Special K Day 3 – shouldn’t it start getting easier now?

It’s certainly easy to pack my food bag for this diet. The same everyday. Adding an apple t my morning food – eaten on the way to work – has helped get me through the morning. Putting the blueberries and raspberries (taken out of the freezer the night before) on the luchtime cereal makes it more interesting and gives me a ‘sweet boost’.

I can’t go from lunch at 1pm to dinner at about 6.30pm with nothing in between so I’m having a small tin of pineapple rings in the afternoon. My choice of tinned fruit was governed by my having lots of small tins of pineapple in the house as I bought some at Costco. The small tin is enough to give me some extra food without being too much.

Dinner was a Marks & Spencer microwave meal. Not ideal but right now Ineed something that I can just throw in the oven or microwave and be eating very quickly. If I make my own food I will eat too much of it. It was nice enough. There was quite a bit of veg (25%) and the rice okay. The chicken tasted like chicken in all microwave meals – artificial. The sauce left a lingering chemical taste in my mouth later that evening. But I’ve had worse.

SO had been to Costco and bought, as well as a twin pack of Special K, some bananas, apples and a huge box of grapes. I can eat a standard box (400g?) of grapes in one sitting. Fortunately, this box was so big – 1.8kg (I just checked) – that I was able to just weigh out 200g to eat now as my brain, and even my tummy, knew that I could not eat them all at once so didn’t even think about trying to.

But now I have to start thinking about food for the weekend, and for Friday when we go to aqua aerobics straight from work and traditionally go the Chinese chip shop on the way home. I had toyed with the idea of making somekind of chicken and vegetable dish in the slow cooker, so it would be ready as soon as we got in on Friday. I’d asked the SO to get some carrots, and some mushrooms for the prawn stir-fry I’m planning for Saturday but he didn’t find any.

Limiting my food intake when I have to carry it away from the house is one thing; restricting my food intake when I’m at home with a full freezer, fridge and cupboards is a whole different story. I popped into M&S Food at lunchtime (there is one a couple of minutes walk from my office) and bought some spinach and three ‘Count On Us’ (ie diet version) beef lasagnes. Why three? they were three for £5 makeing the third one cost not a lot (I don’t remember the exact price of buying just one). I decided that we can have them when we get home from water aerobics on Friday. I’ll have to wait 40 minutes though (30 mins cooking plus time for the oven to heat up). I guess I could try setting the oven to come on so they are cooked when we get home. Then I realised that doing a 45 minute aqua aerobics class on about 400 calories is just not going to work. Should I have a meal at lunchtime and cereal after the class, I wondered? I decided that something hot to pop in the microwave at lunchtime was a must, and that I would still have a hot meal (the beef lasagne and spinach) after the class. I can still keep within the calorie limit. I’ll let you know how I get on.

Tuesday, 2.9.08

First day of trying to be stricter about the diet in an attempt to (no, bad choice of words – I WILL) get my waist mesaurement below 88cm and keep my BMI below 35. Didn’t do too badly. I shouldn’t have had the chocolate sauce on the late night fruit. But it has to be used within four weeks of opening and its been open a few weeks already. – Why do I get the feeling that it’s (un)logic like that that keeps me fat?

Didn’t plan today’s meals which is never good. Had the muesli after the SO left for work. Can’t eat it and kiss him goodbye as he is allergic to nuts. Was hungry in the afternoon but ate an apple. That kept things at bay for a while.  Supper was because I felt I hadn’t had enough fruit today.

Food details:
Breakfast: 40g Dorset Cereals Simply Delicious muesli, 60g fresh blueberries, 100ml semi-skimmed milk

Lunch 150g chicken, 1 banana

Snack: apple

Dinner: pork, mushroom, shallot, peas and lower fat creme fraiche with spaghetti, green beans and brocoli

Supper: plums in filo, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and chocolate sauce

Scale Woes and Food Choices

I achieved one of my goals today. My original blog is Countdown to Fifty where I listed the goals I wanted to achieve before my fiftieth birthday. Getting my degree was number two. Today I got my BA.

Goal number one was (and remains) ‘losing weight’.

Scale Woes
My tummy isn’t going away. My bum is getter smaller, the waist must be smaller because I can get into clothes that wouldn’t fit before, but there is still all that horrible blubber hanging around my middle.

A few weeks ago, just after I started using the gym with my personal trainer, the scales were registering good losses and I was happy. However, the batteries died and when they were replaced the weight seemed to have reappeared. Seems my loss was acatually a loss of battery power.

Of course I’m pleased that my clothes are getting looser, but it’s good to have that confirmation on the scales. Yes, I know that I will have been building muscle and that muscle is heavier than fat. But the belly is still hanging around.
Food Choices
For a while I’ve toyed with the idea of eating good quality pre-packed meals, at least during the week, to make sure I don’t put any extra on my plate. It kind of goes against the grain for me to do that as I really enjoy cooking and like toknow what is inside my food. However, I have so much to do at the moment that not having to cook on a weeknight would be good. It leaves the problem of what to do about my SO’s dinner. Buy him a ready meal as well? Expensive and he doesn’t need to loose (much) weight. Make him cook for himself?

I do have / have had portion-controlled home-made ready meals in the freezer before but usually they need veg or starch (rice, potatoes, pasta) added to them. Again, it takes time and I put on too much.

But the idea of only having in the fridge/freezer exactly what I will be eating, and nothing else is tempting.

Today’s food:

Food/Drink	Serving	Cals	Prot	Carb	Fat	Fibre	F&V
Breakfast
Muesli, Simply Delicious, Dorset Cereals*	35g	128.1	3.8	20.7	3.3	2.6
blueberries	30g	18	0.3	4.1	0.3	0.9
Milk, Semi Skimmed	200ml	98	6.8	10	3.4	0
		244.1	10.9	34.8	7	3.5
Lunch
prawns	85g	65.2	14.9	0.2	0.5	0
spring onion	4g	1.1	0.1	0.1	0	0.1
avocado	70g	133	1.3	1.3	13.7	2.4
cherry tomatoes	40g	7.6	0.3	1.3	0.1	0.4
		206.9	16.6	2.9	14.3	2.9
Afternoon
strawberries	180g	49.7	1.4	10.7	0.2	1.7
Optifit blueberry	100g	125	4.6	14.1	5.6	0.1
		174.7	6	24.8	5.8	1.8
Dinner
M&S nb Curry Chicken Thai green	400g	400	36.8	49.6	5.2	5.6
runner beans	200g	38.7	2.7	5.5	0.7	4.4
		438.7	39.5	55.1	5.9	10
		Cals	Prot	Carb	Fat	Fibre	F&V
totals for Monday 4th August		1064.4	73	117.6	33	18.2	9.1

Nutrition: What I ate today

This is how my food was divided up today.
The tick is because it is pretty close to what weightlossresources say it should be.
But I only had 2.1 portions of fruit and veg, which is not nearly enough and nowhere near my usual. This is the first time I’ve tried making something like this in photoshop (or anything else).

The photo below is what I actually ate.

 

Breakfast: 100g Optivita pineapple dessert, small tin of pineapple (with the juice in a glass) and a 90 cal Special K bar.

Lunch: 4 savours, one 16g Cote Sud cheese with nuts, 16g Cote Sud cheese with cucumber & chives, 32g cherry tomatoes
 
Mid afternoon munchies: 26g Dairy Milk Turkish Delight

Dinner: steak (74g), boiled potatoes (160g), mushrooms (50g), orange peppers (26g), petit pois (46g)

Total: including spray oil for the frying and 200ml lemonade on waking:
1003 calories; 40g protein; 140g carbs; 32g fat; 9.5g fibre; only 2.1 fruit & veg

Is 1200 too low?

I’m having trouble sticking to my self-imposed limit of 1200 kcals per day. In fact, I’ve not yet managed it.

Here’s Monday’s food:

1348 kcals. If I’d not had the hot cross bun I would have been below 1200, though.

At least I’m staying below 1500. I guess if I allowed myself 1500 I’d be going over that.

I’ve taken some photos as what I hope will become ‘before’ photos. I’m posting them in the flickr group 52 weeks to thinner healthier self. They are scary but I need to be scared or I will never get rid of the blubber.

Getting back on track

Things have been strange in my world for a while. My partner had a motorbike accident seven weeks ago (see my ‘Countdown to Fifty’ blog for the story).

 For the first few days I forgot to eat (I never thought I’d ever do that!) then I ate way too much chocolate for a while. Add to that a two week holiday in Italy with lots of red wine, ice cream and pasta (on the plus side, for my figure, a lot of walking while sightseeing, too). I haven’t put all the weight back on and I can still get into the smaller trousers I boasted about in an earlier post. But I need to get serious again.

I’ve joined the flickr group 365 Days. You post a self-portrait for each day of the year. For my day 5 picture I posted this

with the following “I need to lose 4 or 5 stone (56 to 70 pounds)”.

Someone commented “4 or 5 stone!!! you’ve got some ambition.”

I will prove that I can do it! 
As well as using the 365 I’m getting back on track with the Photo-diet Project (where I am now ‘photo-dieter’) and using the the photocena – come and have a look.