Back to Blogging...

...in which it's another new year.

It appears there's no way of stopping new years arriving, It also appears that even though I know it's entirely a fictional construct and that if you really want to change you don't need a new year to do it, I'm incapable of not using them as an excuse to make resolutions, some of which I even manage to keep.

Now that the house has been de-Christmassed, the children's birthdays are all over (2 of our children have birthdays very close to Christmas - one just before, one just after), and we've stopped eating chocolate for breakfast and drinking wine for lunch (mostly) I thought maybe I should start writing blogs again, since it seems I barely bothered last year.

I've only been within my Slimming World target for one week in the last year; most of the time I've been a fair bit above it (although I am still about 3 stone lighter than when I started). Now that the inevitable gorge-fest that is Christmas is over my first resolution is to get back into my target range by the end of February; that means losing about 2lb a week, which ought to be doable.

I have managed to keep up with my running at least, and I can still do 10 miles or more on a Sunday without too much trouble, so my second resolution is to do another marathon and half marathon this year; I'm likely to do Shrewsbury half marathon (hopefully they'll actually make sure it's a full 13.1 miles this year after last year's "oops, we went you the wrong way" mess that chopped 0.5 miles off the course). I think I'll do Chester Marathon as that's in October which gives me more time to train than most others, as I'd really like to aim for a faster time than I got in Manchester last year (plus it's cheaper).

Other resolutions...well, I bought myself a new acoustic guitar and amplifier over Christmas (I did trade in a couple of older guitars), which are both very nice; the amplifier has 2 channels which can be used concurrently, so I can also plug a microphone into it, although amplifying my voice isn't necessarily the best idea in the world (reverb and an EQ does help a bit though). I'd like to do more with music...resolutions should be measurable though, so I think I'll commit to learning at least 1 new scale per month in every position on the neck and recording at least one song per month.

Finally, I will attempt to write at least one blog post a week, mainly about how I'm doing with the other resolutions. Hopefully that will motivate me to actually stick to them, but we shall see...

Oh, here's a picture of the new guitar and amp:

Something old, something new....

...in which a wedding has occurred.

Yesterday Saira got married to her Very Significant Other (who is presumably now upgraded to her Extremely Significant Other :)). 

Since this is a public site I won't share pictures because facebook privacy settings exist for a reason, but I will say that they're an absolutely lovely couple who thoroughly deserve the happiness they bring each other.  (I do think they're rushing into a bit though - 12 years is an awfully short time to be together before you get married ;)).

The wedding/wedding breakfast/reception went on all day (except for a brief interlude, where we went back to our hotel room) and we had an absolutely fantastic time. We love our kids, but sometimes we need to stop being "mum and dad" for an evening and just be Ann and Chris, who can stay up till 2 AM dancing and chatting with friends and drinking (although the drinking isn't necessary). I'm quite proud of the fact that we were 2 of the last 6 people to go to bed (the other 4 being the bride and groom themselves and another couple), although I've also been somewhat exhausted all day!

Saira and her VSO quite often come round to our house for barbecues (basically whenever all of us have a weekend free and the weather is good enough to cook outside). G and I will invariably get the guitars out and inflict sonic abuse on everybody within earshot, and it appears there's no law to stop us (or if there is nobody's found it yet). 

This is great fun (for us at least), and G is actually a very competent guitarist, so it was great to see him play the guitar on stage with some friends who are musicians (Little Red Bird and Vera van Heeringen, who is also G's guitar tutor). He's normally very shy about showing off like this so it was great to see him getting up on stage to play (he only did one song with them and did his best to hide at the back, but it's a start! :)).

I decided to not worry about Slimming World stuff for the day; I did make a mental note of what I was eating/drinking and tried not to go too far over my allotted syns for the week (I hadn't had any for the whole of the rest of the week, which isn't recommended but didn't really bother me). This seems to have worked - at weigh in tonight I had lost 1.5lbs, which means I'm now just 1 pound above my original target. Which is nice.

Food-wise I've been making the usual Slimming World stuff; paprika pork is the kids' current favourite, with chicken rogan josh coming a close second; we've had steak a couple of times too because it was half price in the supermarket.

That's kind of it for now....I may not be able to update much more than once a week for a while because of the summer holidays and looking for a new contract (getting quite urgent that I find one of those now, at least before September).

Diet Food

....in which I talk about food. Again.

If you're anything like me, your image of diet food is probably something like this:

I don't know about you, but eating that stuff all the time would get pretty boring pretty fast.

Now, here's some pictures of things I have actually made and eaten in the last 6 months:

(From left to right: Penne with rich beef & tomato Ragu, Five-spice chicken with noodles and steak with wedges and garlic mushrooms).

The point is you don't have to eat like a rabbit to lose weight. There is some element of the first set of pictures in what we eat; I do quite often have baked potato for lunch, but I usually cook it as wedges and have it with a mushroom omelette (or whatever other veggies I can find to put in an omelette - cooked with Frylight, omelettes are free), and wedges are much less boring than a jacket potato without butter (you can add herbs and spices to them to keep them interesting).

Of course, if you've gained weight and want to lose it you can't just carry on as you are, assuming that you've gained weight because of your diet; something has to change. In my case, that's meant that we no longer use jars to make any meals (everything is cooked from scratch, and generally nicer for it), we use leaner cuts of meat (more expensive but you need less of it to fill you up) and fat is removed from pretty much all meat when possible. If something is fried we use Frylight, which is a 1-calorie spray that you just spray on the frying pan/wok before cooking.

I have started exercising as well, but that is not a necessary part of being on Slimming World; it certainly helps the weight drop off more quickly, but you will lose weight whether you do or not.

I'm sure there are people that will look at the above and say something along the lines of "you can't possibly lose weight eating like that." I'll remember that next time I get on the scales, since they don't seem to have got that message.

Today we are having a barbecue, so there will be lots of (lean) meat later. Avoiding bread is a bit of an issue when there are burgers out (I will make my own for the 3 of us on Slimming World that will be there - these will be free, and I've also found some frozen ones that are 1 syn per burger), but I'll save my healthy b so I can have a wholemeal roll for one burger. I'll do wedges and pasta salad as well as a vegetable salad, and I may do something in the slow cooker...we shall see.

Right, I need to go and change the strings on my guitar.

Saturday 21st June

Breakfast

Satsuma, nectarine, apple, fat-free Greek style lemon yoghurt

Lunch

Mushroom & red onion omelette with beans and a baked potato.

Dinner

Lean meat (pork/chicken/beef) cooked on the barbecue; pasta salad (pasta with vegetables stir-fried in frylight with garlic & paprika). 1 wholemeal roll (healthy b), potato wedges, salad.
3 Sainsbury's "be good to yourself" burgers (1 syn each)

Snacks/Drinks

Fruit, yoghurt.
Err, okay, this didn't quite go to plan....
750 ml of wine (27 syns)
4 cans of cider (38 syns (9.5 syns per can))

68 syns today...but I'm still under for the week.

Exercise 

30 minutes on exercise bike