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Posts Tagged ‘diet’

  1. Life advice #9: When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

    March 9, 2013 by Amy Hansford

    Life advice from a 90 year old? I’ll take it.
    Backstory blog can be found here.

    An oval of happiness Picture credit: Graham Turner/Guardian

    An oval of happiness
    Picture credit: Graham Turner/Guardian

    9. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

    Alex and I have been trying to follow Slimming World. I say trying – dinners are brilliant and ‘Syn free’ (the crux of Slimming World is that naughty-but-nice things have a Syn rating, the lower the better). Breakfasts are pretty good too. Lunch is near enough. But it’s the bits in between that we struggle with. The treats.

    I am the head shopper in the house. I literally write a menu each week of what the family will eat for every meal so I can purely buy what we need, minimising waste and cost. That means I don’t buy sweets, or desserts, or chocolate.

    This in turn means that I crave chocolate. Absolutely crave it. And when I get my hands on some, it’s gone in seconds.

    I bought myself a box of Nerds for Christmas. I should say, this means a box of a dozen boxes of Nerds. Having so much sugar to hand led to a shocking conclusion – I didn’t want it. This set me on a great path – if I have plenty of chocolate to hand, perhaps I won’t want it?

    It didn’t work. I still want chocolate. But, now that there is always enough chocolate in the house, I don’t crave it. When I want it, I just grab a bit and I’m done. There’s no primitive fear that it’ll be taken away, so I don’t over indulge. And they do say that a little of what you fancy does you good.

    And I’m sure Slimming World doesn’t really mind.

    Don’t fear the chocolate – embrace it!

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  2. Wer Wer Wer

    January 16, 2012 by Amy Hansford

    I recently posted on Facebook that this was the year of the anti-mope. No more moping and whining, instead it’s time to just get on and get over the problems, working around them so they’re no longer as issue.

    I’ve caught myself in a right old mope. So here’s my anti-moping* action plan.

    Issue: Weight Gain
    I’m not doing Slimming World. Alex is. I’m doing it by proxy, in that I’m eating everything he is but having something different if it’s easier, especially with getting to rehearsals/the show on time. According to our scales, I put on 3.3kg in the past week. That’s 7lbs. That’s half a stone. That’s ridiculous. I wasn’t looking to lose any weight, but I definitely didn’t expect to put any on.
    Action: SUPU
    That’s “Shut Up and Put Up” for now. There’s not much I can do for the next fortnight while the show is on. At least if I’m eating three meals a day, the work out of nightly dance routines should put the extra weight gain to bed. In the meantime, I can continue to walk with Little L each day.

    Issue: Knackered Knees
    Before Christmas, I was suffering with Bursitis around my hip joints. In the past week, my knees have started to crunch. It feels like the bones slice into each other within my knee joint, if that makes any sense. It mainly happens when my legs are straight, but also in the dances for the show.
    Action: Osteopath and change of gait
    Alan, my osteopath at Joint Solutions, is brilliant. In the past, he’s had me go from being doubled over in pain to being able to perform a whole show in a day. So, a trip to Bletchley is in order. In the meantime, I will do a slightly Steptoesque walk with my knees slightly bent.

    Issue: Tiredness
    I don’t know if it’s because I’m a new(ish)mum and therefore spend my day chasing after a wee babe, but this show is really taking it out of me. I dropped a rehearsal last week as I felt tired enough that I would likely crash on the way home (it’s a 35 min drive away). It’ll all ease off once the show is over, but for now, I am cream crackered.
    Action: More sleep
    Alex is already very tolerant of me getting home and falling into bed within ten minutes. Perhaps I need to nap when Little L naps too. Add to that my B12 jab next week (okay, a week late, but it’s on the way at least) and I should have a little more zip about me by the end of the month.

    What are your solvable gripes at the moment?

    *I ummed and erred over this spelling. On the basis that the action of using a mop is ‘mopping’, I felt happiest with the ‘moping’ spelling. Yes, these are the things that would otherwise keep me up at night.

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  3. Slimming World: I’ve lost count

    January 11, 2012 by Amy Hansford

    My memory is dreadful. I have no idea how long we’ve been doing this now other than it’s over a week. This I know because everyone had their weigh in on Monday and they were all very happy with how much weight they’d lost. Alex lost 5.5lb, which we were impressed by.

    Last night we had spinach and mushroom cannelloni which allegedly takes an hour to prepare and cook. I started at 5.15pm and we at at 7.15pm. It tasted brilliant, but was a bit too much for me to be playing around with at the end of the day. I think I’ll need to prep it all in the middle of the day next time, give me a bit more time to breathe (and feed/bathe daughter, tidy for visiting photographers).

    It was carnage in the kitchen by the time I’d got it all in the dishes. Slimmers World suggests that you pipe the spinach/mushroom mixture in or use a teaspoon. Sod that – get stuck in and use your fingers. It’s the only way to get it all done in less than two hours.

    The finished product was lush. The highest aspiration I have is that my food be like a Marks and Spencer ready meal, and this wasn’t far off. We also have plenty left for another day – the recipe is for four, but we easily got six portions out of this and I still had some broken Cannelloni and mixture leftover.

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  4. Slimming World: Day 2

    January 6, 2012 by Amy Hansford

    Having spoken to a few of the Griffin Players on how they’re coping with the Slimming World rules, they were split pretty much in half: those who realise it’s fairly similar to what they were eating before and are happy, and those who resent not being able to have a full fat coke. To all the latter; don’t forget you can go wild in the diet aisle!

    Day two wasn’t quite as successful as day one, but it did represent a return to the workplace for Alex so there were always going to be issues.

    Breakfast was porridge. Not my favourite, which is why it was a good job Alex was eating it and not me.

    Lunch was planned to be beans on toast. However, for health and safety reasons, toasters have been banned from Alex’s workplace. Beans on bread doesn’t have quite the same feel to it, but hey ho. It’s an easy option so he’ll be having that for work lunches from now on. This leaves me with a fridge chock full of salad to be used up. Somehow I feel Alex is getting the better end of the diet at the moment.

    I ran out of time to do dinne before leaving for rehearsals, so left Alex to fend for himself in the kitchen. We had everything in for the Chilli Beef Noodles but, as I understand it, he left it cooking a little too long. It probably tastes better when it’s not burned…

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  5. Slimming World: Day 1

    January 5, 2012 by Amy Hansford

    Alex, like many of the Griffin Players, has started Slimming World. The theory behind this diet is that most meats trimmed of all visible fat, veg and fruit is ‘free’, while other things have ‘Syn’ points. For example, two tablespoons of light mayonnaise is 1 Syn, a Jaffa Cake is 3 Syns, etc. Alex has up to 15 Syns a day. I make up a menu at the start of each week (mainly so I can make sure we have enough shopping in), only now it’s run by Slimmers World.

    You should know at this point that I dislike cooking. I don’t hate it, but there is a definite resentment at the amount of time it takes to grate an onion, chop veg, measure out spices etc. You should know also that whenever I’m preparing dinner I’m also feeding my nine month daughter whilst aiming to be out of the door as soon as Alex arrives home in order to make it rehearsals 20 minutes late. This means that these meals had better bloody be worth it, or I’m going back to sticking something in the oven for 40 minutes.

    I thought it might be valid to have a real world look at someone on Slimmers World, so here it is.

    Day one.

    Breakfast was brilliant. Giant fry up. Lovely and took me through to well past lunchtime hunger wise.

    For lunch we nipped over the marina to the Carvery. Nomilicious. Alex found he could eat pretty much everything on offer but needed to check Syns of a few things when we got back.

    For dinner, I made meatballs and spaghetti. We used wholemeal spaghetti – I bought pretty much wholemeal everything in the last shop as it’s meant to be better for you, Syns or no Syns. You know what? Wholemeal spaghetti tastes fine, don’t fret it. It was a bit of a pain prepping and cooking everything simultaneously, but it came out pretty good. I whacked a salad on the side so my portions didn’t seem too small. I’m impressed at how good it tastes. I made enough to put two portions aside to ‘ding’ another day, so not a bad start.

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