Cauliflower Cheese and Starting Again

Last week I went back to eating LCHF again.  For one reason and another I had fallen off the wagon, for nearly 9 months. Inevitably I had re-gained all the weight that I had lost, but that didn't bother me as much as the other symptoms.  The worst one was the reflux.  When I'm eating carbs I need to carry gaviscon tablets around with me all the time, which is no fun, let me tell you.  I also really hate the fact that my ankles are swollen almost constantly when I am eating carbs.

I've been low carb again now for just over 10 days, and have had no reflux symptoms at all for the last 9 days.  The constant hunger that I have when eating carbs/sugar has already receded, and my ankles have come back again.  I didn't weigh myself at the outset this time, as I don't have weighing scales in the house anymore, but some of my clothes are already slightly looser around the waist.

One of the things that I find the most difficult about eating low-carb is the amount of cooking involved.  I find that unless I have a ready supply of meals in the freezer and suitable snacks in the fridge that it is too tempting to eat foods that are too high in carbs.  I'm going to try from now on to make a point of always having appropriate meals available in the freezer, and one of those meals is cauliflower cheese.  I've always loved cauliflower cheese, and spent many of my weight watchers years trying to make a low-fat version.  They never worked though, and after a while I just resigned myself to only eating it when having a 'cheat day'.

All of this meant that the first recipe I wanted to tackle when embarking on a LCHF regime was cauliflower cheese.  And let me tell you, in all the times I have made it since, with slight differences to the recipe each time, there has never been a dud one.  It is now one of my favourite meals.

The last time that I made it I took time to write down the amounts of ingredients I used, and even took a few photos, so that I could keep a definitive recipe for myself. You'll notice that my recipe is in fact for cauliflower and broccoli cheese with bacon.  I can assure you that it will work just as well without the broccoli or bacon, but I think they make this recipe perfect.

Ingredients

1 head of cauliflower
1 head of broccoli (just use 2 heads of cauliflower if you prefer)
6 rashers of streaky bacon (optional)

400g cheddar (you could substitute 100g of this with blue cheese and it works wonderfully too)
150ml cream
400g full-fat cream cheese

Method

Steam or boil the vegetables until they are almost cooked, then drain all the water away.
Cook the bacon until crispy. Put the vegetables and bacon into a baking dish. Don't forget to put all the bacon fat in with it too.

Put the cream cheese, cream and almost all of the cheddar into a pan and stir together to make the best cheese sauce you have ever tasted.  It will seem like a lot of cheese sauce.  Trust me, you'll need it all.

Pour the cheese sauce over the vegetables and bacon and mix well to ensure there is sauce covering everything.

Sprinkle your reserved cheese on the top and bake in the oven at 200C for about 25 minutes.

Look at that - doesn't it look fabulous?

It serves 4-6 people, depending on how hungry you are.  If you're cooking for 1 or 2, just freeze the rest.  When needed again, cook in the microwave for 2-4 minutes for a speedy, delicious, LCHF ready meal.

Book a Week 2015 - Overview

Last year, for the first time since I can remember, I made a New Year's Resolution that I actually kept.    In fact I even did better than I planned as I read 53 books in 52 weeks, a whole book more than my target.  Along the way I kept a record of the books, and some information about them, as I wanted to know whether this challenge would encourage me to read different books to the ones I would normally choose.  Also, I do love a spread sheet.

Books by genre

I've split the fiction books up into generic fiction, science fiction, fantasy and detective.  One of the greatest things about this challenge was rediscovering my love of science fiction books - as a teenager I read only science fiction for about 2 years, and I had forgotten how much I enjoy it. I have also split non-fiction into generic non-fiction and self help, using my own arbitrary category system.  I only included one children's book, although I read many, many more with the 6yo and 8yo over the course of the year. The one I included was Matt Haig's A Boy Called Christmas, partly because I read all of it (rather than it being a joint effort between the 8yo and me) and partly because I enjoyed it more than any of the other books I read with the kids last year.

Books by month

I was also interested to see if I read at the same rate through the year.  The chart below shows how many books I finished in each month. As you can see, there is a wide variation - from zero books finished in June to 12 books finished in April.  This mainly reflects the timing of my annual leave during the year, and that in January I deleted Facebook and Twitter from my phone temporarily. June was a very hectic month for various reasons and so reading went out of the window for a bit.

Books by Source

One of the things I really wanted to get out of last year's challenge was to read books that I otherwise would not have come across.  I also resolved that I would try as far as possible to read any book that I was recommended to me by a friend, even if it really didn't appeal to me. When I looked back at the source of the books I read, I was surprised to see that more than a third of them were either gifts, recommended by a friend, or inspired by people I follow on twitter or blogs I read during the year.

When I reflect on the books I enjoyed the most they were mainly from among those that had been recommended to me.

The best books

The best non-fiction book I read was The Unthinkable: Who survives when disaster strikes - and why by Amanda Ripley.  It was recommended to me by one of my friends and is an absolutely fascinating look at how people react to disasters and stressful situations.  In particular it gave me some very interesting insights into how the correct training in medicine can help doctors to overcome their natural response to stressful situations and apply basic principles to ensure they react to emergencies appropriately. 

Among the autobiographies I read, the stand-out one was Matt Haig's Reasons to Stay Alive.  I learned of its existence by following Matt Haig on twitter - so you could say it was recommended to me by the author itself.  It is a brilliant book about surviving, and living with, depression and is one of the books that I will be keeping because I know I will read it again and again.

The best fiction book (well, technically science fiction) was The Martian by Andy Weir.  I read it just after having seen the film and absolutely loved it.  It kept me up until 3am as I could not bear the idea of going to bed without having read the ending.  As is almost always the case, it was much better than the film - although I must say that I really loved the film as well. 

More than any of these books though, one of the books that I read last year changed my life.  That book was Why We Get Fat: And What to Do about It by Gary Taubes.  It was one of many books I read last year about diet, and the one that inspired me to start following a Low Carb High Fat diet. 

Next Year

For next year, I plan to try and read a book a week again, because I enjoyed it so much, but I won't put myself under pressure to do so.  I would also like to continue keeping the spread sheet, as it has been really interesting for me to go back over the year and see which books I read.

If you'd like to have a look at all the books I read in 2015, you can find the complete list on Goodreads

LCHF Take 2

Boxing Day is the new New Year for me.  I've fallen off the LCHF wagon in quite a spectacular way over the last couple of months, to the extent that my weight is back up to my starting level.  Interestingly my waist measurement is not quite back to where it was, so I'm hopeful that at least some of the excess weight is water.

There are several reasons why I started eating too many carbohydrates again, but it has taught me four very important things:

1) I am clearly very insulin resistant.  My body's response to eating carbohydrates again was almost frightening in the way I craved bread, pasta and potatoes almost instantly after eating that first bowl of pasta.

2) I am addicted to sugar, and in particular poor quality chocolate.  Once I start eating milk chocolate I find it genuinely difficult to stop.  Back when I was firmly following a LCHF diet earlier in the year, the occasional bit of 85% chocolate was fine, but it turns out that with milk chocolate I really can't stop at just one piece.

3) I am probably not someone who can have a 'cheat day'.  I comprehensively fell off the wagon after I allowed myself to eat some sweets at Halloween - not even 2 months later and I have regained all the weight I had lost.

4) While I don't have coeliac disease, my gut's reaction to going back to gluten and sugar was 'interesting'.  I'm really looking forward to not feeling bloated anymore in a few day's time...

So, back to LCHF it is.  Starting today, rather than 1st January, so that it is very firmly not a New Year's Resolution.  In addition to looking at all the websites I used before (such as Diet Doctor) I have also signed up to the Banting online course.  I already have the Real Meal Revolution cook book, but I feel that the course will give me the kick start I need.

As the website does everything in kilos, my new starting weight is 89.2kg.  This is a lot more than I should weigh, given that I am only 160cm tall.  I do feel more confident than I ever did when re-starting WeightWatchers though, as I know already that I won't become irrationally hungry, and that I will enjoy all the food I eat.  It does mean I have to be very organised with pack lunches for work, but I'm up for the challenge.

Starting on Boxing Day is a surprisingly good idea as it turns out - the fridge is full of leftover turkey, bacon, sausages and cheese, so the first few days should be easy.

Ankles and recipes

One of the first things that happened when I started cutting carbs from my diet was that my ankles reappeared. I have had slightly swollen ankles for as long as I can remember - worse on hot days, and terrible after long-haul flights. When I was pregnant my legs swelled so much that I was asked to monitor my urine every day for protein as my obstetrician was worried I was going to develop pre-eclampsia.  I never did get pre-eclampsia, but I did have a very impressive weight loss after both babies were born, due mainly to losing water.

I remember that my mother used to get swollen ankles too, so I assumed that it was just genetic, and that there was nothing I could do about it.  Even when I lost quite a lot of weight after my second child was born I still had very swollen ankles, especially on hot days.  And then I started the low-carb high fat diet.  My ankle reappeared within a week - I couldn't believe it.

Here's a picture of my legs from about 2 weeks before I cut out the carbs.  I barely have an ankle at all, and some horrid creases from how swollen they are.

And here are my legs today - you'll note I am also sporting a lovely pedicure. As you can see, I now have bona fide ankles again, despite today being a very hot day here in the UK.

My weight has been stable for 4 weeks now, which is frustrating, but also understandable.  I've been on holiday for the last 2 weeks and have drunk quite a lot more wine than normal.  I have also eaten the odd poppadom.  Those things combined have clearly pushed my carbohydrate levels over my personal limit.  I'm back at work next week, so I'm confident that I can get back to eating a much lower level of carbohydrates, along with drinking less alcohol. 

It will also be easier to stick to a strict low-carb high-fat diet seeing as my new cookbook arrived this week - The Real Meal Revolution by Tim Noakes, Jonno Proudfoot and Sally-Ann Creed.  It contains an essay from Tim Noakes explaining the science behind the eating plan, and some absolutely fabulous looking recipes.  So far we have already tried the cottage pie and the mackerel and avocado breakfast.  Both were excellent, and I have plans to try several more recipes over the next few weeks. 

Obese to Overweight

After 12 weeks of following a low carb high fat diet I have now lost 10% of my bodyweight.  I have also reduced my BMI from 32.4 to 29.2 - this means I have moved down from the Obese category to the Overweight category.

The numbers don't really matter though.  What matters is that this week I bought a new pair of jeans and two new tops, and I chose the ones that looked good in the mirror, not the only ones in the shop that fitted.  And I feel great in them. I have also received several comments from people this week who have noticed that I have lost weight.  Although I am very definitely doing this for myself, it was still rather lovely to realise that other people have noticed and it is always good to get a compliment or two.

Two of my work colleagues have been so impressed with my weight loss so fart that they have also adopted a low carb high fat diet.  They asked me for a book recommendation, so I've advised them to buy Gary Taube's book, Why We Get Fat, as that is the one I found the most useful.  So far my colleagues have lost more than 6 pounds each, in just 2 weeks, which is brilliant.  My next plan is to move the office over to full fat milk for our tea and coffee.