Chicken with chorizo

The smokiness in the chorizo blends fabulously with the chicken, and the olives, making this a dish that fills your mouth with different flavours. I've found that lots of different taste sensations have helped me to feel full sooner. Plus with two types of meat, this is chock full of protein that leaves me full for a long time. It keeps well in the fridge, maybe even improving as the flavours mingle.

One thing I started realising that I needed to cut back on my portions. Leaving out the rice, potatoes, pasta, etc. meant that I just couldn't eat as much, so my serving size got smaller, and so too did the plate.

Of course I'd heard how you should serve meals on a smaller plate to make you feel that you were eating more, but no such trick seemed necessary to me. Just the pure protein hit I was taking meant that I simply didn't want much. I started taking doggy bags home from restaurants, and people weren't sure if I was feeling ok, I was eating so little, but I felt great. I had energy that I hadn't had for so long and it made me want to dance and swim and walk and run upstairs and all those things I hadn't wanted to do for so long. Of course, by now the weight was coming off, and simply not carrying around all those extra pounds made a huge difference, without all the added benefits of the way this diet made me feel, the lack of sluggishness from carbs, the fact that my heart and all my other organs were taking that much less pressure. My knees weren't hurting all the time. I could crouch down to talk to a kid without worrying if I was going to be able to get back up. It was really working and I felt great.

It was around now that people started to notice. Not the weight loss as such - I have such a long way to go that I think that will take a while, but my face, I had energy, I wasn't as red, as grey, as tired looking. I was getting back to myself and this is what they were noticing. But of course as I felt better, I wanted to do more, swim, walk and so on, and then this meant I felt even better and then I wanted to do this more. I seemed to be on a fabulously uplifting spiral. But at the very very bottom of it. Nevertheless, getting on those scales seeing the weightloss (it doesn't go down in one straight line but plunges then stablises, then goes up a bit, falls a bit, drops, rises, much like the profit chart in a cartoon company. But overall, week by week, if not day by day, the weight was coming off and I haven't been hungry once.

Dishes like this help.

These are the ingredients to make the dish for four to six people.

Handful of dried mushrooms
6 Bay leaves
Teaspoon peppercorns
10 tomatoes, roasted, peeled and chopped (or a tin of tomatoes if you prefer)
Three onions
Three red peppers
2 cloves of crushed garlic
Four chicken breasts
100 grams chopped chorizo
2 tablespoons olive oil
75grams olives
Put a pan of water on to boil. Add mushrooms, bay leaves peppercorns and some chopped onions and boil to make a vegetable stock.
In a large pan fry the onion, garlic and red pepper strips until transparent (on a low heat!). Remove from the pan and add more olive oil. Fry the chicken pieces until golden brown. Add the onions, peppers, garlic, tomatoes and some strained stock.
Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for around half an hour.
Add the chorizo and olives. Cook for a further 5 minutes.