Making your veggies come to life…
ByOne of the challenges when following this eating plan is coming up with interesting, quick and easy ways to cook vegetables and make them inspiring.
Many people have mental blocks when it comes to cooking vegetables and it can be areal stumbling block when it comes to loosing weight
It’s really easy to fry or grill a portion of meat or fish that tastes great just on it’s own.
Vegetables can be an altogether different matter especially the ones that we need to be eating a lot more of… I’m talking about broccoli, cauliflower,cabbage and asparagus.
By getting a few good vegetable recipes added to your repertoire you’re meals will reach new heights of culinary excellence.
There are 2 books that have really helped me in this regard that I recommend that you get if you really like cooking and eating well. If your happy with your steamed cabbage with a bit of pesto on it then save the space in your kitchen and don’t get the book.
The first book is Leith’s Vegetarian Bible
With some cookery books they have great ideas for what goes together but they go and ‘mess’ it up by adding way too much of an ingredient that’s not suitable for fat loss.
However in Leiths Vegetarian Bible most of the recipes are pretty much spot on and don’t need much tweaking to fit in with the Four Week Fat Loss eating plan.
I’ll be picking out some of my favorite recipes from this book and letting you know about them
over the coming weeks and months.
The other book I really like is Carluccios Vegetables.
He has lots of easy to cook tasty italian vegetable recipes, home cooking style that you’ll never find in your typical Italian restaurant.
Matt Lovell
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7 Comments
March 27th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
hi matt, its all going well and i’m taking my supplements cod liver multi vits and green tea, but i do really like a few cups of normal granulated coffee with milk and 1 sugar [brown] should i be aiming to drop the coffee etc ???
although ive only returned the phase 2 email i did begin it on tuesday 24th march. cheers
March 27th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Drop the sugar! – if you are having 4 cups a day then it’s another 20g of refined carbs, like eating another meal and one which will hamper your progress.
You can have black coffees and if you really need to then use splenda or just learn to enjoy them with no sweetener.
Having a sweet tooth will make long term control of your fat difficult.
I’m pleased the intensive phase is going well.
April 1st, 2009 at 5:14 am
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April 19th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Hi Matt
Marc again (sorry!). Hope you are well. I am starting in earnest tomorrow on the intense phase but have been trying a couple of meals out to try to get the hang of the quantities and am a little confused, as I think I have got it a little wrong. Here the issue:
I am about 101kg (depending upon the scale that one uses!!), aiming to get to around 89kg. So, based upon your tables in the e-book, I extrapolated to the following daily figures:
200g protein (50g per meal)
90g carbs (22.5g per meal)
90g fat (22.5g per meal)
Here is the thing. I bought a prepp’d 350g bag of cauliflower and broccolli florets from Tesco’s. Checking the Nutrional values table, it highlighted the following values per 100g:
Protein: 3.9g
CARBS: 2.5g
So, according to my calculations from the above, to get 22.5g carbs from these veg, I would need to eat 900g of these!!!!!! And that would almost fill my protein requirement on it’s own! I tried to eat 350g (1 pack)(with a 140g salmon fillet and a large handful of lettue leaves) but I could not get throught it.
To be honest, I think the figures on the pack must be wrong, or I must have worked it out wrong. Could you give me some guidance on the necessary quantities of vegetables for someone of my size, as I am a little lost?
Many thanks
Marc
April 20th, 2009 at 7:01 am
Hi Marc,
This is when you need to use your instinct as well as the guidelines.
The gram amounts for carbs are maximum amounts per meal. i would also eat a little less than your target weight say aim for a 75kg or 80kg person.
I prefer to stick to the palms for counting in my meals. I’d use 2 palms for protein (or 1 1/2) and a maximum of 4 palms of fibrous vegetables (ignoring the total carbs)
Also dont worry about the protein in veg and the carbs in meats (there is a bit) you’ll be adding some condiments as well for flavour and herbs and spices contain carbs as well.
Also remember if you are full – then stop eating! I would eat the protein 1st in the meal and then eat the vegetables afterwards.
Matt
April 20th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Hi Matt
Thanks for the feedback. I will make a best guess and give it a go.
Rgds
Marc
April 20th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Try the palms Marc, they work really well.
Keep me posted as well.
Good luck.
Matt