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HM2014 – 4th May
Since everyone else is saying it, I might as well join in, so May the Fourth be with you!
I did well yesterday. I’ve decided that I’m not going to be as strict with the ‘two shakes a day’ regime on a weekend because it’s not fair on Cameron if we can no longer eat out, so I’m just going to have the weekend as an eating healthy time, and have the shakes if I’m at home.
So yesterday my day started off with a trip to the White Rose Centre to get my hair cut, which also involved a McDonalds breakfast (my bribe to make Cameron get out of bed early to come with me!). I had a bagel with Philadelphia cheese, which is less than 20 more calories than the shake. After the hair cut, we had a little walk around the shops to get some steps. Then there was a trip to Tesco (and a Subway salad for lunch) followed by a trip to Morrisons to get the ingredients for a pasta bake tea, all of which left me at about 4000 steps. I know that’s not enough for the day, so I decided to go up to Golden Acre for a walk.
It was only when I stepped out of the car that I realised I’d left my fitbit in my other trousers on my bedroom floor. I was so annoyed! I know that it’s still exercise, but knowing that I’d do all the walking and not get to my 5,000 step target for the day was very annoying! I sent a tweet about it, and Fitbit’s fantastic support team sent me a message back explaining how to add the walk manually. I was so happy!!
While we were there, we saw more squirrels than I’ve ever seen there at once! And one of them was so tame, it came right up to us, touched it’s nose to Cameron’s shoe and then bashfully ran away.
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HM2014 – 3rd May
Well yesterday was definitely not what I expected! I’d had a pretty good day at work, stuck to my food choices and everything and was just heading to the white rose centre for a hair cut and a walk to get my step count up.
It was pretty bad traffic since it’s a bank holiday weekend and I was queuing down the hill when I heard two loud bangs and then all of a sudden my car was shunted forward. Turns out that a Volvo three cars back hadn’t seen the cars stop and crashed into the Mazda in front of him, causing everyone else to shunt forward.
I wasn’t hurt and thankfully since I was at the front, my car wasn’t damaged too badly, but I ended up stood at the roadside for over an hour and a half while the police came out and dealt with everything. So embarrassing to get breathalysed at the side of a busy road, but there’s got to be a first time for everything I guess!
After I’d got home, I spent an hour on the phone to the insurance company arranging repairs to my car, so that was my evening almost completely gone. I’d not had any tea yet and wasn’t in the mood for a shake and very tempted to go to McDonalds to get a big burger, but I compromised and went to subway and got a yummy salad bowl. Probably slightly more calories than the shake, but I think I deserved it after my nightmare evening, and at least I resisted the call of Old McDonald!
I’ve got four days off work now, so hopefully I’ll be able to stick to my eating plan and also get plenty of walking in since I’m not tied to my desk!
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HM2014 – 2nd May
Yesterday didn’t involve another walk around Golden Acre Park, but instead I went shopping at the White Rose Centre with my best friend Abi. We actually did more walking than I would have done at Golden Acre though, we went in a lot of shops! Rather than doing what we would usually do and go out for dinner, which usually means at least 2 courses and a hell of a lot of calories, I had my shake before we went instead.
I had to use my restraint when I got home too when my brother phoned up and asked if I wanted him to buy me anything from McDonalds. Usually I would have got an apple pie or a McFlurry, but I resisted. I think there’s something about drinking the shakes which makes me feel like if I eat more than I should, it’d just be a waste of time not eating proper meals in the first place, so they definitely still seem like a good idea for the time being!
Since I don’t have any relevant pictures for you today, here’s a funny picture I found when browsing the ‘fitness’ section on Pinterest, which tickled me a fair bit!
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HM2014 – 1st May
Another day down, another day successful. I went for another walk around Golden Acre last night, although this time I was on my own and without Cameron. It was really nice to get in a good walk and just to sit outside in the fresh air in the peace and quiet and relax after a hard day at work.
I admit, I did spend a little too long watching a family of little ducklings that were swimming around the lake. They seemed a little less shy than yesterday and were happy to swim around near me while I took some pictures.
My fitbit seems to be giving me a very high calorie allowance this week, to say I’ve only been doing 5,000 steps a day. Like yesterday, I ate 1,360 calories, but it said I could eat 800 more. And while it would have been nice to wolf down some chocolate or crisps or something, I’m taking it with a pinch of salt and sticking to eating sensibly!
As a bonus for today, here’s a video of some very cute ducklings!
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HM2014 – 30th April
Yesterday was another good day. I had a massive headache at work, but a walk around Golden Acre Park with Cameron in the evening pretty much cleared that up. I always seem to get headaches when I start to drink more water than usual, I don’t know if anyone else has that problem?
Before we went on our walk, I’d already had my chocolate shake for tea, but Cameron hadn’t had anything to eat, so we stopped off at McDonalds on the way home. It was hard to sit there drinking a diet coke while he ate all the lovely smelling food, but I resisted ordering anything, so that’s a bonus! Especially since I have a bunch of vouchers for free apple pies, and we all know how delicious McDonald’s apple pies are, even if they are hotter than the sun!
The walk around Golden Acre is about 2500 steps, so I think it’s a good one to try do more often now that it’s lighter on an evening. It’s nice to spend time just walking and talking rather than sat at home in front of the tv ignoring each other too! I think next time I’ll take my proper camera with me, I took some pics this time with my phone but what’s the point of spending all that money on a camera and then always using my phone instead?!
Meanwood Valley Trail sign at Golden Acre Park
Golden Acre Park
Golden Acre Park
Sunset at Golden Acre Park
Golden Acre Park
Magnolia at Golden Acre Park
Golden Acre Park
Cameron at Golden Acre Park
Ducks at Golden Acre Park
Dogs playing in the water at Golden Acre Park
Runners at Golden Acre Park
Yellow Flowers at Golden Acre Park -
HM2014 – 29th April
Well after one day, it seems to be going okay. I’ve realised that I definitely prefer the chocolate shakes to the vanilla ones, but I have three tubs of each so I’ll have to chop and change until they’re all finished – definitely chocolate all the way after that though! I expected to be hungry mid morning and late evening, but surprisingly I wasn’t, the shakes filled me up more than I thought they would!
You may have seen the recipe I posted yesterday, but I spent a good hour last night batch-cooking a big sausage and vegetable pasta bake which will be my lunch for the next 6 days. It smelt so good while it was cooking, but I’d already had my chocolate shake for tea so I was good and only had a button mushroom to taste the sauce, and the rest was portioned away and frozen.
I’m actually excited for my lunch now, so much better than a Morrison’s ready meal; much less sugar and salt, plus I love cooking, so that’s another bonus!
The only dark spot is that I weighed myself this morning for the first time in a long time and I think I’m now higher than I have been this year, the last few weeks have not been good! But I’m not going to weigh myself again for at least a week and just concentrate on eating well and feeling better.
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Recipe: Sausage and Vegetable Pasta Bake
If you’ve read my earlier post, you’ll know that I’ve decided that for the time being I’m going to have meal replacement shakes for breakfast and tea. Which means that I need something really tasty for lunch, and I didn’t really want anything processed. So I had a bit of a walk round Morrisons earlier and threw some stuff in my trolley with the idea of making a pasta bake. It turned out great, six portions of healthy pasta bake at about 500 calories per serving. I’ll just need to remember to get one out of the freezer each morning!
Nutritional Info (serves 6)
480 calories, 71g carbs, 9g fat, 26g protein, 10g sugar, 693mg sodium
Ingredients
8 Morrisons NuMe Cumberland Sausages
500g Wholewheat Fusilli pasta
1 jar Chicken Tonight Spanish Chicken sauce
300g Trimmed Leeks
2 red onions
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
1 yellow pepper
3 orange tomatoes
150g button mushrooms
1 tbsp Rapeseed oilMethod
Heat the oil in a pan and fry the sausages for five to ten minutes, add the onions and cook for five more. Gradually add the peppers, then the leeks, mushrooms and tomatoes.The sausages have a low fat content so they’ll break up while you’re stirring the veg, this is a good thing! Cook the veg for 10-15 minutes in total and then stir in the sauce. Cook for five minutes to heat the sauce and coat the veg thoroughly and then remove from the heat.
While this is cooking, cook the pasta according to packet instructions (about ten minutes in boiling water).
Mix both pans together and stir thoroughly before serving. If you’re freezing it like I am, split between six containers and rest the lids gently on top until cooled, then store in the freezer.
I was originally going to sprinkle some mozzarella cheese on top and bake in the oven for ten minutes, but I decided not to for re-heating reasons. If I was going to eat it straight away, I’d give it a try!
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HM2014 – 28th April
Well I kinda suck at this don’t I? I may as well have just not bothered at all at the start of the year since I’ve pretty much undone all my hard work, and probably some more. But I’m not going to mope on it, and instead I’m going to start kicking some ass again.
I know it’s not the ideal thing to do, but to get myself kick-started again I’ve decided that for a while I’m going to start having meal replacement shakes for breakfast and tea as these are the two meals where I tend to go way off track, stopping at Subway or Costa or even McDonalds on the way to work for breakfast, and just eating whatever is in the fridge for tea.
Since my dad has not been well and because my mum and brother are usually working on an evening, that leaves me on my own for tea. Cooking for one is quite hard to stay disciplined with and not exactly cheap, and with no-one there to see what I’m eating, it’s not always good! So I feel like this might get me going again. I’ll be having a well balanced lunch at work like I usually do, and some healthy snacks thrown in too.
I also need to get out on my feet more too. I’ve been coming home from work and settling down with a good book rather than going for my usual hour walk. I’m going to have to be strict with myself and get back out there to get my steps up. It would be really nice if I could for once have a higher weekly step total than my boyfriend. I’ve given up on beating my brother since he walks about 13 miles a day for work and I sit on my backside at a PC for 10 hours a day!
So here’s my current inspiration from Pinterest:
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Michael Mayne – A Year Lost and Found
Sometimes, a book comes into your life at just the right time, and this was so perfectly timed it’s untrue. I only picked it up by a random choice when I was browsing the religion section at the library. It stuck out to me for some reason so I checked it out. And it turned out to be completely perfect for what is going on in my life right now.
Michael Mayne was a priest struck down with a seemingly mysterious illness. The doctors didn’t know what was wrong and he spent most of his days in bed, unable to summon the energy to move. Eventually, after being shunted from doctor to doctor for test after test, the doctors told him it was probably some kind of post-viral syndrome, which could clear up in days, or it could take up to a year.
This is quite similar to my dad. He’s been spending the majority of his time in bed since last August, when he suddenly lost all energy and found it extremely comfortable to sit up for any long period of time. He’s not asleep when he’s in bed, just completely lethargic – like the author. And the doctors have diagnosed ‘extreme jet lag’, one of the things that was suggested to Michael.
The first half of the book took you through Michael’s year of illness, the highs (not many) and the lows (a lot). The second half of the book is the Michael talking about how he relates this to his experience of God, and how he doesn’t lay the blame for his illness, how suffering has a higher purpose. The book was a great (and very personal) story about illness and hope, perfectly timed to give me the hope I needed.
My favourite quote from this book was:
“Nowhere is Jesus more powerful than in his passive suffering on the Cross. Nowhere does he show more clearly the truth of the passive, suffering God whose hands are tied by love.”
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I joined the library!!
God knows why I didn’t do this before with the amount of books that I read, but this weekend I finally re-joined the library! I’d been a member since I was about 3 years old; so young that my library card had my mum’s signature on instead of mine! But when I was about 16, Leeds City Council introduced a Breeze card for young people and my library card was merged in with that. And since that expired when I was 19 years old, I haven’t set foot back in any of the Leeds Libraries.
But what an amazing place. Walk in, pick some books, walk out. And no cost! I expected to have to pay for a new card but the lovely lady at the desk at Pudsey library signed me back up in a jiffy. It was really hard not to walk out with an armful of books, but I managed to restrain myself to just 3. Until I journeyed to Leeds Central Library yesterday and picked another four! I don’t think I’ll ever stop reading now!
The best thing is how easy it is now to take out a book (or three). No queuing up at the desk, just set all your books on a machine, scan the barcode on your library card and the machine detects the RFID tags in each book to know what you’ve taken out and prints you a nice little receipt with the return dates on. How fabulously easy!
Plus, as confirmed on Twitter, you don’t even have to take books back to the same library you checked them out from, as long as you take them back somewhere in Leeds. So I don’t need to worry about taking books out on my lunch break in Guiseley/Yeadon or at the weekend at home in Pudsey, just take them back wherever is convenient!
Louise Douglas
(I've got no) Shelf Control…
Louise Douglas 