Tuesday 19 February 2013

Weekly Blog #3

This hasn't been a good week for so many reasons.  It started on Pancake Day when I had my pancake party.  We had buckwheat pancakes with pulled pork and pink pickled onions or cheese & ham followed by normal pancakes with nutella, lemon & sugar or rhubarb & ice-cream.  And lots and lots of booze.  Fizzy booze...flat booze...you name it, we had it.  I forgot to take any pictures.
 
The following night I was too tired (aka hungover) to do proper cooking so I made pitta pizzas.  I think I ate a lot of these when I lost all my weight a few years ago.  They're ridiculously easy and satisfy a craving for stodge.  I spread the pitta breads with a mixture of tomato puree and harissa and topped with sauteed mushrooms, sliced mini pepperamis (don't judge me) and grated reduced fat cheddar cheese.  These work out at 7 points each which is pretty pleasing.

 
My least favourite day of the year (other than my birthday) happened this week - Valentine's Day.  I KNOW that it's crap and commercialised and total nonsense, but it does hammer home the fact that I have nobody to be scathing about it with.  It's a bad day for me anyway but coupled with the fact that I had virtually no food in my flat, I went into a bit of a meltdown and worked myself into a major grump.  How I didn't resort to getting myself a big fat takeaway, I don't know, but I didn't.  Instead I made pasta with prosciutto and creme fraiche (the creme fraiche was a hangover from Pancake Day).  This was a pretty generous portion and cost me about 17 points which is quite a lot for dinner, but I had enough to cover it and it was delicious.  I got some of my 5-a-day through pudding - blueberries and bananas. 
 

I was away for the weekend at my sister's.  She cooked this delicious sausage hot pot thing on Friday night - it doesn't look particularly pretty (sorry T) but was tasty and rammed full of vegetables - carrots, cabbage and potatoes.  I'll definitely be getting the recipe from her.
 
 
After that it all went a bit wrong.  On Saturday we went to a rare-breeds farm where they make delicious soups, homemade bread and cakes.  I started off OK with a bowl of soup (although there was a really good bread roll which I smothered in butter) but I truly fell of the wagon when I had scones on the way out.  They were DELICIOUS but scones, butter, jam and cream are simply not diet-friendly.  Here is one done The Wrong Way Round - the jam should clearly go under the cream.
 
 
For dinner, T cooked from Thomasina Miers' cookbooks.  We had mushroom and sweetcorn quesadillas, black bean tostadas with feta and roasted salsa and chipotle chicken tostadas with avocado and pink pickled onions.  They were utterly delicious and I ate far more than I needed to.
 
 
Sunday was exceptionally naughty.  Toast for breakfast.  Fish and chips at the seaside.  A token nod to vegetables via the medium of mushy peas.  Crumpets and wine for dinner.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  And last night, I came home to a freezing cold flat with empty cupboards and ordered a takeaway.  I may not have finished it all and I ordered more sensibly that I would have pre-diet, but it's still BAD.  My justification was that I knew that I'd have put on weight this week so what harm would it do? 

And the damage?  I have put back on everything that I lost last week - 3 pounds of fat for a few days of taking no care over what I ate.  I barely counted my points at all this week and it makes such a difference - it's easy to turn a blind eye to the bit of butter you use or the extra slice of bread when you're not logging it all in the weight watchers app.  I also feel like crap - I haven't eaten nearly as many fruit and vegetables and have eaten far, far too much bread and toast and have drunk alcohol far more than I have become accustomed to.  I feel sluggish, unhealthy and FAT.  And miserable.  And I know that this week is going to be difficult to navigate as I'm out for dinner tomorrow and Saturday.  It's sad that eating out has ceased to be a treat and has become such a source of anxiety for me. 
 
 

6 comments:

  1. You CAN do this. Forget about last week and the numbers, put it behind you and move on. Your body is obviously feeling the benefits of the better eating, given how you've felt worse this week. Believe in yourself. I do.
    Pitta pizzas look good btw, will have to try them. X

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    1. You're right. I have to just carry on with it as best I can. Last week was just a bad week. I've got an Ocado order arriving today so hopefully can get back on track. I HAVE TO! Pitta pizzas are good - so easy. The kids would love them although probably without the spicy harissa. xxx

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  2. A few bad days are just that - a few days - not a big disaster.
    If you can keep going after them, then you win - that's supposed to be where most people slip up.

    And also - youhave to keep remembering that the weekly weigh-in is very distortive when looked at in isolation (eg if you've had a particularly big/small day immediately before or similar, it will throw out that one day without affecting the next three) - you have to focus on the big picture - the 'graph'.
    You maybe don't really have enough weeks in hand to do that yet, but your general trend is still a good one even without loads of data to play with, no?

    And it would be *very* sad if going out became stressful rather than fun - I don't know what the solution is for this, other than just not to let it be... Or to cunningly plan so that the 'bad' days aren't right next to the weekly day of reckoning...?

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    1. These are all good points. I don't want to become a major obsessive who weighs herself every day though...not sure what the answer is really.

      Unfortunately, eating out simply is stressful when I'm dieting UNLESS I can choose somewhere that isn't going to be totally disastrou for the diet, e.g. bincho yakitori, somewhere like Koya, dim sum etc. I feel far more on the ball when I don't have external things in my diary and those are, undoubtedly, the weeks when I do better.

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  3. I never see any mention of exercise on your blog; even gentle exercise will make you feel better and means you can eat more while feeling less guilty.

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    1. You're right - I don't mention exercise on my blog. This is partly because I don't currently do any but I'm not sure I'd mention it even if I did.

      Thanks for your comment.

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