The Food Confessional

Posted by Sylvia

It definitely is not the fourth of July. I’m struggling with trying to do a calorie count when we’re eating buffets and restaurant meals and so I just don’t really know how many calories there are. I am making sensible choices and I’m increasing my walking to help to keep things under control. I remembered before about writing down what I didn’t have so I’ll do it that way around for a bit.

Today we went out for lunch and I had Asparagus as a starter instead of sausages or cheese. They offered me mayonnaise or butter and when I paused they offered vinaigrettes which I had – it was vinegar with chopped up tomato, green pepper, onion and hard-boiled egg and very nice. I was especially pleased when I realised it didn’t have oil.

For the main course I did not have the ox-tail with fried potatoes but instead had the beef stew (with boiled potatoes). I did have a dessert (leche frita – I can’t pretend there is any redeeming value to that whatsoever) but everyone else had beer with lunch and I had sparkling water.

Because we had such a big lunch I proposed that I would put out a buffet for dinner with salads and ham and breadrolls so people could just nibble. I got myself some celery and cottage cheese to make up for the big dinner. Then I walked down to the beach to see what the noise was about (some reggae thing on the beach, tons of people) and had most of a beer. I realised I didn’t really fancy any more of it so poured it out (go me!) and walked back up the hill.

I had two large glasses of water before settling down with the others to have a glass of wine to make sure I wouldn’t get thirsty and drink too much wine.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the day considering it was non-stop entertaining. And now I’m going to bed. :)

Posted by Anna

I decided that to celebrate 100 days of dieting, yesterday was to be a day off my diet. I went to a picnic concert in Kew Gardens to see the Gypsy Kings and wanted to not have to worry about what I was eating. That’s not to say I wrote the whole day off. In preparation, I had a yoghurt for breakfast and a small tub (125g) of low-fat cottage cheese for lunch. In the end, I didn’t eat that much — a ham roll — but I did have one small profiterole (I wanted more but couldn’t manage it!), a crepe with lemon and about 50g of honey roasted cashews. Oh, and a small glass of pink champagne. I doubt I had over 1500 cals in the end. As a counter to that, I pretty much danced non-stop from 7pm – 10pm, not sitting down once in that time!

It’s been a really full-on week, and coupled with a fairly late and active night last night, I went to bed at midnight and slept right through to 9am which is unlike me. But, it’s the start of *that* time for me, so I’m not entirely surprised. I don’t expect to see any shift in the scales tomorrow which is frustrating. I need to find a way to shift myself from this plateau.