Day 1 for real

So, yesterday didn’t entirely go to plan, but now that almost none of my jeans fit me with any space for oxygen flow / blood flow I am absolutely determined that today really is the first day of getting back to normal. You will see that I weighed myself this morning despite being constipated and having eaten out last night – I was going to try to wait longer but changed my mind because I need to track results properly or I won’t know if I’m getting any…

Today I should have been getting some deliveries, so was stuck in all day. Whereas in Wales I often got deliveries reasonably early, here we seem to be on the end of the delivery routes, so that can be annoying / frustrating… especially when, as today, you’re expecting 2 packages and only one shows up.

As I didn’t expect to get any decent walking in today I trained on the walker again. It was harder work than it used to be so I do feel like its a better workout for me than it was before I took several weeks off!

In the absence of any good photos taken today, here are some taken on a recent visit (walked!) to Henley on Thames, one of my new favourite places to go!

Food today:

Breakfast: Overnight oats & oatbran with vanilla soy milk, plain whey and dried apple

Lunch: Vegetable & chicken soup with some home-made gf beer bread (the multi-coloured bits in the middle are sautéed red onions & walnuts that were spread over the raw dough and then rolled up inside it)

Dinner: Slow cooked beef (pot roasted in garlic beer with some leftover tomato & chilli pasta sauce) with vegetables

Snacks: Greek yoghurt with microwaved blueberries & flaxseeds

Melon; edamame beans; dried fruit; Alpro soya dark chocolate pudding

Weight: 160.4lbs

Technorati Tags: Back to basics

Day 0.5

Of back to reality…

I managed to start the day off well with 40 mins on the walker and a healthy breakfast!

Continuing on a good theme, I then went for a small walk…

And though I ate a few extra bites here and there it was all fruit and plain meat…

Then M came home from work and everything went wrong (diet-wise)

Food today:

Breakfast: (forgot the photo!) A porridge of GF oats & oatbran made with soy milk, and with raisins, dried apple & cinnamon added plus a little whey protein powder.

Lunch: Home-made soup – roasted acorn squash and peppers with coconut milk and leeks, and a little gf brioche spread with low sugar jam

Dinner: Aubergine skins topped with a wonderfully zingy, tomatoey vegetarian concoction

Followed by Malabar sea bass (topped with masses of spicy spinach) and some cauliflower bhaji (which I forgot to photograph until I was on my third helping…)

Snacks: Melon medley; ham; dried apple; Greek yoghurt with stewed rhubarb

Weight: Haven’t started weighing myself yet, but will do in a couple of days

Technorati Tags: Eating out,back to basics

My birthday present

One high point I definitely do want to fill in from my absence was a slightly belated 40th birthday present from my Dad & his wife, C. They offered to pay for me to do a gluten-free cookery course (few and far between in the UK, sadly) and I jumped on it! Of course, when I booked it for the 17th of November I didn’t realise that we would be completing the sale of our house on the 18th so that it would fall smack in the middle of our house move, but it was a very welcome distraction from all the stress of moving!

The course was being held at River Cottage of TV fame, and was being presented by a blogger I’ve been reading and admiring for quite a while – nutritionist, homeopath & amazing cook Naomi Devlin.  We made a sourdough bread, breakfast banana muffins, the best brownies I ever had – gf or not gf – and some gf pastry for pissalidieres (caramelised onion & cheese tarts). It lasted a day, and included a wonderful gf lunch and an exciting ride on a trailer pulled by a tractor from the car park at the top of a steep hill, down the lane to the farm! The other participants were really nice, it was lovely to spend some time talking food with people who don’t get a glazed expression when I mention gluten (no blame to anyone else, but I appreciate that its not that interesting to people who happily devour bread, pizza and all its incarnations!!!)

River Cottage is lovely, and my only regret is not having the time to explore it a little more. I did take my camera along, so here are a few snaps to show you why it was one of the best days ever!

The scenery from the car park was beautiful, and so was the weather!

The. Best. Brownies. EVER. Sorry about the flash, it was getting a bit dark by this point…

And a wonderful lunch I didn’t have to be cautious of (or cook myself!)

Celeriac and parsnip soup with a walnut & parsley pesto

A gorgeous salad with leaves grown at River Cottage, roasted pumpkin and their own air-dried ham

Let’s pretend this was healthy, OK? See - fruit

Naomi was lovely, very informed and interesting but also funny, friendly and warm. It was great to meet someone I’ve read online, and also great to come away with a load of recipes I intend to reproduce at home!

I also made the not-entirely unexpected discovery that I really enjoy the whole cookery course thing, so I plan on looking for more, even if they aren’t gluten free, in the future!

Technorati Tags: River Cottage gluten free cookery course

Nearly ready

To get back to real life now.

We’ve moved

For the last 2 weeks we have literally eaten out every. single. day. And we are today as well. But tomorrow I plan to get back into my kitchen, which I have really been missing, back on the scales – not missed them so much! And back to exercising and living my version of normal life.

Moving has been a great decision in many ways. M is home every night where before he worked away during the week. I can explore new areas, new towns, and soon I’ll be doing new epic walks. But. There’s something to be said for living in a rural area without many options for eating out, if you don’t want to be the size of a house by the end of the week. There are so many incredible places to eat here, and several really good ones are actually a (short) walk away – help me!!!

So, every meal out for the past two weeks has been at least 3 courses (sometimes with amuse bouche as well). When we’ve gone out for lunch I generally don’t have the ability to eat again that day, but when I’ve had to wait till dinner time because M was at work its been on top of a day’s worth of other food as well. Hmm.

I haven’t been photographing my food much, though I plan to start again. I won’t bother trying to fill in the gaps of what I’ve eaten and where I’ve been, but will probably try to touch on some of the high points as I go along.

For now, just a low point. When eating out this much you won’t necessarily be surprised to read that gluten played a part. I thought I wasn’t doing too badly with it – I had diarrhoea a few times, but that could also be done to vast quantities of sugar & fat, plus the sheer volume of food I’ve inflicted on my body – but a couple of days ago we went to a local Italian restaurant and I ordered a pizza. I then spent the rest of the day on the sofa waiting for my bloated stomach (I actually felt like the skin was stretching!) to explode killing all in the vicinity. So that won’t be happening again, and that’s a shame as it was delicious.

Still, if you’ve not abandoned me altogether, watch this space – I’ll be back!

Technorati Tags: off plan,over-eating,gluten intolerance

I'm not dead

I will be back properly - when I get my brain back on straight.

As suggested by the lovely dianeuk, I've been trying not stress so much over the weight right now - I have to, because I've been bingeing / overeating pretty much since my last post. If I manage one OK day, I make up for it the next...

In approx. 2 weeks we're moving house, and I blame the stress - which has really ramped up lately - so I'm pinning my hopes to the theory that things will get easier after the move. We are moving from Wales into England, much much closer to London, so with luck I'll find something more interesting to blog about than the 'woe is me, I suck' theme I'm currently developing. Believe it or not, I'm not even photographing my food at the moment...


Stay Healthy
(unlike me)
Chrissie