Food

Let the Christmas celebrations begin

Posted on December 8, 2012Leave a comment

Why does Christmas have to include masses of food celebrations. I mean really, aside from the gift giving aspect of Christmas, the only other thing I can really see happening is eating – eating lots and lots of food (of course, this eating is normally done with loved ones, but it’s still all about the food). Now I know I’m sounding a bit like the Grinch at the moment, and also sound like I’m complaining, but as someone who is trying to lose weight, I am already struggling – and it’s not even really Christmas yet!

I go to the shops and everywhere I look there is candy, biscuits, cakes, puddings, chocolate, rich deserts, dripping roasts and my favourite – mince pies! And I’m frustrated, because I just want to buy them all up and sit down at a table gobbling everything in sight, but I know that I can’t. So I’m getting frustrated, angry and just a little resentful, which really is not putting me in the Christmas spirit at all. I know that there would be people out there saying, well just buy one mince pie and eat that, make sure you count it into your daily calories, and work it off. To those people I say, I wish I could. But really, my self control is almost non-existant (otherwise I probably wouldn’t find myself 40kg overweight now would I?) I honestly feel like I can’t tempt myself, because I will cave in. Which just brings on that angry frustration again.

Last night we had my work Christmas dinner to attend. It was all planned weeks ago, before I had even contemplated doing 12WBT over the Christmas period, while I was stil quite content to blithely shove food into my mouth while trying to secretly convince myself that I wasn’t gaining weight and that it wouldn’t creep up on me and that I wouldn’t pay for it later (pfftttt, paying now I can tell you!). We had organised to go to a local winery who were putting on dinners where you could select from a few things on the menu and voila – instant fancy dinner. In the end we probably didn’t choose too badly and thankfully going to a winery, they don’t exactly serve up massive serving sizes, but let me tell you that I would definitely have gone over my calories yesterday.

I spent all day thinking and obsessing about food. Minimising my food intake – small fruity breakfast, little leftover serve for lunch, a snack of celery in the afternoon (with a smidge of cream cheese on it) and masses of water, all to compensate for this dinner last night. By the time we got there I was ravenous. But a funny thing happened – I didn’t gorge myself like I normally would have. As they brought out dish after dish (we had six dishes on the menu), I ate from each of the small serves very slowly. I didn’t take any of the extras that were offered to me (though I admit, I ate my bread roll – I was THAT hungry) and I had one alcoholic drink all night. I felt in control and very well full and satisfied when it was all over. So well satisfied in fact that I turned away from the chocolates that were on offer (OMG lush looking truffles too, that’s how serious I was, I turned down truffles) and I said no to dessert.

I did well – at least I think I did well, and I know I did well considering what the old me would have done. I didn’t lack for food, it was all excruciatingly delicious, I had great company while I was eating and I even allowed myself one alcoholic drink. So why do I feel like I was still missing out? On the one hand, something must be sinking into this brain of mine about eating properly and moderation and portion sizes, but on the other hand, something else in my brain is seriously lacking if I keep thinking that I was still missing out because I didn’t shovel food into my mouth, and it wasn’t all fries and schnitzels. I’m hoping that eventually something clicks in my head and it just happens and these stupid thoughts keep popping up.

So tonight, we’re off to a pizza night with friends. This one I’m really dreading, but I’m going to go through my list of 12WBT recipes and find some options that I can make. I will not undo my good work of last night! Nosireebob!

Oh and on other news – weigh in on Wednesday went really well. I was down 2.2kg – biggest loss for me in one week ever I think. Here’s to a good weigh in next Wednesday and here’s to Christmas finally being over so that the food shopping and eating can go back to some sense of normality!

Weigh in day

Previous weight: 107.0kg.
Today’s weight: 104.8kg.
2.2kg loss!

A loss… and a win (or two)

Posted on December 4, 2012Leave a comment

Tuesdays are supposed to be my super smash it day, the theory being that I get up first thing in the morning and go for a swim, do my 40 laps and then have a nice relaxing spa for ten minutes before heading home to start the day, whereupon I finish work and head back to the pool to do an aquaerobics class. That’s the theory anyway. The reality was that I spent way too long watching tv last night and ended up turning my alarm off this morning and sleeping. It was bad and it was the wrong thing to do, but I know my body well enough by now to know that if I had gotten up, by 2pm today I’d have been a walking zombie (note to self, get some more iron tablets from the chemist…) So I felt quite guilty this morning when I finally got up and Mick asked me what happened to my early morning session. I think the look I gave him was enough for him to know that this was NOT a conversation to have with me first thing without any coffee (bless him, he really is so patient and tolerant with me). So that was my loss.

But – and yes, there’s a but – I had a win. Actually I had two wins. One a physical win, and two more mental.

First off, I did actually make it to aquaerobics tonight. Got home from work and put up our new Christmas tree (not a lot involved really, it’s just a wooden one, that really doesn’t require decorations – I’m going for minimalistic this year) and pottered around and contemplated – I hate to admit it, I really did contemplate it – calling my mate and telling her that I couldn’t make it to aquaerobics. But that’s giving in and I can’t continue to do that or I’m never going to get where I want to go (and I’m still trying to decide exactly where I want to go) so I struggled through the laziness and went off to do the class. And I’m so glad that I did. It was just fantastic. I could really feel it in my core and I think I’m going to continue to feel it tomorrow. I feel so refreshed and pumped now, that I’m really sad that I didn’t go swimming this morning. But it’s okay, there’s always tomorrow and every day after that.

Second little win was a thought that I had on the way home from work. Normally, when I get home from work, I scoff down food. Sometimes it’s healthy, most times it’s not. I have no idea why I thought of it as I was driving home, but I suddenly realised that A) I only eat when I get home because it’s habit, not because I’m actually hungry and B) I haven’t done that since I started 12WBT and OMG I’m still alive and haven’t starved to death… Hmmmm. So that just made me happy, because I realise that I can come home and just do things, without having to shove food in my face and that habits can be broken. Not that I think this habit is broken yet, but it’s a work in progress.

Third little win, was again a mental thing, and actually happened last night. I was watching TV last night (the reason that I was up so late and missed swimming this morning, so maybe this isn’t a win after all…. Might call it a draw) in particular the documentary “Fat, sick and nearly dead”, about Joe Cross who started drinking fresh juice every day for two months. Not just drinking a little juice, but only juice. He stopped eating and just drank. He convinced another few people to do the same and the whole time I was watching it, I was thinking “Wow, what an easy way to lose weight” (okay, now that I’m not half asleep, rationally, I know that wouldn’t be easy, would require a lot of willpower – we know I don’t have much of that, read above to see my exercising willpower *sigh*) at the time, I really thought that would be great. I watched him lose so much weight in two months and kept thinking to myself. Two months, that’s eight weeks, that’s two weeks less than the end time of this round of 12WBT. I could totally almost get to my goal weight in that time just by drinking juice! I almost convinced myself that I should do it. But then I mentally slapped myself. What the hell was I thinking? Why would anyone in their right mind (and I’m really sorry if you’re a fan of Joe Cross – if you are, maybe stop reading now…) why would anyone who is mildly sane, willingly cut out every other food group except for fruit and veggies to lose weight? That’s all he was doing to start with, drinking juice. Not exercising, not actually cooking food up, cutting it up, chewing it and swallowing it. Just drinking. WHY? Personally, I think he took the cheat’s, easy way out (and again, I know it wouldn’t be easy…) And that’s where I’m counting my last win. For brief moments, I seriously considered cutting out my eating and just drinking juice for a couple months. But I’m so glad to say that I thought better of it. I love that on this program I don’t have to give up any food group. That I can learn about healthy eating, that I can still enjoy the occasional piece of chocolate if I so wish to. That I am learning about exercising and creating a healthy balanced life. So to Michelle Bridges, I say Thank you. Thank you for not getting me to only drink juice (and it really was vile looking juice too!)

Now here’s hoping that tomorrow morning I get my lazy butt out of bed at 6am and do some exercise.

Yummy ugly balls

Posted on February 29, 2012Leave a comment

Our weekly surprise for 12WBT is to create a snack. The rules were that we had to only have 5 ingredients and be quick to make. Well these technically don’t qualify because they have 10 ingredients and are not super quick to make, but I love these. They came about by a bit of an accident, I had so much dried fruit left over from another recipe and I bought Quinoa and had no idea what to do with it, so here we go:

Yummy ugly balls

Each ball is about 25g and has only 58 calories.
You should get 16 balls out of this mix.

Ingredients

1/3 cup quinoa
1/3 cup oats
3/4 orange juice
3 tablespoon craisins
3 tablespoon prunes
3 tablespoon dried figs
1/8 cup almonds
1/8 cup walnuts
1 tablespoon maple syrup
20g Dessicated coconut

Method

Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees (celcius).
Place the quinoa and orange juice in a pan and cook the quinoa until it has soaked up all the orange juice.
Meanwhile, chop (or blitz) the almonds (I use flaked almonds), walnuts, dried figs and prunes.
Place in a bowl with the oats and add the cranberries. When the quinoa has soaked up all the juice add this to the mix.
Let the mixture cool slightly and then add 1 tablespoon maple syrup to the mix and mix up well.
Take a tablespoon full of the mixture and roll into a ball, flatten slightly and roll in the coconut.
Place on a baking sheet and put into the oven to cook for about 12 minutes.
(The cooking step is optional – you can just roll these into coconut and put in the fridge, but I like the extra crunch you get when you cook these).
When they’re cooked, let them cool and put in the fridge.

So if you’re looking for something that’s maybe a little like a muesli bar, but with less calories and super yummy, then may I suggest these. And if you do make them, drop me a line and let me know what you think. Are my tastebuds just weird?

Some interesting food facts

Posted on February 10, 20122 Comments

Today’s daily food intake…

I did a little googling out of interest today to see just how many calories are in McDonalds food, because lately I’ve been having the biggest craving for a Triple Cheeseburger. Not just an ordinary cheeseburger but a triple cheeseburger. Ohh the gooey cheesy melting goodness and the extreme greasiness of one of those is just divine. Yes, I know they are so totally bad and unhealthy for you, but every now and then I just crave one. Normally of course I would give in to the temptation and go through the drive through and scoff down the cheeseburger before I get home so that no one knows I’ve had one. Then to cover up the fact that I’ve had one, I eat dinner too so I don’t look suspicious for not eating – because I am not one to miss my meals. That was back in the days when I wasn’t eating healthy and exercising though (mind you, there hasn’t been a great deal on the exercise front this week…), these days I don’t do such naughty things. I just dream about holding the cheeseburger in my hands and dream about the taste of it. Then I have to physically restrain myself from going down to Maccas and scoffing a whole crapload of food.

Now in case you’re interested here’s a bit of info about the calories in McDonalds (taken from their info sheet):

Food	Calories
Big Mac	493cals/2060kj
Cheeseburger	284cals/1190kj
Double Cheeseburger	430cals/1800kj
Triple Cheeseburger	Not even on the website! How ashamed of those calories must they be?
Grand Angus	630cals/2630kj
Mighty Angus	686cals/2870kj
Quarter Pounder	549cals/2300kj
Double Quarter Pounder	851cals/3560kj
McChicken	408cals/1710kj
Small fries	255cals/1070kj
Medium fries	368cals/1540kj
Large fries	453cals/1900kj
6 chicken nuggets	279cals/1160kj
Mustard sauce	66cals/275kj

Now let’s put some of this into perspective. When I used to go to McDonalds I would quite often get (apart from the triple cheeseburger [they were a 3am specialty!]) a Double Quarter Pounder meal, with large fries and a large coke. Sometimes if I was particularly hungry I’d also throw in a 6 pack of nuggets. The grand total of that dinner: 1657 calories (there are apparently 310 calories per large coke according to my Google research). That is not just a daily allowance of food, but a daily allowance of food, plus snacks and then the breakfast and morning snack of the next day. All rolled into one dinner! Bloody freaking hell!

When you look at the figures written down like that it’s really not hard to see how I managed to gain so much weight is it. Considering that wasn’t just a one off dinner for me. During my single times, living by myself I would quite often eat dinners like that, to a varying degree. Plus there was breakfasts of rolls with bacon, eggs and barbecue sauce, full fat latte and lunches of some sort of food court meal. I have to admit I never stopped to think how many calories there were in the dinners that I was eating, and I’m a little ashamed to actually put it out there and to read this. God it makes me feel quite sick, and thankfully the cravings for McDonalds have now gone.

Just something I thought I would share with you all.

12WBT pre-season task #6 – Kitchen makeover

Posted on February 8, 2012Leave a comment

So my task for pre-season task #6 – Kitchen makeover was to empty out my kitchen cupboards and the fridge of all my junk food and processed food. Food that I wouldn’t and couldn’t be eating on the 12WBT. Things like chips, chocolate biscuits, biscuits in general, juices and cordials and food that is just in general high in calories and fat and low in any real nutritional value.

I have to say that this was a pretty easy task for me. I don’t really have a lot of junk food in the house and the little that I do have in the house is the food that Mick likes to eat. I know that part of my task is to be ruthless and throw this food out, but I have two problems with this:

A) I’ve paid good money for this food, I don’t want to waste it all by throwing it out. I have issues with throwing out food, for no real reason. I know that there have been times when I’ve bought fruit and vegetables and it’s gotten lost at the back of the fridge and finally I throw it out, but that’s not a purposeful waste of food. Throwing out junk food, while it’s still junk food, is to me – a waste.

B) Mick likes to have the occasional packet of chips. Or cordial. Who am I to tell him that he can’t eat what he wants to? Mick is my number one supporter, and to be fair to him, when he does eat his chips, he doesn’t eat them in front of me, he’ll eat them elsewhere. Mick doesn’t have a weight problem, and is quite fit, so just because I’m not fit, I’m supposed to deny him food that he likes to eat occasionally? I can’t do it, I’ve tried, and I just can’t.

Thankfully, there was only two packets of chips in the cupboard and they are still there, all the way down the bottom where I’m not tempted to get them. The rest of the cupboard is full of lovely, healthy food and so is the fridge. In fact the fridge is happiest of all, full of fruit and veggies as it is!

Terrible munchies

Posted on February 8, 20121 Comment

Today’s daily food intake…

Weigh in day

Previous weight: 104.6kg.
Today’s weight: 103.4kg.
1.2kg loss

Ack, today I have had the worst munchies. I have been craving salt all day long. I’m putting it down to having popcorn over the last couple of days, which I easily get addicted to. I don’t normally go for the sweet sugary things, I’m not a huge chocolate lover, I like the occasional piece of cake, but I can’t eat brownies because I find them way to sweet for me. But put a packet of chips in front of me and watch me gobble the whole packet up. Without blinking! Today, if you had put that bag of chips in front of me I don’t honestly know that I would have been able to say no. I think I might have caved.

I had a bad start to the day. Turned my alarm off and didn’t get up to do my shufflin’ and when I finally did crawl out of bed when the other alarm went off an hour later I had the worst stinkin’ headache I’ve had in ages. I haven’t felt like that for a long time, but today it’s been hanging around like a bad smell. I’m working on a new website at work which means I’m sitting in front of the monitor all day staring at code and thinking and I’m starting to see the connection between the coding and the headaches. Methinks it might be time for me to start wearing my glasses again. But I’m happy because I didn’t cave in and get any bad munchie food to sit and eat at my desk today, just had a Carman’s muesli bar in the morning and that kept me going.

Not a lot on the exercise front sadly. I went to softball training tonight, and once again, ended up burning sweet FA in the form of calories. Seriously, we really don’t do anything at training, it’s such a waste of time, I could have been doing some proper exercise. I did speak to one of the ladies there tonight though who is a high school P.E. teacher and I asked if she does any person training. Turns out she is the coach of a B-Grade hockey team, and she said I’m more than welcome to come along and see if I like it and if I do then I can join the hockey team. Funny thing is, I’m seriously considering it. It means giving up Friday night food shopping because they play on some Friday evenings, and they play in rain, hail or shine, but I think I could like it.

Which is scary for me. Here I was only 6 months ago having never, ever in my life played a team sport, and having no interest in changing that fact, and now I find myself on the softball team (which okay I don’t really like, but am still considering returning to next season) and now I might possibly find myself on a hockey team. Yay go sporty me! Soon they will be calling me Sporty Spice hahaha *thump* (sorry I fell of the chair then I was laughing so hard…) but it’s all things to take into consideration for the future of my exercising.

Bookish goodness

Posted on February 2, 2012Leave a comment

Today’s daily food intake…

A couple of weeks ago I was watching the morning news when they had an interview with a lady called Ruth Field who had written a book called Run Fat B!tch Run. It was only a very brief interview and they didn’t really ask her any questions of great importance, in fact it was a pretty crap interview, but what really stuck with me was the title of the book. It sounded just like the book for me, something that would speak to me in no nonsense terms and tell me what to do. Even if it is in a very straightforward way.

So I jumped online, went to Book Depository (quite possibly the best ever bookshop in the world, free delivery people, free delivery!) and ordered it.

Guess what! It came today. I’ve only had a chance to have a quick look at the first few pages, but already, I think this might be the book for me. In particular, before you even get to the introduction, you get a pledge to sign, and boy do I love the straight talking in The Pledge.

On a side note, I did also order online late last week Michelle Bridges new The no excuses cookbook and it also arrived today, so it’s been a great day of bookish goodness for me. The recipes in this cookbook look divine and I can’t wait to read this one also and start making the recipes. Having had a quick flick through I’ve already picked my first breakfast that I’m going to make, just looks awesomely delicious and yummy – Sweet couscous with orange juice and dried fruit.

Now my big dilemma is which one do I read first, and when do I read them in between exercising, cooking and blogging? Help I need more hours in my day.

Chicken schnitzel

Posted on February 1, 2012Leave a comment

Today’s daily food intake…

Weigh in day

Previous weight: 106.9kg.
Today’s weight: 104.6kg.
2.3kg loss

YAY, great weigh in today made me very happy that finally my weight had stabilised and all that extra weight I put on last week came off, plus a wee little bit more 🙂 I was concerned after weighing in on Saturday and being up to 107.3kg that I’d done something wrong, but it seems all is good.

Having said that, tomorrow I am going to have to do some extra training that’s for sure. We went to the pub for dinner tonight and I had a chicken schnitzel. Oh god, it was fantastic! I enjoyed every single mouthful. Won’t be doing that again in a hurry I can assure you. But on the other hand, a nice meal out occasionally is going to happen, I’m not a hermit. So I’ll enjoy it when I do it, and work a bit harder the next day to make up for it.

Uneventful isn’t a bad thing

Posted on January 20, 2012Leave a comment

Today’s daily food intake…

Had quite the uneventful day today. Nothing exciting, nothing earth shattering, nothing at all really.

Which isn’t to say that’s a bad thing. Sometimes uneventful, plain days are a good thing. No stress, no crap, just a good old fashioned take it easy kind of day.

so that was today. Went to work, sat at my desk, fought with getting our company website (which I’m currently re-developing) to work with IE6 (not all that successfully actually), went home, got our meal plan ready for next week and did food shopping.

But the one thing that I did learn about myself today is a bad habit that I had no idea I have. When I build websites I go into a little world of my own. I will sit and obsessively code away for hours, working on one problem – again obsessively – until it’s fixed. When I’m in that little world at home I quite often forget about food, I’ve been known to go all day without eating when I’m doing things like this. But at work, it’s a different story. I’ve always had snackies at work. Maybe lollies, or chips, or nuts – something. And I still haven’t cleaned that draw at work out, so at the moment there is a little snack-pot of nuts in my draw.

As I sat down this morning and opened up my programs and started working on the website, I almost instinctively reached into the draw to grab out the snack-pot, so that I could nibble on the things in there as I worked. Thankfully I stopped myself in time, because that’s a high calorie snack-pot I have sitting there. It made me stop though, and that was when I realised that it’s a habit of mine. Not a habit at home, but it’s a habit at work, which I’m going to put down to the fact that when I was living in Adelaide my jobs were, shall we say, on the stressful side – and to combat this I would eat. And eat a lot. I don’t have that same problem here, my job here is great, I love the work and I have the freedom to work at my own pace without someone breathing down my neck, but apparently, I brought my bad Adelaide habits with me.

So the snack-pot is gone. Now I just have to start trying to remember that it’s not the thing to snack while I’m working.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a list of excuses that I need to work out and write down. I hate this pre-season task, but love it at the same time, because it really makes me think.

Loss and still eating crap

Posted on January 18, 2012Leave a comment

Today’s daily food intake…

Weigh in day

Previous weight: 109.1kg.
Today’s weight: 106.8kg.
2.3kg loss

Arghhh when will I learn? I got on the scales this morning and yay me, lost 2.3kg which was surprising considering my blow-out of a weekend and I was pretty super pleased about that. I’ve decided that rather than having a treat meal on Saturday’s I’m going to let myself have treat meal(s) on Wednesday’s. That way I have a week to work it off. I’m going to try and keep within my 1200 calorie limit, but if I do blow it, then I’m not going to cry about, just accept it and do some more exercise.

So what have I not learnt? How to eat sensibly when I go out. Usually Mick and I will go home and have lunch together, we’re lucky that we both get hour lunch breaks and get to take lunch at the same time (even though we work at different places) and considering that it takes me a whole 3 minutes and 45 seconds to drive to work – oh yeah, I timed it – we don’t really run short of time. But me, with my not being super organised realised that we didn’t have all the ingredients for our healthy lamb and salad dinner (from The Biggest Loser cookbook, very yummy btw), so we had to go to the shops to get the ingredients. So while we were out, we thought we’d get lunch and eat on the beach. (If you’ve never been to Port Lincoln, you should totally come over, it’s gorgeous here, beaches everywhere).

So what did we get for lunch? A nice takeaway salad from somewhere? No. Maybe a low fat/calorie Subway? No. A steak sandwich and chips? Surely not you say. Not being on 12WBT, you wouldn’t be that silly would you? Yes, yes I would be that silly. So I have no idea how many calories was in that lunch, but I’m guestimating it at about 800 odd calories. And I thought my hotdog was bad?

So, note to self. Bloody well make sure that I have all the ingredients I need for dinner, so I don’t have to pop to the shops at lunch and run out of time to get a healthy lunch from home. If I do have to go out at lunch, then bloody hell girl, start making some better choices.

I will learn. Eventually.

Weigh in day

Yummy ugly balls

Ingredients

Method

Calories

Weigh in day

Weigh in day

Weigh in day