no post? you cheeky bugger, I’ve gone and updated the FAQ page

But perhaps you’ve already seen it? If not, the new content is below and the link to the full page is here. Share the whole page with your slimming cohorts and make us proud!

Oh, I’ve also added random graphs to the page, because why not? Here they are!

  

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Can I detox? My mate swears by a detox programme where she drinks nothing but horse piss and vinegar and she’s lost weight!

I’m not a scientist, not least because I’m too fat for a lovely white lab coat – I’d look like someone had parked a caravan in the corridor. Plus my interest in science extended to melting pens in the Bunsen burner and retching during the birth video we were made to watch during Sex Education week. Sex education in our school was a bust – all the boys were taken away and shown how to roll a condom onto a cucumber (no wonder men have such self-esteem problems when it comes to their cocks – to make it realistic they should have given out cucumbers, gherkins and those tiny pickle slices you get in burgers) and all the girls were taught how to best plug up their minnie-moo. Then we were shown a particularly gruesome video of someone popping a baby out and that was that. There was no mention of gay sex, despite me staying behind late and dropping my pencil case on the floor in front of the teacher with a leer on my face and a wink in my eye. That last bit wasn’t true. I never had a pencil case!

Anyway how the fuck did I get there? Ah yes. I’m not a scientist. But you don’t need to be to know detoxing is a load of shite, especially when you have to buy something in order to facilitate getting rid of the ‘bad toxins’. They always follow the same pattern – spend an obscene amount of money to buy some weird gel, powder or mix, restrict your calorie intake to something like 500 calories a day, and then sit there slack-jawed as the weight falls off. Well, the weight isn’t coming off because of the gel, is it? It’s coming off because you’re not eating enough calories to keep your body going, and as soon as you get back onto normal eating, all that lovely fat is going to rush back on. But at least your lips won’t be blue.

Put succinctly, don’t get suckered in by all the talk of dramatic weight loss and ‘I’VE NEVER FELT BETTER’. People are out to make money from slimming but the only way to do it is to eat healthily, exercise more and maintain that lifestyle going forward. No amount of gels, potions and nonsense will speed that up – because, think about it, if that were the case, none of us would need Slimming World, would we? To that end, that’s the joy of Slimming World – there’s no fancy chemical or procedure, just good honest food and plenty of support.

What are the basics?

You need to understand that I’m not a consultant and all of this is based on my own experience with Slimming World. You should consult your book, ring a class, check online if you have any queries or questions. I’m not your keeper!

So – most of your food will come from what they optimistically call ‘Free Foods’. You can eat as much of this stuff as your little tummy will hold – though stop when you feel full. There’s no weighing or measuring with this, just eat eat eat. Common sense applies – a potato is free, that family pack of Walkers Sensations that you’ve already ate in the back of your car isn’t.

Then, choose a Healthy Extra A and a Healthy Extra B. These are measured ‘extras’ that you should have during the day – to put it bluntly, your Healthy Extra B (fibre) will make sure you’re going for a shit whereas the Healthy Extra A ensures the bones in your ankles won’t snap on the way.

Finally, you get to use your syns. Syns, on top of being a spelling pedant’s worst nightmare, are Slimming World’s way of keeping you in control whilst still obliging your fatty-boom-boom tendencies. Any food that isn’t free or part of your Healthy Extra will have a syn value, and as a general rule, you’re encouraged to spend between 5 and 15 a day. So if you fancy a bar of chocolate, you can have one (a Kitkat Chunky is 12.5 syns, so you could have one a day!) and if you’re heading for a night out, you can still drink. Thank Christ eh, imagine meeting your friends whilst sober.

Finally, you’re supposed to make sure a third of your meal is made up from speed foods. We’re talking most vegetables (most, but check your books) and fruit, so put some berries in your yoghurt or serve your evening meal with a lovely salad.

Confession time: I don’t always bother with this, and I haven’t burst into flame just yet. I get the odd drunken phone call from an ex-consultant telling me that because I failed to stick 100% to plan she’d had to remortgage the house and sell her children into slavery, but well, tough tit.

What then is a S Food? Or a P Food? And F? And C?

Slimming World like letters of the alphabet, that’s for sure. Some free food have these various labels added on to denote they’re:

(S) Speedy food (they’ll fill you up with far fewer calories)

(P) Protein-rich (they’ll keep you fuller for longer)

(F) Fibre-full (they’ll keep things moving)

(C) Calcium-rich (they’ll stop you having teeth like a row of condemned houses)

What’s happened to Red and Green?

Well, can you hear me back there in the DISTANT PAST? Shall I call you on your Nokia 3310 after Series 1 of Big Brother? EH? Red and green days were the old ways, grandma – mainly meat on a red day, mainly carbs and veg on a green day. I lost seven stone this way but when I came back to Slimming World, with both sets of cheeks burning (one through embarrassment at putting the weight on and the other through general chaffing), everything had changed. It had gone to Extra Easy – one unified plan. It then changed slightly again with the introduction with Extra Easy: SP. But that nonsense is for another entry.

a serious post about anxiety

James here – posting yet again from work, activating a draft post because I’m stuck at work! This whole week has been an absolute bust diet wise – couldn’t get to class tonight either, so I can’t even assess how much damage I’ve done. Meh, a week off. Back on it tomorrow. Tell you what, I can’t even tell you all truthfully that it’s been wonderful eating lots of chocolate and nonsense because I actually feel bloated and oily! The problem is, when I’m working late, there’s nothing healthy to hand, and I do need to eat – so we end up getting in takeaway which sounds great in principle but eating Chinese at 11pm with a couple more hours of work ahead of you doesn’t do well for the diet. That said, I feel considerably less bloated now because in the middle of that sentence I had to excuse myself, nip to the gents and let rip a fart that I’m surprised didn’t tear the tiles off the wall. Good lord. Anyway: tomorrow something new and exciting comes onto the blog. And not in that way. We’re experimenting! Here’s this evening’s post…it’s actually a serious one for a change!

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Serious post tonight, folks, though I’ll chuck in a few jokes because why the hell not. I received an email from wordpress (the guys who host my blog) saying happy anniversary – it’s been three years since you set up your blog. My first thought was that I had clearly stroked out for a few months because I was sure twochubbycubs had only been going for a few months, but then I twigged it was actually my first blog where I documented my ‘battle’ with health anxiety. I was so proud of that blog’s name – I called it shakerattleanddroll because of my obsession with my shaking (Parkinsons), rattling (tablets) and droll (the sparkling wit you all know and love). Mulling on it a moment or two, I thought it might be a decent thing to talk about anxiety to give some hope to anyone out there suffering with it.

I suffer from health anxiety – I’d go so far to say that it doesn’t affect me so much anymore and that I have a handle on it, but I’ll still have the occasional wobble (the wobble being a clear sign that I’ve got vertigo, or balance problems, or seasickness, or a brain tumour). Anxiety is an awful, awful thing and those who dismiss it as anything other than a serious illness can kiss my arse. I’m a strong-minded, confident bloke and I was brought to my knees through health anxiety – quite genuinely the worst three months of my life. I became hyper-sensitive to every little thing that my body did and what it meant – always the worst case scenario, and was completely unable to relax or think straight for months. Imagine always fearing you were about to die.

My obsession became multiple sclerosis – I became genuinely quite convinced that I had MS simply because my eyes were aching and I had perceived weakness in my right leg. I had, quite innocently, typed those symptoms into Dr Google and of course, the worst case scenario came up. I knew nothing about MS at the time (I could write a fucking book on it now) but everything ‘clicked’ in such a way that I started experiencing other common symptoms – balance problems, forgetfulness, more vision problems, which only reinforced my belief. I spoke to doctors who ruled it out but I knew that MS is an incredibly hard thing to actually diagnose because there isn’t a concrete test for it, so I ignored them. It’s actually a very common disease for those with health anxiety to latch onto for this very reason – plus a lot of the symptoms of anxiety and MS match up, and the more you worry about having MS, the more your anxiety grows, the worse the symptoms get…

Then, because I saw an article on Parkinsons, I became convinced that I was suffering from that purely because my hands were shaking a little. Just like that, MS was forgotten (and it seems ridiculous to me now) and Parkinsons became the focus. Pick up a piece of paper by the corner and hold it in front of you – watch the edges shake a little. It’s perfectly normal. But to me that was a sign I was going to spend my life unable to type and never eating peas again. Eventually, I pretty much snapped through all of the worry and went to talk to my doctor, who god bless her, went through each and every one of my ‘symptoms’ and told me it was anxiety.

I was put onto an anti-depressant called citalopram for six months – only a small dose, but enough to ‘take the edge off’ my worries. It worked to some extent because it dulled my senses and stopped me thinking about every little thing, but I was cynical about it working. Then it happened – a few peaceful hours became a full day, one day became two, two days became a week, and I just stopped worrying, and I stopped taking the tablets and felt fine. Paul was an absolute wonder through all of this, being my constant rock, as always, and I do try and tell him how thankful I am.

It’s not perfect – even now I catastrophise – if I have a headache, I’ll immediately start running through my mind the possibilities: brain tumour (unlikely, I’m not seeing blue flashes), mad cow disease (possibly, I grew up on cheap beef), stroke (touch each tooth with the tip of your tongue, if you can do that, you’re not having a stroke). Crazy. But, I know how to deal with it – I take solace in statistics. The same logic and rationale that gets me onto an aeroplane keeps me from flipping out over health worries. I’ve had a weird tic in my left eye for a good few weeks now but I don’t care, and that feels good.

I’m not posting all of this for attention or for people to say ‘Oooh, haven’t you done well’ – in fact, no comments wanted, I know I’ve got it licked. No, I’m posting this because if anyone is reading this and going through anxiety themselves – whether health anxiety, general anxiety or just a period of depression, know that it does, and will, get better. At my darkest I thought I’d suffer for the rest of my life and to be quite honest, it’s probably always going to be a small part of me, but I go weeks without thinking about it and I can’t, genuinely, remember the last time it was a problem. It might feel neverending or that there’s no hope, but there’s always something positive to cling to, and things always get better in the end. I did…!

twochubbycubs’ European tour – week five – Croatia

For week five, we’re going to Croatia!

And be warned, today’s stew contains a stable ingredient. Literally, because I’m using horse. When Paul told me I’d be getting my lips around a black beauty, I thought my birthday had come early, but he merely meant this tasty horse-based stew from Croatia. Now listen – you can swap beef in if you’re a big fan of the whinnying little buggers, but I’m not, so into my belly it goes.

Speaking of horses, I’m handing over the reins tonight to my other half, who I’ve blackmailed into writing a blog post to give my fingers a rest. He’s out of beta, and releasing on time! Enjoy!

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A bit of an unusual one for today – and not just for the choice of meat but because I (Paul!) am writing today’s post, instead of James!

I’m usually the ‘behind the scenes’, younger, more handsome (James edit: he’s not) half of Two Chubby Cubs – I tend to cook the meals whilst James works his magic on them fancy words in the posts. I don’t mind, I quite enjoy cooking (though I’m still very much an amateur) and I can never be arsed after a day typing at work to then do the same at home. And, it lets me catch up on my boring programmes that James whinges about (look, Korean war bunkers ARE interesting. I don’t care what everyone says) (James edit: they’re not).

I’ve had a bit of a backward route into cookery, it has to be said. At school I can remember making shortbread and rolls, and the rest of the time was spent gossiping and trying to stealthily hit the ‘Emergency Stop’ button for the electric ovens so we didn’t have to do anything (90%+ success rate, btw) and could go back to yakking. It’s only really been in the last few years that I’ve had a stab at anything other than the plastic film on a ready meal and bunging into the microwave.

I suppose I can blame my mother for that, mealtimes at home at their most exotic never ventured past a jar of Uncle Ben’s Sweet and Sour Sauce poured over a pack of slightly-frosty Kwik-Save Chicken Wings in a Pyrex dish. She did dally with switching to BBQ Sauce somewhere in the mid-90’s but realised the error of her ways and went back to the lesser of the two evils. The chicken was never pre-cooked and whilst I’m not sure if that mattered it always had a slight pink hue and a chewy texture that made you feel like you had a corner of a baby wipe in your mouth. To this day I still can’t eat chicken that has any bones. For the only time in my life I’m solely a breast man.

One thing I did like though was Mince ‘n’ Mash which I still love, though is essentially a pack of mince boiled in the water of tinned carrots and chopped tomato juice. I love it. James can only digest it if it has half a jar of Bisto poured in and half a pack of couscous so the actual meal itself is so diluted he can’t taste it. He just doesn’t appreciate a bit of povo-grub.

It was during my mid-teens that I learnt that too much of a good thing can actually start to get on your wick. Ma offered me once a ‘Freschetta’ pizza that was on offer at the local Spar – you remember it – the four cheese (and it was only ever the four-cheese one I was given. Pepperoni was 10p more) – where the crust rose in the oven. It was DELICIOUS. But, of course, once I said that it was like a red rag to a lazy bull. The very next day I counted and I swear this is all completely true) SIX of the bloody things piled on top of each other, a pile that never, ever seemed to go down no matter how hard I tried (and by God, did I try). To begin with I was in absolute heaven – I even managed to figure out the best way to eat it – use the crust to squeeze out the sauce from under the cheese and mop it up, so that it doesn’t spoil the true heaven that is frozen four-cheese gooiness on a frozen yeasty-floury slab. Lahhhvely. Soon though I started to miss actually going to the bog and the Freschetta love affair was over. “But you said you liked ‘em!”, she said, dodgy tab hanging off her bottom lip that she bought from some gypo at Whittlesey market. “I did! But after three weeks I could really do with some bloody vitamins!”. My protestations fell on deaf ears and I had to wait until the offer at Spar ended before I could once again actually have a crap and eat something else. A similar crisis of the bowel nearly erupted a few weeks later when a delivery of water-damaged Findus Crispy Pancakes filled up the freezer but I knew I had to act fast and feigned an allergic reaction to the breadcrumbs. I cried in relief when I saw those yellow fingers reach into a plastic bag and put that jar of “Uncle Den’s” (times were hard) into the cupboard and calm was restored.

That’s probably why I got so fat. Not that I was ever that skinny before the pizzas came along, heavens no, but I certainly didn’t learn how to eat anything remote healthy. Couple all of that along with some knock-off sweets (Twax, Bouncy, Sprinters…) and it was a recipe for juvenile diabetes and a future shopping for clothes in the ‘husky’ sections at out-of-town garden centres.

This sort of thing pretty much carried on into my late-teens and didn’t end even after I left home. I soon went off to University and my bad eating habits carried on there. This time, however, with even less cooking as I realised my mother’s ability to switch the oven past 180 degrees made her look like Raymond Blanc next to my paltry skills and inability to even know how to chop an onion. I also had to get by on a paltry budget – £400 a month was my bursary and a good £370 of that was earmarked for fags, Lambrini and the monthly mince along to the Dot Cotton club (a gem on an otherwise clap-riddled, drab East Anglian gay scene. RIP Dot!). I also had to buy all my shopping in one go (immediately after that payment went into my account) before I pissed it all up the wall at the on-site Burger King, so it almost entirely went on crisps, chocolate and Diet Coke (gotta watch that figure, after all!) and for some reason no end of sauces. I remember coming home with bags and bags but having nothing that I could throw together into a proper meal, but you could have an absolute fiesta if you came to Room 231 armed with a battalion of breadsticks. This carried on and on and on and eventually I reached the whopping weight of 28 stone. There’s a picture of me somewhere where I’m standing against a wall, but my head is miles away from the wall itself. It’s awful. A combination of bad food and bad habits meant that any sort of weight-loss was going to be impossible (not that I was even trying). I became responsible mostly too for preparing the meals at the place I worked (hospital) which meant easy access to an endless supply of biscuits and other tidbits. I once ate 12 individual cherry cheesecakes that were destined for the patients’ table in one shift (sorry about that) and I routinely had a pint of whole milk and a packet of chocolate bourbons stashed out the back to get me through the day. I was also drinking loads in the evenings which would have meant even more calories bunged on top of stolen NHS produce. No end was in sight, but, I was young and I didn’t really care and I never really felt that ‘fat’ so had no intention of stopping.

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The rest of Paul’s story will come tomorrow! Don’t want to spoil you all, after all, it’s late and I want my hot chocolate. Tonight’s recipe:

To be fair, I think I’ve managed to bastardise two separate recipes here, but it stays fairly close to a Croatian staple – a stew from the Dalmatia area of Croatia. It’s normally served with gnocchi with parmesan, hence I’ve put them on above. It’s not the best picture, sorry.

A note on the horse. Horse is a very lean, very slimming meat and very good if you’re on a diet and don’t have any qualms about eating the poor buggers. I bought mine from www.musclefood.com but you can very easily swap it for beef, though try and get something nice and lean. I’ll say neigh more about it except to tell you it tasted like good lean meat!

The syns come from red wine (worked out at 2.5 syns per serving) and the gnocchi (1.5 syns). You could have it with mash and save the syns right there, and perhaps make a gravy with one of those red wine stock pots then I think it would be free. But honestly.

ingredients: 750g of horse steak or beef with no fat, cut into chunks, two large red onions, rosemary, 1/2 cup of red wine vinegar, two cloves of garlic peeled, a drop or two of oil or if you must, Frylight, two carrots, a celeriac, a bay leaf, two cloves, salt, pepper and paprika. You’ll also need a beef stock cube and some water. Oh, and around 300ml of red wine. I know fuck all about wine, go for something decent but remember it’s going to just evaporate off so…

recipe: slice your onions (Remember, use a mandolin. Quick and easy, just like the author) and chuck them in a pan with a bit of oil and salt to saute down. Add your horse/beef and brown it off. Now, cut up your carrot and celeriac and chuck them in, just for a moment or two, and chuck the red wine after it, high heat, let it boil off a bit. Finally, put everything into the slow cooker with all the spices and bay and seasoning, put on low, and cook until you really want it. Cook gnocchi by hoying it into boiling water and when it floats, serve up with the stew. You can have 70g of light parmesan if you want, but you don’t need that much!

I actually did something a bit different – I cut the horse and onions up the night before and marinated them in the red wine overnight before the night they were slow-cooked. You could do this, but it’s not that necessary.

Enjoy!

J, and for one night only (and well, tomorrow), P!

junk food kids: who’s to blame? YOU ARE, you lazy cow

Weigh in is now tomorrow – we’ve switched classes to allow us to stay to class. No recipe tonight as I’m in such a huff about a TV programme that I had to vent!

Please tell me someone else caught Junk Food Kids: Who’s To Blame on Channel 4 last week (and still on their catch-up service, now)? It takes a lot to get me screaming at the TV – normally it’s thick people on gameshows, or if Jeremy Kyle’s incredibly botoxed and exceptionally punchable face looms into the foreground like a possessed fleshy iron. But this documentary really took the biscuit, and gave it to a fat kid.

It was ostensibly a programme designed to look carefully at all sides of the argument over why Britain’s kids are getting fat, with several different streams running throughout focusing on different children, but what got my blood pressure rocketing even more than my swollen ankles usually manage was poor Tallulah (which I’ll spell correctly, even if your mother couldn’t quite manage all the requisite L’s needed to inscribe her own daughter’s name correctly in copperplate on her neck) and her oil-slick of a mother, Natalie. The kid was fat – not podgy or puppy-fat – but fat. She was in constant pain because her teeth had rotted down through so much sugar at the age of four, which ultimately resulted in her having to go under the knife and have 6 of her baby teeth removed.

It didn’t take long for the same old excuses to be trotted out, either – the poor lassie was fat because of her ‘fi-royd’. Fuck off, unless the thyroid was being deep-fried and served with a side of chips, we could probably rule that out. She gives her daughter Ribena at night instead of water because the alternative is ‘she’d (the mother) be up all night’. Boo hoo! It’s called parenting – you can’t expect Professor Weetos and Dr Pepper to look after your kid. She then missed an appointment at the dental hospital for her daughter because she couldn’t be bothered to roll out of bed of a morning. I despair.

It makes me enormously nettled when no-one dare say the truth to these parents – it’s YOUR fault. You’re feeding them crap and then wondering why their teeth are black and rotten. You choose to let them brush their teeth only when they want to and give them full sugar Ribena instead of cuddles and attention. You’re trying to be a friend instead of a parent and as a result, your child is fat and in pain. But instead of remedying this, you blame everyone else but yourself. I can’t fathom it – I love my cat, and if I thought he was in pain, I’d do anything I could to fix it – and I didn’t push him out of my vagina after nine months of nurturing. I don’t even HAVE a vagina.  I know Natalie loved her kid – but you’re supposed to, loving your kid doesn’t make you an amazing parent – nurturing and making sure they are healthy and happy does that.

There were others too, including a truculent little madam who sat through her dietitian appointment with her mobile in her hand, barely acknowledging or respecting the learned doctor, instead playing on Facebook whilst her mother looked on with a ‘well what can I do’ face on. Here’s what you do – you take the mobile out of your daughter’s hand, you drive 7 miles away and put it by the the side of the road. If it goes missing, tough titty, daughter learns a lesson. If it doesn’t, that’s a fourteen mile walk for your daughter and think of the weight-loss. If I’d disrespected someone like that when I was a kid – and I’m not some gosh-darn-it eighty-year-old, I’m only in my late twenties – my arse would have looked like a bag of raw mince from the back of my parent’s hands. But instead the mother kowtowed to her daughter’s moods and inclinations like some shaking shrew and then wondered why the daughter didn’t respect, acknowledge or follow her.

Of course, like most of Channel 4’s documentaries, it was pretty sneaky filming – they played the usual trick of letting the subject say something like ‘AH’VE NO IDEA HOW LITTLE BELLABRUSCO GOT CHUBBY’ and then panning the camera across a sea of off-brand crisps (Sprinters) and Aldi chocolate bars (N&Ns). I know it was designed to make the viewer annoyed and I know that I played along by getting irate and shaking my head in disbelief – I had to take a Stugeron afterwards because I felt seasick.

BAH.

saving money on slimming world – pounds for pounds (part 1)

Bobby Beale, you little tinker. Cost me £10 at the bookies, that did, plus my dignity for sitting and watching it (and enjoying it!). I’m alone in the house tonight as Paul’s down South. I’m not too good at being in the house by myself, and it doesn’t help that I’ve got the score from Scream 2 playing as I type. If my ex and Paul’s mother burst through the door waving a knife at me then at least I can say I died doing what I love, typing with one hand and scratching my balls with the other. Though I do hate the thought of being discovered in my ‘lay around the house’ boxer shorts with the hole burnt in the behind – from an errant cigarette back when I used to smoke, not from any particularly violent flatus.

No recipe tonight, but instead, a response to the many posts I’ve seen dotted around saying how expensive SW is, especially for new joiners. So, I thought I’d rattle off a few ways we save money – our shopping bill normally comes in at around £50 a week, and we generally shop at a combination of Waitrose, Tesco and Morrisons. I’m just going to scattershot type the article mind, so don’t expect structure and hilarity – I’m sitting here freezing my bollocks off but if I don’t type it before my bath I’ll never bother! I also plan to turn this into a pinned page at the top and keep adding to it. Oooh I’m the gift that keeps on giving!

Bulk buy the staples

Long time readers may remember The Cat Hotel – we cleared out our shed, fitted shelving and use it to store bulk purchases of anything that is either on a considerable discount or cheaper to buy in bulk. So to this end we always have masses and masses of Slimming World staples – chopped tomatoes, beans, pasta, spaghetti, chickpeas, tinned veg, stock cubes, salt, vinegar, sauces, rice. We generally buy these in bulk from Costco – to give you an example of savings here, you can pick up 24 tins of excellent quality chopped tomatoes for around £7, or 28p a tin. Yes, you can buy them cheaper in Tesco if you go down to the ‘Aren’t I a cheapskate’ range, but you’re getting red piss in a tin with a tomato crust. There would be more tomato flavour if you sucked the tomato on the tin wrapper. Bulk buying nearly always pays for itself in the end plus you’ve always got something in – many a time Paul and I will just have a tin of beans for dinner because we’re too busy illegally downloading TV shows and living the life of Riley. By the way, our cats don’t bother with it, and why would they? Yes it’s warm, safe and dry, but they’d much rather crap in my flowerbeds and track their muddy paws across our white tiles.

Cook twice, freeze once!

Most of our recipes can easily be doubled or halved – but if I say it serves four, then cook for four and freeze two portions – or serve three portions and take one for lunch the next day as we normally do. You’re cooking the meal anyway so it’s no hardship at all to freeze a bit up.

ALDI/LIDL

You can save money in these shops, but I don’t like them. I have tried, I swear I have. We went to an Aldi once and it was just too stressful – I don’t like a shop that puts garden shears next to petit pois tins and tumble drier balls next to the Daily Malk chocolate. I find it too confusing, with all the off-brand rip-offs and impossible layout – it’s like an Escher puzzle of abject poverty. Plus when you go to pay for your items the cashier throws them through the checkout like she’s going for gold for Great Britain’s curling team. I like small talk and chit-chat, not fucking carpet burns from a pack of floor wipes swishing past my hand at the speed of light. If you can deal with the above, all the very best to you, you’ll definitely save – but if not…

Don’t be afraid to scrabble in the bargain bin

Listen, I used to avoid the bargain bin like the best of them, but since I discovered that my local Tesco actually do decent meat reductions, I’ll happily get in there and elbow an old biddy in the face for £2 off a pork shoulder. You’ve got to be savvy though – get what you need, rather than what you think is a decent deal. If you weren’t going to buy that six pack of yoghurt reduced to 8p because the fork-lift ran over it and a fox shagged the strawberry crunch, it’s not a bargain. But the flipside of this is – don’t be one of those fucking awful people who grab items as soon as the poor supermarket worker has stuck the reduced sticker on it. Have a touch of class. Yes, you might have a trolley so full of reduced bread that you could use it to stop a raging river, but what price dignity? I’ve mentioned before that I’ve seen people actually fighting and nothing is worth that.

Get yourself a countdown

Clearly not a countdown as in the game-show for the piss-flow challenged, but rather where you bulk buy Slimming World entry costs and get 12 weeks for the cost of ten, plus if you time it right you’ll normally get given a free book that you can immediately sell on ebay for further profit read and enjoy. Mind, this is good for two reasons – yes, you’ll save money, but if you’re as tight as a tick’s bumhole like I am, the idea of wasting already spent money will make you go to class! WIN WIN.

Right – bath now, more tomorrow!

tweaking – why one mashed banana isn’t so bad, plus Greek turkey meatballs!

Surreal sight #477 in Tesco today. Well, no, just outside of Tesco, some biffa standing next to her bags with an inhaler in one hand and a cigarette in the other – she’d take a couple of drags on her cigarette and then a quick puff on the inhaler. Now THAT’S commitment. Even when you can physically feel yourself choking, you carry on – oxygen is for pussies, after all. It’s like opening an AA meeting with a swift half and a celebratory chaser. Takes all sorts. Anyway, there’s a rant coming, so batten down the hatches.

I’m going to write about tweaks today. Before I start, know that this isn’t exactly the official Slimming World position, but rather my own. Obviously.

To me, the ‘no tweaks’ rule is something Slimming World have put into place to stop you blending eighteen bananas into a smoothie for breakfast, or using two tubs of Smash and some Splenda to fashion a small motor car to take you to McDonalds. The logic is over-consuming is easy – you can drink a smoothie in moments but it would take an age to eat the fruit that goes into one, and you’d likely stop before you’d even had a third. You’d need to press a whole lot of apples to make a glass of fresh juice, but one apple would normally curb your hunger.

But people take it to ridiculous levels, and my carrot cake overnight oats from a week or so ago caused a bit of a stir because I said it was syn free despite it having a mashed banana in it. If you follow the Slimming World rule about fruit to its absolute base level, then yes, it should be synned. But, if you apply logic and reason, there’s no difference to me mashing the banana using my fancy-pants potato ricer than there is mashing it between my teeth. Using a masher isn’t going to coat the banana in Nutella, it isn’t going to ‘add sugars’ or ‘release the fibre content’ any different. Sugar doesn’t float about in the air like a midge, waiting to strike the very second you cut into a piece of fruit. Some try and say that you’d use up energy chewing your banana which you don’t do if you mash it in a bowl – perhaps, but I’m not a fucking snake, I don’t dislocate my jaw and swallow the bowl and its contents without chewing, for goodness sake. I have a banana every morning on top of my porridge, the only difference here is that it’s inside my porridge as opposed to sitting on top. It’s still going to be chewed, digested and turned into a gentleman’s egg a few hours later – and I’m not going to fucking syn it!

What irks me more is that there’s always a curious sanctimony applied with the rule, with some people delighting in pointing out ‘BUT THAT SHOULD BE SYNNED’ like they’ve got Margaret MB standing behind them, pointing a pistol at the back of their shaking heads. A rule is a rule, but common sense also needs to apply. I mean, you’re not exactly supposed to stop in the middle of a road, but you do if an ambulance needs to be past – you don’t sit there blocking it, sucking air through your teeth and going WELL THE HIGHWAY CODE SAYS OTHERWISE as some poor bugger has his chest pumped in the back. I’ve been told before that it could confuse new starters, well, perhaps so – but my nephew still craps his pants because he hasn’t got the hang on his potty quite yet, should I start wearing adult nappies so he doesn’t get a complex? Haway!

And finally, what really riles me about being told off about my tweaking is that the very same people will sit there and tut and huff about a cake made from chickpeas but will then make a brownie using a bollockload of artificial sweetener until their countertops look like the inside of Kerry Katona’s fucking nostril. At least I cook proper, healthy, nutritious food instead of manky, artificially-sweetened pap – even if I do have the temerity to use a mashed up banana. FORGIVE ME.

BAH. After that, I could murder a cigarette, but I don’t smoke, and I don’t know where my old salbutamol inhaler is. Anyway, after all that, here’s tonight’s recipe which is actually bloody delicious!

ingredients: 300g of chopped frozen spinach (defrosted), 500 of turkey mince (very low in fat), 3 cloves of garlic chopped so finely, an egg, tsp of oregano, salt, pepper, 90g of crumbled feta (45g is your HEA, but this serves four) and you might, dependent on the quality of your mince, need some breadcrumbs – if so, chuck in 25g of dried breadcrumbs (4 syns – so 1 syn each) but we didn’t need them. For the sauce, a pot of passata, garlic, onion. Spaghetti, any.

recipe: nothing more to it for the meatballs than combining everything together for the balls into one bowl, mixing and squeezing and really blending it with your hands and shaping it into 24 balls. Stick them onto a non-stick tray and pop them in the oven for twenty or so minutes on 180 until nicely browned. Meanwhile, cook your spaghetti. Make a simple tomato sauce by mixing passata, sauteed onions and garlic. Combine sauce with cooked spaghetti, put meatballs on top.

extra-easy: yup. plenty of spinach and tomatoes in this to make it a go-go-go. You could jazz up the sauce by adding peppers if you were so inclined but this’ll do nicely. The balls are tasty and cheesy, and it’s not often I say that.

Cheers now,

J

I can smell a lie like a fart in a lift…

The best news Fatty and I have had all day is the fact that Judge Rinder has shown up in our Sky Planner again, and not only that, it’s for a 100 episode run. I know I know. There’s so much wrong with it I know, it’s very one joke, but we’re a sucker for watching people in ill-advised acrylic sportswear swearing and rocking at each other over bingo winnings. We once went along to a bingo hall in Scarborough and it was one of the most hilarious evenings, though I think I only saw enough teeth in total to furnish eight mouths, and there must have been two hundred plus cattle in there. I managed to get a house (well, the little tablet thingy that automatically dabs your numbers for you did, I was too busy looking slackjawed at the carpet) and I genuinely feared for my life on the way out – so much resentment and seething in the air, I was half-expecting the Premier Inn to be burnt out during the night. So yes, Judge Rinder. I know it’s all bollocks but it’s entertaining bollocks, damn it.

Just a quick post tonight anyway, as my ear is giving me a lot of pain. I can deal with flu, cold, anything – but as soon as my ears play up I just want to bubble. I’m completely deaf in my right ear at the moment, and it hurts every time I cough. Paul has the same problem with his left ear – we were in bed this morning and I was happily rambling away to his back like I normally do (he loves my nonsense and hints about him getting up and making me a cooked breakfast) only for him to completely ignore me – it was only after ten minutes of me gabbling on that my breath on his neck attracted his attention and he reminded me about his ear. I got my breakfast. I do feel that we’re both using our deafness to our advantage when it suits – the amount of times I just haven’t heard him when he wants a cup of tea made, or a toilet roll bringing, or that he’s on fire. Poor bugger!

Final day before the diet starts anew on Monday! We’ve got six recipes lined up for this week:

• tomato, fennel and feta soup;
• baked cod;
• omelette and chips (well, you might not need a recipe for that one);
• grilled chicken salad;
• flicked bean chilli; and
• quick chicken curry.

We’re heading out now because Paul wants to see what a McRib tastes like. WE KNOW HOW TO PARTY!

the endless thank you cycle

Because it’s blowing a gale outside (I’m reminded of when Sky News reported from the storm last year and it cut to an old man who said, quite solemnly, ‘A OPENED THE DOOR AND A GOT SUCKED OFF’ – well it’s not quite that extreme but…) we can’t be fussed to go out and get ingredients, so it’s an old recipe – the burger in a bowl, found here in a previous post! Low syns and quite delicious, even if it looks proper common.

No, my reason for the quick post tonight is we’re experiencing a very British problem – the thank you cycle. You may remember we’ve got three cars – one for me, one for fattychops and one gifted to us. Well, the third car doesn’t get used and it was a shame to have it sitting in the garage with only our ‘summer clothes’ and the ghost of the lady who lived here before us to keep it company. Our lovely neighbours were going on about their grandson needing a car when suddenly a lightbulb went off above our heads and we said he could have our third car as a thank you for all the help our neighbours give us, especially when it comes to gardening and using up hours of our time on anecdotes. He’s absolutely lovely (and his wife is terrific) but he talks like I write – why use two words when eighteen paragraphs and three side stories about being a butcher will do? Wouldn’t swap them for the world, especially when compared to HRTwee, so it was really no bother at all.

So, car handed over with a big thank you from us for all of their help. But oh no! They wanted to say thank you to us, so we had a very awkward conversation full of ‘it’s no bother’ and ‘no really, you mustn’t’ but god bless them, they’ve bought us £100 in theatre vouchers (after a difficult chat about our interests, it didn’t seem seemly to ask for leather chaps and a moustache trimmer). Worse, they’ve popped it through our door when we’ve been at work, meaning we’ll have to do the very right thing and nip over to say thanks. BUT. This to me seems like too big of a present just to say thank you, so what do we do now? Get a card? Go over and do the ‘OH YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE’ dance? I’m terrified that if we buy a small bunch of flowers, we’ll end up getting an even smaller thank you back – like a Lindt chocolate or a copy of Take a Break with the arrow-word completed. And then what happens? Do I go over with my last Rolo and a daisy? I can see this whole thing ending up with us grappling in the street, trying to outdo each other’s politeness through our tears.

Ah what a thing it is to be British.

that’s why tums go to Iceland

Whilst I lie here plucking fitfully at my duvet and bemoaning my tonsils, which are swollen up like I’ve spent an evening backstage at the BBC back in the eighties, I’ve been reading Slimming World’s facebook page and their recent announcement that they plan to produce ready meals and sell them through Iceland in the New Year. That’s Iceland as in the arse-and-eyelid sausages purveyor rather than the country – think what a trek that would be if you wanted a watery shepherds pie. You’d certainly get your platinum body magic award, and I’m sure hákarl (fermented shark, pissed on and left to ferment) (as the tale goes) is syn free. Delicious!

This move has proved divisive, with two camps forming on either side of the argument – one who believes that this is the beginning of the end for Slimming World’s core values, moving away from ‘fresh, home-cooked food’ into over-processed crap ala Weight Watchers that’ll get pushed at you via the classes in the manner of those persistent chuggers everyone crosses the street to avoid. The other side think it’s a great idea – having a few ready-meals in the freezer means that, at the end of a busy day, you can chuck something syn-free in the oven and not have to worry about your diet.

I can see the argument about Slimming World moving away from its core values – it’s always been drummed into me that SW is about healthy eating, making recipes from scratch, enjoying fresh meals with lots of taste and flavour. That’s surely still the case. What the ready meals do is provide an option ‘on the side’ – if you get stuck, they are there as a back-up. I imagine most people do what I do, which is cook for four people, divide three portions between the two of us and stick the fourth in the freezer (then generally go back ten minutes later and pick at it). If they changed the plan to say that in order to lose weight, you’d have to eat at least one ready meal a day, I could understand the discord – that’s ridiculous. But if the plan remains the same and this is something you can incorporate if you choose to, then I really see no problem.

Another argument I’ve seen is that this is a terrible idea as the meals will be over-processed, full of nonsense food and salt. Absolutely. But then so are Pasta ‘n’ Sauces, and mugshots, and Muller yoghurts, and curly-wurlys, and those god-awful pumice-stone-meets-aspartame Hi-Fi bars they sell in class. Unless you prepare every single meal from stuff you’ve butchered yourself or grown in your garden, arguing about ready meals being over-processed is a fallacy.

Howver, perhaps the most hilarious reaction to this whole debacle is from the braying masses who find the fact it is Iceland selling the ready-meals to be the most objectionable part. I’ve seen many, many posts with this weird snobbery attached and one exclaiming that ‘if SW had partnered up with Waitrose this would have been a great thing’, as if Waitrose ready-meals come with someone to prick the cellophane on the top with a golden fork, press the microwave button with a velvet glove and then wipe your taint clean eight hours later. I shop at Waitrose and I’m as common as muck. That side of the argument is truly ridiculous – a ready meal in Waitrose is going to be as full of crap, preservatives, cheap bits of meat and salt as a one in Iceland, only you might have Heston Bloominghell plastered across the front like a smirking egg. It puts me in mind of Cruella de Lidl over the road from me, who changes her shopping from Aldi bags to Sainsbury’s bags for the short walk from her car to her front door lest the neighbours see she shops at a ‘cheap shop’. If that’s your biggest worry in life then you lead a charmed life.

So, because my Sudafed is kicking in and I’m about to go to a blue-sky paradise, let me say this. I’m all for it. More choice on a diet of restriction can only be a good thing. Those bleating about it diluting Slimming World’s core ideal, just don’t buy the product. If it doesn’t sell, they’ll stop, and if they do sell, it shows there is a market for it. If your problem is that the meals will be full of nonsense, then don’t buy it. And finally, if your problem is that it is Iceland rather than Waitrose or Sainsburys, then have a bloody word with yourself.

J

competition: win ‘a Slimming World Christmas’!

James is in bed (well actually no he’s on the settee under our duvet moaning, mopping his brow theatrically and asking for ice) so unusually, I’m writing tonight’s blog entry. That’s not the normal system – I usually cook, he usually gets all sassy about it on here. So if I’m not up to scratch, forgive me. He is contributing from the sofa so hopefully there’ll be a few bitchy comments.

Anyway, clearly the pain medication has made him delirious and weakened because he’s actually agreed to give something away for free that we can sell on ebay for profit. He is very Geordie that way – when he takes a tenner out of his wallet the Queen blinks in the light. But in the interest of a bit of publicity, here we are. We were given two copies of this book when we recently signed up for a 12-week countdown (pay for 10 weeks, get 2 free). Would have been nicer to get a different book each but that’s the way the low-fat chickpea cookie crumbles.

SO YOU CAN HAVE IT. Now when we say you will win ‘A Slimming World Christmas’ from us, it doesn’t mean that we’ll hop in the car, nip round to yours, criticise your curtains and steal your silver. It’s just the book, delivered by top-priority second-class post to anywhere in the UK. Sorry International Readers but your time will come!

Sixty recipes mind! Each more festive than the last, because what says ‘go on spoil yourself’ then measuring out a single Baileys, thinning it out with fromage frais and crying into your food diary. Santa himself won’t be able to resist as he spots your Christmas cookies by the fire, made of spelt and lament.

I’m doing the book a disservice actually. It’s a great book and the recipes are decent SW fodder. If it means you don’t pig out and ruin that diet of yours, then why not give it a go?

ALL you have to do is:

– leave a comment under this blog with the answer to this question: ‘What’s the most disgusting thing you’ve ever had in your mouth – and what do you reckon the syns would be’

and

– be a follower of the blog. The sign-up box is on the right. Put the first five letters or so of your email address (not the full thing!) that you use to sign up in with your answer below so I can match up the winner. Existing followers don’t need to do this bit, obviously!

I’ll use a random picking thing to choose a winner! Please take this competition in the spirit it is meant – it’s a £4.95 book, not a trolley dash around ASDA or a new car. Don’t enter if you’re not a slimmer or don’t need the book for yourself or a mate – I’d rather someone who needed it got it!

Good luck!

The competition closes on 25 November and I’ll endeavour to get your book in the post the day after. Feel free to share in your various slimming groups!

OK. That’ll do.

P