A bit of background

For my first post, I thought I'd explain the diet Paul and I are on. It's called the 4 Hour Body by Tim Ferriss and this is it in a nutshell:

1. Nothing white.
This means not to eat anything that is white (bread, rice, pasta, potatoes etc) or can be white (ie. wholemeal varieties of the above).
2. Don't drink calories.
No fruit juices, and definitely no soft drinks.
3. No fruit.
This diet eliminates sugar from the diet. Even "good" sugar found in fruit isn't really good for you.
4. Repetitive meals.
Try to eat the same few meals regularly.
5. Go crazy one day a week!
For six days in the week, you have to be strict with the diet. But on the seventh day, you are free to eat whatever you like in whatever quantities you like.

What you can and can't eat sounds a little weird written down in rules like this, so in a minute we'll get on to a few recipes to give you an idea of the kind of things you actually can eat.

Essentially, meals can be divided into these three parts:
- Beans/legumes
- Vegetables
- Protein (meat or eggs)

A very important part of the diet is the no sugar rule. Obviously this means no lollies, biscuits, cakes, pastries and even fruit. Fruit is not allowed (for six days of the week at least), which I found hard at first but I'm getting used to it. A lot of the time the fruit I consumed was as snacks I didn't really need anyway. If you think about it, most of the fruit we consume is out of habit, not because our bodies really need it!