Two and a half years ago my husband and I experienced a massive life changing event….our beautiful daughter was born.
5 months after her birth I was struggling with the extra kilos I had put on whilst pregnant. I was exercising regularly doing cross fit training and heaps of pram walking but the weight was not budging.
Diet was my obvious problem…………
Lucky for me I am married to a man that LOVES good food. Now my husband is not the type of guy who eats enormous amounts of food, or extremely fatty food. He is the type of guy who buys recipe books by the dozen, reads many blogs about food and restaurants, and cooks the majority of our household meals just because he wants to!!!
So in the past I was lucky enough to be served up most nights meals like slow roasted Goat with parsnip mash (or roast potatoes), beautifully made risottos and pastas with smoked meats and lots of cheese, Salsicce e fagiolo (sausages and beans) and expertly made bruchetta with lashings of Olive oil….and this is only a sample of what I call his European stage! You can imagine that I spent many a day at the Mediterranean Wholesalers (Sydney Rd, Brunswick) buying bulk amounts of pasta, cheeses, smoked sausages and tinned tomatoes. Then there was the Indian stage…..this stage involved eating a different type of curry nearly every night which of course included large helpings of rice and roti bread (mmm yummy oily roti bread – outstanding stuff)!
Finally after getting fed up with all exercise I was doing without much weight loss (although I felt fitter, stronger and was developing muscles for the first time in my life) I sat my husband down and explained to him that although I loved his cooking I could not continue on this food path. I wanted to lose my baby weight and knew that the only way to do it was to change my diet. Of course he struggled with this! I remember his main comment being ‘I am not cooking food without flavour – I just cant live that way’. Dramatic I know, but hey this guy takes his food seriously!!! I think we both thought that eating ‘lighter’ meant that we would generally be eating food that lacked punchy flavour and that was interesting and different.
And then ‘The Songs of Sapa’ by Luke Nguyen landed on my husbands lap one day. It was a ‘aha’ moment in the words of good old Oprah Winfrey! I don’t think at that very moment we realized what an amazing food journey we were about to embark on at the time, but somehow my husband knew that this book might hold the key to what we both wanted. Lighter, less fattening food with buckets and buckets of flavor! Flavor that we just had no idea existed! So I must say a big thanks to Mr Nguyen – you are somewhat of a hero and you changed our lives forever (in a culinary sense)!
So 2 ½ years after my daughter’s birth I can proudly say that to date I have lost 14 kilos – I actually lost most of that weight in the first year, but I have managed to keep it off till now. I can only put this down to eating Asian food (mainly Vietnamese and Thai) and doing cross fit twice/three times a week. As much as I would like to be some new weight loss guru who has finally found the secret to losing weight and keeping it off – I am fairly sure I am not that person. I am only offering up my experience with losing weight and this is what worked for me. I think it mainly worked because I made a lifestyle change to eat Asian food and exercise regularly. Now like any cuisine, Thai and Vietnamese food does have its fair share of fattening dishes (they do love to fry and Thai’s especially love their sweets). I try to mainly stick to the obvious less fattening meals (salad dishes like Papaya salads, Vegi dishes – love a good stir fry, and lots of prawns, marinated meats and fish).
I would also like to add that that cooking Asian food is not only easy and yummy but it also helps when you want to dine out with your little one in tow. In my experience most Vietnamese and Thai restaurants welcome little ones with open arms – they don’t mind if your child spills rice all over the floor and they also don’t mind if your child is a bit noisy. Another big plus is that Vietnamese and Thai food is usually well priced which is really important when you are dining out with kids.
We do hope that you find this blog useful and interesting and enjoy reading it as much as we enjoy bringing it to you.
