LOSING THE LOCKDOWN WEIGHT GAIN...

Everybody is talking about the effect the C-19 virus and the restrictions have been having with regard to our mental health - depression, anxiety, huge concerns about our loved ones and how to keep them safe, the continuing fear when the situation appears to be never-ending.

In addition to all of the above, many of us are more than a little concerned/depressed/anxious that we have really ‘packed on the pounds’ and it can be mighty hard to commit to some dietary changes. Needless to say, the internet is heaving with diet after diet but I am not convinced that ‘a diet’ is what we need right now.

As many of my readers and followers are aware, I include soups in all my weight loss/weight maintenance plans but I think, whilst many of us are ‘home-based’ more than we normally are and are spending more time in the kitchen than we normally do, I believe that we should continue to make soups BUT not any old soup!

Low calorie, possibly weight loss-inducing light soups are all very well but ‘filling soups’ should become the order of the day currently. A couple of bowls can seriously ‘fill you up’ and hopefully banish the need to snack on bics, crisps, sarnies, pastries, cakes and the rest.

What we need to ‘fill us up’ is a deal of protein, a deal of good fats plus antioxidant-rich vegetables and some carbohydrates… so which of my many soup recipes ticks all (or many) of the boxes? Here is a selection… click on the images to access the recipes.

If you don’t eat meat, leave it out and experiment with the protein-rich plant-based products that you generally use: tofu, tempeh, quinoa, lentils, beans, nuts, seeds, nutritional yeast, amaranth or some of the ‘meat-replacement’ products that you can find in supermarkets and/or healthfood shops but try not to fall into the trap of adding more blood sugar-disrupting, carbohydrate-heavy foods.