Wheat Free Weekend

That is the intention! Its not that easy though! Already I've had the dog telling me that its her divine right to share a digestive biscuit with my mid morning cup of tea - hate to tell you dog, but you could do with "losing it" too!

Breakfast could have been toast and marmalade but instead it was a very delicious pineapple, cucumber and apple smoothie so that's a great start. Thursday night supper, which for as long as I can remember has been "telephone Chinese", was homemade and very delicious chicken lettuce wraps followed by stir fried vegetables and egg fried brown rice. It really helps to have a husband who is an awesome cook and, since I bought him a beautiful leather belt for Christmas that didn't go round him, has also been on a bit of a health kick!

Not sure what we're going to do tonight. It's our wedding anniversary so there will be some celebrating going on. A very beautiful bottle of South African Shiraz has been waiting in our wine rack for a whole year now - an anniversary present from our dear friends in Cape Town with whom we celebrated last year in some style!

So it's not going to be a pristinely well behaved weekend but it is going to be a fun one and I'm hoping the exclusion of wheat makes it a productive one.

Ikg down from last week. It doesn't seem like a big number but its going in the right direction and that's all I ask!

Oh Chocolate

I'm hungry and I need chocolate. As everyone knows there are certain times in a woman's life, diet or no diet, where only chocolate will do. Don't get me wrong, chocolate will always do - but sometimes ONLY chocolate will do and this is one of them!

Trouble is I'm at least 5km away from the nearest chocolate - yes, I have searched every cupbpard and every filing cabinet in the office and there are no stashes hidden away. Trust me, if they were here I would have found them! And I'm not going to leave work to drive 5km to the nearest petrol station to buy some.... no really I'm not! But I admit I thought about it.

Actually the nearest petrol station is only about 5 minutes walk but in this heat it would be melted before I got back! Hang on, who am I kidding? I'd have eaten it before I got back!! Anyway, the road layout here has been planned by dyslexic trainees thowing spaghetti at a map, and in order to drive to the petrol station I have to drive 3k in the wrong direction before I can get to a u-turn to go 2k back! And then do the same thing in reverse to get back to work!

So I'm just going to have to deal with my obsession and try to feel smug that I'm resisting the urge when in reality I'm just too lazy to go out!

So just to add to my pain - here's 20 reasons why chocolate is better than sex:

You can GET chocolate.

Chocolate satisfies even when it has gone soft.

You can safely have chocolate while you are driving.

You can make chocolate last as long as you want it to.

You can have chocolate even in front of your mother.

If you bite the nuts too hard the chocolate won't mind.

Two people of the same sex can have chocolate without being called nasty names.

The word "commitment" doesn't scare off chocolate.

You can have chocolate on top of your workbench/desk during working hours without upsetting your work mates.

"If you love me you'll swallow that" has real meaning with chocolate.
You can ask a stranger for chocolate without getting your face slapped.

You don't get hairs in your mouth with chocolate.

With chocolate there's no need to fake it.

Chocolate doesn't make you pregnant.

You can have chocolate at any time of the month.

Good chocolate is easy to find.

You can have as many kinds of chocolate as you can handle.

You are never too young or too old for chocolate.

When you have chocolate it does not keep your neighbors awake.

With chocolate size doesn't matter; it's always good

Is it wheat?

Well that wasn't as bad as I feared! Nearly two kg put on in a weekend lost in just a day. OK, it was a day of raw cabbage and bown rice but that's not too bad (I've got a tasty recipe!) and the results are worth it.

I'm really, really starting to think wheat is a bigger issue than I wanted to believe! I love my bread (which is apparently a bad sign!) and, although I avoid it during the week, I allow it to sneak in at weekends and the 1-2kg gain seems to be the result. Yes, I can get rid of it relatively quickly but its still a day or so wasted. So next weekend is going to be a wheat free zone, just to see.

Its not too hard at this time of year to stay focused. Its hard to get really hungry in this heat and lots of people (for people read bad influences!) are off on holiday now the schools are out, so our weekends are pretty quiet.

So I'm off to investigate living without wheat. There's lots of great recipe books on the subject - Gluten Free Every Day Cookbook: More than 100 Easy and Delicious Recipes from the Gluten-Free Chef or The Wheat-Free Cook: Gluten-Free Recipes for Everyone for example have lots of great ideas and The Holford Low-GL Diet Made Easy is big on avoiding wheat too. I'm just going to have to find something other than a Spinney's Portuguese roll to spread my marmite on :-(

Oh and any wheat free recipes and ideas would be much appreciated!

Party Time

Ugh - two words that strike fear and panic into any dieter's soul! The problem with parties is that the food is almost always going to be either delicious or fattening, and probably both! And there's probably going to be excessive amounts of the dreaded grape, aka adult beverages, around and we all know that, in all but the most determined characters, alcohol and will-power are mutually exclusive!

So it was on Thursday night. A surprise birthday party for a friend, the end of a long hard week and just to add to the fun, the friend's wife is a seriously good cook!

So what do I do in these circumstances? Well, what do you think I did? I partied like a mad thing and got on the scales Friday morning to find an extra 1.5kg had mysteriously attached itself to my person!! How does that happen! OK, I wasn't exactly a paragon of dietary virtue but I can honestly say that I did not eat 1.5kg of food! Have you ever looked at that amount of food? Its a big heap! You'd have to try really hard to eat that in an evening!

So how come my body can create 1.5kg out of thin air? I must be the biological equivalent of a perpetual motion machine! I'd leave my body to science but I kind of need it right now!

Oh well, the weekend's nearly over - back to salads and raw vegetables tomorrow.

Prayers for Dr Simon

If you’ve ever been inspired by Dr Simon or Deepak Chopra please repost this link – lets get as much positive energy flowing to him as possible!

Much love goes to Dr David Simon of the Chopra Centre who this week was
diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Share your positive thoughts
and laughter by posting on this website which he will visit daily for
support: http://www.lovefordavid.com/

Stress - what's that?

Why is it that, whenever we feel stressed, the automatic reaction is to reach for the chocolate? I mean, what possible good can chocolate do? And for that matter, why can't we crave a nice crisp apple or a light tasty salad instead of a bar of Galaxy Hazelnut? Oh now look what I've done! I've named the monster, now I'm in big trouble!

Funnily enough, I treated myself to a packet of Minstrels the other day and to my amazement they really didn't do much for me! They used to be one of my favourite treats but this time they seemed a bit tasteless and not very interesting. Even the thrill of having something "forbidden" didn't interest me, since in my philosphy nothing really is forbidden! I shared them with everyone else in the studio and that did feel good, all the fun of chocolate and hardly any of the calories! I could be on to something here.

Now, I know there's supposed to be feel-good substances in chocolate and that's what we're really craving and I can kid myself that there's lots of protein in the hazelnuts but that's exactly what I'm doing - kidding myself. So my mission for this week is whenever I'm feeling stressed or overwhelmed and that urge for Galaxy Hazelnut surfaces, is to consciously replace that thought with something more nutritious and healthy and to consciously focus back on what I want - that fabulous fit body, rather than how hard I'm going to have to work to get it.

Maybe that's where we go wrong a lot of the time, and not just with diets - we take our eye off what we want and start to focus on what we have to do to get it. Which sounds sort of sensible but actually is anything but. Focusing on the work makes everything much more difficult, but focusing on the desired result is fun and empowering.

How to Survive a Weekend

So, I've had a very good week and great results - another kilo and a half gone - I've now officially lost 10kg since Christmas - yipppee, celebrations all round! No I do NOT need a cake to mark the occasion - and NO a carrot cake is not OK, no it does NOT count as a vegetable!! Nor do I want to go out for a curry to celebrate or even hit the Barasti!

You see this is the trouble with losing weight! Sooner or later your friends get bored with all the good behaviour and want to drag you out to play and play inevitably involves a glass or two of wine (OK maybe a bottle or two...) at which point all good intentions go out the window and before you know it you end the weekend 2kg higher than you started! Now I can live with 1kg. For me a lot of that is water weight because at the weekend I do eat some bread and that always causes me problems, but it will go the next day. So 1kg I can accept as a consequence of a bit of fun bad behaviour, but once it goes up to 2kg I'm in trouble. Its going to take me half of next week to get back to where I started, at which point frustration sets in and "what's the point" thoughts start to raise their ugly heads!

So weekends are a balancing act between having fun, preferably lots of fun, and keeping the positive momentum going. Some weekends I do ok, others are a disaster before they even start! Yes, some weekends I want to have my cake AND eat it - really, can someone tell me, what's the point of cake if you don't eat it?

A Sad Day and a Glad Day

And for the same reason!

A sad day because my favourite pair of super comfortable jeans are now so big on me that walking downstairs in them has become dangerous! And when even the dog laughs at you, you know its time to consign them to the ever growing heap of clothes that just don't fit any more! Its going to be tough - these are the jeans I reach for instinctively on a Friday morning, they go with everything and they are so comfortable its hard not to mourn their passing! But I need to be strong - I'm told keeping them is dangerous, it means deep down I expect to need them again!

So tomorrow morning I will march down to the bin, take a deep breath and throw them in - and then pour something really disgusting over them so I'm not tempted to whisk them back out again!! Or maybe I'll leave it till Saturday....

And its a glad day because that super trendy sparkly pair that I bought in the New Year sales (and risked buying a size smaller) have gone from being rather snug to perfectly comfortable - so these are my new favourite jeans. And if anyone says a woman over 40 shouldn't be wearing sparkley jeans they can just go and get stuffed!

I'm Starving!

Actually I'm not. But it was a complaint from a diet buddy the other day that got me thinking. I've been following a low GL (glycemic load) plan with a good deal of success for a couple of years now. Yes, I deviate, sometimes really badly! But I find it really easy to get back on-plan because basically I enjoy the food. Its easier and less restrictive than low GI and I'm pretty sure its healthier too. Certainly I feel great on it and after 30kg down I have to say it works! This is the book I use most of the time and what I love is its written by people who actually love to eat: The Holford Low-GL Diet Cookbook: Recipes for Weight Loss, Health and Energy So many diet books seem to be written by people who think food is the enemy and that's never going to work for me! I've cooked entire dinner parties for some quite serious foodies from this book and not one of them has had a clue they've been eating healthily!

Anyway, this friend started the same plan as me about two weeks ago and I couldn't believe how hungry she was! I sometimes find it hard to believe I'm on a diet with some of the recipes and often the quantities defeat me.

But it occurred to me that "normal" eating for a lot of people involves large amounts of bread, rice and pasta - bulky foods that fill you up physically but really don't deliver a whole lot nutritionally. So sticking to a low GL plan may be a challenge initially because you have to get used to the feeling of being nutritionally satisfied before you are physically full. Its a subtle difference but once you get used to that feeling, it makes sticking to the plan really easy.

Many people who overeat are in fact nutritionally starving! They might feel full up but their bodies are craving the nutrients they require and, until it gets them, its going to keep sending "I'm hungry" messages to the brain! No wonder most diets don't work!