Favourite Diet Foods: Celery and Apple Salad w/Walnuts

Celery and Apple Salad w/Walnuts

At various stages through my dieting adventure people would ask me how hard and how painful it was dieting, as if the only food I could eat was plain, tasteless and more effort to eat.

Far from eating bland and tasteless food I actually rediscovered my taste-buds and change the way I looked at certain types of food, particularly the fresh variety.

Salads became less of a thing to dodge, to a filler with healthier meals, to a main course in it's own right. By the time I had made it to the Raw Food Diet month I had a number of salads I had eaten with frequency from my Vegan and Vegetarian phases, and had taken up a notch by transiting to totally Raw.

A few people have since been asking advice on what to eat when on certain diets and what my favourite recipes are, so with some help from my chief cook, designer and photographer here's one of my favourites.

celery and apple salad with walnuts

Ingredients

1 Cup celery finely chopped

1 granny smith apple chopped

spring onion finely chopped

1/2 Cup walnuts toasted

cos or iceberg lettuce to serve

Dressing 

3 Tbsp low fat mayonnaise 

3 Tbsp light caesar or ranch dressing

1 tsp honey

salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Combine dressing ingredients. 

Add to chopped celery, apple and spring onion, toss. 

Plate onto shredded or whole cos/iceberg lettuce leaves.

Top with toasted walnuts. 

(Obviously if you're going raw, don't toast your walnuts, go with raw) 

(Also can be bulked up with added diced leftover chicken, or small cubes of cheddar)

Unexpected Side Effects of Weight Loss

May 2011 to May 2013

83 Kilos again, back on track.

In a few days it will be one month on from my year of dieting and my transition from one diet a month experimentation to ongoing sensible diet and maintenance. Not quite as snappy as one-diet-a-month is it?

Much less punchy and quirky and much harder to explain.

One of my good friends at work found a photo of me from May 2011 a year before I started this project April last year. A number of people were struck by the change in me, and because the change happened gradually over the course of 12 months it was not easy to recognise the man I was. I surely don't.

So I happened to be wearing a red shirt by sheer coincidence and got another good friend to take a new picture of me on the opposing wall and a few magic photoshop minutes later and voila! Before and after shots are immensely gratifying.

Which brings me to unexpected side effects of dieting, the things which I never thought about but all of a sudden either happened or changed.

1. I lost weight in my feet. Surprisingly not long after I noted that I need to downsize my belt and my pants, I found that my shoes (I usually went for wide fit) were loose and my socks were loose too. I was still wearing the same size shoes and socks, but they had stretched around my feet and now I fit shoes which I had found too narrow before.
2. General weariness has lessened and I feel healthier and better all around. When I had a bit of a binge after the end of my diet I actually could feel (psychosomatically perhaps, but there none the less) the food having an ill effect on me. Like that scene in Super Size Me where the consumption is making Spurlock feel ill.
3.  Taste changes. I still like sweet things and still like some junk food, but now I find that I have trouble stomaching much of it. I find it hard to overeat even when I really like something. Likewise in certain salads and vegetables, I had no time for before I now really enjoy. Food actually tastes better, must be all the processed crap clogging up the buds. I have no scientific basis for this, but hey works for me. 
4. Warding off sickness faster. In the time BCE (Before Consumption Ended) I would catch a cold and be sick for 1-2 weeks and rely on anti-biotics and inhalers, generally being miserable. In the time AD (After Diet) I have had two serious colds, each of which last about 2 days and I took no drugs, saw no doctors and needed nothing but a bit of sleep. Immunity boost FTW!
5. I don't recognise myself. As above when I see old photos of myself I look like another person. When I see myself reflected in a shop window or similar, I don't recognise that person either. So my self image is POV, but not when I see myself relfected, in pictures or on video.

Continuing the diet is not as punishing or as hard as I thought it would be without the short term end point to leverage off. Instead it is more a matter of when I see weight creeping back up it worries me and I take action. A few weeks ago I put on 6 or 7 kilos and hit 88 in short order after ending my year.

By following my plan and sticking to it in general terms, the new Uber Diet is working pretty well and I am 83.3 Kilos again, which is a nice weight to be at.