, but I literally had to keep telling myself "sugar is poison" and actually grit my teeth to get past the urge to indulge.

I wish you the best of luck if you decide to cut out sweet junk food as I found giving it up harder than giving up smoking, but like smoking when you finally manage to quit you will feel very proud of yourself and feel the benefits in no time at all.

Spot The Difference!

The below photo shows me now and me in March 2013, as you can see there is quite a difference in my appearance!

Crisps

Crisps are a vital part of my snacking day, admittedly eating a whole six multi-pack in one sitting was never going to end favourably so some changes had to be made.

The first thing I discovered was that crisps that are high in fat seemed to be a trigger for me to over eat so I needed to find a better alternative, the first product I tried was Walkers Baked which weigh in at 100 to 101 calories per 25g bag which is significantly less than regular bag of Walkers Crisps which have 129 to 132 calories per 25g bag. The problem I had with Walkers Baked is that they still had the "fat" taste to them that triggered a desire to over indulge, so my crisp replacement quest continued.

Next up were Special K Cracker Crisps and these fitted the bill perfectly, they had good flavour and were crunchy but most importantly didn't have the fat trigger taste at all, so I would happily have one packet for either lunch or as a snack in the evening without craving even more of them. It was during this Cracker Crisp phase that I made an interesting discovery: single packets of crisps for sale in shops have a larger portion size than the packets in muli-packs, for example an individually sold bag of Special K Sweet Chilli Cracker Crisps is 23g and has 94 calories while a multi-pack bag is 21g and has 86 calories, upon further investigation I found this to be true of most multi-pack bags of crisps, so from now on I only ever ate multi-pack bags and only had them in the evening.

Next up I excitedly found that Walkers had started to produce a product called Pops that are created by blasting potatoes with hot air and they taste really good! Here is the calorie information for the various flavours (note that 19g are multi-pack bags and 23g are individually sold bags):

• Melted Cheese & Crispy Bacon Flavour: 19g = 84 calories / 23g 102 = calories
• Original Flavour: 19g = 84 calories / 23g = 102 calories
• Sour Cream & Onion Flavour: 19g = 84 calories / 23g = 102 calories
• Prawn Cocktail Flavour 19g = 85 calories (no individual packs are available)

Pops became my mainstay evening snack, the melted cheese and crispy bacon less so as they taste kind of odd!

Then thanks to the ability to socialise and view other people's food diaries on My Fitness Pal I discovered via my Cousin's wife's food diary that a multi-pack packet of KP Skips contains 76 calories, a new low calorie record for crisps and they are "real" versions not a product made specifically to be healthy!

KP Skips then became my main crunchy snack and I still munch a packet every day or two, I have also found the Weight Watchers Variety Pack that contains two 18g bags of the following:

• Cheese Flavour Maize Puffs: 78 calories a pack
• Sweet Chilli Flavour Potato Hoops: 70 calories a pack
• Chicken Fajita Flavour Tortilla Corn Chips: 82 calories

They are OK  but nothing special as the flavours a quite weak and I will most likely not replace them when I've used them up.

**I've now found another low calorie crunchy snack, details are in this brief post: Stop Press: Crisps