HOW TO LOVE FOOD AND LOSE WEIGHT

Food isn’t just fuel for us – it’s our life. We spend most of every day cooking, thinking about food and coming up with recipe ideas, not to mention eating! Great-tasting food is our passion and we’re not about to give that up.

But we have to admit that we’ve overdone it a bit. Years of enjoying endless gorgeous meals has taken its toll and we’ve piled on the pounds. Like many middle-aged blokes – and ladies – we found that we’d got too hefty and our health was suffering. It was time to face facts and take a good hard look at ourselves so we took a deep breath and got on the scales. Ouch! It was a long time since we’d weighed anything except ingredients and it was a shock. We were both a couple of stone or more overweight and over 40% of our body mass was fat. It was time to diet.

Now we have to be honest, we’re never going to be skinny minnies and we don’t want to be. It’s just not us. But we’ve made the effort to lose weight to stay healthy and enjoy life to the full. We want to be walking up hills and down dales without getting out of breath, and to be riding our big bikes when we’re 70 so we need to keep mobile and trim. And that means every now and again watching what we eat and reining it in a bit.

Okay, we’re not going to diet for ever – we’re still greedy and we’ll always love our pies and curries – but our weigh-in was a wake-up call to act before we got dangerously big. Losing weight has been quite a journey for us but we’ve done it and we’re proud of ourselves. Now we know we can drop the pounds when we need to and this will help us keep a check on things in the future. If we can do it so can you.

Look at losing weight as an investment in yourself and the people you love. The benefits far outweigh the sacrifices.

Si: “I was always chubby, even as a lad. I ate for comfort after my dad died when I was only eight years old and the weight just continued to pile on. I didn’t know when to stop. I got teased at school, but I kept on eating. At 11 years old I was 11 stone. By my 12th birthday I was 12 stone. And then when I got into this game, I had every excuse to eat the most fantastic food whenever I wanted.”

Dave: “ I was quite skinny as a kid, but my mam and dad and me all loved our food. But my dad had a physically demanding job in a paper mill and he burned it all off. My life has been very different, but I’ve gone on eating the pies and hot pots and big roasts, as well as the fine dining all around the world. When you’re on the road a lot like we are, it’s hard to eat sensibly and all too easy to stoke up on rich fatty food. I’m never going to be skinny again but I don’t want to be obese either.”

SO THIS IS WHAT WE DID

We didn’t want to sacrifice the pleasure of cooking and feel deprived or hungry so we knew we had to come up with meals that we would enjoy making and eating if we were to stick with the diet.

With the advice of healthy eating experts, we discovered that by making small changes in our cooking habits we could still enjoy big flavours and the food we loved while dropping the pounds. And it’s true. We’ve shed weight and we feel the better for it. Our blood pressure and cholesterol levels are down, our waistlines have shrunk, we have more energy and we look HOT – but not as sweaty as we used to!

And even more importantly, we’ve done all this while still eating some of our favourite, great-tasting dishes that we now cook with less fat and sugar, but bags of flavour.

We think our recipes are fantastic. Yes, they’re lower in fat and sugar but they still taste amazing and we’re still just as enthusiastic and creative about our cooking as ever.