Flageolet Bean Casserole
Info per serving:
Calories: 281.8
Fat: 5.3g
Saturated Fat: 0.8g
Protein: 13.2g
Carbohydrate: 41.1g
Serves 4
1 teaspoon light olive oil
3 zucchini, cut into chunks
2 garlic cloves, crushed
150ml dry white wine
2 × 11-oz tubs fresh tomato pasta sauce
2 × 14-oz cans flageolet or navy beans, drained and rinsed
salt and freshly ground black pepper
Heat the oil in a large frying pan and fry the zucchini for 8 minutes over a medium – high heat, stirring often. Add the garlic when the zucchini is almost cooked. Add the wine and boil rapidly for 2 minutes to reduce by half. Add the tomato sauce and beans and simmer for 5 minutes. Season to taste.
Easy Piperade
Serves 3–4
A much tastier classic French version of scrambled eggs.
Info per serving:
Calories: 230.0
Fat: 12.6g
Saturated Fat: 3.3g
Protein: 13.4g
Carbohydrate: 17.5g
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 each of red, green and yellow peppers,
cored, seeded and sliced into strips
1 red onion, thickly sliced
2 large garlic cloves, crushed
6–8 large beaten eggs
salt and freshly ground black pepper
Heat the oil in a non-stick wok or pan and fry the peppers and onion until they begin to soften but not brown. Add the garlic and cook for a further 2 minutes.
Season the eggs well and add them to the pan, stirring them into the vegetables gently until the egg is set. Check again for seasoning and enjoy, hot or cold!
Butter Bean, Olive, and Feta Salad
Serves 4
This is a good summer salad.
Info per serving:
Calories: 337.0
Fat: 11.5g
Saturated Fat: 6.5g
Protein: 18.2g
Carbohydrate: 35.6g
4 ripe tomatoes
1 tablespoon light olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
2 × 14-oz cans butter beans, drained
⅓ cup black olives
1 red onion, thinly sliced
2 cups feta, cubed
Chop one of the tomatoes and blend in a food processor or blender with the olive oil and lemon juice until fairly smooth.
Cut the remaining tomatoes into wedges and mix with the beans, olives, onion and feta.
Toss in the tomato dressing and serve.
SECTION 2
Well done, you’ve achieved your goal, you’ve dropped a size. Now it’s all about …
HABIT BUILDING
HABIT-BUILDING STRATEGIES
So, it worked. Well, that’s the first hurdle out the way. By now you should have lost some weight and be feeling fitter and healthier. But don’t get complacent! Now, while you are feeling on top of things and the lessons of healthy eating and exercise are fresh in your mind, is the ideal time to make these strategies part of your everyday life. Remember, we had a deal – together we’ve proved that you can lose weight. You have done the Get a Grip plan. Now I want to show you how to keep it off. For lifelong results, there’s no magic pill, just lots of small steps toward a healthier, fitter you. To help you understand these steps and help you make them part of your life, this section is divided into ten parts. Each part covers a proven strategy for successful weight control and a healthier you, with tips on how to implement it and why it works. Whether you implement all ten at once, or just address one or two a week, you’ll be heading in the right direction. Come on, it’s time to build some habits …!
HABIT 1
MOVE MORE, MORE OFTEN
By now, you should have got the message that physical activity is an essential part of the weight-loss equation. Exercise boosts calorie-burning muscle mass, helps raise metabolic rate, and makes us feel good. Ask someone if they are physically active and most will remember how they’ve been running around all day and reply “yes”. But think about it. OK, so you may feel “tired” at the end of each day but is it because you were physically active, mentally active, or geographically active? Here’s an example: you wake up in the morning and think “today I have to take the kids to school, finish off that report, get the washing done, work half a day for my job, cook the dinner and do some homework for my evening class” – and that is just the first page on your To Do list. By the end of the day you are tired because you have had a mentally tiring day, having to juggle and complete so many tasks. But none of these has actually involved you moving your body very much. Let’s look at another scenario: this time you have to take the kids to school, drop off the dry cleaning, take a package to the post office, pick up a prescription from the doctor, buy your food shopping from the supermarket, drop in to see a friend who has not been well, run downtown, stop by your office, pick up the kids at 4 p.m., take Johnny to soccer, Elizabeth to piano, the list goes on … All of these involve being in a different place, so you have been active but you have been geographically active – you have covered a great deal of distance but you have done it with a car, bus, or public transportation. You have been all over, traveled great distances but your body has barely moved at all.
So are you geographically active, mentally active, or are you actually physically active? One of the most important habits to try to build in this book is to move your body more often.
Many people say they haven’t got time to be active. It can certainly feel that way sometimes, but think about this … There are 24 hours in the day, and let’s assume we sleep and rest for 9 hours – that leaves 15 hours when we are awake and could potentially be moving our bodies. Multiply that by 7 days a week and that leaves 105 hours a week available to us to move our bodies. Even if you go to the gym three times a week for 60 minutes, that leaves 102 hours of inactivity. So, as you can see, we are expecting a great deal of change in our weight and body-fat levels for our efforts, when effectively, we are only moving our bodies for a mere 3 hours a week. In fact, a study published in the journal Nature found that non-gym goers who were generally active in their daily lives (for example, walking instead of driving, doing manual tasks instead of paying other people to do them) were actually healthier