To live without addiction

I think everyone probably has a bit of an addiction to food and I have come to realise, over years of struggling with weight loss, that it is never going to happen without a bit of a detox from sugar. To this end, this week I have made a few drastic changes to my eating habits. For two weeks I am giving up the following:

• Sugar (except lactose, because I can’t do all this and also be denied a comforting cup of tea)
• Starchy and refined carbohydrates

I am hoping that this will help with food cravings, which are never because I am hungry but just because I want food. Perhaps I am bored or unhappy about something, but neither of these reasons are good enough to eat a sugary or salty snack. They say that weight loss in 80% diet (annoyingly), so I made this my primary priority.

I have always been perfectly happy to go without breakfast, so my first step has been to properly decide what to have for lunch whilst I am at work. This week I decided to make two soups that I have been alternating between. I made a Red Lentil, Chickpea and Chilli Soup (without the chilli) from BBC Good Food, which I have found to be a very reliable source of most of my favourite recipes. It is very quick to make (it only takes 35 minutes) and is very flavoursome (and with lots of cumin, which I love). I have also made Madhur Jaffrey’s Green Soup (from her book, ‘Indian Cooking’), which is a curried pea soup (more cumin) and a new but very delicious addition to my collection of recipes.

My thinking is that both of these recipes are both very filling and neither will get too boring, so I won’t be tempted to supplement my lunch with other, less healthy options. I have also bought some little pots of 0% fat plain yogurt, which I have found help to curb hunger and therefore works well as a mid-morning or afternoon snack.

I have read that while it only takes two weeks to form a habit, it takes forty days to break one, so I know that I am going to have to be very intentionally careful for at least one and a half months, which will give me lots of time to build up a good repertoire of different soups and other ideas for healthy lunches. My aim will be to not get tired of what I am having for lunch and that will require weekly change. Alongside this I have also been consciously drinking at least two of my water bottles per day and in order to incentivize myself I have been rationing my tea, which definitely works because I love tea!

Then comes dinner. Since I have given up starchy and refined carbohydrates, I have been having a normal meal, but without the accompanying rice, pasta or potatoes and have been trying to replace them with green vegetables (in fact, I have finally discovered what my favourite vegetable is: samphire! I have had it in restaurants many times, but never known what it was called, so it is exciting to be able to have it at home now).

I have also been very careful with my portion sizes as there is no point trying to eat healthy food and then eating too much of it. I have been taking a travel mug sized portion of soup to work each day for lunch and portions in the evening have been vastly helped by the lack of accompanying carbs – it has certainly been a good way of very easily eliminating some calories.

Next up: exercise!

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