Me and my diet recipes blog

logo, diet recipes blog, Light & YummyMy name is Giovanna and I was born in Italy, in the beautiful city of Naples, but currently I live in the Netherlands with my partner, my son and four lovely cats. I started this blog some time ago as the English companion of my Italian well established blog Mangia senza Pancia, but then I had to put it on hold for a while. Later I decided to continue translating all my recipes in English and hopefully to do so for a long time, sharing with you also some of my tricks for a healthy diet.

I started blogging as I could not find a job but I wanted to keep busy using my skills, which I like to call “computering”. I studied maths at university at the very beginning of the computer age, and then worked in IT for many years mainly in Italy and in London. Blogging has been so far the best solution to keep my IT skills up to date, being creative, build my own little business but mainly: BEING MYSELF!

Currently I manage an extensive club on facebook where I give food and diet advice, gained through my experience and with my great surprise this group has grown quite a lot, to the point that I hold “diet events” and so I had to open my own company. This has been a real turn of my life: from computer nerd to helping people… and I love it! Maybe one day I will be able to do a parallel group also in English, who knows!

Food & Diet

As most Neapolitan people I love good food: Mediterranean and of course Italian style are my favourites and cooking is amongst one of my preferred pastimes. But everything should be done with measure: during my life I became overweight more than once! Luckily I have always managed to lose the extra kilos. I tried losing weight in many ways but eventually I understood that it is better to do so following a healthy diet, balanced, suitable for the whole family and that gives me satisfaction when I eat. I found all these characteristics in the Weight Watchers Propoints diet which I already knew from London, where I followed the 1-2-3 Success plan.

conditions beginning, motivational, diet recipes blog, Light & Yummy

In 2012, having again piled quite a few kilos due to a period of major stress with my job, I started my Italian blog Mangia senza Pancia, which literally means “eat without tummy”, meaning that it is possible to eat in such manner to fill satisfied and stay slim. As the days passed I wrote on my blog what I cooked and ate and of course all my feelings: a complete diary together with all the recipes I cooked everyday. By the end of 2014 I lost about 50 pounds, becoming also quite expert at cooking light and at calculating the Weight Watchers Propoints of the different ingredients.

Fitness

Obviously a good diet must be accompanied by some physical activity too. During the actual diet period I started with Tai Chi, which helped a lot for my mind but then I needed something more cardio and I started Zumba, which I absolutely loved and still do. 

before after zumba, fitness, diet recipes blog, Light & Yummy

Since then, after losing all that weight, I have gone wild: bootcamp, nordic walking and currently running too, which I was never able to do, even when I was a girl! This was one of the best things that could have ever happened to me: from having become a couch potato I now go running 3 times a week, and also do one lesson of zumba and one of pilates. I am getting very fit, capable to endure hours of exercising, which before I would not even have dreamt of…

Why an English diet recipes blog

After a year of blogging in Italian I decided to open also a companion blog in English and share my cooking with non Italian readers. I have many Dutch and English friends who cannot read my current blog but can see all the pictures go by on facebook. They ask me how to cook what they see on the pictures, so I thought opening Light&Yummy was a very good idea! Then I had not time to translate for a while but here I am again, very determined to add at least one recipe per week. Of course all your comments, positive or negative, are welcome … I will be happy to answer to all your questions the best way I can.

Okay, lot’s of work awaits so, here I go!

9 Replies to “Me and my diet recipes blog”

  1. Hi :). I am from Netherlands and i don’t know how can i disable my signature? Regards 🙂

  2. Ciao Giovanna,

    I’m so happy that you have now a blog in English! I was regularly reading “Mangia senze Pancia” , with the help of google-translate, as my Italian is not very strong, but I’m learning and practicing. You always motivated me a lot and I really enjoyed reading my blog. But now since you are posting your recipes also in English I need to thank you as well on behalf of my Italian boyfriend who do not need help me translating your posts anymore 🙂

    I started recently a little blog as well, I hope you visit me sometimes too. http://www.eatcooksmile.com

    Warm regards
    Yulia

    1. Hi Yulia! I start from the bottom: you have made a nice blog indeed, very nice pics and the diary too! I will read it in details later and tell you more but it is very promising, well done 🙂 Oh and the explanation about the WW diet itself is done so well! One thing I haven’t got yet is if you are also going to the meetings or following WW online, please let me know, so we can exchange more info.
      I am happy you find my blog useful and you manage understanding Italian too! Slowly I will remake all posts in English here on Light & Yummy, diary aside, and have a good recipe database here too. But it takes so long! I spend a lot of time also on facebook, on my Mangia senza Pancia page, chatting with people who follow me, and replying to all sort of diet queries. I keep saying I am no expert but I get lots of questions anyway 🙂
      So it is going to be a slow translation 😀
      I really thank you for all the nice feedback, it is very kind of you… a big hug and hope to read you soon! Maybe if you like you can join my Light & Yummy on facebook, as it is faster to communicate there. The link is below all recipes.
      Ciao! 🙂
      ps: where is your bf from exactly?

      1. Thanks a lot for your reply and your nice feedback! I’m following WW online in Germany. I have a blog inside the online WW community as well and it became quite big, I never expected that. I enjoyed writing this community blog so much, but I was unhappy, that I couldn’t properly upload pictures or mealplans and the functionalities were really poor. So I decided to create an own “real” blog. And I created it in English for the similar reason as you, because I have a lot of friends who cannot speak german, starting from my boyfriend. He is by the way from the north, from Bergamo.
        I like it very much there, so in my heart I’m slowly becoming a Bergamasca :).
        I believe it’s a hell a lot of work for you to translate all the recipes into English, as your database is massive! I wish you good luck for this and very much looking forward to read them in English.
        I don’t have a facebook account yet (I know a shame) but I plan to get one finally and then I will join your fb too.

        Un abbraccio
        Ciao
        Yulia

        1. wow that’s a very nice story for your blog, you should write it somewhere (unless I was unable to find it!) 🙂
          I have been to Bergamo but I know it’s a beautiful city! And I pay the online WW here in the Netherlands but I can’t really make a blog as I cannot speak and write Dutch well enough, but you never know, I may start the oddi article to practice 😀 😀 😀
          In this English blog I do miss the part about the daily diary… maybe I am going to start it anyway, even though I am nearly at goal! For me it’s just a lack of time, because I have plenty of ideas for things to do with the blog…
          Un abbraccio a te e scrivi anche in italiano, quello che riesci, così fai un po’ di esercizio 🙂

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