day 37 - ooops! Exercise Challenge

In an attempt to get myself moving and burning a few more pounds of the dreaded fat cells, I decided to sign up on an exercise challenge on the atkins diet bulletin board.

They have this great thing where people pledge miles of certain types of exercise and then work towards the target.

I joined the challenge a little bit late this month, rather than waiting until next month to start.  I set myself a target of 60 miles on my bike (better to start small I thought).

So far I have only got 11 miles in - oh no!! and its the 20th of the month!  I really need to get myself moving in order to reach my target for this month.

Checking the weather forecast for tomorrow to see if its a suitable day to ride into the office.  I don't have any far flung appointments, so its a good day to use the bike.

The bike in the picture is the same as mine - very nice and comfortable for zipping around town - and of course, if you ride a bike, there is no such thing as a traffic jam.

Wish me luck catching up!

Keetje

Day 36 - Update

Hello Everyone,

I haven't written much of an update recently as I have been incredibly busy with day to day survival.  Work has been well...work-like, but I had some good news today about another case won, which has done a bundle for my self confidence.

That news came at the end of an incredibly frustrating day when I spent literally hours trying to get a few simple jobs done because of a problem with the broadband connections in the area.  I was ready to go home and dive into a tub of extremely sugary ice cream - but the good news arrived and perked me up.

I watched an amazing programme on the TV last night about a young Welsh girl who had put on the most tremendous amounts of weight - she was weighing in at 33 stone (at the age of 15).  She was fortunate enough to win a scholarship to a special school in the US for youngsters with BIG weight problems.  I didn't agree with a lot of the dietary advice given i.e. low fat low fat and low fat - but it was pretty inspiring to see this young woman take control of her life and her eating and exercise regime.  By the end of the time covered by the programme, she had lost a massive 12 stone.

The great thing about this young woman's achievement was the way that she brought back all the things she had learned from her school to her way of life at home.  She did not let a difficult home situation detract from her determination to exercise and eat well.  What a great example from a youngster of 15!  The school also concentrated on the reasons why these youngsters were overeating and treated their addiction to overeating and the reasons behind it as well as the symptoms.

I shall bear her in mind as I continue with my weight loss programme.  A few of my friends and family are starting to notice that the weight is going down - which is always nice.  My singing teacher has also commented that I seem to be able to breathe more easily - apparently some obese people are hypoxic because we are unable to breathe correctly because of the weight around our middles!

These are all very good reasons to keep at it!

Keetje

Things to do with Green Stuff (5) - Endive Hearts

When thinking of things to do with green stuff, I find it is a good idea to shamelessly rip off some of the wonderful cooking ideas of our friends across the channel - the French.

Add to that a little Dutch know-how of what to do with cheese and ham and you can come up with a really nice recipe.

I have always thought that endives were sort of fancy lettuces - but no - they are an extremely useful vegetable for roasting.

Roasted Endive Hearts with Ham and Cheese

250g of endive hearts

2 tablespoons of olive oil

2 large slices of ham

100 grams of grated cheese (i.e. cheddar, gouda, emmental)

Cut the endive hearts in half, lengthways

Heat the olive oil in a baking tin in the oven at about 220 degrees C

When the oil is heated, place the endives in the hot oil flat side down, roast for about 10 minutes and turn - roast for a further 10 minutes

When the endives have a crispy, browned texture, remove them from the oven and drain off any excess oil (if you prefer to keep the oil in the tin, that is ok too).

Cover the endives with the grated cheese and place back in the oven and cook until the cheese is bubbling and slightly brown.

Place the two slices of ham on a plate, remove endives from the oven and place them and the melted cheese on top of the ham.

Eat!

I particularly like rolling the endives up in the ham!

Needless to say, other seasonings can be added - a little garlic paste can be used to give the endives a little more flavour, but I find that they have a good fresh flavour of their own.

Keetje

Carbohydrate Hangover - Day 28

Tricky old subject, carbohydrate hangovers.  Fortunately today I am talking about my beloved's monster of a carb hangover yesterday.

He went out to dinner with some chums and ended up eating (and drinking) rather more carbs than were good for him.  The poor lad was sick as a dog and spent a good deal of Friday night/Saturday morning with his head down the toilet.

I had a similar happening a couple of days before - I came clean to him and told him how rubbish I felt.  He made suitably sympathetic noises, but I suspected that he did not realise just how ghastly it all was.  He assumed that I was giving a little feminine exaggeration to how I was feeling.

Now the thing is, when he gets a bit sniffy about me feeling under the weather, fate seems to intervene and make the same thing happen to him...only WORSE!

So, on Saturday, he was being terribly brave, but did admit to feeling completely awful - he then told me that he thought I had been exaggerating my symptoms rather.

All I can say is......

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA - that'll teach ya, big guy!

A gleeful,

Keetje

Update - Day 24

Good Evening everyone,

It's been a tricky few days.  I finished up a massive case at work and have been having a bit of a 'come-down' after it all.  This has made me a little prone to falling off the wagon...ok, I admit it, I did fall of the wagon on Sunday - but Monday climbed straight back on and carried on regardless.

Add to that a few personal issues that knocked me for six - life has been pretty uncomfortable all round.

Never mind, feeling a bit better now and am pushing myself back into the swing of things - need to get some more exercise - but tomorrow I am car bound as I have to go to a funeral, but after tomorrow, its bus or bike for me.

I did spend Monday in a bit of a state of self-flagellation for falling off the wagon, still feel a bit rotten about it, despite several days having passed.  

So tomorrow it is up early, off to office, do stuff and then do the multi-storey workout before I head off to this funeral.  The guy who died was an ex-colleague.  He had a highly stressful job and also drank and smoked for England.  I don't think that his constitution was strong enough to stand up to such abuses, so sadly he died at the age of 57.

There will be a social event afterwards with the inevitable sausage rolls, sarnies and beer - so resoluteness must be exercised.

Keetje

The beloved...

...has been doing extremely well on his diet.  He is happily stepping on the scales and seeing the fat melt away.

One is not meant to be competitive about these things, but its rather tough seeing the way that the weight disappears off the male of the species, whereas we women have a much harder time of it.

Nevertheless, I am thrilled to bits for him.  He has been fighting a post-giving-up-smoking weight gain for quite some time and the increase has been getting him down rather, as he has always been a lean kind of guy.  As I have said before, he was a particularly ferocious low fat diet last year and he did not lose anything like he has lost this time..I think he is about 7 kilos down and he loves the food and the choices he can make.  He has a particular passion for blue cheese - which he is indulging to the full!  Sweetheart, I KNOW you like blue cheese, but is it really necessary to have it EVERY day?

I am very very proud of him and as I said to him yesterday - the fact he has found it hard to shed this weight gain is not his fault - it was just the fault of the stupid diet that he was following.

Well done baby!

Keetje

ps. The feet in the picture do not belong to him, they are some really scary feet I found on the internet!  His are FAR nicer.

Lunch on the run

I have chosen this picture to show how it's been in my office for the past few days.  If I haven't been sifting through huge piles of papers, I have been yelling down the telephone at people on behalf of a client.

It's been early starts and late finishes and LOTS of stress.  Add to that the absence of my lovely secretary on holiday, it was chaos this week.

Hardly the best of circumstances to stay on a diet - or so I thought.

Everyone at the Atkins Diet Bulletin Board stresses the importance of planning ahead.  So I did.

I made sure that there were always enough eggs and bacon for breakfast and made sure that evening meals were in the fridge ready to be cooked when I got in.  Lunch is more problematic for most, I know - but I am lucky in having a mini supermarket a few hundred metres down the road from my office.  Now I know what once my backside is in my chair, it is rare for me to move very far until it's going home time.  So on my way into the office, I would go via the supermarket and pick up some deli meats and cream cheese and a couple of bottles of spring water.

I made up my own little whooshie rollups, as I call them.  This involves a slice of beef, spread the cream cheese and a tiny bit of horse radish sauce - literally a quarter of a teaspoonful per slice.  Then just roll it up and there is a really handy little office snack.  Another discovery was the same meat with cream cheese, but with black pepper - I love black pepper so really layered it on.  Lunch would be washed down with a lovely big cup of coconut tea.  

This stuff gave me a lot more energy than my more usual toasted ciabatta - those always made me a bit sleepy in the afternoon.  I think the new eating carried me through what was a very taxing period extremely well.

Only problem was the horrible pile of washing up that my poor secretary found when she got back.  Yes, I had managed to buy my lunch, but had completely forgotten to buy some washing up liquid.  Just as well she is a very nice lady.  She did have a bit of a laugh at all the ingredients that had appeared on the shelf in my bookcase, such as black pepper, coconut oil and horseradish sauce.  I think she thought I had opened an Atkins Cafe and given up what I normally do.

Keetje

a little chunk

Always best to take on mammoth tasks a bit at a time.  Another piece of good advice I was offered today was from the lovely Sherri at the Atkins Diet Bulletin Board - she says that she sets herself goals every month.  So I am going to try and do that.

I have divided my weight loss up into 10% sections, which seems to make it much more manageable.  I have completed the first 10% and am now into my second.  The target is 110 kilos - I have no particular date for this, but would like to try and be around the 114 mark by the end of this month - May 2009.




Keetje