Louisa's Weight Loss Blog

Cor! Get a load of that!

Roast Dinner

This is a typical Sunday roast. Very rarely are they not yummy if your mummy has made it! It is eaten in homes across the country and is seen as quintessentially British. Traditionally, the roast dinner was the Sunday treat and the rest of the joint of meat (or a chicken) would be used over the forthcoming week. Bones could be used for stock, giblets can be used for… well, use your imagination and do your own research, I’m starting to feel queasy!

The calories in a roast dinner will obviously vary depending on the trimmings you have with them. Green veggies are good for you and don’t have many calories in so we can discount them comfortably. The problem comes in with your potatoes, parsnips, yorkshire pudding, gravy, sauces (e.g. bread, horseradish, cranberry), stuffing, crackling etc. Then of course, there is dessert which might typically be bread and butter pudding, lemon meringue or a warm apple crumble with ice cream. In food heaven just thinking about it aren’t you? We need to snap out of it! I make my bread and butter pudding with Bailey’s Irish Cream and it is incredible! It’s moist, alcoholic and I could happily munch on it now at 9.38am!

How many calories do you think there are in a roast dinner? Sit down because I would hate you to faint with shock… roast dinners can vary from around 750 calories to 1500 calories! Have you got the shakes? I have! You could be consuming over half of your daily allotted calories before dessert! Then factor in a glass of wine if you’re being social with the family around the dinner table… It is a dieter’s nightmare!

How can you get around the calories in a roast dinner?

First of all, if you’re only eating a roast dinner once a week and being ‘good’ for the rest of the week then don’t get too upset about it, you are allowed some normality! You should not forgo eating with your family because of your diet. How many times do I have to tell you? Dieting is meant to enhance your life, not limit it. There are steps you can take to make your Sunday roast more diet friendly.

• Avoid sauces or don’t pile sauce on your plate. Do you really need a tablespoon of Bernaise or Hollandaise when a teaspoon will suffice?
• Depending on how you make it, gravy isn’t too awful for dieters but do try and cut down as home made gravy can contain up to 162 calories per serving. Onion gravy is better for dieter than say, a meaty gravy but it is all down to preference. I don’t even eat gravy with a roast and most people find that rather strange.
• A Sunday roast dinner could be made up of almost 3/4 carbohydrates! Try and limit your potatoes, parsnips and yorkshire pudding and fill up on your steamed green veggies.
• Be social as you eat. Talk to your fellow diners and savour your food. If you put your knife and fork down between mouthfuls and chew your food properly you will probably feel full before you actually finish what is on your plate. Too often I feel uncomfortably full after eating a roast dinner and that is usually because I have eaten too quickly and didn’t recognise that I was becoming full.

Nobody cooks a big roast dinner just for themselves. A Sunday dinner is usually a social family event and should remain as one. If you are conscious about being on a diet and feel guilty for eating a roast, encourage your family to do something active after dinner. If you need a half hour nap after eating, have your nap and then as a family do something active like go for a long walk, go for a bike ride or play a ball game down at your local park. Family time doesn’t just have to revolve around food, you can all spend time together being active, bowling, go-karting, skiing or just paddling in the sea is great!

Now for Sunday’s food diary:

Breakfast: None – woke up too late

Lunch: Bread, pate and hummus. Roast lamb chop, carrot (raw) and mashed potato. Apple pie, warm strawberries and single cream followed by black coffee. (I had a glass of red wine with my meal)

Dinner: A slice of toast and I picked at Sunday roast leftovers so a little bit of chicken, a parsnip, cooked carrot, broccoli and a roast potato. Then a medium sized slice of coconut cake.

Proactol: Only 2, I forgot to bring the packet with me to dinner.

Exercise: None, I was resting after a very busy Saturday!

I wasn’t able to write my blog post yesterday because I had such a busy day.

I temped at an event in Nottingham, working as a steward for the most popular bit of the event – the luminarium. It was pretty cool, the kids loved it but as it was free, people queued for about an hour and a half just to go in to the sculpture! It was getting really annoying though, people kept trying to jump the queue and others tried to get in after it was closed. For the record, I couldn’t care less how far you’ve come just to see this thing, if you pitch up at 3.45pm when the event closes at 4pm and expect to walk straight in just cos you look at me like a kicked spaniel, you want your bumps read.

I lugged a few metal traffic barriers around and now have a bruised shoulder. After over 9 hours of work and only 30 mins break, I had to walk for half an hour home. Luckily, Jonny was an absolute babe and had got up early to deliver me safely to the event which was really helpful otherwise I would have been shattered on arrival.

When I finally got home, Jonny was about to put a pizza in the oven but I was so hungry I asked him to rethink the strategy. He mad a tuna and pasta bake instead… not the best we’d ever had but it was food and I was starving. I then had to get ready and rush out because we were off to see Michael MacIntyre at the ice arena. It’s just a few moments from my house and it was fab! He was so funny! He said that someone had told him that he walks like a toddler who has done twosies in his nappy and later on in his performance, I thought, IT’S TRUE! In the second half my cheeks were so very badly aching. This is good but I did start to worry I’d get wrinkles… I love humourous observations about people’s relationships, mainly because they are echoed in ALL relationships. A couple of times I said to Jonny “It’s funny cos it’s true!” For the record, I don’t care about his morning breath, it’s a fact of life and I have a strong stomach. He has less of a strong stomach but he is learning to cope when I have coffee breath in the morning. Well, I assume he is learning to cope, he pulls that horrible face much less…

We were going to go out with his work mates after but they flaked on us. Jonny didn’t want to end the evening so we went off to a casino. He lost £24 odd on a bonus slots game by trying to double it. He won a bit more back but still made a loss on the evening. That’s the nature of gambling my friends, you don’t always win big like we did back over Easter!

Saturday’s food diary:

Breakfast: Two shredded wheat with skimmed milk

Lunch:Two hot ring doughnuts and a couple of chips

Dinner: Tuna and pasta bake

Snack: Turkey breast sub on hearty italian bread with olives, tomatoes, cucumber and sweetcorn. No sauce.

Proactol: 4

Exercise: 1 hour of walking and a physical day of work!