Month: February 2022

Did Pilates in my jammies first thing, then had a 20 minute walk before I started work today. Useful chat with my Gloji mentor (who is now called Zara because Wilma is on holiday) about warming up before exercising, and cooling down afterwards. Doing those things could help prevent muscle aches afterwards, which is handy to know. I made a few notes but Zara is going to send me an email with notes in too. And I had a look and found some warm up videos online, a few of which required me to be more bendy than I am; I liked this one though, am going to download it. In case you were wondering, my leg still hurts – hopefully the Pilates helped some.

Here’s my food pictures for today. They omit the 2 squares of 100% chocolate I had between lunch and dinner. PJ asked, since I ate 2 squares, is it now only 90% chocolate?
It’s this stuff – very low on sugar but possibly induces a drug high.

I know I’ve been posting pictures of everything I eat, but please do not infer, from the inclusion of the picture below, that my breakfast this morning was a blood pressure monitor. I was clearing some drawers out and found the monitor, then it occurred to me… I’ve been eating more healthily for a few weeks so let’s see if my BP has changed any, right? I have a definite memory of my readings being around 130 over something in the past – or in that region. Not any more, though.

I think seeing this alone would be enough to keep me motivated. Salty and processed foods raise blood pressure, there hasn’t been as much of those in the past 3 weeks. I might have a moment of wistfulness as I walk past the favourite crisps in the shop, but this is worth it. Now I’m almost looking forward to the blood test for cholesterol that the GP wants me to take in a few months.

Been a busy day moving around doing stuff indoors, then I went for a long walk – leg still painful but gradually improving.

I’ve got a bit more housework stuff to do this evening. Short story – one of our chests of drawers broke some time ago (it was ancient, and the drawers gave up on life and went flump! flump! bang! on top of each other, pinging screws all over the carpet); we took a while to get a new one, which is now in place, and I now have to move things that are not in drawers but which should be in drawers into some drawers. Then I have to call the council at some point very soon so they can remove the old chest of drawers, which is sat, sulking with its back to us, near the back door.
My life is constant glamour, I know, but I do have normal blood pressure.😇

Today I decided to experiment with whether I can be trusted to eat bread again, and I ended up deciding (after some bread) that I don’t really want to eat bread. It was a wholemeal roll with peanut butter and rocket in it, alongside a salad with chickpeas, and an apple. Firstly, I kept forgetting to eat the bread – it was like my brain was already telling me that the rest of the food was the meal. Then, when I did eat the bread, it was just this weird, dry, mass of not very tasty thing… and, after a while, I got a painful indigestion feeling, as though the bread got stuck on the way down (I promise I chewed it).

Suggestions from the internet include: taking smaller bites, chewing it more, taking sips of water, also… just not eating bread. I sent a cup of tea down after it and will be going with that last one.

I had run out of almonds for my quiche base and went to the shop (slowly, my leg still hurts) to get some. PJ had requested Funyuns (onion rings crisps, but American) and, while picking those up, I came face-to-face with one of my favourite brands of crisps. They’re not sold everywhere, even the shop over the road (which always has Funyuns) only occasionally stocks these crisps that I like. I know a little of what you fancy is meant to do you good, right? But no. I walked past them. Don’t applaud yet though, it’s only Day 20.

I think I find certain types of food a bit addictive. Paradoxically, it’s things that, if I focus on what it feels like to be eating them, I don’t have that great a response to them. With crisps there’s the salt hit that does it for me – I think it does for a lot of people with crisps; that combined with a possible sugar hit given it’s literally potatoes, and a definite fat hit since it’s usually fried potatoes! Although I thought the experiment worth running today to see if I could eat bread, I don’t think there’s any particular value to including crisps in my diet at all, so I’ve drawn a red line through them for now. Hilariously, I don’t count the baked lentil chips because, while they’re OK, I don’t crave them. A bag of lentil chips lasts at least a week in the cupboard, with some of them occasionally being added to a meal or in a bowl as a snack. A bag of crisps that I like though, a pack of 6 used to last me less than 2 days – I was so into them that if you saw me eating them, you might have been be tempted to suggest the crisps and I go get a room.

Couple of other challenges:

How fast I eat – As a kid, I ate slower than everyone else, but as an adult I learned to speed up so that I wouldn’t be the last one at the table. Who cares what is convenient for other people though!? I need to slow back down to the correct speed for me, which is quite a bit slower. And if there isn’t time in the work day, I need to make the time.
Healing this painful calf so I can exercise / how to still get some movement in while it’s healing – I had to chase the supermarket delivery driver around the block today, as they were very lost and I did not trust them to follow directions they’d already failed on. It wasn’t fun and I could feel my calf muscle tensing up again. I figure keep walking, gentle stretches, stick it on a heat pad, do some exercise that doesn’t strain it – and avoid step aerobics at least until taking the steps up to my front door doesn’t hurt. Also ask Wilma’s temporary replacement (she’s on holiday) on Monday what to do about it. I will open with “Do not suggest swimming!” and see where we go from there.

So it turns out that if you’re an older person like me, and you launch into doing step aerobics without stretching properly first, you might get a muscle cramp in your leg the next day, while walking through the market, thus it being somewhat inadvisable to yell. I counted the painful walk home as my exercise for today and will get back on the proper exercise tomorrow (plus stretching).

Busy work day. Ate some nice food though… and was really grateful not to have to weigh it all, or look up calories. Meals below might’ve been smaller if I’d had time for breakfast.

Wilma’s “try putting food on smaller plates” idea may have some merit – depending on what the food is. I occasionally like to have pretty much a forest of salad, and that wouldn’t be likely to fit on something that’s barely larger than a saucer. But… fresh from eating a deep ramen bowl full of wild rice (hiding under the chicken and veg you can see in one of the photos below), I can definitely agree that too much is too much. Wild rice isn’t even rice – according to the internet, it’s a grass. I’m overly full because I ate too much grass (she said, sheepishly!).

The Gloji video I’m watching at the moment is talking about calories and volume, which underpins what I found out above re eating dinner out of a large bowl. I was asked to think of what foods I eat that are higher in calories and it might be the nuts and seeds but especially the nuts. I might do a one-day calorie counting exercise where I weigh and measure everything then see how many calories it adds up to. Just the one day though. I’ve counted calories before and it’s a pain in the rear. But it would give me an idea.

Alternatively, hmmm… if it’s not too bad then get doing that step aerobic video and I can worry less about it. 😈 

I’m currently congratulating myself a fairly ridiculous amount for having invented a pastry that tasted amazing. A Facebook friend had made quiche and I suddenly, desperately, wanted quiche – a bit of a challenge to start with when I can only use non-dairy equivalents, and an extra challenge because I’m not keen on the taste or texture of regular pastry. I don’t know how healthy what I made was but, along with the quiche, it tasted amazing.
Over half the flour was oat flour (put a load of oats in a blender), then less than a quarter of it was ground almonds (blender again), and another less than a quarter was flax seed (blender yet again, and I bought these ones rather than spending hours fishing them out of a seed mix). I shook on some tarragon then used Vitalite for the fat, and some water. It was too crumbly to roll all that well but, once cooked, held together just fine.
The quiche was mushroom and broccoli. It had a sprinkle each of 2 different vegan cheeses and it might be the nicest thing I’ve eaten this month.

Before this blog turns into a food blog, I’ll also mention that my exercise DVD arrived this afternoon and I therefore now have no excuse whatsoever not to do step aerobics!

Today was first day back at work after a week of annual leave and an interesting lesson – maybe don’t fill up the first day back from work with a gazillion appointments, such that there isn’t time to move, get a cup of tea, or go to the bathroom. Loving being back at work but I could’ve planned better. Tomorrow is calmer though…

Tomorrow will see the arrival, through the post, of the step aerobics DVD I ordered 😀
I love me a bit of step aerobics. Wilma was asking where I’m going to fit it in and can I set myself a goal with it. I said I’ll experiment with where I can fit it in and that my goal is to do it at least once, at all, this week. Promise low, deliver high, yep?

I forgot to take a photo of my evening meal… and now I’ve eaten it!
For anyone following the photos of what I’ve eaten, this evening’s meal was almost exactly the same as I had on Day 7. You are welcome to head back to that post and look at the photo… please use your imagination to add broccoli.

Good evening! Not been much with the blogging today as it’s the last day before I start back at work but I’ve had a lovely, long walk, and eaten nice things. PJ made me breakfast – I don’t usually have a cooked breakfast but, when he makes one he always asks would I like to be included, then heroically foregoes proper dairy in the scrambled eggs so they’ll be safe for me too.

I’ve got another Wilma catch up tomorrow at 3. She sent me some useful feedback to my food diary and I read it but I’ll give it another read before I speak to her.

Sound a fanfare… the food delivery arrived! All sorts of making, baking, and creating can now happen, and then all sorts of rescuing the kitchen from looking like a bomb hit it afterwards. It’s the weekend, so it’s a good time for it. Hopefully I can get enough made, today and tomorrow, that I’ll have stuff ready to eat on my first day back at work. I seem to have crammed a ton of work appointments into Monday; the rest of the week it calms down a bit.

I had a walk for an hour this afternoon. Several of the large trees fell yesterday, it’s sad. My usual stroll around the outside edge of the park turned into circumnavigating past masses of branches and trunk.

My back aches somewhat from standing in the kitchen for ages making olive cake then mushroom and chickpea burgers. Burgers were gorgeous though, and PJ, my human test subject liked them too. I mostly followed the recipe except I didn’t have any parsley so I used rocket, and I used shiitake mushrooms instead of regular ones as they needed using up.

So here’s why the burgers took ages to make – the recipe called for flax seeds and my only flax seeds were part of a mix alongside pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and hemp. I spent the best part of an hour separating everything else out: pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds are large so can be removed easily, then hemp seeds are round so they roll if subjected to being on a slope, but flax seeds are flat so they don’t. That’s commitment right there – or it’s ridiculous, given the food shop arrived today and there were many other things I could’ve turned into dinner.
Never again – I’m going to order some just flax seeds from the internet right now.

Late night edit: I just looked back at the recipe and realised I was supposed to put bread crumbs in the mushroom burger recipe. Oops.