Weight Loss Diaries – Weeks 2 & 3 | Honeymoonin’, hikes, and tons of Greek food

Find out more about this project and my weight loss goals here
View last week’s entry

Starting a weight loss journey the week before our honeymoon in Corfu was a little bit of a strange decision, I’ll admit. But is there ever a perfect time to start a weight loss journey?! While I won’t calorie count on holiday (how do you even do that when eating restaurant food, anyway?) I did get a TON of steps in, hiking up and down to stunning beaches all over Corfu. And when I got back, I was strangely excited to get back to my healthy plan!

Since these two weeks only had one week’s worth of the weight loss plan, I’ve merged them together into one post.

Anyway, let’s get into week two and three’s ups, downs, learnings and statistics…

This week’s stats

Weight loss goal: 0.5kg
Weight lost this week: 1kg
Current weight: 97kg
Weight lost total: 2kg

Daily calorie goal: 1,750
Average daily calories consumed: 1,557
Water goal: 12,000ml
Water consumed: 10,000ml

Step goal: 70,000
Steps achieved: 114,686
Distance walked: 67.98km
Heart points achieved: 531
Longest walk: 4.16km

On the menu

These two weeks were an odd one for meal planning – on Thursday, we flew to Corfu at 5am, and flew back the following Thursday, landing back in the UK at 3pm, so I just planned our meals for the days we were home either side. I had the added challenge of trying to finish off what was in the fridge and fruit bowl at the beginning of the week, too! I was back to work again on Friday, but that evening I created the meal plan for the following 9 days, and we went to both Aldi and Tesco to pick up all the ingredients. I love shopping at Aldi because it’s so much cheaper overall – but we often can’t get everything we need, because they don’t stock everything or have sold out of random items (this time they had no fresh parsley). Usually I send my husband off to Sainsbury’s during his work week to pick up the last few bits, but this time we decided to pop round the corner to Tesco instead, just so we knew everything on the list was ticked off.

Of course, this meal plan only covered 6 full days – the rest of the time we were in Corfu. I feel it’s almost human rights abuse to diet on holiday, so I obviously spent it eating lots of fried fish, aubergines, feta and anything else doused in olive oil.

New recipes

Trying new recipes is fast becoming the best thing about this diet plan. I’m still enjoying baking and experimenting in the kitchen – only now the goal is improved nutrition, as well as taste!

High protein, low sugar cinnamon buns that look this good? The secret ingredient is… cottage cheese. Yep!! Despite me having to mix and knead the dough by hand, these came out beautiful! They were super fluffy and light, have very little fat in them, and each deliver 6g of protein for just 147 calories. Feel like a treat, but two of these for breakfast is still under 300 calories. I’ve stashed most of them in the freezer for breakfasts next week.

We’ve used Homepride pasta bake sauce for years, but we eat the entire dish between the two of us, so it has far too many calories to fit into this diet plan! Instead, we tried this BBC Good Food Sausage Pasta Bake recipe – and by using low fat mozzarella, less parmesan and swapping the 6 sausages listed for a pack of 12 of these Muscle Food sausages, each serving comes out at a respectable 579 calories, with 37.5g of protein and 20.4g fat. It was super tasty and satisfying, but next time I think I’ll include an onion and add cherry tomatoes – and maybe use slightly less pasta.

It might not look like much (there is a whole chicken breast hidden in there), but this Chicken, Chorizo, Olive and Chickpea Stew was absolutely delicious, and packed in a whopping 57g of protein per serving, at only 505 calories. I used less oil for frying, some kalamata olives we brought back from Corfu, and served it with Barenaked Rice – which is fake rice made from konjac flour, at only 15kcal per serving. It’s not as nice as basmati obviously, but at 15kcal a serving it’ll make a great substitute!

Out and about

Now a few weeks in, the daily walks have become second nature. The clocks going back has also given me an additional hour in the evenings, so I’ve been going on daily evening walks with my husband after work. Sometimes we’ll stop in at the Co-op – 6pm is the time to hunt for orange stickers, and we find some really great stuff in there, from bread and fruit to fish and posh sandwiches – but mostly we just walk for a walk’s sake. It’s nice to have a buddy to chat to, and gives us some nice quality time where we’re not on our phones, watching TV, or rushing about trying to cook or clean.

A cracking Sunday Co-op reduced haul – this week’s finds included croissants and breaded cod that will store nicely in the freezer for a future week; a ready meal to freeze for my husband take to work (when we don’t have anything prepped); a posh prawn sandwich that we’ll split for a nice afternoon snack next week; a chunk of soft goat’s cheese; a pack of ripen-at-home plums that were actually ready to eat; and a 24p french stick, which makes great eggy bread or sandwiches.

Despite a lot of lazing around on beaches, I found it very easy to go over my step goal while in Corfu. In fact, most days, I easily hit 10,000 steps.

Of course, it’s much easier to do this on holiday, when you aren’t tied to your work desk 7.5 hours a day!

Ways I moved more this week

  • Daily walks with my husband – which we’ve dubbed Family Walking Club
  • Much exploring, hikes and wandering around Corfu – including beaches, peninsulas, caves, a palace and even an abandoned hotel

How I’m feeling

I half expected to come back from my holiday weighing more than I did when I started this journey, so I was pleased to see I hadn’t undone all the weight loss achieved beforehand – and still managed to lose 1kg overall in these two weeks. After a week hiking around Corfu, I definitely feel fitter and stronger, but I fell off the wagon when it came to drinking enough water. While I had my water bottle with me at all times, there weren’t a lot of places to refill it, so I found that quite difficult to stay on top of. Hopefully now I’m home again I can pick that habit back up again.

One thing that has occured to me since coming back from Corfu is that I feel like I’m constantly thinking about food – planning meals, cooking meals, researching recipes, making sure my planned food for the day doesn’t go over my calorie limit, working out how to use up everything in the fridge before it goes bad. Was I constantly thinking about food before? Maybe I was – or maybe because this has been such a big change, with a huge overhaul of how we plan, shop, cook and eat, it’s just using more of my brain power right now. Hopefully, once I have a bigger repetoire of ‘on-plan’ recipes and foods, planning a week of meals and snacks will be second nature.

Corfu in summary: drinking white wine, petting stray cats and admiring the view from on top of big hills

‘Til next time,

Alli xx

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