Thread: Helping OH lose on Red

Hi everyone

Here's the dilemma, since I have been maintaining, so has OH, yet he needs to lose at least another stone so I am trying to help him lose about 1lb a week for the next 8 weeks (before holiday) ..

So this week, I am encouraging him to fill in a food diary (in the hope that he will learn the plan a bit more), and we are trying a red week (his choice). We eat all three meals at home, and I cook (he works, I don't).

Here's the problem - I plan and cook the meals, and when I was losing weight, I always used both B choices in my meal planning. He is opting to use 1 B choice daily for 2 alpen lights (which is a good idea as he has a mid morning and mid afternoon cake snack problem ) which is great, but causes me issues as I only now have the one B choice to use in meals - I will tend to use this for dinner.

So - help needed! please!

What could we have for lunch, red day, no B choices, an A choice could be used, few or no syns please ... we cook at home, so all facilities available

thanks xxx

I do red days mainly & sure I never have B choices at lunch, as like you use them for my evening meal & use one for my breakfast.

I have things like:

Slices meats, cottage cheese & rice crackers (3 crackers = 1syn of the brand I have)

Plum Tomatoes, Bacon & Quorn Sausages

Quorn fillets in Syn free bbq sauce & salad

SW Quiche & salad

I also tend to have dinners left overs - so if I have made curry, chilli or something like that, we tend to have enough left for a bowl at lunch time

Hope this helps a little

Omlettes of different kinds, Chicken with different sauces and either salad, or boiled veg..you dont need to have a HeB with it Hun, I find carrots, cauliflower, cabbage, greenbeans, swede, butternut squash and boiled onions are more than enough! Lol

I would consider 2 options:

1.) Just syn his extra HEB and carry on as normal using 2 within the day

2.) Get clever about 'swapping' what you would have used the HEXB on. e.g.
Mashed potatoes - use mashed swede and carrot or mashed squash or cauliflower puree
SW chips- use butternut squash chips
Pasta - use courgette ribbons
peas- use breen beans
Rice- With a curry have spiced vegetable side dishes and salad rather than rice, with a chilli, serve in a bowl with salsa, yoghurt dressing and top with HEXA cheese so you don't miss the rice
Roasties- butternut squash substitution again

xxx

I know that you have said that you are going to do just red days, and all of the suggestions above are great (I'm a red day girl too!!). What about doing M2M?? That way, you could have a red breakfast, green lunch, red evening meal? Just in-case you had forgotten about it....

Might make it easier on some days so that you could have Jacket potato, pasta etc at lunch. If he needs the meat hit, and you fancy green, the (shhh) 'Quorn' (I said shhhh!!) Red Leicester and onion sausages (1/2 syn each) aren't too bad. With baby roast potatoes and baked beans (Yum. Had this for my tea last night!!!)

As for red lunches.....

Leftovers (quick, easy and cost efficient!!!)
Ratatouille - with chopped smoked gammon in it. (this could also fall into the leftovers category)
Egg & Bacon (and sausages, and mushrooms, and tomatoes!!!)
Omelettes with bacon/sausages/mushrooms/onion/cheese....
Pork chops with mushroom stir-fry (any stir-fry pack will do, you just need to make sure they've not sneaked in any sweetcorn!!)
Sweet 'n' sour pork/chicken (another leftovers meal usually!!)
Soups
Stews (just fill up on the other veg, and leave out the potato)

I also use shredded, blanched cabbage instead of rice (with a curry).

Maybe you could also sneak in a couple of EE days. Just if he misses rice with curry etc.

SW quich made with blitzed cottage cheese so its extra creamy - pop ham, mushrooms, tomato and peppers in and serve with some lovely salad.
He can have a nice big wedge of it and feel satisfied x

Great suggestions thanks!

Our reason for Red this week is that we usually follow EE (great for maintaining I find lol!), so to change things about, last week we did green all week - I lost 3lb, he gained 1lb, so he fancies seeing if red will get him a decent loss.

So, the problem is more me trying to remember how to be inspired on Red... I like some of the 'swap' suggestions, and quite frankly, it is only one week, I will work through your lists!

Today I stir fried some reduced steak and two big bags of stir fry veggies. A homemade syn free stir fry sauce to jazz it up a bit. Yummy, but I have a feeling I will be starving later ....