Seeking Recipes

Week 64

Weight: 17st 1.5lb
Loss This Week: 3lb
Total lost: 80lb

I got weighed wearing my jeans, and still lost 3lb, I'm happy with that, oh yeah!

So I end March weighing exactly the same as I did at the start of March - am I good at maintaining or what?! I consider this all good practice for when I'm trying to maintain my weight at 9st something hehehe!

The version of the plan I followed last week was the "desperate for Payday" plan. Poverty is good for weight loss apparently. This week I will be following the "Just been paid and gone mad in Sainsburys" plan and it will be interesting to compare and contrast the 2. Will I fare better on fresh melon and raspberries, or naked pasta and savoury rice? I know which one makes me feel healthier, but there is something quite nice and comforting about the kind of food you find at the very back of the cupboard. There's some mushy peas there calling my name just now, hmmm, what shall I have with them?

My aim for this week is a nice conservative 2lb loss. Slowly, slowly, ever so slowly. Let's not forget, it was the tortoise who won the race with the hare.

I have been trying to keep the spark alive by trying a new recipe every week (except that final empty purse week of the month!) so do me favour, lay your recipes on me. I am open to any suggestions, veggie or otherwise. I'll have to come up with an incentive for you, a competition or something. If I do that, I'll feel like a proper blogger! In the meantime, if I use your recipe I'll review it here, and of course link to your blog - how does that sound?

Aiming For The.....?

Week 63

Weight: 17st 4.5lb
Loss This Week: 2lb
Total lost: 77lb

Yay for a 2lb loss since I last stood on the scales. Bearing in mind the Birthday Weekend that occurred between then and now, I'm very pleased with that result!

This week I'm mostly wondering about how our high expectations can affect how well or badly we do at weight loss. There has been more than a handful of weeks where I've thrown myself heart and soul into The Plan, with the desire to shed 3 or more pounds, or to reach some transient goal, only to be disappointed. And disappointment can take me in one of two directions. It can either make me even more determined the following week, or it can make me throw my hands metaphorically in the air (to actually do it would be better for toning my upper arms though) and slide back into bad habits faster than you can say hot buttered crumpets.

Now, I've never been someone to set my sights low. I firmly believe that you have to aim for the stars to reach the moon. But even I can see that repeatedly setting myself up to fail may, in the long run, prove slightly detrimental to the overall goal. I know I'm not the only slimmer who is hard on themselves when they don't lose as much as they hoped for, and in the cold light of day, away from the emotion of the weigh in, I think it's a shame when we can't be kinder to ourselves. So this week, I aim to lose a nice steady pound or 2. I took years to get fat so I can afford to spend a fair bit of time getting slim too. I'm not going to set unrealistic targets, I'm not going to beat myself up for tiny losses and maintains when I have stuck to The Plan. And I am most certainly not going to fall by the wayside just because it's taking me a long time to get to where I want to be. I believe I have proved I'm in it for the long haul now, so there's no point stressing about how long that may turn out to be.

A final thought. Apparently it has been proven that owners tend to look like their dogs. What part of me looks in any way like either of my skinny greyhounds? Maybe the me we will see one day :-)

Long Time No See...

Wendy looks around furtively to check no one's looking, and runs back in!

Hiya! Fancy seeing you here!

OK, I confess, I didn't blog because I gained weight and ran out of ways to say so. But I miss my witterings, so I'm blogging despite that fact now! So what's been happening in the fortnight since I last put erm, fingers to keyboard?

Well I've had lots of fun! Last week I went to a Ceroc class which I've wanted to do for aaaaages! I finally decided to just do it and dragged a friend along for good measure. It was really good fun, and good exercise too, so I will be going back for sure, although not this week as I'm working that night. Can I just say though, if you are a man reading this, please go and join your local Ceroc classs! The class I was at was seriously short of men, and it's a man-led dance so we need you!

It was my birthday yesterday, and was preceded by a girls day / night out in Manchester on Saturday. We went to all the "nice" places, including cocktails at the Midland Hotel, which makes me feel sooooo sophisticated! And my friends (I was out at the front of the group somewhere and managed to miss this!) saw a boxer called Ola Afolabi leaving the Radisson Hotel on his way to a match. He went with some top girly training tips ringing in his ears (try and kill him, and if you think you're going to lose, walk away!) and he went on to beat his opponent which was apparently a bit of an unexpected result! So maybe my friends have missed their vocation and should be ringside telling boxers to be careful!

As the nicer weather has started to peep out, thoughts turn to the garden. My "lawn" was a disgrace, thanks to the work of 2 dogs. I decided the only thing I could do was fence it off to keep them off it totally, dig it up and start from scratch. My first plan involved paying someone to do it. But I'm not rolling in cash, and it's hard graft rather than rocket science so I've been doing it myself. The fence is a cheap and cheerful affair, low enough for me step over, but high enough to confuse 2 long legged greyhounds who have no idea of the concept of jumping. Digging the old lawn up was a massive task, but I finished it yesterday in the sunshine and am rather proud of my efforts. Today I have raked in some fertiliser, and now I'm torn between buying some turf for instant gratification, or grass seed. The decision comes down to cash really, but I'm going to be unhappy if the birds eat all my seed, that's all I'm saying!

So I've not been the most committed dieter these past couple of weeks, but I've certainly been doing the "move more" part of the equation. And as always, I'm delighted by my ability to do these things. I'm healthy and active, and that's what's important.

Hair, Makeup, Wardrobe, Action!

Week 60

Weight: 17st 1.5lb
Loss This Week: 1lb
Total lost: 80lb

That was a week of herculean effort for 1lb, but hey, I won't complain at a loss, just hope for a bigger one next time!

This week it's all about my look again. I just feel very "meh" about my hair and wardrobe at the moment. I've got clothes that will do rather than clothes I love and that just isn't good enough! I've been browsing clothing collections online and in catalogues and I don't even know what look I want to be in! I kind of know what I like, but I'm not finding it. And as for my hair, well you can all see the state of that - the picture over there <------- shows it in it's true colours. It is pretty frizzy if not well tamed. It can look lovely when the natural curl falls just right, but a bit of rain or humidity and I'm a wreck. If I have it cut shorter the curl becomes more prominent but I'm never convinced I suit short hair.

On the plus side I'm happy with my face right now. I don't know whether you had noticed but I've done a bit of work on my blog, sorting out links to posts so recipes, photos etc are easy to find. In doing so I was forced to confront my "before" pics and it really showed me how far I've come! My face is so so different now. My skin is pretty good too, and in the last week or so I have made the effort to wear a bit of make up every day. I have had so many people telling me that I look "well", "healthy", "fresh", etc that I know it's more than worth the few minutes a day it takes to do.

Of course, all this means shopping. A hard job, but someone has to do it.

3 Bean Chilli

One of the staples of my eating these days is 3 Bean Chilli. It's delicious, nutritious and very very filling. As an added bons it' totally free on Green days and Extra Easy.

Here's the recipe.

1 onion
3 garlic cloves
400g can of red kidney beans
400g can mixed beans
200g can chickpeas
small handful of fresh coriander or 1 tbsp dried
Fry light
1-2 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp ground cinnammon
2 tbsp ground cumin (I half that!)
2 X 400g cans chopped tomatoes
1 tsp artificial sweetener
salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 tbsp very low fat natural fromage frais
Pinch of paprika

Method

1. Finely chop the onion and garlic cloves. Drain and rinse the beans and chickpeas. Roughly chop the coriander.

2. Spray a large pan with Fry Light and place over a medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and stir fry for 2-3 mins.

3: Add the chilli powder, cinnamon, cumin, tomatoes and sweetener. Bring to the boil. Season well, cover tightly and cook over a low heat for 10 mins.

4: Add the beans and chickpeas. Mix well. Return to heat for further 10 mins.

5: Serve in warmed bowls. Spoon over a tablespoon of fromage frais, sprinkle with paprika and garnish with coriander.

I am casual with this ingredient list. I use whatever bean selection is in my cupboard, including baked beans and it's fine. I often chuck fresh chilli in, which is great. If I don't have any fromage frais in then I just miss that part off and it's still fine. The fromage frais is delicious though! I serve it with boiled rice and it goes a very long way! It's a brilliant midweek, close to payday store cupboard ingredient meal and allegedly costs only 75p per serving so perfect in the current economic climate.

(I have copied this recipe directly from Slimming World Magazine.)

SAS Swoops In!

I mentioned on Monday that this week I would be doing an SAS Log. Here's how it works. On 1 side of the page is a list of daily aims and potential danger areas, plus space to write any of your own thoughts. On side 2 is a sort of food diary, but as well as writing down what you've eaten, you tick to say whether it was Free Food, Healthy Extras or Syns. And whether you planned to eat it or not, whether you knew the Syn value before eating it, whether you accurately measured or estimated for Syns and Healthy Extras, and whether you are writing at the time of eating, or later.

I'd say most people would claim to have a clue about their eating habits. Certainly I'd say I knew what I was eating pretty much every day. If I was trying to appear virtuous I would tell you that I nearly always stick to plan 100%, and that most days I have less than 5 Syns. If I was being honest I would admit to the odd spoonful of cereal or square of chocolate, or bite of toast. I would still be adamant that my Syns were minimal.

Well not any more! The SAS Log has sprung my eyes wide open. Day 1 revealed it, Day 2 confirmed it and Day 3 is making me try to change it.

Here's what I'm doing. I am regularly (as in most of the time!) eating things with a Syn value without knowing what the Syn value actually is. I estimate, I eat, I forget. Or as in this week I estimate, I eat, I look it up and recoil in horror! Yesterday I consumed around 8.5 Syns in this way. This would be OK if it was always so low and I never went over the 15 Syns per day allowance, but this week I am being very careful to write down everything I eat, so when I snaffled a crisp it was one crisp, not a handful. On a normal week I can well imagine I am going well over on some days, and it certainly brings last week's gain into perspective.

Knowledge is power! I guess I'm armed and dangerous now then.

I love dieting, I do.

Week 59

Weight: 17st 2.5lb
Gain This Week: 1.5lb
Total lost: 79lb

*Bangs head repeatedly on desk*

Okaaaaay. My frustration knows no bounds! I thought I'd been on track this week. I was on a high from last week. I was intent on seeing "16st something" on the scales. I went to a friend's house for dinner and we did a SW meal, each of us providing one course. I did the Strawberry Dream pudding. That's really making an effort, that is! Now OK, I'm going to admit here, there was nachos and dips too, and I did have some, but I didn't drink. And it was my only indiscretion of the week so I don't think I "deserved" the gain. Stupid scales!

Upon reflection, I think maybe some unwise eating behaviour may have been in evidence. It was half term and I was off work so I spent several days reorganising my house, shopping at Ikea, building flat pack furniture and going back and forth to the tip. All good body magic mind you - one morning I screwed 56 screws and banged in 104 dowels! My bingo wings should be in great shape! But what was happening was I was getting up, throwing on my scruffy clothes, making a coffee and getting straight to work. Add in the dog walks, and most days I didn't have time to eat anything until teatime. And of course by then I was hungry enough to eat the table I was sat at! I think I may have accidentally slipped into old habits like eating some of whatever I was making for Rebecca while I was in the kitchen, and lots of little things to tend to add up to a big disaster!

So I'm not downhearted, I've recovered from the misery of the weigh in. I have a plan for this week that involves an SAS log (for non SW readers, this is like a food diary but for behaviour, to pick up on any little bad habits you don't know you have!) And I think I'll go back to my green days again. I hate meat. Yes, I really really do. Chickpeas rock!