No bread, no pizza, no meat, no problem

A frittata made with three reduced-fat cheeses, tomatoes and pesto, above and below, oozing like the deep-dish pizza I deny myself to maintain my weight loss.

Most of the ingredients are available at Costco Wholesale. To prepare a 10-inch frittata, see Do you know how to do 'The Frittata'?

Do I miss bread and pizza, which I gave up a couple of years ago to lose weight, at the suggestion of my trainer at the gym? Absolutely.

I no longer have a trainer, but I'm still on a no-bread, no-pizza diet.

What I don't miss is the 48 pounds I've lost, giving me -- someone who has been overweight for most of his adult life -- a feeling of being relatively light on my feet.

My weight recently hit a plateau in the 179-181 pound range, compared to a high of 228 pounds in 2010.

A wedge of the deep-dish frittata with Della-brand organic brown rice from Costco Wholesale in Hackensack and stewed tofu from H Mart in Englewood.

Go brown

I've substituted brown rice, whole-wheat pasta and mashed sweet potatoes for white rice, conventional pasta and white potatoes.

I've added organic quinoa to my diet, making 2 cups at a time to provide a side dish for 4 or 5 breakfasts and dinners. 

I finished the quinoa on Wednesday morning. So I made 2 cups of organic brown rice with diced organic tomatoes in an electric cooker for the next set of meals.

Fluffy organic quinoa has fewer carbohydrates than rice or pasta. Here, I ate the whole grain with Chinese cabbage and spicy tofu from a restaurant that didn't have brown rice.

Instead of having bread with these organic eggs accented with pesto, I filled my breakfast plate with squash, sweet potato and sauteed cabbage with sweet peppers.

Two fish are better than one, as in this dinner of fresh wild salmon from Costco Wholesale in Hackensack and pan-fried whole whiting, which were $3.49 a pound at H Mart in Englewood.

I also gave up meat and poultry more than 3 years ago out of concern over all the antibiotics and growth hormones used to raise animals on factory farms, and the lack of information on most restaurant menus.

I've switched to seafood, especially wild-caught whole fish and fillets.

I also favor anchovies, sardines, whiting and other small fish that contain very low levels of mercury.

Homemade Black Tiger garlic shrimp and whole-wheat spirals with sardines.

Food discounts

Jerry's Gourmet & More and H Mart, both in Englewood, discount prepared food after 4 p.m.

Jerry's knocks $2 off its restaurant-quality Meals To Go, cutting the price for a complete dinner of fish, chicken or pork with pasta and other sides to $5.99.

Jerry's added a sign to the refrigerated case to make its Meals To Go easier to find. The small yellow stickers on the cover indicate a price cut to $5.99 from the regular price of $7.99 after 4 p.m.

H Mart, the Korean supermarket, cuts the price of Jinga-brand prepared rolls (kimbap) and other food  by 50% after 4 p.m.

On Wednesday, I picked up a seaweed-wrapped roll with fish sausage and egg for $2.50 instead of $4.99.

I also found a box of 20 small, yellow, intensely sweet Ataulfo Mangoes for $9.99, a discount of $6.

But my wife said the Englewood H Mart was selling the 20-package Shin Ramyun box of spicy noodle soup at full price, forcing me to drive to the Little Ferry H Mart on Wednesday to buy it on sale for $14.99, a discount of $3.

Kimbap and Korean pickles from H Mart in Englewood.