The FastDay Forum

English crisps are American potato chips.
I am also trying to have three good meals a day. As I love homemade cakes I have it as part of my lunch. I do not keep snack food in the house especially crisps as I could easily eat a six pack without blinking! At the weekend I will have a proper pudding with dinner instead of yogurt. Mostly I only have wine with Sunday roast but occasionally have lager if we go to the English pub. On the whole alcohol is not a problem.

The biggest change for me has been reducing the amount of Red Wine I drink. I used to have half a bottle 5 or 6 nights a week and now I only have it 1 or 2 nights. It's not so much the wine itself, but the fact that I want to eat for England when I've got a glass in my hand and of course, nothing healthy, just junk like crisps, peanuts etc. Now, I just don't keep crisps in the house, so on the nights when I make a conscious decision to have wine, I make up a stack of black pepper Ryvitas with low fat cheese spread. I still get that lovely savoury crunch, but without all the calories.

I have tried really hard to cut out bread, this is my downfall and I am finding the less I have the less I yearn for. I do wonder if they put addictive things in bread, biscuits ...now I make my packed lunch and use wraps - learnt this one from WW...it seems to satisfy my need to have something substantial at lunch time.

I eat normally on feast days and normal for me means proper meals, mostly healthy stuff but some puds and definitely some home made cake or bread, home made lemon curd too yum!

I'm definitely eating less cheese though since starting this and also fewer biscuits, infact hardly any. I usually have choc chip cookies in as I put them out on the hospitality trays for my guests. However I've invested in some of those wrapped two packs instead so that I'm not tempted to eat any.

As to crisps or McDonalds no thank you not my temptation at all. I've only ever been in a McD's once and that was enough.

I must be doing something right as I've lost over a stone since the start.

I have tried to restrict wine to Saturdays only (broke that rule this week!).

I've also had to stop buying chocolate to have in the house. Even though I like dark choccy I haven't been stopping at a couple of squares.

I do like veg and salad so thats easy to have but I think portion control is needed for other stuff. Eating things like the M&S fuller longer or the "Look what we found" meals is helpful.

I'm gradually seeing my appetite go down but it has take a while - I know some people found this happened to them early on but for me it has been relatively recent after several months following this way of eating.

Crisps are my biggest weakness, I find the only option is to not keep them in the hpuse. Well, I can't keep them in the house, I've always binged on them if I've tried.

Oh yes, they are definitely my downfall too. At office parties, I can skip the cake but if there's a bowl of crisps on the table, I'm doomed.

My only chance of not eating them is if I try to bring to mind the picture from a few years ago of a woman drinking a bottle of vegetable fat which was captioned about eating 2 packets of crisps a day, is like drinking 9 litres of vegetable fat. Yuck! If I can keep that image in mind before I start, I can move to the other side of the table. If I inadvertently take a handful, booooooom!

I've also had to stop buying chocolate to have in the house. Even though I like dark choccy I haven't been stopping at a couple of squares.

Me too. The nightly Green&Blacks couple of squares was becoming too many squares, so I've stopped buying it. I've never wanted it in an evening badly enough to go out in the cold and dark and walk to the supermarket !