Adulting is not as easy as I thought

Who thought adulting was so hard. I needed a new diary for next year and went to the Calendar shop to get one. I spent 45 minutes choosing one... WHAT!!!

Usually I go in, find a funny one (Simon’s cat being one of my favourite) and get out, but a voice inside told me if you want to be taken seriously at work get an adult diary.

Ended up getting a busy B diary, still not sure I like it but hey ho I’m now stuck with it. Will see how it turns out.... 

New house

So I have moved, I have a new address about 40 miles away from where I have lived for the last 15 years. I still don’t know that many people, and I don’t have kids so it’s difficult with the neighbours as it’s a family orientated neighborhood.

I still work in bedford and commute everyday, hopefully I will find a new job around my home soon. Spending 2 hours driving everyday is starting to take its toll on me.

I’m getting used to be single again and need to enjoy cooking for one again. My portion control when I cook is still for 2 people. And I have to be honest as I come back after 19:30 in the evening, the last thing I want to do is cook. Which means that I have been piling the pounds again.... looks like it will never stop

But overall, I am getting my life reorganised. It’s nice not to have to worry about going back home, or stay in the car parked outside the house dreading to walk in. So all in all the end of the year is on a positive note. 

Homemade taboulé (Syn free)

It has been a very hot day today, reminding me how I miss a good taboulé. In France, it's one of the most popular salad in summer.

So tonight, I decided to try to come with a recipe which would be as close as possible.

 

Taboulé recipe:

400gr couscous

500ml boilingwater

300gr tomato passata 

1/3 of a jar of syn free Colemans concentrated mint sauce 

Cherry tomatoes cut in quarters

Orange pepper bell

Weight your couscous in a plastic container, add your water, cover. Once ready fluff the couscous with a fork. Add the rest of the ingredients in the couscous and mix well. Refrigerate for a few hours. Taboulé is served very chilled.

If the taboulé is too dry for you, more passata and mint sauce can be added.

In the last few months

So it's been a bit more than a month since my last post, god life has been hectic.....

1/ my partner and I split up a few months ago. 

2/ my comfort eating has gone down a lot since

3/ I realised I did not have much of a life so I decided to get a new one (which I enjoy very much)

4/ I had lucky escape some weeks even if I did eat non healthy food.

5/ I have now lost 2st and 10 pounds (yes, I know I have a lot more to come off. But come on, it's still a good result!!!)

Week 11 weight in

Loss this week: 6lbs

Total loss so far: 1st 10lbs

At last I'm losing weight again. Although I'm not sure it's by eating healthy, this week was all over the place but I did eat a lot less following the aftermath of last weekend 

Week 10 weight in

This week I maintained

Total loss so far: 1st 4lbs 

Week 9 weight in

This week: + 4 lbs

Total loss so far: 1st 4lbs 

Holidays

So I had a week holidays and I did not watch what I was eating. Let's face it, I'm not the only one who has done it and probably won't be the last.

What scared me was how easy it was to go back to eating unhealthy. I had ice cream and biscuits. crisps, chocolate, more chocolate ....

I mastered some courage this morning and got on the scales:

1/ felt ashamed

2/ screamed at myself

3/ really really mad at myself

4/ OMG, look I can't do it and I just ruined everything I did the last 2 months

5/ (breathing deeply in) it's ok, managed to do it I can do it again 

And that peeps are the 5 stages of grief Slimming World way 

Week 8 weigh in

This week: 1lb

Total loss: 1st 8lb

Tangtastic sweet Syn free

Tangtastic dandelion & burdock sweet

Syn free

 

Ingredients:

3 cup dandelion & burdock soda no added sugar

1/2 cup gelatine powder

2Tbsp Sukrin:1

3 tsp citric acid (I like my sweets to be very tart, if you want them to be less measure less acid)

1/ Pour the soda in a stainless steel pan and let it go flat.

2/ Add the gelatine powder and mix until the gelatine is dissolved.

3/Put pan on low heat and stir until the mix is at 60 degres Celsius.

4/ Take pan off the heat and let it cool down slightly.

5/ Once cooled, pour mixture in mold (I used two silicone round molds)

6/ Set in fridge, it took 1 hour for my two moods to be set properly.

7/ Cut sweets in the shape you want. In a plastic tub, mix the sweetener and the citric acid. add the cut sweets to it and shake until all the sweets are covered.

8/ keep in fridge up to a week.

Week 7 weight in

Loss: 4lbs

Total loss so far: 1st 7lbs

Week 7 has been a better week. I increased my intake in speed vegetables and reduced my speed fruits. It's also my ⭐️ week.

Weight in week 6

Just realised I forgot to enter last week weight in. So here it goes:

Put on 2.5 lbs

Total loss 1st 3lbs

Healthy eating inspector

Meet my new healthy eating supervisor... Cinder.

 

He will be helping with my meal planning and look very closely at my syns 😂.

Struggling

Been struggling a lot with snacking recently. It was not a major problem until last week, but it is one now.

Did some microwave crisps last night. I know it is a tweak but it's still better to have homemade ones than opening a pack of very fatty one. 

I had some salt and pepper mix left over from when I did Chinese. I sprinkled it on top of mandolined protatoes with fry light. 4.5 minutes for each plate in the microwave, checking at 2 minutes to make sure they were not burning.

 

Butternut squash and Bacon Soup

 

Butternut Squash and Bacon Soup

Syn free

Ingredients:

1 Medium Butternut Squash diced

1 Red onion diced

2 Garlic gloves crushed

2 carrots diced

1 Pak Choi diced

2 Chicken Stock Pot

1 litre of water

4 Smoked Bacon Medallions diced

Salt and pepper to taste

Add all the ingredients together, bring to the boil. Once boiling, reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Don't forget to stir time to time, and check the water level, if needed add a bit more water.

Take off the heat and blend until the soup is smooth. 

Serve a a swirl of fat free Greek yogurt or fromage blanc.

This soup is ideal for SP days and can be reheated.

Ohso Good Chocolate

They honestly should have called it Oh My Good it's so lush chocolate and I can't believe it's only 3 syns for a 13.5 gr but I can see that name might have been too long.

The Ohso Good bar with no added sugar comes in 3 different flavours: lemon, raspberry and original.

 

I bought the three flavours but at £3.99, they are a bit of an investment. Now are they worth it? No question about it...Yes 

 

I tried the lemon one as soon as they arrived. I'm not too keen on dark chocolate as it reminds me the bitter chocolate (85%) that my mum used to give us as kids (Hell it could put hair on your chest). But I was pleasantly surprised by the little bar of lemon chocolate, to me it tasted just like chocolate and lemon curd, which I love. Did I had to go and check the wrapper again to make sure it was only 3 syns? Yes, I did... because honestly something that good can't be just 3 syns. It did curb my chocolate craving.

3 Syns/Bar

 

Ohso Good have a promotion at the moment buy 4 packs and get free delivery. If you use the code slimming25 you get 25% off.

http://ohso.com/shop/

P.s:

It's also worth noting that the normal chocolate and orange bar is only 3.5 syns/bar.

Weight lost visual aid

I'm doing slimming world online, as I'm not going to group and I still need that little push people would get in group, I created a visual aid. Standing proudly on my fridge, my little clouds of weight loss are there when I open the fridge. It has been laminated so I can erase them if needed, I use some white board pens to colour them in.

 

The green dots are my weight ins. As no one at home knows about me and slimming world (my dirty little secret lol), it is not titled.

Porky lights part 2 🐷

Received my Porky parcel today. I was very excited to open it and see my packs of sausages.

 

 

Even went through the house to show them to the builders (and yes.... they now all agree that I'm mad as s box of frogs, think they were just going for weird before this).

As it was lunch time, I decided to cook 3 and have a sausage sandwich with a dash of ketchup. 

I followed the instructions and cut them in half lengthways, my first thought was I don't think I cooked them long enough they are still juicy, put them back for another 5 minutes in the oven, but still juicy. I tried one and they were cooked. 

I throughly enjoyed my sandwich and the sausages were as I said before juicy and felt like a proper butchers sausage when biting them.

Celebration the year of the Rooster

As yesterday we were celebrating Burn's night, we did Chinese New Year tonight.

I literally slaved in the kitchen all day to have a Chinese feast tonight. So much washing to do, even if I did it as I was going along, I have still two sinks full of it. Ah how I long for the good old days when I did not have to worry about getting a takeaway. Except than now when I see how many syns are in one I can feel my hips getting bigger.

On the menu tonight was:

Lemon chicken

 

Salt and pepper chicken

 

Vegetable stir fry

 

Fried rice 

All the recipes can be found on Pinch of Nom website 

Week 5 weight in

Loss: 1/2lbs

Total loss so far: 1st 5.5 lbs

This week was hard and I'm very happy with this loss. I have been leaving in a renovation project house for the last 4 years. And in the last few months, it has become a building site. 

We had the electricians in this week, and as lovely as they were, it has been difficult for me as my privacy dropped to almost zero. Having to look out to see if the  corridor to the bathroom is clear, taking a quick shower just in case, they cut the electricity, happened on Tuesday ended up with no lights in bathroom (we don't have a window in it) and no water (the shower is electric).

The boiler was cut for a few hours too and ended up freezing in the house, well to be fair it was freezing outside. 

I ended up eating the wrong thing as I was trying to keep warm. Let's face it a salad does not keep you warm hot chocolate does. Abused it a bit and had to do a few SP days, thank heavens for courgettes lasagne sheets.