Mix-And-Match Salads

If you fancy creating your own 'superfood' salad, you can use the following guide to pick and mix your own ingredients, either at home or when you are choosing lunch from a deli or salad bar. To get a 10GL meal you can fill your plate with vegetables from the 'Unlimited' box then selectone of the options from both the 'Choose 1 Protein' and 'Choose 1 Carbohydrate' boxes, to provide a balanced meal of protein, carbohydrate and plenty of fibrous vegetables.

For example, you could have spinach, watercress, rocket, cherry tomatoes, artichoke hearts and olives, with chicken slices and butterbeans. Alternatively, try Romaine lettuce, spring onions, celery, roasted red peppers, and smoked mackerel flaked through with quinoa. The serving sizes here are for one person, and include maintenance phase portions when you are allowed more carbohydrate to bring your meal up to 15GL

UNLIMITED

Salad leaves

Lettuce or other leaves, such as spinach, watercress, rocket

Other non-starchy vegetables

Vegetables, such as spring onions or red onion, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, radishes, diced peppers, beansprouts, celery, fresh herbs, vegetable antipasti (such as marinated artichoke hearts, roasted peppers or olives - drain offany excess oil)

CHOOSE 1

Protein

1 chicken breast fillet or equivalent slices or strips of chicken, turkey or lean ham

85g (3oz) (medium fillet) smoked fish, such as smoked salmon, trout or mackerel

85g (3oz) (6 large) cooked prawns ¹/2 x 85g (3oz) can tuna

120g (4¹/4oz) cottage cheese

75g (2³/4oz) cheese, such as feta or goat's cheese

2 hard-boiled eggs (or mash 1 hard-boiled egg into 1 tbsp cottage cheese)

1 tbsp nuts or seeds, such as pine nuts, pecan nuts, walnuts, cashew nuts or pumpkin seeds

200g (7oz) hummus (small pot) 65g (2¹/4oz) quinoa (dry weight) 100g (3¹/2oz) smoked tofu, cubed

CHOOSE 1

Carbohydrate

(grains and starchy vegetables)

1 medium carrot (grated) or

apple (diced)

maintenance phase: 1 large carrot or apple

110g (33/4oz) beetroot maintenance phase: 160g (53/4oz)

¹/2x 410g (14¹/2oz) can (2 tbsp) mixed pulses, butterbeans, lentils or chickpeas (or other pulse) maintenance phase: ²/3 x 410g (14¹/20z) can (3 heaped tbsp)

3 rough oatcakes

maintenance phase: 5 rough oatcakes

³/4 wholemeal pitta bread (or to make life easier, have a whole pitta bread for 10GL but don't have it with a carbohydrate containing filling - so no sun-dried tomatoes or hummus,for example

maintenance phase: 1 pitta

11/2 slices rye bread

maintenance phase: 2 slices rye bread

65g (2¹/4oz) quinoa (dry weight) maintenance phase: 90g (3¹/4oz) (very large serving)

40g (1¹/2oz) brown basmati rice (dry weight) (very small serving) maintenance phase: 60g (2¹/4oz) (small serving)

40g (1¹/2oz) wholemeal pasta (dry weight) (medium serving) maintenance phase: 55g (2oz) (medium-large serving)

3 small baby new potatoes maintenance phase: 4 small baby new potatoes

¹/2 small baked potato/sweet potato maintenance phase: 1 small baked potato/sweet potato