The Food Confessional

Posted by Sylvia

My weight was up again – 80.2 or 80.4 I think. Waiting for Wednesday for the full weigh-in and hoping I see the same effect as last week.

Breakfast
2 coffee: 60

For lunch I made chicken soup with Japanese vegetables and thin soba noodles. The total calories is really a guess because I used various jarred/tinned foods which did not have calorie counts on them (pickled bamboo, enoki mushrooms). None of it was sweet or even particularly seasoned so 150 calories is almost certainly high.

Lunch: 260 cal

475 calories for dinner – although the calories per 100g of lamb varies SO much in the USDA data, let alone if I start using other websites, that I am really not sure what to make of it. For future reference, I decided to go with “Lamb, Australian, imported, fresh, leg, sirloin chops, boneless, separable lean only, trimmed to 1/8″ fat, raw” at 132 calories/100g

It’s just a deboned leg of lamb (Spanish :P) with the fat trimmed off but the calories listed vary wildly even just looking at the fresh, lean only Australian lamb. It ranged from from 123 (foreshank) to 143 (leg center slice, bone-in) and 146 (fresh loin, which should be less!) to 165 (shoulder). The leg counts were all around 130s so I went with that :P

It really didn’t seem like that much – even though I gave everyone extra as we were only having salad with vinegar on the side. Connor immediately after dinner asked if he could have some bread with cheese as he was still hungry.

The worst of it is, having eaten less than an hour ago, I feel hungry and very tired, both. I would have expected a meal consisting of mainly meat to fill me up more.

It wasn’t until totalling this up that I realised I was very lax with the details today. I took a handful of walnuts and crushed them and scattered them onto the salad without ever weighing them. I’m glad the calorie count looks low because I suspect that today I fell foul to hidden calories and I really wasn’t as careful as I normally am.

It is definitely more complicated cooking for three and I was sorely tempted to say forget the diet, lets just carry on for the rest of the week as normal and start up again after we get home from our trip.

As it is, we’re going out to dinner Wednesday evening and we need to have a decent dinner Thursday evening and food will be sparse Friday daytime when we are travelling. I’m still wondering if it would make life much easier to just drop the diet for now.

Posted by Sylvia

I was very slow to wake up in the morning (and I overslept!). It seems like I am sleeping a lot, which is frustrating. I am not sure if this is related to dieting or not.

3 coffees with milk: 90 calories

I was thinking about how I start to feel grumbly towards the end of the week and as the days go past I start edging closer and closer to the 1,200 limit. It struck me that as I’m pretty upbeat about dieting on Mondays, I should make sure to get 1,000 or under to counterbalance it a bit. Theoretically, on Monday I’m still nicely sated from the weekend and so shouldn’t be bothered.

Pasta Salad lunch: 370 cal

The salad was using up left-overs from the weekend and tasted very nice with vinegar and a bit of mustard. I had originally been tempted to drizzle olive oil over it at the end but then I decided to see what it was like without. It was the right decision – the salad really didn’t need it.

In the afternoon, I caught myself wandering into the kitchen looking for a snack. Twice! I was snacking during the day on Sunday which was naughty and I guess it stuck in my mind.

Chicken with Chickpeas and Stuff: 365 calories

I froze the Chicken and Chickpeas in portions when I made it before but it was rather boring. I thought about making it extra spicy and adding rice but by the time I thought about it, it was too late to cook the rice. Instead, I added my homemade chile powder, yogurt, salt, chopped coriander and extra veg. Then I splashed a little bit of lemon juice at the end and served. I thought it was nice. Cliff said it was a “bit tomato-y” which I suspect was the effect of the lemon juice making it a bit more acidic.

After dinner I still felt hungry. As bedtime drew near, I decided to make do with a hot chocolate because I couldn’t think of a good snack of around 150 calories that both of us would enjoy. If I were dieting on my own, I would have definitely eaten something.

When I got up on Tuesday morning I did not feel hungry at all. I think there’s definitely an argument for less calories at the beginning of the week.

Posted by Sylvia

Friday Morning Weigh-in: 80.4

That’s a +.2 from Thursday – eeek!

Cliff also saw a slight blip up. As we’ve both been very good, I’m not sure what to make of it.

I took an hour’s walk today, down to the beach and back. It helped to clear my head but my calves and ankles ached all weekend!

Breakfast: 60

Lunch: Potato Mamoosa 400 calories

I made dinner rather quickly and so was not very exact – but it was one chicken breast plus veg in the skewers and 60g rice each with some lettuce leaves so it’s not exactly complicated. I guessed the vegetables high so as to be safe.

Saturday and Sunday are off days and although Saturday was pretty restrained (chicken legs in sauce with veg and potatos for lunch and roasted duck with noodle stir-fry for dinner) I went a bit crazy in the middle of the night and ate the last of the Christmas chocolate and then made a HUGE batch of popcorn with melted butter. Then I drank wine and watched old sitcoms until almost 5am. It seemed sensible at the time.

I’m feeling a bit rough today and the food was very carb-heavy which I’ve noticed is my general reaction to a hangover.

I’m stressed out in advance about next week which will be very busy and then we are going to Germany on Friday morning so need to get packed and organised for that as well. And then there’s the slight issue that my passport is out of date. ARGH

But still planning to diet Mon-Thurs and still would like to at least get to 79.* kilos before we leave.