Sunday 26 January 2014

Cake!

These little beauties are skinny lemon cupcakes, made with low fat yoghurt and blueberries - definitely my kind of diet food! The only question now is what to do with the 'spares', freeze them as suggested, or take them in to work? 
Tonight's dinner looked pretty good too if I do say so myself! Orange and ginger chicken skewers with mashed sweet potato and stir fried veg:
Not quite Michelin standard but still pretty!

Saturday 25 January 2014

Weigh in number 1

Today was my first weigh in of the weight loss programme, and I've lost 2lbs so that's good news. The other bit of good news is that today's shopping was cheaper than last weeks! Now admittedly that may be because I went to lidl instead of sainsburys and bought the meat from the butchers, but it's still reassuring to know that being 'on a diet' won't necessarily break the bank! Oh, and for today's scheduled walk I went up to the allotment for herbs so that's one less thing I had to buy. My calorie allowance goes up this week, but I think my walking is supposed to go up too do hopefully I'll still manage a decent loss.

Wednesday 22 January 2014

Waga who?

Tonight's dinner was soba noodles with soy glazed tofu. I bought silken tofu instead of firm as that's all I could find in sainsburys so the texture was a bit weird but it was pretty tasty. I'd never had soba noodles before and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised - they're made with buckwheat flour so are a pretty unappetising brown colour but brown food always seems more filling than white/beige so that's hopefully a bonus! Anyway, the peppers, courgettes and spinach helped with the colour:



Yes, they are basically kids chopsticks incidentally!
Today's live well work well meeting at work was interesting - we had the meeting doing laps of the car park, so 40 minutes of slow walking to add to today's activity log!

Saturday 18 January 2014

Week 1, day 1, shopping fail!

Today is the first day of my weight loss programme, which meant shopping from a ready made list. Not entirely sure how I managed but instead of buying the steaks we were supposed to be having I ending up buying stewing steak - Oopsie! I reckon the stew I ended up making had a similar calorie count to the meal I was supposed to be making though, and to be honest it probably suited the weather better anyway, so win!
Today's official exercise was a 30 minute walk, which I managed to fit in before the rain came on.  There's a long and dull story attached to my walk involving Royal Mail incompetence but as I say, dull and boring, and a walk's a walk!
Slightly concerned  by the cost of this week's shop. I think it's probably just because it's the first week, and a lot of the stuff I bought will go in the freezer, but all the same, I may have to throw in some swaps in future to keep the cost down.

Thursday 16 January 2014

The big cauliflower rice experiment, and some rabbits

This is a picture of some baby bootees I knitted for a friend - pretty cute but really tricky to knit! Anyway, cauliflower rice.....I've seen this mentioned a few times now online so thought I'd give it a go. In theory you blitz cauliflower in a food processor and steam it in the microwave for a few minutes to make a low calorie alternative to rice. I have to agree with hubby's opinion that it was more like couscous, but we both quite like couscous so that's no bad thing! It went fine with the hairy bikers paprika chicken that I made from a packet tonight. It wasn't bad for a ready made sauce, but the 'proper' version I made from their recipe book was much nicer, if I do say so myself! Having said that, lots of people don't cook from scratch for whatever reason so good for them for trying to cater to that market with something vaguely healthy.

Tuesday 14 January 2014

On a diet?

Well this is a first - I'm 'on a diet'!  I've signed up to the hairy bikers diet club which basically works the same way I approach weightloss anyway, ie on a straightforward calorie with lots of tasty home made food. I won't be starting my plan till Saturday as I'd already meal planned this week but as it happens, tonight tea was a hairy dieters recipe anyway. Peppers stuffed with feta and mushrooms which was tasty and got the thumbs up from Mr C too! 
On the exercise front I walked home from work tonight,for the first time this year. It was a bit chilly but not too knackering, so I'll be making a habit of that until the nights draw out a bit more and I can cycle to work without worrying whether my lights are bright enough.

Monday 13 January 2014

New Year, New Blog

Yes, I know we're a couple of weeks into 2014 but it's still January so I'm still going with new year!  My big 'thing' this year is the C2C bike ride I've signed up for, but I don't want it to just be a training blog so I'll also continue to post pictures of my dinners, and report on developments at the allotment which will have to involve some building work this year. I need to build a couple of pea/bean fences and replace some shelving in the greenhouse so that should be fun! Did I mention the C2C? It feels like an impossible goal at the moment but I have till August to train so hopefully it won't be too traumatic. I've mostly been focussing on weight management over the past couple of years so I think it'll do me good to switch focus to fitness.