Hi!

Was just going to do this as a big long post, but I’ve decided to split this into individual, but quite short posts, for the sake of my own sanity if nothing else.

Due to my ever expanding waistline, I considered my options – for context, during the Covid period I lost a lot of weight, and post-Covid it’s all come back, so I needed a new strategy for weight loss that wasn’t due to a pandemic. (To clarify – I wasn’t particularly unwell or anything – it just so happens that if you shut the pubs and restrict what I can do in my spare time as “go for a walk” then it’s a pretty effective diet regime!)

I had considered retiring the blog in light of this – ultimately, I can’t review food without eating it – but then it hit me. What if, hear me out, I could still eat kebabs, and somehow skip calories?

Here are the results.

Now, I will add in two disclaimers; firstly, due to a range of factors (I’m nowhere near as active as I was being the big one) these have had a negligible effect on me – however, it’s a marathon not a sprint, and thus far, I’ve maintained a constant weight. It’s not been weight loss, but it’s not been weight gain either, so I’m calling it a modest win, and at the very least, I’m slowly moving in the right direction. As such: Disclaimer 1) Importantly, and to make this abundantly clear, the venues I visited do not necessarily endorse these as lighter options. Of the 6 reviews I will post today (apologies to your social feeds etc.) only Istanbul claim “It’s practically health food”, and only GDK provided calorific information on their menu. (For readers in England, unlike down there, Scotland has not introduced a law requiring calorie counts to feature on menus.) Two of these meals were semi off-menu (i.e. required me to ask for an alteration), so, for the above reasons, self-evidently, the term “lighter options” is purely my own assessment and judgement.
Disclaimer 2) I am *not* a dietician. If I were, I’d likely get sacked in my first week in the job. If you want dietary advice, NHS 24/NHS Inform/Your local friendly neighbourhood GP would be who I’d speak to, rather than an idiot with a website.

Now that I’ve said that, I’m going to post some pictures of food and write a bit about them.