Chicken or cheese?

I quit Slimming World in March last year, after seventeen months with them, during which I lost very nearly two and a half stones. It's a very effective way of losing weight, increasing health, feeling more energetic, and recovering a lost size and look. I stopped going to SW only because I felt I'd slimmed-down enough, and didn't want to carry the weight loss too far: at my age, you can look scrawny if you get too thin. I also wanted my Thursday evenings back for other things I wanted to do.

The kind of eating regime recommended by SW will steer you away from fatty and sugary foodstuffs and towards truly nourishing things that fill your tummy in a satisfying way, yet are low in fat and sugar and - for their bulk - low in calories. This translates into a regime dominated by fresh meat and fish (or vegetarian substitutes), vegetables and fruit - as much as you can eat. Non-vegetable carbs and dairy are allowed, but rationed.

It's all carefully worked-out, and you are free to devise your own menus within the parameters set. You can also be personally creative with menus, and invent and use your own control mechanisms, whatever works - hence my famous spreadsheets!

I have always liked that freedom: it makes me feel that I'm adhering to good rules, but able to do my own thing. And for the most part, the Slimming World approach means I can still enjoy many of my favourite foodstuffs. An almost ideal way of staying healthy, and maintaining the right weight, through wise eating. And although I quit SW nearly a year ago, I have continued to follow its guidelines, and still use those control spreadsheets I invented for myself. I gather that recently one or two SW guidelines have been modified, but it's clear that those I took on board in 2016 will still do the trick for me.

And of course, if I ever feel that I need to up my game, or have lost that perfect resolve, I can always rejoin SW and once more go to their weekly weigh-ins and Image Therapy sessions. Those group meetings were always enjoyable, whether it was my local group, or a group elsewhere in the country that I attended while on holiday. I sort of miss them even now. They were certainly a welcome social focus when far away from home.

But I'm pretty self-motivated, and I think I'm doing OK on my own. I admit to some weight slippage in mid-2018 that I still haven't really recovered from, but all the SW constraints are still in place, and indeed they provide me with handy excuses for being strong and sensible when tempted by something naughty that I shouldn't be eating. I do allow myself the occasional treat - the odd bit of chocolate, for instance - but I never make it a regular treat.

Chocolate is easy to stay away from. Other things less so. One of them is cheese.

I've had to cut out several things I used to eat a lot of, but still miss - or even crave. Cheese is one or these. I love the tasty tang of strong cheddar cheese, or the saltiness of soft and blue-veined cheese. Before SW, I used to eat a big hunk of cheese every afternoon with bread, butter and conserve and a nice cup of tea. All that had to end, apart from the cuppa. There was no way I could have a daily cheese, bread, butter and conserve fix and hope to lose weight!

So cheese has joined the list of things that I allow myself only very occasionally, only when eating out. When sharing a cheeseboard, for instance. Still, now and then I look at ways to include it into my regular eating regime, and yet still keep within the proper SW framework.

Last week, as an experiment, I looked into replacing my afternoon cold, cooked chicken thigh with a little morsel of cheese. SW lets me eat as much chicken as I like. But chicken is bland. Cheese, though... I wondered whether a small amount of cheese (30g) would be equally satisfying as an afternoon snack, to help fill that long gap between lunch and the evening meal. Cheese would certainly give me a big flavour hit. It was an idea that had me slavering.

I considered the matter.

# SW's guidelines let me eat 30g of cheese per day as a source of calcium and protein.
# But I was already using milk for that, and since I loved milk, I'd still want to consume both.
# That could be done within SW rules, but it meant getting very, very close to my daily limit for 'naughty' foodstuffs. No room left for any other treats! And those cropped up most days.
# Waitrose sold 360g of strength 5 cheddar cheese for £3.85. 1.07p per gram. Enough for 12 afternoon snacks at 30g per snack.
# Waitrose sold 435g of cooked chicken thighs - let's say 330g of actual chicken meat (the thigh bone, skin and gristly bits wouldn't be eaten of course) - for £3.49. Meatwise then, 1.06p per gram. 6 pieces of chicken, enough for 6 afternoon snacks at 55g of chicken meat per snack.
# So for roughly the same cost, I'd get cheese to last 12 days, or chicken to last only 6 days at most. On cost, the cheese was much better value.
# And flavourwise, cheese won hands down. I'd much prefer eating cheese to chicken!
# But as for being SW-compliant, chicken won. Even if I gorged myself on chicken, I'd still lose weight. Not so with cheese - unless I gave up all the other naughty extras that I could presently consume without compromising my slimming regime.
# Both cheese and chicken were rich in protein and other things that a balanced diet required.
# But cheese contained a lot of fat, and when you looked at the unopened packet you had to say to yourself, 'You're going to stuff all that fat inside you, where perhaps it will stay.'

Well, I bought a packet of that good-value, knockout-favoured, but undeniably fat-laden cheese and ate a minute 30g morsel of it for two afternoons, instead of my usual chicken thigh.

But I'm afraid it didn't satisfy. There was just too little of it to quell my peckishness at 4.00pm. Even when combined with an apple and a banana. And, to be honest, I didn't like the cheese restricting my daily scope for having other 'naughty' things. Like gravy and mint sauce, if I were cooking lamb that evening.

So I binned it, and went back to my normal regime. Which means chicken and an apple at 4.00pm, unless I'm out of the house.

Cheese will have to stay a rare treat when eating out!