I have no more excuses.
I MUST start and loose weight. I no longer have the excuse of pregnancy to eat what I want. I got weighed this week and actually finding out how much weight I've put on since the start of my pregnancy makes me feel sick (I have no intention of sharing this with anyone .. yet). I would like to loose 5 stone and try and get fit again, which it is going to be a massive challenge and inevitably a very long process.
To kick start my diet I have been given the chance to try the Lighter Life Fast 5:2 diet. It's a diet that has products that are available exclusively at Superdrug and consists of fasting for 2 days with the help of the Lighter Life products and then eating normally (albeit healthily) for the remaining 5 days.
Each box of LighterLife Fast contains four food packs (you need four packs each day). The packs include shakes (vanilla, strawberry, banana and chocolate), porridge, vegetable soup, spaghetti Bolognese, pasta carbonara and four bars (nut fudge, peanut crunch, cranberry and raspberry and toffee.
From eating four packs on each of your fasting days you get 100% of the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of vitamins and minerals, with good amounts of protein and fibre, and all for around 600 calories on each fast day.
I wasn't sent the full range of products so can't comment on all of the varieties. I was sent 4 vanilla shakes, 4 strawberry shakes, 8 vegetable soups, 8 pasta carbonaras, 4 toffee bars and 4 crispy peanut bars.
So .. I started on Wednesday this week. For my first fasting day I ate the items below.
Breakfast consisted of a toffee bar.
I was quite impressed with how big it was! It was surprisingly filling. I thought it was ok, but I actually thought it tasted a little salty. Clearly not enough to put me off though, as I still ate it all.
After drinking water and coffee, I found I kept off any hunger pangs til lunch time.
Lunch consisted of a strawberry shake. To make the shakes you simply add 220ml of water to the powder and either shake or blend using a whisk or hand blender and drink. I thought the strawberry shake was really tasty. It was sweet and filing. I think in future I will add a little extra water so it lasts a little longer.
I then had a peanut bar mid afternoon. It was delicious! I much preferred this to the toffee bar. It felt like it lasted longer and was really tasty. It reminded me of a Tracker bar.
Later on for tea/super I had a further Strawberry shake. Again, it was nice, particularly as I watered it down a little more.
If I'm honest I really didn't feel massively hungry on my first fasting day, now I'm not sure whether that means my body knew it was going to have full meals the following day or just that I felt full, but I didn't struggle at all.
Tomorrow is my second fasting day. I'm excited to try some of the other flavours.
For the rest of the week I've been trying to eat more healthily - much more fruit and veg, more water and I've started using a smaller plate to try and control my food portions.
I've decided I'm going to wait until the end of the trial before getting weighed. So I still have over three weeks to go. I'll keep you updated, hopefully with how well its going!!
*I am participating in a trial free of charge in return for a review*