Only buying healthy things in the supermarket

So far, things are looking good!

My first 'official;' day of garden leave and I think I've been more mentally busy than I have been for the last few weeks whilst at work. After getting up, I stuck a load of washing on and planned out what I would be eating for the next few days - I really don't want to give up on my healthy eating so I was thinking that if I meal planned, I would know what to get in the supermarket and it would be easier to stay on track if I knew what I'd be eating for the next few days.

Well, my shopping trip was incredibly successful. I managed to get a whole lot of fruit and vegetables and precisely 0 snacks at all. In fact, the only 'additional' thing that I bought was for lunch today and I was incredibly proud of the fact that I'd found it! What's that? Butter nut squash dip.. Hurrah! I loved the Butter nut squash and sweet potato dip that Marks and Spencers used to do, however they stupidly decided to discontinue it a few weeks ago, much to the chagrin of my lovely vegan friend and myself. Having had it for lunch with a raw pepper and pita bread, I have to say it's rather nice and with less than 6g of fat per 100g of the stuff, I'm certainly going to be eating a lot of it in the future - I just hope Sainsburys don't decide to discontinue it was well!

As I really don't want to sit on my arse for the next 4 weeks watching random TV. I decided to head off to another National Trust property and go to Hinton Ampner. I've been before so I knew it wasn't a massive property, but I could easily spend an hour or so walking around and admiring the antiques in the house. As it wasn't the best weather in the world today I also thought it wouldn't matter too much if I had to cut my visit short as it was within an hours drive of my house.

I think I made the right choice as it turns out that only the bottom floor of the house was open as there is construction work being done on the roof. Due to all the scaffolding, the house doesn't look as grand as it did before, however I guess it's a necessary evil and once done, the roof will be a lot better :-) The gardens were still beautifully done and I actually decided to wander down a footpath for 1/2 a mile or so in the fields, opposite to the property.All in all, I'm glad I went out and about, rather than staying in.

As news of my leaving the company spread round my ex-colleagues (my Boss sent an email just after lunch, telling everyone I had left), I was inundated with emails and Facebook friend requests which was really, really touching. I spent a good hour replying to people and was trying to balance telling them 'the truth', without coming across as bitter. Once again, it was really, really nice to read some of the complimentary things that all of my ex-colleagues were writing and stops me asking myself 'Was it me? Was I crap at my job?' evidently a lot of people don't seem to think so :-)

Tonight my lovely non-work friend and I are going to watch 4 episodes of  'Judge Geordie' and I've cooked her a Whole roasted cauliflower which turned out really, really well - whether you're a meat eater or not, I'd certainly recommend it. Yum! One of my sisters turned up tonight and we spent a lovely hour at the pub with my boyfriend and now we're off to bed so we can spend a lovely day together tomorrow :-)

So yes... Been 100% committed to my healthy eating and feeling really awesome! :-)

Meal planning to refocus my efforts

First day of garden leave - I'm looking to make it count

It's amazing how different you feel when you eat less healthy foods. It's also amazing how your body reacts. I'm going to go food shopping in a bit, so am trying to work out what I'll be eating this week so I don't buy any rubbish, but eat much more healthily. This is what I've come up with so far. I'm not sure what I'll get for lunch today, however so far I've just had another pot of porridge as despite being bored of it... I've still got a few pots left, so it doesn't make sense not to use them up :-)

Monday 20th May 

B - Porridge 

L - ???

D - Vegan roasted whole cauliflower (my Vegan friend is coming round tonight!)

Tuesday 21st May

B- Porridge with rasberries

L - Pita bread, houmous, tomatoes and pepper

D - Turkey with veg

Wednesday 22nd May

B - Porridge with rasberries

L - Pita bread, houmous, tomatoes and pepper

D - BBQ Chicken and Vegetable skewers

Thursday 23rd May

b - Porridge

L - Lunch with my Mum - Find somewhere healthy

D - Wagamamas chicken ramen (Dinner with Drama Friend)

Friday 24th May

B - Scrambled eggs on toast

L - baked sweet potato with beans

D - Chicken with Veg (Dinner with Gastric Band friend so need something she can have a small portion of)

I've got a shopping list and will not buy any snacks, no matter how 'healthy' they are - I'm thinking I'm going to try and do a lot of walking this week as well and potentially get back to the gym. However we'll see on that one... 

Right! To the Supermarket...  :-)

How do you 'get back on the Wagon?'

Oh my God, I've had such an amazing weekend.

It was awesome. truly awesome. I surprised my Boyfriend with a night in Devon - Lynton, to be exact. We drove down there on Saturday lunch time and spent all of Saturday afternoon / evening and Sunday doing things around Exmoor and it was brilliant. Not to beat around the bush - I ate shit. I don't mean I stuffed my face from morning to night, but I ate some unhealthy things and it's only now I'm back at home, that I'm trying to recalibrate my focus for next week. 

On the way down to Devon we called in on the 'Quince Honey Farm', or as I've been saying 'The Bee Farm'. You learnt all about how the Honey Bees made honey, how it was collected and how it was processed as well as what you could make from the honey / wax. There were an awful lot of hives in different places and whilst it was slightly off putting by hearing the very loud buzzing behind the glass, it was also fascinating to see inside all the hives. I'm not overly keen on honey to be honest, but sampling some of it on a tasting stick - It was actually really nice :-)

Our hotel was amazing. The 'Seawood hotel' and our room looked out onto the Ocean. It was really romantic and so relaxing - especially as I've now left my job so I wasn't thinking about what I needed to do when I got back to the office. As soon as we got to our hotel, we checked in and started exploring straight away. We went on the Lynton and Lynmouth railway (this train that takes you up and down the cliff) and wandered around Lynmouth which was just so idyllic. I even found another painting of bluebells by a local artist which is beautiful and will look amazing in my house. We walked by the river and enjoyed the beautiful Saturday Sunshine. 

I actually missed Blogging yesterday, however one of the reasons the hotel was so peaceful is because it had NO phone signal whatsoever - this meant no texts, no phone calls and more importantly... no internet access. It did claim to have WIFI, however this wasn't accessible in our room so in the end, I decided to just wait until I got back home to update my blog and catch up on everything that's been happening on Social media (which is actually nothing, so I really do think I need to stop using it so much... )

We decided on a meal in 'The Vanilla pod', a restaurant in Lynton at the top of the cliff - It was amazing and I had a started of spiced chickpeas and a main course of fish - Pretty awesome and quite healthy. Unfortunately, I washed it down with 2 large glasses of red wine and then decided I wanted chocolate (there's a theme emerging every time I drink!) so went to the local Llondis and bought a medium sized bar of chocolate.

I won't say what else happened on Saturday night, suffice to say - For the first time in ages, I actually didn't feel stressed and it's amazing how much libido you have when you're not worrying about stuff :-)  My boyfriend and I sat on some chairs by the window and just talked... it was so nice to have some proper 'us' time and after that we.... *ahem* .... Yes.. I think we both had a smile as we went to sleep on Saturday!

Despite the bed being really comfy and it being incredibly quiet I didn't sleep overly well as I'm just not used to sharing a bed with someone - nevertheless, it was still really nice and comfy and breakfast in the hotel was gorgeous - It should have been anyway, as it was Eggs Benedict. I've not Googled how many fat and calories, I know it will be a lot, so.. yeah... I know. After breakfast, it started raining which was a bit of a pain - however we checked out and started our massive 'National Trust' tour on the Sunday which consisted of Watersmeet, Arlington Court and Dunster Castle.

Thankfully the weather got better towards lunch time and the afternoon so we were able to get on and do things pretty easily. Lunch consisted of a cheese Ploughmans that we bought from Arlington Court - Despite having a big chunk of bread on each of our plates, my boyfriend was trying to stick to his Atkins-esque diet and low carbing it, so he gave me the bread to feed to the finches that were really tame - I think it's the longest we've actually sat down anywhere as we were both trying to get the birds to eat of our hands. We didn't manage it, but they did get very close! 

Dunster Castle was as lovely as Arlington Court and we did a lot of walking before admiring the actual Castle. Before we got to the Castle, we stopped off on the way and had an icecream (Yes, I'm deliberately mentioning all of the things I've eaten today as I said... it's not been great) however, it was a lovely icecream and I really enjoyed it. I really did - having beautiful weather, looking out onto the sea and eating an icrecream is a memory I hope I never forget as it was just lovely. 

The amount of beautiful antiques inside both Arlington Court and Dunster Castle certainly ignated my passion to buy more antiques for my house - however as I've got another week before I get paid, I am going to try my best to tame my desires for the next 9 days :-)

You'd have thought that after 3 National Trust properties, that would have been enough - but no, on the way back home we saw a brown sign for 'Cleeve Abbey' - An English Heritage property and decided to pay a quick visit in there as well - I love gothic things, gothic architecture is just amazing in my books and I love ruined Abbeys. As we're both National Trust and English Heritage members, it doesn't really cost us anything to do all of them in a day and as we're not usually around the area, we thought 'why not?'

As it was 4:30, there was noone else around and it was really nice to wander around, learn about how the Abbey had been turned into a working farmhouse building and admire the lovely arches. Down the same road was a cider farm and we decided to pay a quick visit in there and buy some cider - After all, why wouldn't you do that when in Somerset? :-) As well as buying a couple of litres of cider, I also bought a small bag of chocolate raisins...

2.5 hours later and we were back home - or should I say, we were in the Sushi restaurant in Reading that we have frequented on more than one occasion. I didn't go 'crazy', but I did have quite a few pieces of sushi.... Now I'm back home, absolutely knackered and my feet / back are hurting quite a lot. We did over 7,000 steps yesterday and over 11,000 steps today!

I ate crap - I don't regret it, I'm not going to lie about it... and I'm not going to apologise. It was such a lovely couple of days and I feel that my relationship with my Boyfriend is really strong at the moment. We've been together a number of years, but things seem to have just 'clicked' and I've never before looked forward to the idea of buying a house, having children, being with someone for the rest of my life... But I really am and I still enjoy and look forward to spending time with him.

However, this isn't a daily thing and I don't want to 'give up'. I don't want to weigh myself at the moment as I have a very strong feeling, I'll see an increased number on the scales and I think that will make me feel quite upset - almost embarrassed? as I've done so well to date. So for the next week, I'm going to do a lot of clean eating. I'm not going to starve myself in pennance for the last couple of days, but I am going to meal plan tomorrow morning and update my blog with the weeks food choices... 

So yes... Back on the Wagon.. Size 14 jeans for Christmas... Let's go :-)

Start of a new adventure

Goodbye work

Breakfast: Half a punnet of strawberries and a handful of grapes

Lunch: Raw pepper, tomatoes, cucumber and 1/2 pot of houmous

Dinner: Venison burgers, parmentier potatoes with red cabbage

Snacks: No snacks today

That's it. I've left my company. I've gone. 

Despite not telling many people or making an announcement, the people who did know, have been so amazing - I got cards, presents... it means so much to me as they're people I genuinely like and respect and going in this morning, my last day in the office after 5+ years was harder than I thought it would be. My Boss had sent me an invite for a 'Final Handover' at lunch time, so I used the morning to delete anything I don't want 'the woman' to read in my emails (as I think she'll be given access to my emails next week) and sent my last ever email to my lovely work friend, saying that she's amazing, that I knew we could be friends even though I managed her and if she ever needs anything - to let me know. It's not the end of our friendship - I'm seeing her on Monday night to watch 'Judge Geordie', but she won't be 'lovely work friend' any more.

Breakfast was just some strawberries and grapes - not the most filling of things and not something I'd eat on a routine basis, however after pizza last night I just felt like I wanted something quite light. After getting to work, I went to Starbucks with another friend - Before we moved offices, we had a Starbucks really close to us and we always used to go on a Friday, which became 'Starbucks Friday'. As it was my last day today, we did a final 'Starbucks Friday', something we'd not done in over a year since we moved office locations. He's another lovely, lovely work colleague and I hope I can stay in touch with him as well - he's currently trying to buy a house with his Wife and has been telling me all the frustrations they've been having. I've been taking notes, as it's something I want to do with my boyfriend in the next year :-)

My handover meeting happened.... and that was that, I locked my laptop / phone / encrypted USB stick in my locker and put the locker key on my desk and just walked out.... I did feel really sad, but it's the right decision. I then went to Marks and Spencers as I was starving and due to feeling a bit 'weird', went for 'the usual', so much more clean eating... raw pepper, tomatoes.. etc. I also decided to pick up food for tonight, as my plan is to spend the rest of the day inside, getting my head together and then focussing on an amazing weekend ahead - A really short, but hopefully romantic break with my Boyfriend - Who still doesn't know where we're going :-)

I'll freeze the other burgers but will probably throw the rest of the potatoes away and eat all the cabbage - I'm certainly going to try and cook things from scratch as much as possible, however I'm not going to worry about this tonight... I'm just going to chill :-)

At the moment, I'm watching 'My big fat Gypsy holiday', before watching the latest episode of 'Tattoo Fixers' so as you can tell, it's an exciting afternoon planned! I'll be going to bed relatively early as I've got a hair appointment tomorrow at the hair dressers and then... we'll be setting off to a really nice place about 3.5 hours away. Despite a 'mini holiday', I'm going to try my best to make healthy choices but not get obsessed about things.....

Junk food + friends = failure?

There was pizza

I'm just back from my friends house and wanted to write down how I felt. It's been over 3 months since I really had any kind of real 'Junk food' and I can't recall the last time I had any kind of takeaway. I think I underestimated how I would feel, being in a garden with loads of other people and trying to eat healthy when the only option is Pizza / Cheesey garlic bread / chicken strippers...

OK, so let's start from the beginning - My friend invited me to her 'Guitar Hero gathering', where she had invited a number of work friends and a couple of other friends from other places - I was one of 2 people who she invited from 'other places' as I don't work in the same company as her. I was planning on bringing some healthy options in my bag and indeed, did manage to remember to put a Bakewell tart nakd bar in my handbag.

I arrived at 5:30pm and chatted to a couple of her work colleagues, whilst another 5-6 people arrived. We all sat in the garden and chatted, everyone was really nice and the weather was lovely. It gets to 6:30pm and my friend says' right, let's order Pizza'. I feel myself start to panic - What do I do? say no thanks? Produce my nakd bar from my Handbag and eat that instead? eat a small amount of pizza? I hate unknowns, it makes me feel really uneasy and I just don't want to fail at healthy eating, I genuinely want a lifestyle change.

We go round in a circle and say what we'd like to order - I was desperately searching for the healthiest option- I look at the pizza bases and decide to go for a thin crust pizza, rather than a normal base or stuffed crust. I also opt for the 33% less fat cheese and decide to go for a vegetarian pizza, so it's got vegetables, rather than meat on the top. I ask my friend for a small one, thinking I could have some of it, but other people could also have some...

Before the pizza comes, I wonder to myself if I should eat my nakd bar, thus being less hungry later on and eating less pizza, however I actually felt really uncomfortable about eating in front of others when they weren't eating anything. I also felt a bit 'weird' at the thought of eating something different and drawing attention to myself when the pizza came. One thing I genuinely believe - I don't want people to cater to me or my choices. The thought of bringing it up with my friend 'Er, I need something healthy' didn't even come into it - She actually apologised at not having any diet drinks when I asked for water (I was driving, so wouldn't be drinking alcohol anyway) and also said 'I'm sorry, I know pizza isn't very healthy, I hope that's OK?'

That's any awesome friend already in my book - It's me who's choosing to try and lead a more healthy lifestyle and I will never, ever compromise on my social life, so it's up to me to try and make the best choices. 

All of the food came.. and this is what I ended up eating.

Is it bad? Is it too much? I don't know.. I didn't feel completely bloated, but I certainly wasn't hungry afterwards. To be honest, it wasn't overly nice and certainly not as nice as the normal 'Texas BBQ' but then I guess it lacked the normal thick base and lashings of BBQ sauce that I usually eat - not to mention all the meat. Whilst I didn't feel guilty when eating it, I certainly didn't think 'God, this is amazing, I want more'. Despite there being 4 garlic bread pizzas to eat, I stayed away from them completely and now that I'm back home, this is how I feel:

1. I feel really thirsty, I've already drunk a pint of water and I still feel like I want more.

2. Sorry if TMI, however this is the first time in over 2 months where I seem to be farting a lot :-S

3. I feel a compulsion to eat more crap - This might be totally psychosomatic as it's a trigger for me, however if there was a bag / bar of chocolate in front of me, it would be gone in minutes.

4. I feel frustrated - I was eating really clean and healthy today up until tonight. Now there's pretty minging pizza in my body, making me fart and feel bloated. 

Now that I'm back home, I've been looking at the 'healthy' options at Dominos. It turns out that I was right about choosing a cripsy thin base as apparently:

A crispy thin base has 80 calories and 3.5g fat  Vs A traditional base has 160 calories and 6g of fat

Also

A crunchy thin crust Domino’s pizza contains less than half the carbohydrates of Domino’s classic hand-tossed pizza

I also managed to find the Dominos nutritional information online. Now, in case you haven't realised yet. I am lazy... I really am, I'm not going to spend hours of my time, working out the best combination, however I did look up the think and crispy based vegetarian pizza and find out the nutritional info per slice.

This is what it said...

Vegetarian Supreme - Thin & Crispy Crust - Medium .. 99.5 calories per slice.. 2.8g fat. As I ate 3 slices plus a few other bits on my plate, I'd assume we're talking less than 600 calories and less than 2g of fat.

Am I happy with that? Honestly? No, not really as it tasted pretty crappy and I just don't want to put that kind of stuff in my system at the moment. I think I'd much rather wait for a while and then actually order a small Texas BBQ pizza and really enjoy it. Same as with my chocolate - Why have manky car melted chocolates, when you could buy a small bag of maltesers and really enjoy them?

I'm glad I saw my friend, I'm also glad I didn't make a fuss about eating pizza.

I'm glad I know a little bit more in regards to the healthiest choice to make if I'm faced with a similar situation, however as I'm going away for the weekend, I'm concerned that I've got out of my 'routine' and that it's going to be hard to eat healthy for the next few days. Tomorrow is my last day at work, so for the time being I'm going to focus on getting it over and done with and then meal planning for next week.

Tomorrow is another day and it will take a long time to lose my excess weight - but I'm still committed to that journey :-)

There's a lot of love in the air

I'm loving a lot of things in life at the moment.

Breakfast: Fruit salad
Lunch: Raw pepper, tomatoes and cucumber with Houmous
Dinner: ??????
Snack: 2 slices of malt loaf

I loved the small packet of Maltesers I had yesterday - I genuinely savoured them and oddly, I felt really full after eating them which is certainly different to how I used to be. I could easily eat a 'Family sized' bag which was about 4-5 times the size of a normal portion and eat more afterwards, in fact I thought nothing of eating an entire dinner and then 'snacking' on a large Family sized bag an hour or so afterwards. I enjoyed them, I really did. It won't be a daily thing, not even a weekly thing, but if I want another bag next week... then I need to stop feeling so guilty about it.

So yes, I loved the Maltesers yesterday, I also loved my dinner. I haven't had Turkey in any shape or form since Christmas day, however I saw the 'Paprika turkey breast steaks' and thought they sounded OK, so bought a packet. I cooked both last night and gave one to my Boyfriend when he came round as he's on his Atkins-esque diet so can eat meat. I had my steak with baby roast potatoes and a lot of steamed veg. I thought it would taste OK, it tasted better than OK, it tasted absolutely gorgeous. I'm not keen on hot / spicy things, but it wasn't spicy at all, it was very nice and incredibly filling. As Turkey is even more healthy than chicken, I'd certainly recommend trying turkey, especially if it's marinated in something interesting.

I'll definitely be buying more turkey in the near future - I'm not sure it would go in a salad, but there's only one way to find out! So yes... I've currently got a lot of love for turkey as well as Maltesers.

Breakfast this morning was por... aha! No, it wasn't :-) It wasn't my obligatory porridge at all, it was an amazing fruit salad that I made myself after nipping to Sainsburys with my Boyfriend last night. He wanted to get a bulb from Halfords and as we were out and about, I suggested we nip into the supermarket quickly. As I'm working from home today, I decided I wanted something different to porridge, so thought I'd make a fantastic looking fruit salad. It tasted amazing, however I think if I were to eat it every day, I'd be overdosing slightly on fruit sugar and I'm not sure it would fill me up as much as porridge would - Maybe greek yogurt and less fruit would be better? Either way, I still really loved it.

So yes, love for fruit salad as well :-)

I'm loving the fact I only have ONE MORE DAY at work after today and to celebrate I have bought some 'classy' Prosecco, which I plan to drink when I get back from work on Friday. Not the entire bottle mind you, but sitting on my sofa, with a glass of Prosecco and thinking 'That's it... no more, I'm done' after a number of crappy months at work is something I'm really looking forward to doing. So there's certainly love for my life - and I'm really loving the fact I'll be having 4 weeks garden leave starting on Monday!

After eating my breakfast, I decided I'd be productive by straightening my hair and hoovering the house - it's only a small 2 bedroomed house, so hardly a mansion, but I find it hard to relax unless it's tidy and for the last couple of days, I've noticed 'bits' on the floor which annoys me. 

Despite 'working from home' today, there wasn't any work to do at all, apart from reply to a couple of emails, therefore I spent most of it watching Horror Movies and political dramas (SAW, Sinister, BBC Adaptation of 'The House of cards'), waiting to head off to my friends house as she's having a 'Rock Star' party with a few of her work friends and invited me over as well. I'm not overly bothered about the Rock Star part (PC game, I believe.. like Guitar Hero, never played it as prefer things on the Play station!) but it will be nice catching up with her... She's the friend who is divorcing her nasty Husband and is stupidly shagging a married man at the moment.

Lunch was my usual, with raw pepper, tomatoes and cucumber. However unfortunately Sainsburys seems to be out of 'Moroccan topped houmous' which is frustrating, so I decided to opt for the caramelised onion one instead - more fat, sadly, however I actually enjoy this one as opposed to the 'roasted red pepper one', which I find a bit, 'meh'...  I've actually really enjoyed eating less processed food today, so I'm thinking of continuing this next week. 

I'm off to my friends shortly and have absolutely no idea what she's making for dinner tonight - It may be 'finger food', I'm hoping it's not pizza or takeaway. I don't want to be antisocial, however I'm going to bring a couple of slices of malt loaf and a Bakewell tart nakd bar in case it's all total junk, in which case, I could have a small amount, but eat some more healthy options that I'll keep in my handbag... 

I guess I'll find out soon!

Why would you eat revolting food?

If you're going to eat chocolate, at least eat nice chocolate, right?

Breakfast: Oats so simple Golden Syrup porridge
Lunch: vegetable tempura / Chilli beef with sticky rice
Dinner: Baked paprika turkey breast, roast new potatoes with steamed veg
Snack: Packet of maltesers

Today has been an interesting day – Rather than ‘Cloudy with the chance of meatballs’ (I’ve never seen the film, I just find the title really random) it’s been more, ‘A voyage of self discovery’, although I appreciate that makes me sound like my Drama Friend, so won’t go on and on about it!

After I posted last night, I decided I’d continue to be productive and decided to clean out a lot of rubbish in my car. It’s certainly not dirty, however as I’m the only one who drives it and usually the only person in my car, I’ve got my gym kit in the back seat, a bag with some empty tubs in it, a couple of bottles of water thrown onto the back seat… etc etc. One of the paper bags I grabbed had a couple of unused Birthday cards in it.. I’d bought them for friends, forgotten I’d bought them, bought more cards and used them… As well as the two birthday cards, there was also a bag of ‘Mozart chocolates’ that one of my work friends had brought back from Germany for me – about 4 months ago.

Now, I’ve got very little will power when things are literally in front of me – which is why I’ve not been buying chocolate, crisps or icecream as not having them in the house removes that temptation for me. To be faced with marzipan chocolates is sheer torture as 1. I like marzipan and 2. I like chocolate. When I discovered them, I put them back in the bag and took them into my house to throw them in the bin.. except, I didn’t throw them in the bin as all I wanted was – Marzipan chocolate. It was almost as if I’d gone from not being hungry to being starving and the only thing that could possibly sate my hunger were these chocolates that I’d just discovered in my car…

I sat on the sofa, and ate one – It was quite unpleasant actually. Being in a car for the last 4 months and some of those days being over 30 degrees had meant that the chocolate had blanched. They were also really crumbly and tasted incredibly artificial… I ate another, and another, having to eat them over the actual bag as the chocolate was so damaged, it wasn’t sticking to the marzipan. After the 6th one, I finally came to my senses. Why on earth am I eating something that I’m not enjoying? They’re revolting… they’re actually not nice and considering I’ve not had chocolate for WEEKS, why am I bothering to eat really disgusting chocolate? If I eat chocolate, at least make it nice chocolate for crying out loud…. And that was it, I threw them in the bin.

I then took them out the bin so I could take a photo of them :-) And then threw them back in the bin, which is where they have stayed….

I don’t feel guilty and actually, I’m fine today – I’m not feeling as if I need to punish myself, nor eat a lot of unhealthy food – One thing I was wary of is that my lovely work colleague and I were having lunch today and had decided to go to our favourite Thai restaurant as it’s the last day we will ever work together at the company (I’m working from home tomorrow and she’s on holiday on Friday) I was actually feeling quite anxious about the choices I would make on the menu – What were the healthiest choices? Would I go crazy and pig out as I ate the minging chocolates last night? How can I ensure I stay focused on my healthy eating yet go to a Thai restaurant for lunch?

Well, I think I did OK - not amazing, but not totally badly - My lovely friend and I had 2 courses. For starters, I had vegetable tempura. I was weighing up tempura over chicken satay with peanut sauce, which I know isn't the most healthy thing in the world, but tempura batter is fried? But what if I don't eat the satay sauce? But then the chicken would be dry, surely?

I had no idea, I made an educated guess as to what would be the healthiest and now I'm back at my laptop, I can Google it to see if I was right.

Estimated calories and fat
Vegetable tempura - 320 calories / 18g of fat
Vegetable spring rolls (3) - 167 calories / 6g of fat
Chicken satay (3) - 250 calories / 5g of fat
Prawn tempura - 116 calories / 1g of fat

Different websites say different things, so I'm certainly not going to believe the figures above 100%, however it's safe to say that I think I chose one of the most lardy things on the menu... Hrmm. I honestly didn't think it would be that bad, after all, it's got the word VEGETABLE in it! It's certainly a lesson to me and something I'm happy to learn - So, the next time I go to a Thai restaurant, I'll probably choose the chicken satay or the vegetable spring rolls as opposed to the vegetable tempura.

The main course was Chili beef with vegetables and sticky rice. I usually had a massamum chicken curry, but as it's made with coconut milk, I assumed that it would be rather high in both fat and calories and on this occasion, I was actually more accurate. 

Estimated calories and fat
Massumum curry - 295 calories / 12g fat
Chilli beef with rice - 354 / 4g fat

I know from the above it looks like I was wrong - however the Massumum curry is just that.. the curry, and doesn't incorporate the rice. Stick the calories on from the rice and it's more than the chili beef...

Either way, it's more than I usually eat for lunch and after we'd eaten, we actually took a detour to Marks and Spencers to allow me to grab some vegetables for tonight - I picked up some marinaded turkey breast yesterday so my plan is to have that with some roast baby potatoes and steamed veg for tonight... As well as picking up some vegetables, I decided to pick up some maltesers - I don't even know why I did it, however I think there's something in my head that I'm trying to work through - as if I can eat chocolate 'if I want to', and it's not a bad thing... I'm not a bad person and so what?

They're currently still in my bag and I've not stuffed them all in my face.....yet. Tomorrow I'm working from home again, so I'll pick up some really healthy food for lunch and not grab anything unhealthy. 

I think I'm getting nervous as it's just over 2 days until I leave my job and I'm feeling a bit unsure about stuff. It's silly really, I've managed to hold it together for months when I've been having a really awful time at work, so to lose it now and go back to my old habits would be absolutely stupid. 

So tomorrow is game face - Get up, be healthy and get focused.