Fast 800-4-1 week 5

Posted on June 8, 2021 by lindaharley

A week’s worth of meal ideas for those following the Fast 800 plan (low calorie, low carb, high protein) but are making meals for one.

Note: I don’t eat meat, but I do eat fish, dairy and eggs. But lots of the ideas are vegetarian. I’ll refer to the recipe book if relevant.

Day 1:

I was in transit, which is actually reasonably easy to fast on, as there is a limited choice of suitable options!

Breakfast – iced latte while sightseeing

Lunch – avo on sourdough from Pret at the airport, with a tub of mixed nuts from Tesco

Dinner – 2 egg omelette when I got home, with a selection of veg and cheese from the fridge (green pepper, mushrooms and cheese)

Day 2:

Breakfast – cayenne and rosemary nuts and seeds, emergency stash in my desk drawer (170 calories)

Lunch – this was a grab and go affair. I headed for the M&S deli/tapas section and picked up some spiced prawns, grilled calamari, and a bag of florette crispy salad leaves. I had half the seafood on the salad (200 calories)

Dinner – I turned the rest of the seafood into a sauce with a good dash of Big Tom spicy tomato juice, and served with butternut squash “boodles” as a sort of seafood linguine. (200 calories)

Day 3:

Breakfast – overnight oats with chia seeds and blueberries (225 calories)

Lunch – I’ve been trying out veggie sheets, which i had to buy online. Softened, they make great wraps, so i chopped up some of my florette salad and boodles, added some anchovies for protein, made little summer rolls and made a dipping sauce with protein meant butter. (220 calories)

Dinner – Nasi goreng with prawns, peanuts and cauliflower rice (354 calories) The recipe in the red book p 129 serves 2, but this is an easy one to halve the ingredients.

Day 4:

Breakfast – 60g cottage cheese with raspberries and blueberries (100 calories)

Lunch – florette salad with prawns, radish and tomato, and a sachet of miso soup (140 calories)

Dinner – Boodles with homemade bolognaise sauce that I had in the freezer, parmesan cheese to up the protein (400 calories)

Day 5:

Breakfast – same as day 4, plus a glass of Big Tom (200 calories)

Lunch – out on a road trip today! Chose a veggie quiche and didn’t eat the crust (180 calories), and had an iced latter en route (80 calories)

Dinner – Swedish carrot with cod (Red p118, 279 calories), with some steamed mixed green veg (55 calories). The recipe is easy to adapt for one, although such a small amount of carrot can be hard to puree, and mine was a bit too sloppy. But it was tasty, the gingery carrot was sweet but not overly so.

Day 6:

Breakfast – fried egg, mushrooms and vegetarian black pudding (200 calories) with a slice of sourdough toast (100 calories) as a weekend treat

Lunch – carrot and coriander soup (blue p 58, 134 calories) This is a bit low in protein so I added a blob of greek yoghurt (40 calories) and some pumpkin seeds(60 calories), which sank to the bottom! I made 4 portions, froze 2 and will have the other for lunch in the next few days.

Dinner – broccoli and paneer (blue p 182, 345 calories). The recipe serves 3, which is slightly odd, but it’s simple enough to adapt for 1. I don’t like hot tomatoes, so I sub those for mushrooms, and I had some leftover nandos peri-peri rub, so I used that instead of curry powder. Had tomato salad on the side.

Day 7

Breakfast – overnight oats with added chia seeds

Lunch – out for lunch, chose a tomato a and mozzarella salad from the starters.

Dinner – I bought a celeriac at the weekend. One of the tricky things about doing this for one is using up all the veg, and certainly a whole celeriac looks a little daunting! But it keeps well, and I will be making various things from it. Tonight was the famous celeriac fries, done for the first time in the air fryer, and served with plant chef herby bangers, sauerkraut and mushy peas. (400 calories)

Links to previous weeks menus:

Fast 800-4-1: Week 1

Fast800-4-1 week 2

F800-4-1 week 3

Fast 800-4-1 week 4

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Fast800-4-1 week 2

Posted on February 8, 2021 by lindaharley

A weeks worth of food following Fast 800 principles, but suited to cooking for one.

Menu:

Monday: Greek yoghurt and granola, veggie sausage, miso aubergine

Tuesday: mushroom scrambled egg, blue cheese and chicory, cauliflower rice paella

Wednesday: chia pot, thai curry, prawns w courgetti and edamame spaghetti

Thursday: chia pot, thai veg curry, prawn stir-fry

Friday: Boiled egg, smoked salmon salad, halloumi ratatouille

Saturday: Overnight oats, halloumi ratatouille, salmon fillet w hoisin roast cauliflower

Sunday: Overnight oats, smoked salmon salad, veg burger, turnip fries, cheesy leeks

Foods that to be used up this week include apples, oranges, cauliflower, turnip, smoked salmon.

Vegetarian sausages come in a pack of 8, and it’s usually easiest just to cook them all at once. So Monday’s lunch was leftover from the sausages I’d cooked at the weekend, in an onion gravy. This reheats quite well in the microwave. Miso aubergine is p178 in the Easy F800 recipe book. It was very salty, and I wasn’t keen on the edamame cooked open in the oven, I’ll just micro them next time. But a satisfying plate of food.

Having a load of apples to use up, I made one into cinnamon apple crisps, p 220 first recipe book. These take a long time in a cool oven, but are a nice crisp snack.

Tuesday- blue cheese and chicory. It may be very good for your gut, but boy this is bitter! I could only eat half of one raw with salad, kept the rest for dinner. I was adding in some seafood to up my protein, and I love little pickled cockles. Any seafood packs a good protein to calorie ratio. So I made a cauliflower rice dish with paella flavours of paprika and garlic. And added the rest of the chicory as a side.

Wednesday: due to spend the rest of the week in the office, so I made a pot of chia seeds and yoghurt to have mid morning, defrosted a tub of Thai curry for lunches, and had some olives leftover from the paella. One of the issues about cooking for one is the freezing of leftovers, which is limited by the size of tubs available. But having 2 portions in one tub is suited to bringingto work, where I have access to a fridge and microwave.

I found edamame spaghetti in Holland and Barrett. The calories are similar to normal pasta, but it does have a protein content. I mixed a small portion (25g) with some courgette cut into thin strips, and served this with garlicky prawns. Frozen prawns are always on hand in my freezer, but they come in different size packs, so do check. I used half of a 180g pack, saving the rest for tomorrow. From a bag of mixed leaves I used some rocket to garnish.

Thursday I still had the chia pot and curry in the office fridge, and for dinner I used the rest of the prawns to make a stir fry, using some spinach leaves out of my salad bag. I added some Konjac noodles – I’m not a huge fan of these, they need to be rinsed well, and then dry fried to get rid of the fishy smell. But they were in the cupboard and I hate waste! Kimchi on the side, I love this stuff.


Friday: I always boil more than one egg when I’m cooking them, so have hard boiled eggs ready to eat in the fridge. Had one for breakfast. Lunch was some more salad leaves with smoked salmon, and for dinner I was cooking for my husband also. He likes the ratatouille w halloumi p212 of the original recipe book. The recipe serves 4, but husband eats 2 portions, I eat one and there’s one leftover for lunch.

Saturday: I made a big bowl of overnight oats using one apple, to do over 3 days. I can’t remember why I had so many oranges, but I decided to try the orange and almond loaf, p 222 of the original recipe book, which would also use up some of the dates I had left from Christmas. 300g of ground almonds! And 300 calories a slice! I’m not sure this really fits well with a low calorie diet, but I was intending to freeze most of it to have as an occasional treat. It smelled good while cooking, but the end result is quite heavy, and not worth all those calories.

Lunch was the leftover ratatouille, which reheats well, and for dinner I was tying the hoisin roast cauliflower, p210 of the blue recipe book. This was unpleasant, the addition of vinegar to the marinade makes it pungent and sour, and hot vinegary chilli but still crunchy cauliflower is really nasty. Turning a perfectly good low calorie veg into a 250 calorie side dish is not a move I’ll be repeating. Recipe serves 2, I kept the rest to have cold as a salad next day.


sunday: overnight oats, salad with the cold cauliflower, boiled egg mixed with sour cream and horseradish, smoked salmon, and the rest of my salad leaves bag. I’d bought a slab of plant based mince, so I was making a burger to go with turnip fries and cheesey leeks. These are easy to make in the microwave, zap the sliced leeks, then stir in some soft cheese and grated mozzarella. I had actually made 2 patties, but I left the room at one point and when I came back there was only one! Not sure which dog is the guilty party, but I know which husband should have been paying more attention!


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Fast 800-4-1: Week 1

Posted on January 30, 2021 by lindaharley

I’ve been trying to follow the Fast 800 style of eating for a while now. I did the original 5-2 back in the day, and managed to get through a day on 500 calories based around fish, veg and eggs. Since then the diet has become more popular and has evolved into what is now Fast 800, where it is 800 good quality calories per day every day for up to 12 weeks. It gained even more popularity when a TV show Lose a Stone in Three Weeks was aired during 2020, and of course a whole series of books have followed.

For ease of typing, I will refer to the books as O (the original guide) R ( the first red recipe book) E (the new blue topped Easy recipe book) and BSD (the Blood Sugar Diet book).

I have a number of issues with the books. I don’t eat meat but I do eat fish, and I find the veggie recipes can be quite high calorie (600 cals for a curry?) and have a sizeable carb content. But the biggest issue I have is that I am often just cooking for myself. There are a few recipes my husband also will eat (the halloumi ratatouille R212 being a favourite), and there are a handful of recipes for one (miso soup, omelettes), but more often than not I’m making adjustments to the quantities to either have a portion leftover for lunch, or to freeze. Having single portions of something suitable in the freezer is great, but can be limited by the availability of suitable containers. This also leads to the problem of how to use up half tins of coconut milk, or an opened jar of pesto.

So this will be a blog series looking at how to get a week of recipes using up what needs using, without too much repetition or saminess.

So. This week’s stuff that needs using: tofu, half an aubergine, half a pepper, half a block of halloumi, end of a cabbage, pak choi, spring onions and coriander. Smoked mackerel, mushrooms, kale, beansprouts, half an avocado.

Sunday: I made little aubergine halloumi and pepper stacks, and served them with a quick salad with yoghurt dressing.

Monday: I got creative with the smoked mackerel. Half of it I made into pate (BSD 73) which did 2 lunches, and the other half I made into fishcakes (E 110).

The recipe served 4 but was simple enough to halve, served with sesame stir fry veg, and I cooked and kept a portion to have cold with a salad.

Tuesday: Loaded miso soup with tofu and mushrooms.

These little mini snack packs of dried seaweed are great for tearing over Japanese dishes.

Wednesday: I’d used a stuffed butternut squash dish for my Christmas centrepiece, and had chopped the remainder into chunks and kept in the freezer. I used some to make a Red Thai curry with the coconut milk, made 2 portions and froze one.

Thursday: stir fry with tofu, beansprouts, and some frozen stir fry veg. These packs are very handy when cooking for one, as you just use as much as you need.

Friday: The rest of the squash roasted with sage, and served with a portion of veggie bolognaise (R194) that I had in the freezer.

Saturday: The coriander is really getting past it now, but used to garnish a shakshouka

Sunday: Another use-it-up stirfry.

Overall verdict: This was pretty good, I had a colourful array of vegetables, but I always struggle with using fresh herbs before they go off. I may revert to buying them frozen. What would I do without my freezer!

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