5:2 diet: Cutting down portion sizes

It is, of course, not just what you eat on a fast day but how much you eat of it. 500 calories a day (or 600 if you’re a lucky male) is not a lot so every calorie counts.Surprisingly one of the easiest ways to do that is to cut down on the recommended portion size on ready-made products. The manufacturers of big 600ml tubs of soup, for example, assume you’re going to divide the pot between you. In fact you can divide it into three - 200ml is quite enough for a bowlful, especially if you add a splash of water to thin it out. (Most ready-made soups, I find, are too thick and gloopy*) 40g of porridge...

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Katie Stewart's apricot teabread

I was particularly sad to hear of the death of cookery writer Katie Stewart the other day as her books were a bible as I was learning to cook. (No, please don't work out how old that makes me.) Other people on Twitter clearly felt that way too so we had a bit of a Katie Stewart love-in last weekend when we all cooked a favourite recipe.Mine was a teabread, the sort of cake that's gone out of fashion but which was both delicious and economical because you could slice it so thinly. It's also incredibly easy to make - a bit like a boiled fruit cake.At the time I used to follow recipes religiously,...

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5:2 Easy spicy 5 vegetable stew

Looking at the arctic scene out of the window this morning I must admit the last thing I wanted to do was fast but having worked out today was the only day I could fit in over the next 3 days I reckoned I'd survive provided everything I ate was hot.I was thinking vegetable curry but it somehow morphed into a soupy stew. A rather more calorific one than I'd intended as I hadn't checked out the calories in parsnips or Jerusalem artichokes which have almost as much as potatoes. But it still came in well within the daily allowance especially as I only had just over a third of it.Dieting or not it's...

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A couple of great frugal blogs

I don't want you to think I've entirely forgotten the main point of this blog which is about eating frugally, not just fasting on the 5:2. And I've recently discovered a couple of blogs that do that job incredibly well.One is A Girl called Jack written by a single mum who feeds herself and her son on £10 a week. Ten pounds! It's also far more than a food blog but covers politics, volunteering and other aspects of life in Southend. Her latest post is on a delicious-sounding fig, rosemary and lemon bread she made for 26p. And there's a great post about how the price of supermarket basics is sneaking...

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What to drink on the 5:2 diet

Given that you’ve only got 500 calories to play with it seems a bit of a waste squandering a quarter of them on a glass of wine - or any alcoholic drink. But the diet is all about choice so if that’s your special treat you might want to know exactly how much your favourite tipple will set you back. The good news is that a 125ml glass of champagne only tots up 95 calories but if you’ve a taste for full-bodied South American reds or shiraz at, say, 14.5% and you drink a ‘normal’ 175ml glass of it, that’s 140 calories gone*. A double whisky is 122 calories. Add a non-diet mixer and that’s 178 calories....

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Smoked haddock, roast tomatoes and parmesan

A recipe - if you can call it that - which scores on a number of fronts. Easy, only 3 main ingredients, suitable for the 5:2 diet and ideal for those of you who like to keep Monday meat-freeIt features smoked haddock which is much more interesting than the unsmoked variety but as low in calories. 100g - less than half the pack I bought - totalled just 85. I managed to put away and freeze 2 other portions which made the £3.71 outlay seem relatively modest.I baked it with sliced tomatoes and a sprinkling of parmesan which is one of the most 5:2 friendly cheeses because you don’t need that much....

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5:2 diet: What you can (and what you shouldn’t really) eat on a ‘feed’ day

The theory of the 5:2 or ‘fast’ diet - and what sells it to those of us greedy mortals who habitually struggle with their weight - is that you can eat anything you like on the 5 days you don’t fast.Obviously it’s not quite like that. If you made up for the calories you’d missed the preceding fast day by pigging out on giant pizzas, outsize cheeseburgers and triple-cooked chips - or even multi-course Michelin-starred meals - you might still lose a bit but it wouldn’t do your health much good. On the other hand nothing is actually out of bounds. Not pasta, not cake, not cheese, not wine, not all...

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