Diet & Weight Loss: No Carb Pizza Omelette!

As a female who wasn’t blessed with the ability to lose weight and be toned just by existing, I find myself constantly looking for ways to achieve this but without feeling like I might die of boredom at having to eat bland, tasteless food; or indeed feel like I’m missing out on lots of other delicious foods that I know I enjoy and crave deeply from the exact second that I make the decision to get back on the healthy eating wagon.

And, because I’m a vegetarian, I have always found myself relying perhaps a little too heavily on carbs also, to make a meal feel substantial, filling and obviously tasty. So knowing I needed to lower my carb reliance and increase protein to start seeing further results, I spent the last 4 years forcing myself to find ways to eat eggs so that I could actually enjoy them, which meant that they weren’t too eggy, both in taste and texture; as despite not being vegan, I didn’t eat eggs (unless in cake) for a very, very long time.

I just couldn’t get my head around what they were (let’s not even mention it now as I am still not at ease with it and I don’t want to undo my hard work over these years, ha) so my protein intake was less than impressive. I have now mastered the art of making both omelettes, and scrambled eggs by adding vegetables, cheese, and other flavourings that have enough other textures/tastes to make them actually quite enjoyable to me.

Success… I now have a healthy, low carb meal option that actually leaves me feeling full, and satiated. I still miss carb heavy food, but now look for ways to try and satisfy cravings for them without leaving myself feeling guilty that I’ve fallen off the wagon again. Obviously a treat is fine, but as a lifestyle change that is realistic, I need to enjoy the food I am eating and not just eating it because it’s healthy.

One massive craving for me that I really miss whilst trying to be healthy has to be pizza. I bloody love it! But it doesn’t love my waistline… it’s just not healthy, and that carb-heavy base makes me put on a stone just thinking about it (sympathy please). So how could I find a way to satisfy a regularly recurring craving for the gooey, pizza goodness? Well, with an omelette base, of course.

Luckily, I have been sneaky well informed, and researched enough to have found a ‘diet’ that might suit me as it allows me to eat cheese(!); and not only allows, but encourages (high fat, low carb – keto diet)… yep, I think I might have found ‘the one’ - diet wise, anyway.

And so I decided to do an eggsperiment (geddit? I’ll book my own taxi for that) to see if I could make this omelette taste anything like a passable pizza to me. And by goodness, I think I actually have! Obviously it’s never going to replace your favourite pizza from wherever, but it’s also not going to make you die from diet guilt, or have your buttons popping off your clothes by indulging in it.

Ingredients:

2-3 eggs (or more if you’re making for more than one person, or particularly hungry)
Chopped tomatoes/passata
Herbs (mixed, or fresh basil works)
Chopped onion
Cheese (hurrah, I used cheddar but any melty one that you fancy is all good)
Salt & Pepper to taste

Or whatever toppings you fancy, obviously. I just kept this one very simple, as I didn’t know if it would work or not.

Method: 

 

I cooked the chopped onion in a small amount of oil (I used olive, but any is fine, just don’t use too much as you don’t want a greasy pizza sauce) until translucent, then added the tomatoes, herbs, and seasoning before cooking through so the flavours were developed enough. You could make this in advance and freeze it, or use it as a base for pasta sauce too. You could do this without the onion, and add them at the end, or not at all if you prefer.

Then, I decided to stick to just a plain omelette base as I knew there’d be less chance of it breaking. I whisked the eggs with salt and pepper, then cooked it both sides in a frying pan so that it was golden brown, and feeling fairly sturdy.

I then transferred my omelette to a foil lined tray and spooned enough ‘pizza sauce’ to cover it, sprinkled plenty of cheese over it (and any other ingredients you choose), and then put it under the grill until it was melted (this particular cheese didn't melt as well as I'd hoped, but still tasted good).

Then I ate it, obviously. I really, really enjoyed it too. So I actually do think I have found something I can eat and enjoy regularly that does satisfy that pizza craving I get, until such a day where I can have a real pizza as a treat.

Happy days. I can’t believe I’ve written so much about eggs though, ha.

This post originated at www.thebeautyscoop.co.uk

Non Invasive Skin Tightening Treatment, Pellefirm Launches in the UK; Plus My Experience So Far!

Me having a treatment at Dr Rita Rakus' Clinic in London.

We've all got our body hangs ups... you know those parts of the body that you desperately try to cover, conceal, hide and generally prevent others from seeing, or noticing! I personally could quite easily tell you at least one thing that I didn't like about pretty much any part of my body that you named; and would definitely struggle to find something overly positive to say about pretty much any other part too.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has this eternal life struggle either; and whilst there may be greater issues going on in the world, when something makes you unhappy about yourself and you have to 'put up with it' every day, it does become a larger issue to you. To name just one of my many, many body hang ups, it would be my 'sorry for itself' state after my 6 stone weight loss. I'm talking about the slightly loose, somewhat flabby skin that covers areas such as my stomach, bingo wings, bottom... in fact; it would probably be quicker, and easier for me to list the places that weren't affected, ha. You get the idea.

However, I'm also a big advocate of changing the things that make you unhappy if you can... in all aspects of life; and so when I'm faced with treatments, products and procedures that can change, or at least improve things then I'm all for giving them a go. Why carry on suffering if you don't have to, right?! That's why I was extremely happy to have been invited recently to attend a demonstration of Pellefirm, a high tech, non-surgical skin tightening treatment that has only just hit UK shores, as I’m always interested in this kind of thing on a personal level as well as to be able to tell you guys about it too.

Now don’t think that this treatment is to help you lose weight, as it isn’t for this purpose at all. Nor is it a one stop ‘quick fix’ in an emergency ‘I might be seen naked/semi naked imminently’ panic, as a course of around 6 (depending on each client and their start and desired finish points) is recommended to see results.

It’s a treatment for those who have may have lost tone/tightness in their skin to help to tighten and smooth it out. This is skin that may have been stretched through weight gain, pregnancy and/or ageing that will not just ping back into place, no matter how much you exercise, or how healthily you eat. It's skin that would normally require surgical intervention to rectify, in the form of tummy tucks and other such skin reducing procedures.

Before & after images, and the Pelleve machine with Pellefirm handpiece from the Ellman website.

The claims by Ellman International, are that by raising the temperature of the skin through the use of a hand piece that is attached to the main Pelleve machine (which has multiple functions, I should add), delivering radiofrequencies into the skin and heating it to temperatures of around 45 degrees that this will in turn heat the dermis and sub dermis to a higher level and trigger collagen synthesis… which basically (as far as I understand it) causing the collagen to break down, and then reform, thus creating the skin tightening effect that occurs afterwards.

Whilst at the demonstrations (one in London at the clinic of Dr Rita Rakus, and another in Birmingham with Dr Hugo and Dr James Kitchen of the Stratford Dermatherapy Clinic taking charge) I was also lucky enough to get the chance to trial the procedure as their case study, so I got to experience it first-hand.

Me having the treatment in Birmingham with Dr James Kitchen from the Stratford Dermatherapy Clinic.

The treatment itself wasn’t painful, although I was told that I appeared to deal with the heat exceptionally well (the heat was increased gradually, which I think helped a lot), and I didn’t experience a great deal of reddening of the skin either which is something that can happen during/afterwards, (but causes no ill effects and does disappear relatively quickly too, should it occur to you), so I was all good with that too. The treatment lasts around 40 minutes per area, depending on the size of the area and also how long it takes your skin to reach the optimum temperature too.

Results aren’t immediate either, as mentioned… although on my short trial so far, I did notice a slight change in the appearance of my skin, so I’m hopeful that with further sessions (something I’m also told I can continue with), will increase and become more noticeable – expect further updates in due course.

Is this something that you’d try out? Do you have many body hang ups?

This post originated at www.thebeautyscoop.co.uk