The 5 2 diet 4 weeks on

Today marks my fourth week of following the 5 2 diet and I thought I'd put up a little update.  After four weeks I've lost a grand total of 10 lbs and I'm really happy about it.  While I haven't lost that much since my last diet related post I know the reasons why (Wetherspoons rack of ribs I'm looking at you)  My clothes feel baggier, I can tell that I've lost weight and most importantly I don't feel like I'm on a diet!  I've found that I'm eating healthier, probably because I'm eating a lot more vegetables than I used to do, in fact on my fasting days I find the easiest thing to do to keep the calories down is simply to go vegetarian.

One of the nicest dinner recipes I've come up with is roasted veggie cous cous - it's packed full of good things and uses spices to keep the flavours interesting.  It's not a tricky recipe but because it uses oven roasted tomatoes it takes a while to prepare.  If you don't have time then you could simply use de-hydrated sun dried tomatoes, Merchant Gourmet do some really nice ones.  The beauty of doing it at home though is that you can take a cheap punnet of not very interesting tomatoes and turn them into something wonderfully flavourful.

Roasted Vegetable Cous Cous (serves 2)  138 calories per serving according to www.myfitnesspal.com

200g cherry tomatoes, halved
1 red pepper, chopped into bite size pieces
1 courgette, chopped into bite size pieces
1 onion, chopped into bite size pieces
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cumin
chili to taste
pinch of salt
100g cous cous

1 Pre-heat the oven to 150C.  Put the halved cherry tomatoes on a baking sheet cut side down.  Roast in the oven for 3 hours.

2 Take the tomatoes out of the oven and turn the heat up to 200C.  In a small bowl mix together the spices and salt - how much chilli you put in is entire down to personal taste.  Put the rest of the veggies on a large baking sheet and add the spice mix.  Use your hands to mix everything together so that the veggies are covered with the spices and them pop in the oven for 20 minutes.

3 After the veggies have been in the oven for 10 minutes prepare the cous cous following the instructions on the packet - I find that 100g of cous cous needs about 100ml of boiled water.  After the cous cous has been allowed to soak for 10 minutes the veggies should be down.  Take them out of the oven and stir into the cous cous along with the roasted tomatoes.

This cous cous is lovely on its own but is also good served as a side dish to chicken.  If you're not dieting then it could be made more substantial by adding chunks of feta cheese.