When The Moon Hits Your Eye...

... Like a big pizza pie, that's... so low syn it should be a crime!

Bonjourno!

Life has been ca-razayy as of late, what with moving house, new jobs and whatnot, but I've decided to share something amazing with you. So, my current weight loss stands at an amazing 5 stone and 4.5lbs! I can't believe how far I've come in such a short amount of time, it just proves how much Slimming World does work, especially when you stay to group and get the support. 

I've seen a lot of posts on Instagram recently about changing the bases of pizzas for things such as smash and grated cauliflour (something I'm a little reluctant to try since smash seems to play havoc with my stomach). The one I found does have a syn value, but compared to the syns in actual pizza - I read somewhere that Domino's can get up to 600 syns! - it's really tasty!



For Slimming World Pizza Pies, you will need:
2 Old El Paso Stand 'n' Stuff Tortillas (4.5 syns each)
Tomato Passata or Puree
Any of your chosen pizza toppings
40g cheese (HEXA)

Preheat the oven to 200°c, then fill your tortillas about 3/4 of the way full with your chosen toppings. My favourites are chicken, ham, mushrooms and sweetcorn. Little tip, if you cut everything up small, you can get lots more toppings inside! Fill the remainder of the tortilla with passata (add some garlic and herbs to give it more flavour if you like) and divide the cheese between the two. Cook in the oven until the tortilla is crispy on top and the cheese has melted (around 10-15mins).

These are so amazing, I have them all the time and feel like I'm eating something really bad for me, when they're so low in syns its amazing! Enjoy!
Ciao!
x

Weekly Shopping Recipes

Bonjourno!

How is it already October? I feel like I've only just perfected my summer wardrobe and now I have to roll out the jumpers and scarves. It's a great excuse to eat some fabulously heart warming food now that the weather is a little bit colder, I'm finding that salad for lunch just isn't cutting it anymore, I need something that will warm my soul!

This week I've decided to show you all my shopping list, and what kind of Slimming World food I would make with it. I'm a self-confessed bargain hunter, and I won't spend any more than I have to on food that I know I can find cheap. I also like to buy in bulk and make meals that I can freeze if I need to, which is really useful for lunches the next day - especially when they're hot and filling in weather like this!

So here is my current shopping list (I'm actually heading out this evening to get it!)

As you can see, myself and my partner like to plan what we are eating throughout the week, and work out which days we're working so that we can plan who is going to cook. My partner likes to cook on his days off, because he feels bad that I tend to cook 5 days out of 7 (which I am definitely supportive of!). The 'fend 4 self' just means that I won't cook for both of us, we will just forrage from what we have in the fridge. Days like that are great for me to have more speed, because he really doesn't like vegetables, so on those days I tend to have some kind of meat with lots of veggies.

Monday

Salad is a must on a monday for me because I have weigh day on a Tuesday, so I like to get in as much last minute speed as I can. This week I'm making quiche, which I can have with veggies and my partner can have with onion rings or chips. He likes the Slimming World food that I make, but occasionally he likes to have something a little more synful. I'll put chicken and mushrooms in my syn-free quiche, and have it with broccoli, cauliflour and carrots.

Tuesday

Like I said, Tuesdays are weigh day for me, so I try not to eat much throughout the day. Once I've been weighed I have something for a cheat meal, so that I won't crave any junk food throughout the week. This week we'll buy some frozen pizzas and have them with added toppings.

Wednesday

Although it says spaghetti and meatballs, when I went to Iceland they didn't have any of the Slimming World meatballs left :( so we changed the idea and decided to have some chicken with the spaghetti instead. I'll make a tomato sauce with passata, herbs, mushrooms and peppers.

Thursday

It's around this time of the week when I try and be a little bit more creative, and maybe try a recipe that I haven't tried before. I saw this recipe on the BBC programme "Eat Well For Less" and adapted it so that it would be Slimming World friendly. It's basically cous cous with tinned salmon, mushrooms, peppers and sweetcorn with some added flavour from herbs. I can't wait to try it!

Friday

Thankfully my partner is off work today so decided he wanted to cook. He's a dab-hand at cooking meat and loves to sizzle us some steaks on his days off. This week we're going to have lamb steaks with syn free chips, veg for me and onion rings for him.

Saturday

Again, we changed our minds after I'd taken this picture! We're going out for lunch on Saturday, so changed the meal from slow cooked pulled pork to syn free steak bakes, because lunch will be quite big so we didn't want something huge for tea. I love these, and the recipe is on my blog :)

I hope you enjoyed my shopping list, and maybe it's inspired you to have some meals that you haven't tried! 

Ciao!

x

Shocking Revelations

Bonjourno!

I seem to start every blog by apologising for the lack of posts, but I have actually been super busy with work and other things - trying to sort out moving house makes me want to eat cake! However, I did have the chance to try out a few new things recipe wise, as I felt as though I was getting into a rut where I was eating the same things over and over and not really enjoying anything that I was eating because it was all so samey.

Saying that, I'm open to suggestions, so please comment below if you've tried anything exciting this week, I'm running out of ideas of things to do with pasta and rice, so please let me know if you've had something tasty!

This week was a tad up and down. Normally, my slimming world consultant is just lovely, supportive and enthusiastic about slimming world, but this week things have just turned on their head. Basically, I was perusing Instagram one day and came across a post about new hifi bars. Just to stress, this person was NOT a consultant, nor had she mentioned anything about when the bars were out. Being a supportive person as I am, I screenshotted the pictures and posted it to my local group's Facebook page, thinking that everyone would be as excited as I was, because the flavour sounded really good. About an hour later, I got a message from my consultant asking "where on earth I had found this" and "the consultant that is feeding me this info should be fired" because i am "always in the know and it makes her look stupid". 

The message really upset me, and at that point I was ready to not go back to that group, find another one and tell her to eff off. It wasn't until the next day that she messaged me saying that she'd just had an awful group that night and my post "tipped her over the edge".

Am I in the wrong here? No one ever said that these hifi bars were a secret, and since they were shared on Instagram, surely most people know about them by now? I feel degraded and like this whole Slimming World thing isn't about support anymore.

Still, the support from this blog is just amazing and I couldn't do it without you guys <3

Ciao!
x

Half Syn Three Course Meal

Bonjourno!

I've decided that I'm actually going to take the time to write more of these blog posts, since I recently hit 3000 views (which I could not be more grateful for!). I have a lot of blog post ideas for recipes and snacks to help inspire and motivate people just like me, who are losing weight the slimming world way.
It was nice over the summer to actually spend some time with my partner, we work opposite shifts so as I'm coming home from work he tends to be heading off.. it's a bit of an annoyance! So when he managed to squeeze a day off in the summer he decided to treat me to a slap up slimming world three course meal - which he only ended up cooking the main course! It was so tasty, and only ended up being half a syn for the whole thing, which was amazing! So here are the recipes for everything we made, the syn values, and some pictures to get your mouths watering.

Starter - Stuffed Cheesy Garlic Mushrooms

You will need:
2 Portobello Mushrooms
1/2 tub Quark
Garlic Powder
40g Mozzarella

This one is so simple, just mix the garlic powder and the quark until it's a smooth paste, fill the mushrooms with it and add the cheese on top. Put them in a preheated 180° C oven for 10 minutes until the cheese on top has gone a lovely brown colour. 

Main Course - Steak and chips

You will need:
2 pieces of rump steak (all fat removed)
2 large potatoes
Any veg/salad to accompany 

First, preheat the oven to 200° C. Wash, peel and cut the potatoes into chip shapes, spray an oven tray with fry light, place the potatoes on then spray again with the fry light. These take around 20-30 minutes to cook. In the mean time, heat a griddle pan to a medium/high heat and spray with fry light. Cook the steak however you like it, I personally prefer it medium/rare. Serve the steak with any veggies or salad that you like.

Pudding - Jelly and Cream

This one is definitely the easiest, take the remaining quark and add sweetener until it's at your preference, it tastes so good! Then serve it with a Hartley's 10cal jelly of any flavour, which is only 1/2 syn! 

I haven't had such a good meal in a long time, and I only had to make a little part of it. Maybe he should cook for me more often ;)

Ciao!
x

A Syn Free Pasty?!

Bonjourno!

I do apologise, these blog posts are getting further and further apart! My life has just been so crazy busy since I started my new job, and although I've had the entire summer off (perks of working in a school) I still had loads and loads of things to do. 
After coming back from Alton Towers, we went to see my family up in Newcastle, and spent a long week with lots of small children! It was really nice to see my family again -  I only really get to see my sister once or twice a year because she lives so far away. 

Anyway, I was browing the interwebs looking for some new ideas for Slimming World recipes, as I'd been totally off plan for a while and not really lost that much weight since I got my 4 stone award. I thought about just giving up completely since it was so nice to eat whatever I wanted, but when I had the shock of the scales, it pushed me right back to knowing that I needed Slimming World. So browing around and I came across this recipe for a syn free Steak Bake.

I know exactly what you're thinking, syn free and steak bake are not words that you would normally associate with each other. But when I made the recipe, I can honestly say that it was amazing - even my partner enjoyed it!

You Will Need:

Asda Chosen By You Stewed Steak (400g tin) (This is the only one in Asda that is syn free, but there are a few other options around other shops)
Kingsmill Wholemeal Sandwich Thin (HEXB)
Egg

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees, then put around half of the tin into the sandwich thin. In a bowl, beat the egg, then use it seal the edges of the pasty, and brush over the top to make sure it crisps up. Put it in the oven for around 10-15 mins, or until the top is nice and browned.

This recipe is so simple, you can rustle these up in a matter of seconds and have a tasty snack!

Ciao!
x

Fun Times At Alton Towers

Bonjourno!

I know it's been a REALLY long time since I've written a blog post, but honestly my life has gotten super busy over the last few weeks and I've barely had any time to myself to write anything. I can't apologise more, and I'll try harder now that the schools have broken up and I have six whole weeks to myself (woo!). 

So, I don't know if I've mentioned it on this blog before, but myself and my partner had decided that we were going to celebrate the start of the holidays with a sneaky trip down to Alton Towers while the kids were still at school (side note, we actually planned this before the tragic crash on the Smiler..), so that the queues weren't so bad. I took to Twitter to talk about some of the issues I had with going - was I too fat? Was I too wide? Were my thighs too big? The list went on and on. I did some serious - and I mean serious, like hours of internet trawling and searches - research to find out exactly what the heigh/weight/fatness restrictions were around Alton Towers.

People online were really kind - I was hoping to get my 4 stone award before I went (which I did, eeeeee!) just to give me that extra confidence I needed. And after literally changing my mind about six times about whether I wanted to go, we just packed a bag and went, though I was a little apprehensive about it.

So day 1 started off pretty great, standing in the queue for Rita (0-60mph in 2 seconds, insane!) I was actually shaking, I really didn't want to hear the oh so famous "sorry, could you just get off?" and have to make the walk of shame. To my ultimate surprise, the restraint came down over me and fit me fine, I even had room to spare! This boosted my confidence completely and I was ready to take on the world. I even managed to get on Th13teen, which I was sure was going to be too small.
So then we reached Air. Infamous Air. Having done a lot of research about it, lots of people had mentioned that there were bigger seats on row 4, so that was my plan. I even took the courage to ask the really kind woman at the entrance to the ride if she thought that I would fit. She was really nice and suggested the bigger seats, saying that she had seen massive blokes go on it and have no issue. 

Right, I thought, I'll go for this, made a bee line for the 4th row and sat down, pulled the restraint down. Shit, it won't go down. Cue the attendant. "Can you move up a bit and try it again?" Nope, nothing, still won't come down. Fuck this, I'll just get off before I embarrass myself even more. Doing the walk of shame has never been so humiliating. Cue floods of tears, general swears and a fuck this, we're going home attitude. 

After a while of talking and calming down, we decided to try Nemesis. Another pull down restraint. The queue was minimal, so we got on straight away. Again, couldn't pull the thing down, so I got off and went to speak to a man. This part is amazing, because this man that I spoke to deserves a raise for what he did for me. I was still in so much of a tizz from what had happened on Air that I burst into tears right in front of him. He was so kind and took us to a quiet place to talk about it, where I explained what had happened. He gave us free priority passes to come back when I had calmed down, where he would let me try a seat at the back to avoid embarrassment, if not he said I could try a bigger seat, which he even said was probably too big anyway.

So later that day we went back, and he was so kind once more, and to my actual amazement, I got on! And not in the bigger seats, in the normal ones! He said the restraints were half locked when people get on, so it's really hard to get them to where they need to be. 

I really can't get over the kindness of the staff there, really boosted my confidence, especially after what had happened earlier! To those planning a visit in the future, if you're not a size 10, then avoid Air, you have be a skinny minny to get on that asshat!

Hope you all have a wonderful summer,
Ciao!
Ps. Here's a cheeky photo to make you all laugh ;)
x

A Day In The Life...

Bonjourno!

I feel like it's been ages since I've written anything on here, and I'l be honest with you, I just haven't felt in the zone recently. I feel like no matter what I do, how many syns I have, if I have just one bad meal then my weight loss goes way down or I have a gain. For example, last week I went out and had a Nandos (not too bad on syns, around 20 for the whole meal) and stayed relatively low syn for the rest of the week to compensate, and still I only managed a half pound weight loss. I know I should be happier, after all it's better off than on, but I'm a really, really impatient person and feel like half a pound is nothing in the long run.

*sigh*

I will get over this down-in-the-dumps thing that I've got going on, I'm hoping to have a good loss this week and finally get my 3 and a half stone award!

So anyway, I've decided to let you into a little bit of my daily life, and show you what I eat during a normal extra easy day on Slimming World. Enjoy!


Breakfast

I normally can't be bothered to get out of bed early enough to make myself a decent breakfast, so I tend to just grab a cup of tea and start the day with two HiFi Lite bars (the chocolate ones are just amazing!)

Lunch

I try to stay as syn free as I can for lunch so that I can use my syns on snacks later. Lately I've been really getting into having salads, as they're really quick and easy to take to work with me. And you can always pop to Subway and have a fabulous syn free salad with all those lovely cuts of meat! The salad I had today had warm chicken and beetroot.

Snack

I don't know about you, but when I get home from work I literally want to eat everything in the cupboard. I have no idea why but I'm just so hungry! So when I came in I decided to spend some syns and have a bag of crisps, these bag of lovelies are only 3.5 syns!

Tea

Like lunch, I try to make low syn or syn free meals for tea so that I can snack later on. I love having lean meat with veg or a chicken pasta bake, or my own personal favoourite, spag bol! Tonight my boyfriend was kind enough to do some steaks in fry light on the griddle pan, and I roasted some potatoes in butter fry light, then added some fried mushrooms on the side. 

After tea I usually enjoy a cup of tea or coffe (green tea or fruit tea if I've had my healthy A that day) with some fruit and a muller light yoghurt.

I hope you've enjoyed a little insight to what I eat in a day!

Ciao
x