Si: Doing what we do for a living, food is our life, it's been an interesting journey. We're more body aware and we're more food aware, I think actually it's made us better cooks.
Dave: We tend to work hard at making flavours, it's stocks and good cooking.
Si: The food that we cook becomes cleaner and what we mean by that is that there isn't the clawing kind of residue of oil or fat, not that there was particularly it was always balanced, now it's just clean. It's the difference between eating a fat, really heavy Indian curry, and eating Thai.
Dave: We've just got that balance - our curries have got a lot better, we're not relying so much on ghee, it's more about the spices and the pressure cooker because that way you're getting all the flavour out of the spices.
What advice do you have for someone who is looking to lose some weight?Si: Just start it, the hardest bit is starting, and then once you've got that momentum, just keep going.
Dave: But you need to get a set of scales. Scales don't lie and weigh yourself at the same time every day. It's amazing if you do discipline yourself with the scales you'll be surprised how quickly initially the weight will drop off, once you start thinking about what you do. Keep a food diary, so you're not kidding yourself because it's that doughnut on the way to the car from the supermarket, it doesn't count but it does, you think I just snaffled it, it doesn't mean anything.
It is great that you can still love food and lose weight with your diet books, what would your top tips be to others who are real foodies?Si: The thing is the diet books that we've produced are a direct reflection of our love of food. From the beginning of making the books it had to be great tasting food first and foremost, not diet food, it had to be great tasting. Then the process was actually making it less calorific. The great thing about it is that food is our hobby, cooking is our hobby and our life's love, so we didn't want to lose that while we were losing weight. It was a great process to go through to go right, okay, how will we make this spaghetti bolognese or this tray bake or curry as tasty as possible, but bringing the calories right down, and we achieved that, and that's been the legacy of the books.
