Slimming World Survival: My Top Five Free Foods For When I’m Craving Something Syn-tastic

I think we've all had one of those moments where, we know we're trying to eat well, but we just need something that at least tastes bad for you. When I'm in the mood for comfort food but I don't want to digging into my syn-stash, I usually rustle up one of the following, at a whopping 0 syns per serving:

1. (Spiced Up) Slimming World Chips. So the Slimming World Chips recipe is an oldie but a goodie. At first I was making them exactly the way their recipe states, but I found them a little... Bland? They made a reasonable side-dish to whatever meal you're having but they definitely didn't fill the void left by proper deep-fat-fryer home made chips. So I spiced them up a little bit. After I've boiled my potatoes and let them dry off a little, I sprinkle them with Nando's Peri Peri Salt (although I'm sure other spices would work fine). I also use the Garlic Infused Fry Light instead of plain as it adds a little something extra to the chips. Yum.

2. I definitely wasn't the worst for drinking fizzy drinks, but every now and then I just have a real craving for something sweet and fizzy. When the sugar craving hits I mix a little bit of no-added-sugar cordial (I like the Apple and Blackcurrant from Robinson's) with diet lemonade. Sweet, fruity, fizzy... and best of all, not a single syn in sight.

3. My biggest food vice is probably toast. For me, there is nothing you can eat that is more comforting than a piece of white or seeded bread, lightly toasted and coated in butter (just thinking about it is making me hungry). But alas, a single piece of white toast with butter is around 7-ish syns. So to fill the void I've been using my healthy extra's to rustle up cheese on toast, I take 28g of Cheddar Cheese (or the amount allowed of your preferred cheese from your Healthy A list) and 2 slices of wholemeal bread from a 400g loaf from Healthy B.

4. Mark's and Spencers "Just Add" range. Now not all of these are free, but my favourite pick from this range by far is the "Mexican Chicken" and it's on the list of syn-free options. It's great for an on-the-go snack or a light lunch. This is what's in my bag for lunch when I'm on late finishes at work since it's tasty and totally satisfying but it's syn free and also good for SP days. I try to avoid carbs on my late finishes and this is the thing that totally saves the day for me.

5. Steak, Bacon and Gammon. These three meats all come under the same heading for me: something I can have at home or away that always tastes like a proper treat. If you're making sure that the cuts you're going for are lean and that you're not frying them in fat then they're all deliciously slimming.

Tips For Eating Healthier: Meal Planning

When I decided to start trying to get back into shape (and I know round is technically a shape) I looked to Slimming World to be the healthy-eating push that I needed but getting used to cooking from scratch most nights was difficult at first. I have a schedule that's all over the place (shout out to anyone on a shift rotation!) and some weeks traditional meal-times just wasn't working for me. That's when I started looking into meal planning.

I must admit, going into it I wasn't sure; I thought meal planning would be really restrictive and that I'd struggle with not fancying what I'd planned for that meal, but it's been a lot easier than I thought it would be. Here's how I've been making it work for me:

1. Work out your schedule. A pretty standard tip I'm sure you'll agree, but one that's so important. If it's not just you that you're meal planning for take their schedule into account too: there's no point planning a meal for 2 people if the other one isn't home for that meal. I find this helps especially if you don't really have a set work routine - I work a shift rotation and my mum (who I'm meal planning with) also has a job with varying working hours but we meal plan together where we can.

2. Have a consistent day of the week to actually do your meal plan, I do my planning on Sunday's. I start by looking at what I have that needs using up, find recipes that involve those ingredients and then make a list of the things I need that I don't already have. Simples. If you want to get clever with this step, you can work your plan to have things that you can switch up in there too. For instance I like getting full chicken breasts because while my meal plan may have been for chicken kievs, if when that meal arrives I don't fancy them, I can marinate and roast my chicken breast, or I can cut my chicken breast into small chunks and have peri peri chicken pieces. I find having a well stocked spice rack helps with spontaneity which can help keep you from getting bored with your meal planning.

3. Plan things that actually work realistically with your schedule. My first week on late shifts, I was planning a proper evening meal and taking it to work in a Tupperware. Which meant I was waking up earlier to cook and I actually ended up hungrier and more tired for it. Now I'm more realistic and have a big breakfast before I leave and take pre-prepared fruit, veg and maybe a packet of pre-cooked meat or pasta with me to snack on and that's working much better than a proper meal on those shifts. Similarly when I'm on early starts I try to pre-prepare my lunch the night before so I can throw it in my bag and go in the morning.

4. Work your food shops into your plan. This is another area where I was messing up initially with my meal planning. I'd plan to something with fresh ingredients 3-4 days after my initial food shop and then have to give up on that plan as I didn't have time to go out and re-stock mid-week. We generally do the main shop on a Sunday and try to nip out again on the Wednesday or Thursday to restock if I can. If you know you're not going to have time to nip out for fresh ingredients mid-week, maybe plan to have fresh things like salads earlier in the week, and get your veg in later in the week by cooking up and freezing meals for days 5-7.

5. The most important thing to remember with meal planning is to not be too hard on yourself if you don't stick to it 100%. Things change, plans get switched up. Don't beat yourself up if you meal planned to have a healthy breakfast every day this week but woke up on the weekend in need of pancakes: you still had the healthy breakfast 6 days that week which (if you're anything like I used to be) is probably more than you normally would have.

Hope this helps!

I’m Back! Some Changes Around Here And The Beginning of My Healthy Living Mission

So... It's been a while. As much as I've been loving the blog and writing I've been investing time into some other things recently and found that my amount of free time was running pretty low. I'd been burning my candles at both ends and ended up crashing pretty hard and decided I needed to take a step back to re-evaluate some things. Which is really just a long winded way of saying I'm going to be switching up my schedule for the foreseeable future and will now be posting on Tuesdays and Fridays.

It's been a tough decision but I realised that I'd been avoiding the blog for a few weeks now because I knew I don't have the time or energy to continue producing 3 good posts a week. I didn't want to start posting sub-par content or become unpredictable with my schedule and thought reducing it down to just 2 posts a week might make things more manageable. I'm not going to sit here and make excuses for myself but I have a full time job outside of blogging and trying to keep up with a relatively demanding schedule on top of my job was taking some of the fun out of it for me.

Anyway, now that all of that is out of the way, what have I been up to lately you might be asking? Trying to get myself back into shape, mainly. (I know that somewhat rounded is a technically a shape, but you know what I mean). For those of you who didn't know; I work in a call centre, which involves a surprising amount of being bribed with junk food and a very non-surprising amount of sitting down all day. That in combination with my range of very active hobbies (blogging and binge-watching TV shows on Netflix) and a diet of Domino's and freezer food resulted in a gradual but substantial weight gain.

Whilst, strictly speaking, I'm currently on a diet, I'm following the Slimming World programme and I'm hoping to use it's "food optimising" mindset to make some long-term healthy lifestyle choices. I've used this healthy-eating model before but fell off the band wagon when a combination of a severe lack of cooking ability and messy shift patterns made proper meal prep something that needed attention. I've also joined a gym and have vowed to go at least 3 times a week (we'll see). I'm planning to do a few posts about how I'm making healthy living work for me which should hopefully be helpful to my fellow shift-rotation friends who are struggling.

So that's it for today, I hope you don't mind that I've had to cut back on my posts a little. Thanks for taking the time out of your days to read my posts. See you on Friday!