Healthy Eating
Soup and Salad
RECIPES
Soups, Salads and other healthy recipes.
NUTRITION
Nutriational information about ingredients and a healthy balanced diet.
HOME GROWN
Hints and tips for growing your own fruits and vegetables.
DESSERTS
Healthly puddings and desserts.
WELLBEING
A balanced life approach to wellbeing.
Welcome
Hello, my name is John.
I’m “Mr Soup and Salad”.
The nickname Mr Soup and Salad was given to me by some of the members at a Slimming World group I attended for a year.
I started experimenting making tasty, nutritious, low calorie soups, packed with nutrients, vitamins and healthy ingredients. The soups went down well within the SW group, and hence the nickname. I was pursuaded by the group members to enter a national Slimming World recipe competition with one of my Spicy Tomato Soups. I didn’t win, but the idea of my recipe becoming one of the Slimming World soups sold in Iceland, which was part of the winning prize, was a fun idea. You have to be “in it to win it”.
Later, while walking our dogs through the village where I live, someone I had never met before got talking to myself and my wife. Out of the blue, and to my total surprise, she said, “You’re Mr Soup and Salad aren’t you?”, and the name has stuck ever since.
Nutrition
Discovering a love of healthy eating got me thinking, and I wanted to know more. So, I studied level 2 Nutrition online and passed that, and then decided to go on and do level 4 Nutrition at St Marys University. I didn’t have time to submit the assessment at the end of the course due to work commitments. However, this year I am back at St Mary’s Uni redoing the Level 4 course and am determined to pass.
So, the science of nutrition has got me hooked and that’s one of the reasons the Mr Soup and Salad website came about.
Weight Loss
That first year at Slimming World I lost 3 stone, reducing my weight from 18st 9lbs down to 15st 3lbs in the first six months. I did my own version of Slimming World, went to the weekly weigh in, and stayed at group sessions to listen to other peoples stories. But, for the most part I simply focused on eating healthy food, less fatty foods, less processed sugar, and much less diary and bread. Properly doing Slimming World was a bit too complex for me with all the “rules” to try and read, understand, and follow.
Within a year I put nearly all that weight lost back on getting back to 18st 3lbs.
I am now doing what I said I never would, which is, weighing my food, “working out” getting regular exercise, and monitoring my calorie intake and calories burnt.
I use the NutraCheck app to track Calories, percentage fats including saturated fats, carbohyrates and sugars, and protein in my diet.
I also use my Samsung Galaxy 6 smart watch and the Samsung Health app to track calories burnt with exercise. I have linked the exercise calories in the Samsung Health app to NutraCheck, via Google Fit as it won’t link dirctly, so a handy work around. Using this method I can easily track calories in and calories out all within in the Nutracheck app.
I use accurate Renpho scales linked to a cool Renpho Health app to track my weight over time, mainly weekly, to monitor my progress.
Simplicity is the key. If it was too complex, or time consuming to track and record calories, nutriation balance, exercise and my weight the whole plan would get dropped pretty quickly!
It has turned out to be really easy, insightful, and enjoyable. Much easier than I thought it would be.
It is also a lot cheaper. A weekly fee to Slimming World of around £5 a week totalling £260, or so, for a year, compared to around £30 to £50 a year for Nutracheck.
Plus, I feel more in control so I imagine it will be easier to sustain in the long term.
Exercise
While at Slimming World I did very little exercise, other than walking the dogs, and the occasional walk with my wife. That was intentional as I wanted to experiment with whether it is possible to lose weight just doing Slimming World, without exercise. I found it certainly it worked for me, at least in the short term.
I am not a fan of “the gym” having tried it a few times but just can’t get into regular trips to the gym. Expensive and all that time travelling to a from the gym. I gave up on that idea.
My job is desk based so I don’t get a lot of exercise during the day, although I have invested in a rise and fall electric desk so I can stand while working or tuck my exercise bike under it when raised!
So, this time I am mixing healthy eating, the majority of the time, with a fair degree of exercise.
The first 6 weeks of my new weight loss regime saw my weight reduce from 18st 3lbs to 15st 13.6lbs, which is over 2st 3lb weight loss in just 6 weeks, while also eating really healthy food.
My target is to get below 15 stone, and stay there.
I prefer NutraCheck to track food calories, but you could use MyFitnessPal, whatever works for you.
NutraCheck, and calorie counting, is teaching me portion size, which is important, and not something I really grasped on at Slimming World, as you don’t calorie count on SW.
I will be posting some of my experiences, experiments, and thoughts on weight control and “dieting”.
Mr Soup and Salad was set up to share some of the things I have been learning along the way, in case they might also help or inspire you.
Some recipes, resources, hints, tips, ideas, nutritional information, and some inspiration.
Grow Your Own
One of the best natural sources of Vitamin D is sunlight. Getting out in the fresh air and sunshine to grow a few of your own vegetables is therefore great for your Vitamin D levels. Vitamin D helps regulate the amount of calcium and phosphate in the body. These nutrients keep bones, teeth and muscles healthy. On Mr Soup and Salad you will be able to find information about Vitamins, their benefits and importance, and what food items are good sources of what Vitamins and nutrients.
So, one of the joys I have discovered on this journey is the pleasure from growing your own fruit and vegetables with all sorts fo experiments for successfully growing along the way.
Green fingered I was definitely not! I killed any plant I have tried to grow in the past and never really attempted to grow much.
But, developing a love of healthy soups and salads also led me to research how to grow some of a my own fruit and vegetables.
The first year went OK, but with experience it is something you can develop and get better at.
Growing your own, or some of it, is not just about the ultra fresh produce you get from your efforts, the mental, wellbeing, and personal benefits have been way more than I anticipated. It gets me away from my desk and sofa too, more fresh air, exercise around the garden, and inspiration from the awe of nature.
I am lucky enough to run my own business and work from home so grabbing a bit of time before or after work to water, plant and nurture the plants isn’t too much of a stretch of my time.
Seeing a 2mm Tomato seed become a 6 foot Tomato plant covered in beautiful red Tomatoes over a period of about a three to four months is awe inspiring. It has taught me patience and a real apprecation of food and the time and resources needed by plants to grow into what we will eat in a matter of minutes.
Not everyone has the space to try and grow their own fruits and vegetables but with the fairly small space I have, I am trying to make the most of it.
I will be sharing some of the hints, tips and ideas I have discovered about growing your own, in case they inspire or help you.
Meditation Coach
Over the last two years my wife, Tracy, started a business called “calming space” which helps people with massage, meditation and Reiki.
Tracy asked me to keep her company at some of her training, be her model or guinea pig, and somehow along the way I ended up training as a meditation coach myself.
I have been exploring meditation, and its benefits, for a couple of years now and have found it a really useful mental and wellbeing tool.
I am not a religious person so I tend to practice what they call “mindfulness meditation” or visualisation meditations.
I have found it useful in a number of ways.
Exercise Meditation
One of the ways I am using meditation I call “exercise meditation“. This is where I use a meditation visualisation when I am exercising, such as on my exercise bike at home, or swimming in the local pool.
Exercise meditation helps me get a whole hour of peddling roughly 12 miles in an hour, without getting bored on the bike and potentially burning around 580 calories in the process. In the local swimming pool it helps me achieve 64 lengths in an hour or around 540 calories burned.
Basically the meditation visualisations I have developed help me focus so I don’t get bored just peddling away or counting the lengths. For me that great and keeps me going.
Business Meditation
The other type of meditation I am developing is “business meditation“, which involves focusing on business issues, problems, ideas or plans to improve the productivity I achieve.
I will be sharing some thoughts and ideas in the wellbeing section of Mr Soup and Salad.
Healthy eating, nutrition, exercise and mediation have all really helped me, so my hope is that they can help and inspire you too.
Rewarding and not hard to learn, meditation has proved a really value new life tool.
Give it a try, what have you got to lose?
The secret is putting to one side thoughts that it is a bit weird and something only other strange people do, and working out what type of meditation works for you. If you can make it personal to you, and what works for you, then that’s the real key to it being a useful tool for you.
Exercise
The dreaded “work out”.
I have tried Gym memberships a few times in my life. In the last few years I joined the gym twice and each time I did that went to the gym once in the year, effectively costing me over £200 each of the two times I went. I thought spending the money would make me go, but that didn’t work either time I tried it.
However, I instead purchased a VRAi exercise bike and now I cycle around 12 miles (20km) a few times a week which takes around an hour each time. However, I make very good use of that hour, not just for the virtual cycle ride! Hints and tips about how to make “exercise time” far more interesting, rewarding, useful and sustainable will be in the wellbeing sections on Mr Soup and Salad.
I also swim twice a week, sticking to the slow lane, to keep my heart rate in Zone 3 which is a great heart rate zone for burning calories rather than building muscle. I swim for an hour and in that hour have built up from thirty 25m lengths to around sixty lengths. 64 lengths is equal to approximately 1 mile which feels great to achieve.
We have a second hand treadmill and usually once a week I fast walk at around around 6.5 km/hr for an hour or around 600 calories burned.
So far I have managed to stick to a fairly regular weekly exercise regime for nearly two months now. A lot longer than any previous exercise regime I tried to do.
It has helped with the weight loss and also given me a massive boost in energy, feelings of positivity, and general better wellbeing. Getting the exercise has proved a valuable investment of my time and effort.
The wellbeing section of Mr Soup and Salad will feature some hints, tips and tricks for making exercise less boring and therefore more sustainable!
Mr Soup and Salad
A healthy approach to life.
With the goal to be healthy and feel healthly.
To learn to appreciate and care for ourselves, our planet, and our wellbeing.
Eat The Rainbow
Soups and Salads can be extremely healthy, packed with vitamins and nutrients your body needs tobe healthy.
A healthy balance diet can have a great impact on quality of life.
“Eating the rainbow” is a useful way to eat many of the nutrients that help your body and mind thrive. Eating the Rainbow refers to eating fruits and vegetables of different colours as the colours are created by the different nutrients in each item of food, hence eating a variety of different coloured fruit and vegetables helps you get a healthy variety of the nutrients your body needs.