In my last post (which I suspect bored you cos it certainly bored me!) I mentioned that my eating is ‘kinda’ in hand.

It’s not perfect but I’m not inhaling stuff I shouldn’t be eating. (I should confess that, at my worst a few weeks ago I willingly ate packets of normal crisps. With gluten. Just normal packets of chippies. Bizarrely though I waited for the allergic reaction – being a coeliac and all – nothing came.)

Rather than craving junk food or my trigger food it occurred to me that I needed to find some other fast / takeaway options.

In my old hometown I had my favourite (and safe – coeliac-wise) takeaway haunts… but since moving I’m yet to discover Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese takeaway havens.

However after recently eating Thai takeaway and being reminded how much I love the spicy taste, I’ve been buying supplies to ‘mix’ it up at home a bit as well. Years ago when I did Weight Watchers, I had heaps of cookbooks and was good about trying different recipes, but now I just eat the same things week after week.

So I’ve been trying the “Passage to” range by Passage Foods* cos they’re all gluten-free. The Vietnamese Lemongrass Chicken was okay, though nothing to write home about, but the Beef Rendang was scrumptuous. In fact I couldn’t wait until lunch the following day to have my leftovers.

As I said in my last post, I’m pretty sure I still eat too much but I do feel more satisfied after particularly tasty meals. I have a few other mixes in my cupboard to try and have been hanging out for the Sri Lankan Coconut and Cashew Chicken mix.

Another thing that may (or may not) be helping my appetite is that I have again weaned myself off diet coke.

Long term readers may recall that I cut it out of my diet a couple of years ago. After some difficulty I started seeing benefits which surprised me – namely that I wasn’t hungry all of the time.

The same thing has happened this time, though not to the same extent. I was eating very healthily last time and suspect my low GI diet helped me feel satiated longer.

Basically my decision to go cold turkey this time came as a result of the fact I ran out of Vanilla Diet Coke (VDC). It’s hard to buy and I was initially too lazy to go to the one supermarket in town which sells it. Despite the fact I’d been drinking about a litre a day, day one passed without incident, though I struggled through days 2-4.

Ten days after I cut it from my diet my mother visited and I asked if she could bring a small bottle of VDC which I knew was wallowing in her fridge. She did and I treasured it and had it for afternoon tea. And it was delicious!

It’s over two weeks now since I have been VDC-free and I’m going to try to settle into a routine where I have one a week – or normal diet coke when out for breakfast or coffee. (I don’t drink tea or coffee!)

I haven’t been anywhere near a scale so have no idea if the reduced bingeing and lack of VDC is having any impact. But, perhaps that’s a good thing. If I got weighed and nothing had changed I would most certainly wonder WTF I was torturing myself.

What’s your take on diet soft drinks? Okay in moderation; a food replacement option; or never ever?!

PS. This is not a sponsored post, I just like to give a shout-out to food brands which cater for we coeliacs.