How many steps do you do in a day?

I'm looking forward to celebrating the end of my first week of my new job

I've been sleeping so much better now that I'm eating healthily again - I also think it's got something to do with having more exercise. No, I'm not going to the gym, however I'm having to walk a lot more to work.. just by walking to the train station, walking to the tube, walking to work - it's over 3,000 steps each day! That's pretty awesome and much better than what I used to do - unless I walked into town with my work friend, I'd never make 3,000 steps a day.

Thursday was another working from home day and I already feel productive, despite still not having access to all of the systems I need access to! I even went out food shopping at 8:30am and got back before 9:00. My shopping bags were full of vegetables and fish - not a chocolate bar, or unhealthy thing in site! A complete 180 degree difference from this time last week when I was in Harrods, celebrating my youngest sisters birthday by having afternoon tea in their Georgian restaurant. I've been to a number of different hotels in London for 'Afternoon Tea' - the Ritz, The Savoy.. all of have been really enjoyable, however Harrods was stunning. The service alone was just brilliant and we had so many sandwiches and cakes - I don't regret it at all as I've got great memories, but I'm so glad I'm back on the healthy eating road.

Lunch was another BBQ chicken salad as I had half a pack of mini chicken fillets to use up and more lentils. Today I didn't have cucumber, but had red onion instead and also sprinkled some cheese over the top. I tend to buy the ready grated cheese - 1. As I'm lazy and 2. As I find it's easy to portion control as you don't grate too much.

I also managed to feed the birds and clean my bathroom at lunch time - I don't know why, but I thought when I started a new job, I'd be so busy I wouldn't be able to do the 'normal' chores, however I seem to be coping really well.. partly, I think it's because I'm only doing 3 days in London, I have respect for people who commute a long way 5 days a week.. How *do* you do it... I think I'd be so tired!

Dinner was another chicken breast, but this one was wrapped in bacon and courtesy of Tesco's (Quite low in calories and fat). I decided to serve it with rosemary roasted potatoes and some steamed veg - Absolutely delicious. I know there's a lot of veg on my plate, however I want to try and 'bulk up' and stop being hungry by eating healthy things, rather than craving chocolate or pudding an hour after I've eaten. So far.. so good! :-)

No time to even think?

I'm off in 35 minutes.. so this will be a quick one!

Breakfast: Packet of Belvita Biscuits

Lunch: Chicken and bacon baked pasta

Dinner: BBQ chicken / 2 sausages and 1 chinese spare rib with 4 veggie kebabs

Snack: Slick of Victoria sponge cake / Packet of Cadbury buttons

Yesterday was great fun, but quite hectic. My boyfriend and I got up quite early and headed down to the antiques auction we usually frequent once a month. I felt utterly knackered - not just because I got up early, but because I didn't go to bed until after 12:30 as my Boyfriend had come back from Thorpe Park last night and suggested we go for a 'Night drive' - it was fun, I enjoyed telling him what I had got up to during the day (Pottery painting etc) but I swear if I don't get 8 hours sleep, I feel really exhausted.

Unfortunately as I was exhausted, I didn't bother eating breakfast and as there wasn't anything at the auction we wanted, we left there and decided to head to the South coast(ish) and got to Chichester as it was a lovely day. On our way down, we saw a brown sign for 'Butser Ancient Farm' and as I thought that sounded random and crazy, suggested we stop. It was a lot more interesting and big than we thought - we had assumed it would be some crazy archaeologists in a field, digging things, but it was a whole village recreation of neolithic, Mesolithic and other ages. As it was 10:30 and I hadn't eaten anything, I was in a rather bad mood - I then found some Belvita Biscuits in my boyfriends car and decided to eat those - Not great, but better than a full fry up, I guess. 

We wandered round there for a good hour or so before heading off - The people were lovely and if we had wanted to stay longer, they would have given us a tour, but we continued onto Chichester. By the time we had found parking, it was lunch time and I was still starving so we literally went into the first restaurant we found in the centre. I ordered some chicken and bacon pasta as all the salads had things in them I didn't like - walnuts, blue cheese, avocado.. not a fan of any of them, I'm afraid! Why is it so hard to stick to 'normal' salad things?

After lunch, we went to the Cathedral, which was absolutely beautiful and after a very scenic wander round, we then decided to go to Fishbourne Roman Palace which was very closeby. 10 minutes in the car and we arrived, paid entry fee (£8.50 for an adult) and wandered into the 15 minute video which the lady on the front desk seemed desperate to show us and the other people who had just arrived. It was interesting - narrated by Tony Robinson no less! I won't say a lot about the place as I'm running out of time, however to my mind, it's certainly worth a visit and the mosaics are beautiful.

A cup of tea and slice of cake later (I know, I know) and we drove back home via a Farm Shop to pick up some meat for dinner so we could have a BBQ. The Farm shop isn't one we go into frequently, but they have an amazing vegetable and meat selection and after buying a lot of stuff, we headed back to my Boyfriends house to do the food. 

It was really, really lovely - especially the vegetable kebabs which I made and my Boyfriend brushed them with some oil infused with Basil.. you could really taste the Basil.. Yummy! It was also lovely just sitting in the sun and talking to him. However, as his Sky Box is dead, we aren't able to watch any TV so after dinner, we decided to go to the pub with one of his friends and I stayed there until after 10pm...

Looking back at what I ate today has genuinely shocked me. I didn't think it was that bad, however let's be honest, apart from the veggie kebabs, it's hardly healthy. This is quite frustrating as I had been thinking I'd been getting back in 'the zone' however I'm obviously not overly mindful about what I'm putting in my body and if I don't change this, my body won't change overall... 

I'm up so early as I'm off for a 'mini break' with my Gastric Bypass friend... I am taking my laptop so look out for interesting food posts in the next few days :-) What I wouldn't give for a lie-in right now! :-)

Today is another day to put good things in my body!

Well, that's a bit of an anti climax

Today didn't really start off like I expected

Last night after I blogged: 1 large glass and 1 small glass of red wine

Breakfast: Oats so simple Golden Syrup porridge pot with blueberries

Lunch: Wholemeal pita bread, 1/2 a pot of houmous, raw pepper and handful of tomatoes

Dinner: BBQ Chicken breast with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber

Snack: Bakewell Tart nakd bar

Last night, my boyfriend and I went to a pub for a pint of diet coke, or in my case, a glass of red wine - a large glass of red wine, which turned into 1 large glass and 1 small glass of red wine. As I don't drink very often, I was rather drunk and after a nice 1.5 hours of chatting in the pub, he drove me home and I spent the next few minutes working out what I could eat as I had the munchies... 

I've been quite good in not having any chocolate in my house, so I'm not easily tempted to shove it all in my face - With that option unavailable to me, I did manage to find prawn crackers and frozen gyoza dumplings. 15 minutes later, I had 8 dumplings and some prawn crackers and was eating them with sweet chili sauce whilst watching 'Googlebox'. I then went to bed and slept for a few hours, before waking up in the middle of the night as my flea / mosquito bites were itching, scratching my leg, my leg bleeding and falling back to sleep...  I woke up this morning with dried blood on my leg - Lovely :-S

Do I regret eating more food than I needed? Not really, no - People do it when drunk and I'm human. The old me would have berated herself, felt like a failure and have thought 'Well, no point in continuing my healthy eating as the scales won't show a good number for ages, now.' and that would have usually signalled the end of my diet. The new me is looking at this a bit more pragmatically - Yeah, it wasn't ideal, but these things happen - It will happen again, I'm sure. I'm going to fancy a drink at some points in time and at some other points, I'm sure I'll get the munchies. I can't go back and change what I ate yesterday, but I can change what I eat today and as such, it will be back to normal with the healthy lifestyle :-)

I got into work really early this morning as I needed to print off, sign and scan in all the new job documents and there were quite a few. I wanted to do it early so no-one asked me what I was doing, nor managed to look at any of the documents. With that done, I emailed my Boss, asking him for a meeting as we usually have one on a Monday, anyway. Unfortunately, he emailed back and said it would be tight and could we have a phone call in the afternoon? Sure, I replied, but it would be good to talk to him today, whenever is best for him.

As it turns out, he arrived at work at 10:30 and suggested we have a quick catch up - As I wasn't mentally prepared, I rushed what I was trying to say which was basically 'Not happy, want to leave, please pay me money if you want my resignation now'.... 

I appreciate that some people might not agree with my approach. 'Why bother?' Just resign as you've got another job' and if I hadn't have been subjected to such horrible behavior over the last few months, that's exactly what I would do. However, I've worked my absolute butt off, over the last 5 years - I've opened offices overseas, undertaken office moves, sorted out things that weren't working on Bank Holidays, I was even running the company when my Boss's son sadly died last year - None of which was within my job description, but I did it as it was needed. So to witness my Boss have 'super secret' meetings to coach the woman I assume he's been sleeping with and take away various departments and responsibilities from me and give them to her, just isn't acceptable behavior. Being excluded from meetings I've attended for over 2.5 years without being told why, isn't acceptable and being pushed out from the company isn't acceptable.

So my plan is to see if I can get my Boss to pay me to resign. He doesn't know I have a job offer and as I have 10 days to accept it, I can play for time. Also, my mental health is a lot better knowing I won't be working here in a few weeks. So worst case = Boss says no to paying me, and I resign. Best case, Boss says yes to paying me and I resign. Either way, I'll be leaving soon. After I garbled my words out, my Boss asked for time to think about it, saying he didn't see the point of garden leave and he'd consider what I was asking and we'd talk again on Wednesday.....Watch this space!

Work was really, really, really... boring. I don't have a lot to do at the moment which is a rarity, but as such, I find it soul destroying to sit at my desk and not actually, well, work! I mostly emailed my friends and read online forums which isn't exactly good practice, but I've totally checked out of this job now, so it's just playing a bit of a waiting game. Thankfully I got to walk into town with my lovely work friend at lunch time, even if it was just to grab some salad bits for tonights dinner. 

After work, I headed back and marinated some chicken breasts in BBQ sauce for the makeshift BBQ I was planning to do with my Boyfriend, watched 'The Last Ship' (a post Zombie apololyptic drama, directed by Michael Bay so loads of things blow up) before heading over to my Boyfriends house. We sat in his garden, chatting, whilst the chicken cooked on the BBQ and I told him what had happened at work and how I can't wait to leave in a few weeks time. 

Dinner was really nice - I love BBQ's and anything marinated in BBQ sauce gets my vote instantly :-) Once finished, we headed inside and found something on TV that we could both watch 'Shed of the year', which is this weird program where people in the UK make crazy things out of their sheds - A Japanese Tea House, a World War 2 land Girls hut, a 1950's diner... Crazy stuff! We also cuddled a lot, which for me is really enjoyable as I've felt a lot closer to my boyfriend over the past few months - probably because he's been really supportive over my work stress. 

I'm now back home watching South Park and am looking forward to hopefully getting a really long sleep tonight as it seems to be a bit cooler? 

Day before D-Day

This is probably the first Sunday in over 3 months where I'm actually looking forward to work tomorrow.

Breakfast: Oats so simple golden syrup porridge pot

Lunch: Wholemeal pita bread, 1 raw pepper, 1/2 pot of Tescos Moroccan houmous 

Dinner: Baked BBQ chicken breast, rosemary toasted baby potatoes and steamed baby carrots, green beans, sugar snap peas and baby corn

Snack: Marks and Spencers wholegrain BBQ crisps

Unlike Friday night, I unfortunately didn't sleep as well - I think it was too hot in my friends spare room and I woke up a few times after dreaming about my car being vandalised. Unfortunately, this is a somewhat regular occurrence for me. About 8 years ago, my car was vandalised 7-10 times and the Thames Valley police were utterly useless. My car was keyed more than once, all 4 tyres were slashed, my wing mirrors were kicked off 5 different times. I had a love poem put on my windscreen and the best one, my drivers door was crowbarred open, my CD's were taken out of my car and placed in a pile by my front door (my car was parked about 20 meters away from my house at this point).

I turned into a wreck, constantly paranoid, couldn't sleep as every noise I heard, I'd be looking out the window, seeing if my car was OK. When I phoned the police, they never bothered coming out and on the one occasion they did, they said 'Oh, it's probably just young lads, walking through to the pub, having a laugh....' they didn't even take the CCTV offered to them by a local Indian restaurant. In the end, I ended up parking my car 1.5 miles away at my friends house and walking back home - I did this for over 6 months, before I moved house. Despite it being 8 years ago, me having a different car and having moved twice, I still get paranoid, I still wake up in the night and if I hear a weird sound, I still look out the window to see if my car is OK. 

Despite not sleeping overly well, I got up, made myself breakfast and chatted to my friend for an hour before heading off back home. I did remember to leave her the 'present' that I had promised her - the fake poo! When leaving her house, she said to me, 'So you didn't scent mark my room then?' I replied 'Just go and have a look' :-) I think it looked quite realistic and had me chuckling to myself like a child for a few minutes. Unlike Friday, the M4 was really empty so I made it back in under 3 hours - Just in time for lunch! Lunch was 'the usual' and after unpacking my stuff, I decided to chill for a few hours. 

I seem to have been bitten quite badly by something - Whilst I don't want to accuse my friends cat of having fleas, it's either fleas or mosquitoes and I've not quite worked out, which. Either way, I have a number of bites on both my ankles and they're itching like crazy :-S

Dinner tonight was another BBQ marinated chicken breast with rosemary roasted mini potatoes, steamed carrots, green beans, sugar snap peas and some baby corn - Delicious. I'm just heading out with my Boyfriend to go for a glass of red wine in a local pub and catch up on the weekend :-)

Tomorrow is D-Day. It's the day I sign the job offer to my new job and it's also the day I ask for a meeting with my Boss to try and negotiate a financial settlement.... Let's see how this goes... 

Organic Veg Boxes and Psychopathic Managers

Thank God it's Friday... It didn't feel like a 4 day week!

Despite the last 3 days of work being pretty good, today wasn't great. I've got a very strong suspicion that my Manager is planning on getting rid of me :-( Thankfully, having been at the company for over 5 years... they can't just dismiss me (ACAS guidelines state that you can be dismissed at any point during your first 2 years but after that, many more processes need to happen to get rid of someone). I'm not a psychiatrist, however having read a number of books on random subjects including psychopathy, I am almost 100% convinced that my Manager is one - Apparently it's quite common in politics and high level positions (such as Managing Directors *cough*).

Either way, it's a horrible feeling when you feel out of control - no matter what you do, you can't change anything and it's usually about now, that I reach for the food: The chocolate / crisps / a nice rack of BBQ ribs or pizza, however once I've eaten it, I feel even more unhappy as I've still got the work worries but also feeling guilty for eating loads of rubbish. Then I feel as if I've 'failed'.. so I think 'sod it, I may as well continue eating crap' and the cycle continues.

Well, let's try not to do that for a change - At the weekend I was reading one of my food magazines and they had an article about organic fruit and vegetable boxes. As I was feeling motivated, I thought I'd sign up - I've been wanting to for ages, so why not? There are a number of local ones, or you can find a more national one. I couldn't find a local one that delivered to my area, so I decided to go for Riverford - http://www.riverford.co.uk . Signing up was pretty easy and my box came as promised today. It was outside my door at 7:30 when I went to work which I thought was pretty awesome :-)

I've not tried any of it yet, but it looks amazing - 2 peppers, asparagus, carrots, lettuce, potatoes.. All really fresh and unlike certain supermarkets... it doesn't look like it will go off any time soon!  

I also got a pretty cool recipe book which is really useful as I'm really looking to try new things and as I'm constantly busy, this means I don't necessarily have to go and trawl through the internet or my recipe books - I also get to try something new, so double win!

Dinner was a lovely BBQ chicken salad and as I had a Sainsburys delivery last night, I had everything in the house already - Just what you want on a Friday night - there's no need to go food shopping and no temptation to go and order a takeaway! I marinated the (free range) chicken in BBQ Sauce and then grilled it so didn't need any oil. I then made the salad with lettuce, tomato, cucumber and lentils with a small amount of feta cheese - I drizzled it with some balsamic glaze and hey presto! Not bad, huh? :-)

This weekend I'm getting my hair cut and seeing a friend - I haven't seen this friend in 6 weeks and it will be interesting catch up. She's.... interesting! A lovely person, but is currently divorcing her husband for being incredibly controlling and is currently having an affair with a married man. Not something I condone in any way, shape or form, however she doesn't seem to want my opinion (which is that he won't leave his wife and she really shouldn't get involved) so I keep my lips firmly shut on the subject....

TFI Friday!