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.

3 weeks later - settling into a better rhythm

Back down to 84 kilos, my new goal is to stay as much as possible in the lower 80's - where I feel best and healthiest without resorting to excess ugly foods rich in sugar and fats.

That means a lifestyle change of sorts. Without resorting to a short term diet plan, or punishing myself with a long term (the idea of dieting with no end is depressing) diet, I have settled on the idea of a new lifestyle, one that serves the basic concepts of what I have learned about food and myself in the last year and makes a regular regimented schedule that is easy to maintain and allows me to enjoy food without guilt or excess.

The idea is, for the evening meals:

Red Meat - once a week.
Chicken - once a week
Fish - twice a week
Vegetarian - three times a week.

Some of the Recent Dishes for Lite Dinner

Evening meals should be low or no carb, leftovers (particularly carb ones) will be lunch the next day. So for example we had fresh Terakihi Fillets tonight with chips and a salad on the side. The kids ate fish and chips, I ate fish and salad, but will take leftover fillets and the chips to have for lunch tomorrow.

The plan also includes Intermittent Fasting which is a very good way to feel virtuous and in control of any days where I snack or eat a heavy meal, which I will undoubtedly do. On Tuesday and Thursdays I'll stick to the IF plan and basically have a fruit lunch (filling but lo cal) and then have a lite salad and/or grilled fish option for dinner.

Weekends are always going to be the hardest as during the work week it is easy to stick to a sensible plan and be far too busy to be snacking anyway. Fasting is incredibly simple when you are busy, but when you are home it's easy to lose focus and pick away at whatever is around, especially when the kids are grazing animals interested in a constant stream of small amounts of food and resisting meals wherever possible, as a strategy I know that will not work for me.

So there's the plan, weekends will be the upper end of my weekly bell curve, it will dip on the tues/thurs fasting combo and by having a porportional idea of what kind of food we will be eating, it will become second nature.

Now to see how well I can stick to this. It's more open ended and that's something I struggle with as a concept, but I just started getting new clothes and they fit me now, so I need to stay in this range to stick to my goal of never buying a 'size up' again.

15 Days Later - Reality Vs Normality

2 weeks afterwards, the reality of returning to normality has hit home.

While I would like to think that my habits had changed, it was shockingly easy to allow myself to eat terribly and start to undo the work I had done. And in a surprising amount of time. In less than two weeks I had put back on approximately 6-7 kilos.

Chocolate and sugary foods were the worst culprits. Because I had so little in the last year I ALLOWED myself little splurges, (one or two pieces can't hurt too much on their own?, I can't keep it up and won't do it again!).

Apparently I am lying bastard. Now it might seem harsh, but the more I look at it the more I see that it's all on me. I chose to accept this and my choices put me on the path to eating rubbish when I simply don't need to and ultimately don't want to. No one was trying to get me back on the chuck-wagon, most people know better than to try and convince me of anything let alone direct me to do things I don't want.

At first I was okay with it, because I expected to put on some weight and I had said to myself that 85 kilos was a good weight, having been down to 81 and feeling that it was a little too thin, and even getting comments from others to that effect.

But then it kept going, and I found myself eating crap food without thought to consequence, or worse, thinking that because I had lost a tonne of weight already, I had wiggle room. My stated goal of having to never buy bigger size clothes was still the 'upper' limit of what I could do.

This simply meant I was making excuses for eating badly.

My body rebelled and punished me, it felt lethargic and weary and the aftereffects of eating crap showed up immediately. My mind though had plenty of patterns and habits to fall back on and I kept making excuses for it.

Just one more won't hurt, I'll plateau and it will stop, I'll take it more seriously tomorrow.

You would think after a year of hard (ish) work to get where I am, losing 45 kilos, disciplining myself without  fail and mostly without exception (I can count exceptions in a year on one hand ) that I would not be so fucking stupid and let that happen.

But I did, and was okay with it.

For about 2 weeks.


To me this what a drug addiction is like - just without all the scary and much more serious and immediate consequences? I don't actually know this for sure, and don't meant to belittle serious and life threatening  addictions in anyway - but this is a good metaphor for me. I have to treat myself to my own version of rehab.

So while I am not going back to the strict regimes of my Uber Diet and I am not going back to the diet roundabout of a diet a month, I am regulating my diet again. 

Maybe I have to do this for the rest of my life, it's not that hard and I still enjoy food and am far from the picture of a miserable and self hating dieter, but obviously it can be so easy to put it all back on again. Maybe that's hyperbole and I'd never put it ALL on, but why put any of it back on really?

I feel fantastically better when I eat well. I sleep better, its better for my wife and kids, it's just better full stop.

I do have to buy new clothes, but dammit I am buying them and getting ones that fit, not settling for having slightly bigger clothes that I know I can 'eat up to'

That way lies madness.

Post Year of Diet Breakdown: 365 Days, 13 Diets, 45 Kilos

After a year of dieting I would have a lot of data to display, piece by piece I'll add them to my blog for interest's sake.

Graph One: Weight At the end of each Diet.

Graph Two: Amount of Kilograms lost per Diet.

 Graph Three: Weight Loss as a Line Graph with figures

It's all over, Rover! BMI Weight Achieved!

So after the final fast day I finally get where I never thought possible.

I am now officially (technically, or whatever you want to call BMI) a healthy weight.

My BMI (Trefathen calculation) is under 25 and now at the very upper range.

Also this marks the loss of over 45 kilograms in a year marked by 13 diets, the reintroduction of exercise and a quantum shift in my eating habits and taste.

It's been a quick year in some respects, not as hard as it sounds and certainly fascinating.

Will it make a good book? No idea, but considering the response that such a change gets from people and the apparent inspiration it gives people it's worth a crack.

IF I can write it without being holier than thou, without being a dick, without being an expert, without knowing what I was doing and without being humourless.

Most importantly, without an extra 45 kilograms.
(OK it's obviously not going to be without a little self-satisfaction).

I'll work on some stats and figures for my final blog post for this project - I'll check back maybe once a month and keep myself honest on my ongoing weight - which I expect to rise, but not more than the clothes size I currently wear.

I'll wait a month before buying a new wardrobe, that way I should know what size I will settle at.

My friends should be well over this by now, but thanks to everyone who supported and encouraged - even though I rejected all such notions initially, once I was underway the ego boost was significant and bloody helpful in some doubtful times (the plateaus).

 

The New Plan - Day Sixteen

The last day - a year later.

The final day is today and I will be fasting for the day starting at a weight of 82.4 kilograms.

Yesterday I consumed less than a thousand calories, I was not fasting but I was not that hungry so I just ate what I ate which was all vegetarian and sugar free with a fruit based dinner.

Seems like this day has been coming for a long time since I started the final countdown and Uber-Diet phase and now that it's here it's a bit odd to think that it will all be over in 24 hours.

The rest of the week will be interesting to see how I adjust to life with no restrictions, I have lunch booked on Wed, Thu, Fri and dinner out on Saturday. Will I be a cheap date and eat like a bird or will I make up for it with eating everything that looks good?

Not sure I'd go that far - but the menus at Hard Luck and Molten are very enticing.