Month: July 2008

July 31, 2008

Clothes really can be slimming

Eating Well – A Diet Blog
July 31, 2008 9:15 A.M. Weight: 345.0 lbs.

Yesterday, it looked like I was going to miss my monthly goal by just 0.6lb, even allowing for my normal weight loss.

So last night, I was going to just have a salad or something, but when I got to the kitchen, I was actually quite hungry.

‘Oh well, its only a target,’ I thought, and ended up having a pretty good dinner – grilled chicken, and steamed potatoes and peas, a low-fat desert, and lots of fruit.

So today was the moment of judgement., I got up, pulled on my joggers, and, picking up the polo shirt I wore last night, stepped on the scales. I was 0.2lb over!

Then I thought – ‘this polo is actually quite a thick one’, so dumped it in the laundry basket, put on a light Cotton Traders T-shirt, and stepped on the scales again.

The scales were alternating between 344.8 and 345, so I made my goal weight! It’s a bit cheeky that my success depended on what shirt I wore, but, to be fair, the Cotton Trader shirts are what I normally wear, day to day, so it’s no foul.

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July 30, 2008

The goodness of pure blackcurrants!

Eating Well – A Diet Blog:
July 30, 2008 2:48 P.M. Weight: 345.6 lbs.

I’ve just had a bit of a shock. I can’t stand artificial sweeteners of any sort, so if I buy squash or cordial, I buy something fruit-based. Lately, I have been drinking Ribena, a popular blackcurrant drink in the UK.

However, logging my calories for lunch, I discovered – according to the Ribena figures, that 100ml diluted is 45 calories. That means the pint of Ribena I have just drunk is over 250 calories – more than the prawn and mayonnaise sandwich I ate.

Thinking about this further, a good British ale is only 180-200 calories per pint, so it would be better for my diet to replace my fruit drinks with beer. I like the sound of that!

Of course, on looking into this, I discover that it is not all as it seems. Checking the side of the bottle shows that the manufacturer’s figures are based on a dilution of 1 part Ribena to 4 parts water – essentially a syrupy kid’s drink. I reckon I dilute it 1 part to 10 of water, at least – just enough to flavour it. So it isn’t as bad as I thought.

I still like that beer idea, though!

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July 29, 2008

The BIG Dark Knight

Have just booked tickets to see The Dark Knight at IMAX in Thinktank, Birmingham. I’m not working on Friday, so I have got a ticket for their midday Planetarium show, then the afternoon looking round the science museum, and some 5-storey-high Batman in the early evening.

As my old mate Clive used to say – “If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing to excess!”

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July 29, 2008

Holiday planning

I usually have two holidays a year – one for me alone, and another one where I take my mum away for a week.

This year, I seem to have skipped my solo holiday – I will probably end up spending it in the garden, or going out for days.

But for my holiday with mum, she said she fancied going to Dorset.

So I have managed to find a town cottage in Weymouth for a week in early September – only 4 weeks away. I googled “self-catering Dorset” and came up with Rupert – one of 7 cottages converted from stables, each named after the shire horse it used to stable, ours being Rupert.

It looks pretty nice, we have a room each, a decent lounge and modern kitchen *and* private parking; and it’s pretty central to the Old Harbour area of Weymouth, so there should be lots of local shops and pubs and restaurants we can visit without the car.

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July 26, 2008

Keeping it all going

Eating Well – A Diet Blog
July 26, 2008 6:42 P.M. Weight: 345.6 lbs.

I spent most of yesterday putting my garden back to rights, and I have just spent another hour out there finishing off.

Socially, I’ve been fairly busy lately, which means things like the garden have been a little neglected. While I have been gallivanting, my cabbages and broccoli have fallen foul of the Cabbage White Butterfly – eggs and caterpillars galore, all the plants have some outer leaf damage, and a couple were beyond saving. Meanwhile, two of my beetroot plants suddenly wilted – I pulled them up to find the beet had been eaten by something.

Anyway, my cabbages and broccoli now have a net cage around them, a piece of engineering that I am proud of. I will try to get a picture of it before it falls apart. I’ve also just planted a whole tray of beet seed, to see if I can get some plants in to replace the eaten ones.

I feel that the garden and my diet are connected, not in a mystical way, but practically – when I don’t have time for the garden, I’m probably not finding time to eat well, either. Also the exercise is useful.

This week I came across an interesting little book called The Half-hour Allotment – which describes how to tend and keep an allotment in just 30 minutes a day. Of course, my garden is a fraction of the size of an allotment, so it’s got to be worth a go.

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July 25, 2008

What Happened to Minstrel’s Hall?

Previous visitors – at least, the observant ones – will have noticed that my old web page has been replaced by a blog.

I decided to do this for a number of reasons. The old page had not been updated in a long time. I had been planning to redesign the whole site for a while, but had never gotten round to it. At the same time I had recently started blogging, and decided that the blog would make a more interesting and relevant front page to the site.

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July 11, 2008

Woo-hoo!

Eating Well – A Diet Blog

July 10, 2008 7:44 P.M. Weight: 345.6 lbs.

Well, I am back; and although I haven’t been tracking these last few days, I seem to have dropped 3.5lbs.

I haven’t tracked so far today, and it’s pizza for tea, so I think I will start logging again tomorrow.

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July 3, 2008

Stuck in the middle with you…

Eating Well – A Diet Blog

July 3, 2008 1:09 P.M. Weight: 349.2 lbs.

So it seems that my body likes the number 349.2 – I’ve been bouncing either side of it for the last week.

To be fair, I have been fairly busy, socially, and it isn’t really a great mystery why I have stopped losing. I had people round on Saturday for board games, and so there was coke and cookies in the house, and on Sunday I went out to lunch with a friend – the full roast beef and yorkshire pudding.

Also, as I am off work for the next week, I’ve been pretty busy, work-wise, so have missed out on my lunchtime walks.

Tonight, I am off to stay with my Mum for a few days in London, so see you all when I get back.

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