Rain, rain go away

A positive start to the week and another day of healthy eating

I think I'm already getting into a routine for work and I even slept well which is impressive considering I tend to wake earlier than my alarm as I'm always worried about 'not waking up in time' (God knows why.. my alarm is rather loud!). Routine in getting up... getting ready and now, routine in breakfast as once again it was a banana and a slice of malt loaf.

Looking out the window at the torrential rain made me feel quite lucky to be working in a rather swish office again. The happy feeling continued at lunch time when I got another salad - sadly there weren't any 'superfood' salads today, so I just went for a basic one which was still nice, just not as varied.. butterbeans.. chickpeas... a little bit of coleslaw.. It filled me up and I felt rather virtuous that once again I was choosing something healthy as opposed to a large sandwich, packet of crisps etc... 

The day got even better when, at 4pm, I heard that the tube strikes have been called off this week - Hurrah! :-) Bonus :-) Getting home was a bit wet, however thankfully I had my umbrella so managed to arrive home relatively unscathed.

For dinner I met one of my ex-work colleagues who I hadn't seen for a little while. She is lovely and is sadly one of the 5 people I had to get rid of about 7 months ago.... My ex company sucked in more ways than one. Thankfully she realised that it wasn't my call and we remained friends with no hard feelings. We met at Wagamamas and spent a good hour catching up whilst I munched on a chicken ramen and drank green tea. I can't say that a Chicken ramen is my favourite dish in the world, I actually prefer the Wagamama ramen, however the difference in both calories and fat is quite significant so I tend to try and stick to the healthiest option as much as possible - Plus.. it still tastes quite nice.

We then decided to go to Giraffe and have a quick 'mocktail'.. I had one with pineapple and coconut juice which was lovely - in some ways, actually nicer than some of the alcoholic cocktails I've tried recently.

By the time I got back home it was dark - The nights certainly seem to be drawing in and soon we'll no doubt all be wearing coats, hats and scarves but until then, I'll be happy to just sit on the sofa in my PJ's and watch TV :-)

Kensington Palace and Poltergeists

Even the rain didn't spoil the day

Considering tomorrow is the first of June and technically 'Summer', it was incredibly rainy today. I went to London to see a friend who I haven't seen for ages. As she's got children and works, it's been hard trying to find a mutually convenient time, however today seemed to work for both of us. After meeting in Waterloo (and surviving the train journey with the 7 drunken teenagers drinking Stella at the table opposite me) we decided to go to Kensington Palace, wander round and catch up on life.

Getting there was pretty easy and it wasn't too busy which was surprising considering it was a weekend. £17.50 each, so not exactly the cheapest place in the world, but it was London. Whilst it was nice go round and investigate as I'd never been there before, I have to say it wasn't as good as Hampton Court - the rooms were very empty and didn't have much furniture or character in them - I assume that's because of the amount of visitors that come through the rooms and the fact that furniture would make it harder to walk around.

Despite Kensington Palace being 'meh', it was lovely catching up with my friend and despite not seeing her for ages, it didn't feel like any time had passed at all. After a nice cup of tea and a wander around the rest of the palace, we decided to grab some sushi for lunch at the Japan Centre - the one close to Picadilly Circus. 

I think I'm like 'proverbial kid in the sweet shop' when it comes to the Japan Centre, I love sushi and there's literally so much to choose from, it's scary. It's probably a good thing that there isn't one in Berkshire, otherwise I'd no doubt be buying food from there most days. I have my staple favourites - the tofu pockets (Inari) and the egg sushi (tamago), but the rest of the shopping basket is flexible. As I knew I wouldn't be getting back home until after 10:00pm, I also bought dinner from there and ended up with a lovely Chicken teriyaki don (chicken, rice, egg...). I thought I'd also buy a chocolate pancake (Doriyaki) for pudding and after we purchased all of our stuff, we decided to sit outside and eat our lunch as it was chucking it down from the sky.

Unfortunately, the sushi doesn't have calories, fat or any kind of nutritional information on it - so it's a bit of a mystery unless you look it up on the internet beforehand. I assumed this was also true for my chocolate pancake, however after consuming it, I actually saw that there were figures on the back of it - Hrm.. I have to say, I was shocked in regards to how many calories were in it, over 200! and nearly 9 grams of fat as well? Well, I enjoyed it, but once again it goes to show that I can be really ignorant when it comes to how many calories are in things and my 'educated guessing' isn't all that accurate.

After we had lunch, we realised that the rain really wasn't going to stop any time soon, so we headed back to Waterloo, had another coffee and then said our goodbyes - As she's got a Samsung Note 4 phone, she showed me how many steps we had done together - over 11,000 - Not bad for a days walking :-) After I got back home, I ate the rest of the Sushi for dinner before heading out to the cinema to meet my lovely Vegan work friend. She's also into horror movies so we had made a cinema date to watch Poltergeist. I was hoping it would be better than the film was saw the other month 'It follows' which seemed incredibly random and the bad 80's style music was very frustrating.

Turns out, it was rather scary and had both of us cringing behind our hands by the end of it, so missions accomplished. After driving her back home, I'm now writing this whilst in my PJ's and watching Family Guy before sorting out my breakfast for tomorrow and going to sleep before I go back to dreaded work tomorrow.

Thankfully only 2 days of work next week before I'm off to Northumberland with my lovely boyfriend to stay with his parents until Sunday. Thankfully, his parents are really, really nice and friendly, so I'm really looking forward to it. 

Tomorrow night I'm back at the gym - the first time in over 3 months! I'm actually slightly nervous, but know that once I've gone, it will be great and I'll feel really good, too. 

A very rainy Friday

TFI Friday!

I hope everyone is looking forward to the weekend as much as me - Having checked the weather forecast I'm not entirely sure that it's going to be beach or picnic weather, however I can still hope!

This morning I didn't have to get up as early as the last 2 days, so jumped out of bed, did the usual bathroom ablutions and then had the hard task of working out what to wear. When I was thinner, I used to take more pride in what I wore to the point, I'd pick it out the night before (complete with accessories) and then in the morning I didn't need to engage my brain until much later. The last few months, I've not done this as I don't feel as positive about myself - therefore it's more of a 'Meh, whatever, that will do', which is not how I like to be.

Additionally, my type of clothes has changed - I currently live in my Marks and Spencers Waterfall cardigans as they're floaty and hide any lumps and bumps I have. Whereas when I was thinner, I'd be fine in just a fitted shirt, or a tighter jumper as I felt good when I looked in the mirror.

Today, we have a hybrid look. Due to being blessed / cursed (depends on your viewpoint) in the chest department, having a 36 GG chest means I find it hard to buy shirts and tops that fit, so I tend to buy my things from Pepperberry and this has been a total blessing. I got both my black shirt and cardigan from Pepperberry and they're both size 16SC (which stands for Super Curvy in pepperberry terms). Jeans are from Next and they're a size 18 - I'm having to wear a belt and they're pretty lose, however they're smarter than most of the denim I own, so for the moment, they'll do.

I'm lucky, as I can wear what I want to work, jeans.. T-shirts... however due to my position, I do try and keep it slightly formal, so tend to go towards shirts, rather than tops and dark jeans, rather than ripped jeans or ones that have patterns on them. As bad as it is, people do make judgements on you and being a woman in I.T, working with a lot of men who are older than you.... Well, let's just say it's easier if you don't look too scruffy!

As it's Friday, I opened my door this morning to find another box of Riverford

Organic Vegetables waiting for me - having a quick look inside of it before I went to work, there doesn't appear to be any weird or strange things like there were last week (Come back Kohlrabi, I want to eat more of you!) however I'm sure my boyfriend and I can find a nice recipe that incorporates most of them. 

Breakfast was porridge (sadly not fruit as I've run out) and that kept me going until lunch time, when, despite it absolutely chucking it down from the sky, I headed out into town to buy some more houmous and a bag of salad for my friend coming round tonight. I found another new 'snack pot' - this one has beans and salmon in it and I thought it sounded quite nice.

I toasted another wholewheat pita bread and munched the peppers and tomatoes - after 15 minutes I realised, I was totally full and the snack pot is probably going to go to waste. This is annoying as 1. I'm trying to be more sensible with money and 2. I don't like wasting food.

The old Imogen would have probably eaten it anyway, however I don't want to do that - I'm full, I need to listen to my body and I don't need to put anything else in it at the moment. I think I've always had 'eyes bigger than my stomach' and today has been more evidence of this - OK, so now I know - I don't need more food if I've got some vegetables and a pita bread, it's just being greedy.  

My snack today is a cocoa orange 'nakd bar', which I'll much on at about 4:00pm. It's funny, as most people (including myself) associate Vegan products as being tasteless or bland or 'weird', however the nakd bar range has become one of my favourite snacks - especially the new bakewell tart flavoured ones as they honestly taste like bakewell tart!

Tonight I'm seeing one of my lovely friends who I've not seen for a little while so I will be feeding her Hairy Bikers healthy chilli and having a gossip before the exciting weekend ahead!

More amazing sushi in London

Wow, it's really raining cats and dogs at the moment!

It's so rainy in London, it's the total opposite of what it was like yesterday. I'm only in London for meetings and after work I'm off to meet 2 of my sisters in the City so we can go for cocktails (I haven't broken the news to them that I'll probably be sticking to diet coke as I really don't need to be drinking vast amounts of calories at the moment, however it will be nice to catch up, regardless)

After getting off the train, I went to Wasabi, which is a Japanese 'fast food' place. They used to have a stand in Waterloo, but now have a shop and it's brilliant (if, slightly expensive) all the sushi is individually wrapped, so you can pick up a tray and just do a kind of 'pick and mix' which is pretty cool - meaning you don't need to buy anything you don't like and won't eat.

Unfortunately I got there at 9:10am and they didn't have much out at all - only prawn and salmon nigiri. This wasn't the end of the world, as I like both, however I needed to get to work so couldn't really wait until they had put the rest of their stock out. At least that was lunch sorted!

I've now just eaten my lunch and it was AMAZING! The salmon was brilliant and the prawns weren't bad either - I'm pretty full and feeling happy I didn't go out with my colleagues and buy lasagne or all the other amazing things I can currently smell round the office.

Also glad it's half way through Thursday - Only 1.5 days until the weekend! :-)