Craving Pizza!

Deborah posted a pic on her blog of a dish in a restaurant that looked like a flatbread / pizza-like concoction, with roasted veggies and goat's cheese and balsamic and it gave me an immense craving for similar. I even went and bought some flour tortillas this morning to serve as a base for my own recreation...

In the end, though, I resisted the demon carbs because I ate so much bread over the weekend. So the tortillas are in the freezer and my lunch today was pizza without the pizza - arugula topped with grilled red and yellow peppers, grilled zucchini and grilled asparagus, olives, borettane onions, eggwhites, flax oil and balsamic vinegar. It tasted great and it doesn't look too bad either, does it? And it does make a change from steamed spinach.

However, it wouldn't be a CRON day for a Sara without some spinach, so here is what I ate for my early dinner before my pottery class (which I really must go to this time even though I really should be weeding the allotment patch out).

Steamed spinach, asparagus, chantenay carrots, broccoli, low-fat cottage cheese with LLBY.

It's been one of those LOT of food days; I also ate almonds and yoghurt and soya milk at 2am during an attack of insomnia; blueberries, pumpkin seeds and goji berries for breakfast at 7; salsa mixed with LLBY, mushrooms and zucchini sticks for snacking after the gym; strawberries and walnuts as a dessert after lunch.

I can't be bothered to enter the salsa into CoM so here is the report without 100 cals or so of that.

===========================================
Nutrition Summary for 30 April 2007
===========================================

General (83%)
===========================================
Energy | 983.6 kcal 82%
Protein | 83.0 g 92%
Carbs | 123.4 g 103%
Fiber | 35.2 g 117%
Fat | 26.3 g 66%
Water | 1567.9 g 58%

Vitamins (99%)
===========================================
Vitamin A | 52514.4 IU 2251%
Folate | 1035.4 µg 259%
B1 (Thiamine) | 1.7 mg 153%
B2 (Riboflavin) | 4.4 mg 398%
B3 (Niacin) | 20.8 mg 148%
B5 (Pantothenic Acid)| 6.8 mg 135%
B6 (Pyridoxine) | 3.6 mg 277%
B12 (Cyanocobalamin) | 2.2 µg 92%
Vitamin C | 597.6 mg 797%
Vitamin D | 440.9 IU 220%
Vitamin E | 21.5 mg 144%
Vitamin K | 1483.1 µg 1648%

Minerals (98%)
===========================================
Calcium | 1216.2 mg 122%
Copper | 2.6 mg 289%
Iron | 21.0 mg 117%
Magnesium | 513.3 mg 160%
Manganese | 4.9 mg 270%
Phosphorus | 1243.4 mg 178%
Potassium | 5019.6 mg 107%
Selenium | 160.7 µg 292%
Sodium | 1185.6 mg 79%
Zinc | 9.8 mg 123%

Lipids (59%)
===========================================
Saturated | 3.5 g 35%
Omega-3 | 2.8 g 254%
Omega-6 | 6.7 g 152%
Cholesterol | 7.0 mg 2%

I was just in a mood for snapping my food today. I won't continue!

No Dark Satanic Mills Here

This is the view from a scenic outlook over the Longleat Estate called Heaven's Gate. It's still stunning weather here, and when my friend MA and I walked up here early this afternoon with her dog we just wished that we had thought to pack the papers, a blanket and a picnic so that we could lounge and gaze at this beauty all afternoon.

Here is the view looking back up the hill - weird and wonderful Stonehenge like sculpture. MA read all the blurb about the artist but I was so focused on getting to the actual overlook I didn't even see it was there. We took turns posing with R the dog in the wheel-like structure but the pictures are on her camera, not mine. I might post them later on, when MA sends them to me. R was the star of the show and charmed everyone up there. Such a lovely dog, and so much like my Tigsy in temperament that if the timing wasn't wrong I would seriously be tempted to believe in reincarnation.

It's been a social weekend and so - well, a little unrestrained shall we say on the liquid calories. Food has been pretty good - MA likes to eat piles of veggies too, but she also likes her carbs, so I started this morning with sociable toast and turned into a raving bitch queen from hell 3 hours later when the energy ran out. Luckily MA was very understanding of my temper and feed-me-now and we found a lovely cafe in Bradford-On-Avon where I ate more emergency bready carbs and olives *sigh* and then gorgeous oyster mushroom and asparagus bruschetta without the brushetta. I also dipped into the cheese and crackers with another friend after MA left for home, but back home I have eaten some purple sprouting broccoli (season is almost over, *cries*), some baby rainbow swiss chard leaves straight out of the garden, and loads of vine tomatoes with black pepper and two quorn sausages just to end the slight junk binge.

Even for me I have been conscious that I am drinking far too much right now and so I want to have at least 2 full days alcohol free this week, and be very light on the others. I am kind of ashamed that I can't just say "no more" and stick to it, but we have a wine tasting on Thursday and then a long weekend in Leeds with a friend and it's just not going to happen; well, it could but I'd rather plan for the calories and forgo the cheese plate! However, I would really like to plan for much of June and definitely the first half of July to be very, very light on the booze. I'm now at the weight I wanted to be back in January (around 112-114lbs); I could maybe drop two more pounds but no more than that, so I need to look at balancing my diet more now and being very careful. I don't want to go too far, and I certainly don't want to lose sight of my health and future in all the minor stresses and more serious family troubles that are going on right now.

I really need a holiday!

Another Country

I spent last night at this hotel in Wales with my mother, prior to meeting my brother briefly nearby early this morning. We had a lovely girlie night, and ate in the hotel restaurant where we both ate grilled asparagus with poached egg and spring onion and mustard dressing as appetizers, and I ate a small mediterranean vegetable salad for my main course - arugula, zucchini, eggplant, tomato. I have no idea how much oil was in the dressings for either and so, as usual, the eating out calories are a mystery. I can't imagine they would be that high though, and as usual I'd covered all the bases before I left, more or less.

Breakfast this morning was higher carb than I am used to - 96 cals worth of Dorset Cereals Berries and Cherries (I kept what was left in the package and weighed it when I got home - I'd only eaten 30g of it and thought I'd eaten far more, and actually it appears to be the lowest calorie option in the range by more luck than judgement), 1/2 slice of wholemeal toast, some yoghurt - the french kind of sweetened fruit puree in the bottom - and some dried prunes and apricots. I don't know why I ate so much except because it was there and I am hoping that it is that, together with the very strong coffee, and the very little sleep I had in the night, that is the reason that I am feeling mildly shaky and decidedly weird in the chest today. Ow. And *fear*.

I am running around too much again and I Need. To. Slow. Down.

I have today off work, and got home in good time with a series of extremely well-connecting trains and buses with hardly any waiting time between them. Bonus. I do have a lot of tidying up in my house to do though before my weekend guest arrives and am trying to summon the energy. Urgh. Oh for a cleaner. I seem to have several unwelcome invertebrate squatters judging by the silvery trails on my carpets and rugs, little bastards. I am hoping a quick hoover will sort out the worst of the evidence and not leave my friend totally grossed out by my slovenly kept accommodations.

Yes, we still have good weather! :-) And in my area at least set to continue so for a few days yet. All the summer flowers are blooming already; it's quite incredible. Heaven knows what will be left for me to bunch together in July.

A Rose By Any Other Name

I came across this range of ready meals in Waitrose this lunchtime, and was actually really tempted by them! I did resist the marketing lure and just picked up the low-fat cottage cheese I'd gone in for, and ate that with steamed (ok, microwaved-in-the-bag) spinach and pumpkin seeds for my meal instead, but they did look quite amazingly yummy and not really too high calorie considering the genre.

But, still a ready meal, right?! That is not somewhere I want to go! Though, maybe one day, for a bit of variety... and at least they would ensure I get my omega balance right, which is still woeful on London days without access to my flax oil and when I forget my brewer's yeast/flaxmeal breakfast mix - which I did this morning!

There were also some other little pots of quinoa salad, and brown rice salad, and chickpeas with spices and butternut squash. I must say it's the idea of butternut squash that I was finding really tempting. Mmm, butternut squash...

Quickly...

My computer chose today to more or less die, and so I've been at work for 6 hours just staring into space, not even able to check blogs or use CoM! Yuck.

For some reason I also ate a whole 50g of spicy seed mix (sunflower seeds, pumpkin, flax and hemp) with my steamed spinach at lunchtime. Now I've got CoM back, the fat bar is very... interesting indeed. Oh well.

The zucchini and tomato dish I posted a pic of the other day really was as simple as I made it sound. It was one large zucchini chopped into chunks, 2 tomatoes (ditto) and 200g mushrooms. I chucked them all into my favourite earthernware dish, swirled the balsamic vinegar over the top, and shook dried basil, oregano and black pepper all over the thing. Some garlic would have been nice too, in whole cloves, but I was feeling lazy. Then I covered the dish with foil and baked it in a fairly hot oven for about 45 minutes, and put a tsp of flax over everything when it came out.

Navel-Gazing

I was thinking - as I prepared my enormous dinner last night and tried to cram 200g broccoli and 200g of collards into my largest Crueset saucepan - that really I should think about upsizing.

I ate it all as well, along with a not small dish mushrooms and zucchini and tomatoes cooked in the oven with balsamic vinegar and lots of dried herbs.

I wanted to add my own voice to what I will call the debate about disordered eating that is popping up here and there in the various blogs, but Robin has already done it so eleoquently so I shall be brief.

For my own part, I believe CRON to be a way out of disordered thoughts about food, not a way of life that slams the doors of obsession and restriction upon you. Using CoM, I eat less restrictively and more consistently now than I have done for much of my adult life. I probably won't use CoM forever, and I don't use it every day - but it has reinforced the knowledge I already had about what I consume and what I can expect my food to do to my body... or rather, what I can expect my body to do with my food. Food is not the enemy. I don't have to fight with it. It is something I use and work with. I am in control of it. It is not in control of me either by presence or absense.

For weight loss, CR works. Of course it does. But long term it is ON that is important and crucial. And focusing on nutrition and balance is not disordered thinking; it is quite the reverse.

CRON appears to have grounded me... well, as much as I ever will be grounded! I will always be highly strung, somewhat manic and terribly perfectionist.

Anyway, that's all getting a bit old now. So moving on... I had another great weekend, with hot sunny weather, good company, lots of time spent in the garden, and reasonable although not perfect nutrition. I even made it to the gym once! This coming week my usual schedule is shot to hell with family committments and I am all over the place geographically, but that's fine! Life is for living after all, and I am certainly doing that right now.

Have some Lily of the Valley pretty.

As promised

Turns out the majority of my phone cam snaps were about as blurry as I was late last night. But I think this one, of Tower Bridge, is pretty iconic.

Aw, dammit

Well, I was on track... Left work high on 925 cals but figured I'd eaten so much during the day, I could last until I got home and then would have steamed spinach and stir-fried-esque mushrooms and I'd be 100% and about 1020. Then... had arranged to meet a friend for coffee in the Hilton at Paddington and they were charging a minimum spend of £10 per person just to sit in their lounge! So I decamped to their bar and waited for her there. With a glass of sauvignon blanc. And then another when she and P arrived. Ate my mushrooms on the train with salsa for dipping because I had the munchies. Got home and a friend just up the road called and asked me over for a late night night-cap. So, another glass of chardonnay, 4 strawberries and a piece of goat's cheese later...

Honestly, I am such a Bridget Jones cliche, I despair.

Hello, Hilary! Welcome back. :-) I hope you are going to post all about your trip.

Night on the Town

Our wander along The South Bank last night was fabulous. We crossed the river on the Millennium Bridge at St Paul's, and walked past The Tate Modern, Shakespeare's Globe, Borough Market, Hays Galleria (where we stopped for an overpriced drink in a very, very crowded bar), Tower Bridge, and ended up at Butler's Wharf where we ate at The Blue Print Cafe in the Design Museum. Mmmmmm, yummy food. Neither of the dishes I ordered were exactly what I expected but they were both totally delicious (once I'd pulled them apart and doctored them a bit). I had young garlic with goat's cheese as a starter - I expected it to be a salad with garlic leaves, but it came as a whole roasted bulb with the goat's cheese mashed onto a large piece of sourdough. I ate the sweet garlic with my fingers and scraped the cheese off the bread - P finished that off to mop up the juices from his razorclams. And then I had the baked salsify with parmesan, and an order of purple sprouting broccoli and an order of mixed leaves. The salsify came wrapped in crisp filo pastry - which I removed... it's years since I've had salsify and I need to eat it more often; it is divine, sort of like a white, silky asparagus. I could have eaten a whole plateful. We didn't have dessert (obviously) but even I was tempted by a hazelnut meringue with berries. We drank coffee and then wandered home, over Tower Bridge. I've got some fabulous photos I will download from my phone when I get home and post later on.

So, I didn't use CoM at all yesterday but I feel fine about that. The meal probably had a lot more oil than I am used to in it - dressing on the salad, I suspect there was some butter in with the broccoli but I'm not sure - and I definitely didn't get anywhere near enough protein, but I enjoyed every single bite I ate and I felt in such an amazingly good mood, what with the wonderful weather, the great company and London being as beautiful in the dark as it could possibly be.

Today I'll be eating more of my usual foods, my yoghurt with flaxmeal and brewer's yeast etc, more almonds and pumpkin seeds and gojis, lots of salad, cottage cheese, spinach. I've even got a bit of avocado. I've picked up some purple asparagus which I am looking forward to trying - it can be eaten raw, apparently - and I've got some pineapple to assuage an odd craving for the stuff.

And I'm still feeling in quite a good mood!

I cannot believe how fast time is flying this year. I'm back in London again and it hardly seems time at all since I was last here. It's insane.

Last night P and I presented some of the wines we want to serve at the wedding to our wine group. They went down very well, and we've found one for definite - the Viognier I was sipping on during my lazy day in the sun on Saturday. Our hostess had called me in the afternoon and asked if I wanted her to get some food together, and I had said yes - so there was the usual cheese and bread on the table. I admit, I had some. But by the time the tasting was over, and we had chatted to C the hostess who is also my caterer, and trekked all the way across London on the tube to get to P's house, it was too late to eat - let alone think about preparing ON food. So my calories for the day (in food) probably weren't too bad, but the nutrition probably could have been better - I was low in calcium, magnesium, zinc and iron again, and E.

Today I am going to go a little easier on myself and relax about food. I'm not going to start eating anything junky, but I have a lunch date with a friend and then will be eating with P tonight and I want to enjoy it. I want to rethink my daily foods - yesterday's mushroom salad at lunchtime left me feeling quite horrible all afternoon and I am wondering if I have reached mushroom-saturation! :-) The goal is still to get more nutrition into smaller, more calorie dense portions, especially with the summer coming on. I don't want to spend summer afternoons whaled out on mammoth platefuls of spinach.

****
So today so far... approx 200g strawberries, Total 0% with the Brewer's Yeast, flaxmeal, Gojis, pumpkin seeds and almonds, almonds and gojis (yummiest ON trailmix!), er... hummus and sauteed (I suspect) peppers on a flatbread wrap (I didn't eat the wrap), sauvignon blanc in the pub at lunch. Can I blame the sun? Unfortunately, not. I am just not a good CRON example! BUT I am still and will probably remain CR'd today. There are so many ways to do this and I wish April's detractors would realise this and stop fixating on the particulars.

Lazy Grazer

I had real trouble dragging myself to the gym this morning. I have days when I feel more lethargic and lazy than others and on those days I have to battle with myself to just keep moving and keep doing the things I need to do. Today is one of those days and in the gym I was constantly having to motivate my lazy self to move, when all my lazy self actually wanted to do was lie down and do feeble sit ups in a half-doze.

Lazy days always seem to coincide with days when I am picky with food - not fussy picky, but picky as in constant hand-to-mouth grazing. At the moment I am uncomfortably full having eaten, since breakfast (a solid 300 or so cals of yoghurt and extras) - 250g butternut squash with cinnamon and walnuts, a whopping 400g of the ABC soup I made in quantity the other day from Erin's vegblog, 170g odd of collard greens, the whites of 3 hardboiled eggs, 10g almonds and 5g of Goji berries. Working at home is not always great for CR!

******
... and it carried on! I snacked on steamed spinach and soy sauce, and then on romaine with mushrooms, tomato and fresh herbs from my window box, and then finally progressed to dinner with steamed asparagus, more spinach (purely to bump the iron, however artifically), and quorn sausages which, despite my comment to Jake in the comments to this post about being junk food free, are to all intents and purposes junk food. I have no idea how to enter them into CoM apart from just the bare figures - they are not equivalent to whatever a Quorn Dog is. But my report is good enough anyway not to fret (that much... and I took a B12 supplement this morning). It was too much food again though. I need to work out a way of getting more nutrition into smaller, more calorie dense meals which will leave me able to move at the end of the day.

STILL not alcohol free however, bringing the day's total cals to approx 1300. Where did my willpower go? I had it earlier this year!

===========================================
Nutrition Summary for 17 April 2007
===========================================

General (86%)
===========================================
Energy | 995.1 kcal 83%
Protein | 82.4 g 92%
Carbs | 119.1 g 99%
Fiber | 33.8 g 113%
Fat | 29.8 g 75%
Water | 1794.7 g 66%

Vitamins (96%)
===========================================
Vitamin A | 77841.3 IU 3337%
Folate | 1256.8 µg 314%
B1 (Thiamine) | 1.7 mg 159%
B2 (Riboflavin) | 3.9 mg 351%
B3 (Niacin) | 19.7 mg 141%
B5 (Pantothenic Acid)| 5.4 mg 108%
B6 (Pyridoxine) | 3.0 mg 228%
B12 (Cyanocobalamin) | 1.3 µg 54%
Vitamin C | 295.1 mg 393%
Vitamin D | 425.2 IU 213%
Vitamin E | 21.9 mg 146%
Vitamin K | 1959.2 µg 2177%

Minerals (95%)
===========================================
Calcium | 1354.4 mg 135%
Copper | 2.5 mg 279%
Iron | 19.7 mg 109%
Magnesium | 538.8 mg 168%
Manganese | 5.2 mg 288%
Phosphorus | 1013.2 mg 145%
Potassium | 5131.6 mg 109%
Selenium | 152.3 µg 277%
Sodium | 740.3 mg 49%
Zinc | 8.8 mg 111%

Lipids (58%)
===========================================
Saturated | 2.9 g 29%
Omega-3 | 4.0 g 359%
Omega-6 | 6.9 g 156%
Cholesterol | 3.0 mg 1%

Summer Days, Drifting Away

I achieved nothing I had planned to achieve today but that's fine. I had the most wonderful day lazing in the garden with a book and chilled Viognier (er, yes) in the fabulous sunshine. This is so much not typical weather for April in England and I am sure I should be fretting and wailing about global warming etc but... oh. It was so great to stretch out and relax and just be. I swear I could see leaves and petals unfurling infront of me. I watched juvenile delinquent bees dipping in and out of petals, drunkenly weaving from too early flower to too early flower; I watched crows flying from trees to church tower, building their nests in the turret; I watched aeroplanes traces cloudy arcs in the otherwise cloudless sky. I dozed in the sun and I got my vitamin D from the best possible source.... and now I have purple sprouting broccoli for dinner. Still far, far too much wine, but a lovely and much needed relaxing day.

Angelic Nights

Last night P and I went to see this production of Venus and Adonis at the Little Angel Puppet Theatre in Angel. It was quite simply one of the most magical hours I have spent in my life, reduced to a state of suspended disbelief and child-like wonder. Just absolutely gorgeous, and I am wondering if I can get to see it again before the run ends at the end of this month.

Before the show we ate at The Duke of Cambridge, a pub which only serves organic food and booze. I had a huge helping of beetroot soup, and failed to finish my smoked mozzarella and rocket salad - because it was too rich, and also because I had succumbed to a slice of fresh, homemade brown bread and was stuffed. When we got home my appetite had come back, so I had some salad leaves with pumpkin seeds and a tiny shaving of parmesan... and then fell into bed and was out like a light. Before dinner I was at 644 calories and 94% vitamins and 87% minerals - which isn't too bad for a London day.

This week has just flown by again. I'm looking forward to a relatively quiet weekend of gardening and CRON alone, and hopefully a chance to calm things down on the wine front. The weather is set to continue wonderfully warm for this time of year, and I really want to enjoy every minute of it. I am definitely going to start off my salad leaves in pots, and get some spinach into the ground, and think about what other veggies I want to put in and where, and what flowers I can persuade to bloom to be ready for mid July.

Wedding Daze

This morning I finally got the first (and the majority) of my wedding invitations into the post. What with deciding on suitable wording, getting them printed on card of a size and colour and weight that we both agreed on in a font that we both agreed on, decorating each one with paper petals and finishing them with hand-tied ribbon, locating addresses, addressing envelopes and stamping them - well, let's say my self-imposed deadline of mailing them 4 months before the day was well and truly missed!

I'm in town again today, and it's great to finally see that the leaves on the horse-chestnut outside my office window have unfurled and there is green to look at. There is also blossom, with petals tumbling in the wind, and it's warm enough not to have to wear a coat. At lunchtime I will probably pack up my usual spinach and mushrooms, find some protein to go with, and head to one of the nearest parks. Holland Park always has wonderful flower displays and it will be nice to see what they are doing so early in the season. Last year the beds were planted full of wild flowers and lavender and it was almost like being at home, apart from the distant noise of the London traffic.

Yesterday was another reasonably low calorie day and I ate practically the same as I did on Tuesday. Packed up veggies at home and brought them into town with me so that when I got to P's I wasn't desperately searching for something suitable to eat (left out on P's kitchen table was a packet of lemon biscuits and a Pot Noodle - not very Sara friendly!). Still wasn't alcohol free, but last night I was sampling one of the potential wedding wines, a Brouilly, so I'm not bothered about it. It wasn't entirely to my taste, but we will be serving several others on the day so I'm sure I will find time for a glass or two of something I just adore.

*****************
LATER. The joys of the internet. I've taken advantage of a little slack time to do some browsing around on supplements and the like, using a link that appeared in a response to a posting on one of the CR mailing lists I'm signed up to - cheers, Arturo, indeed. :-) Reasonably useful stuff and not too incomprehensible for a layperson. Well, I think I understand it. The upshot is that I have decided to go back to supplementing with folic acid, and to take calcium and probably magnesium as well. And to cut down on my spinach intake, because although eating 225g of spinach a day makes the numbers in CoM look stunning, there is no guarantee that they are stunning, and I may be losing calcium because of it, and because, quite frankly, I am a little sick of the stuff. More diverse greens in my salads to come, I think. And with luck most of those will be home-grown...

Failing to catch the wagon

I'm cross with myself. Today should have been a really good day, starting with the gym and back to my usual food - and both of those have happened. But I picked up Tigsy's ashes from the vets, and was very uspet... Being upset I have had some cider and a couple of glasses of Pims (with full-fat tonic) at a neighbours. I am so annoyed that I can't seem to manage one day alcohol free at the moment.

I am going to be boring and post what-I-ate and confess to my boozy sins. Maybe that will get me back on track sooner. Tomorrow is yet another day.

Breakfast:
Total 0% with pumpkin seeds, goji berries, almonds, a brazil nut, ground flax and brewer's yeast; kiwi fruit

Snack: raw broccoli with 1 tsp apple and chilli jelly.

Lunch:
Spinach with mushrooms, brewer's yeast, eggwhites

Snack (1):
Cantaloupe, Grapenuts, Gojis
Snack (2):
Steamed asparagus, raw cauliflower with 1 tsp apple and chilli jelly.

Dinner
Steamed purple sprouting broccoli, quorn cooked with leeks, tomato and rosemary


===========================================
Nutrition Summary for 10 April 2007
===========================================

General (79%)
===========================================
Energy | 927.5 kcal 77%
Protein | 81.4 g 90%
Carbs | 117.8 g 98%
Fiber | 37.6 g 125%
Fat | 23.1 g 58%
Water | 1397.5 g 52%

Vitamins (98%)
===========================================
Vitamin A | 34653.7 IU 1485%
Folate | 1137.8 µg 284%
B1 (Thiamine) | 1.7 mg 155%
B2 (Riboflavin) | 4.2 mg 385%
B3 (Niacin) | 20.9 mg 149%
B5 (Pantothenic Acid)| 6.8 mg 136%
B6 (Pyridoxine) | 3.2 mg 244%
B12 (Cyanocobalamin) | 1.8 µg 73%
Vitamin C | 454.2 mg 606%
Vitamin D | 442.9 IU 221%
Vitamin E | 19.0 mg 127%
Vitamin K | 1499.2 µg 1666%

Minerals (97%)
===========================================
Calcium | 1080.9 mg 108%
Copper | 2.5 mg 275%
Iron | 19.8 mg 110%
Magnesium | 505.1 mg 158%
Manganese | 6.6 mg 365%
Phosphorus | 1218.5 mg 174%
Potassium | 5227.4 mg 111%
Selenium | 152.2 µg 277%
Sodium | 998.0 mg 67%
Zinc | 13.9 mg 174%

Lipids (56%)
===========================================
Saturated | 2.5 g 25%
Omega-3 | 2.0 g 186%
Omega-6 | 4.6 g 105%
Cholesterol | 3.0 mg 1%

Off Piste

I have company so much this weekend that my CRON practice has become, by necessity, a bit ad hoc. Breakfast is the only meal that I get to eat alone, and I should be loading up on the vitamins and minerals far more than I am, but somehow cold spinach does not appeal at barely eight in the morning.

I no longer take supplements except for my D, but at times like this I really do wish there was a magic pill to pop to make sure I get all my RDAs that is CRON-peer approved. Or rather, since I know what I end the typical ad hoc eating day low on - iron, zinc, B5, B12 - that I knew which individual supplements came from reputable sources. How do others know and manage? Or is this yet another thing I am putting too much unnecessary thought into?

Speaking of unnecessary thoughts, mine have been tending towards the morbid recently - because of Tigsy, because of the situation with my grandmother, which is not good, and yet more family members are facing health difficulties. My mother keeps saying, what if something happens to you, what would I do?, and I just don't know what to say. Obviously I am doing my best to stop anything happening to me yet by practicing CRON and taking exercise (not as much as I should!), but still I drink, and drink too much (this weekend has already been heavy on the intake and it's only Sunday) - so my best is not yet good enough. How on earth would I face her if something happened to me because I had one glass of wine too many over the years? Or if anything happened at all?

But today of all days, Easter Sunday, I need to banish these morbid thoughts and focus on new starts - new starts for me (every day is a new start, right?), and new starts for those around me whom I love. And new lives - another dear friend of mine has just had her first baby, and that is very exciting. I can't wait to play Bad Auntie Sara.

Looks like it is going to be another stunning day for weather as well. I am loving this sun, just loving it. P, my neighbours and I are off to visit my mother for the day, which I am looking forward to. She lives in a very picturesque town on a river estuary, and there will be some lovely walking to be done, lots of sea air, and a pub lunch (at which I shall not be drinking because I am driving, yay!).

Oh, yes. In a moment of madness in the farm shop yesterday I purchased Hot Cross Buns to share with P and said neighbours on the trip. (If this is just a UK thing, I can imagine hoards of US readers sniggering at the back...) Why I thought this was a good idea, I don't know, because now I need to avoid eating one myself. But they did look very, very good indeed. Oh, the slippery slope!

Gardening and Easter in Summer

Wow. It is such gorgeous weather for England at this time of year. I just got sunburnt sitting with friends in their garden... and then with my neighbours in my garden. wine might have been involved.

It's been great today to be off work and get some planting done and some tidying up in my courtyard. I just love bedding plants; it is so satisfying to make a small area look one thousand plus one times better in just one hour, just by filling some pots up with compost and annuals.




After all that, a girl needs a CR snack.

This evening will involve more wine and less CR friendly food, unfortunately. But it will involve more friends and good company and I can live with that.

Hope everyone has a happy long weekend.

The CR Social

So last night I met my first real life CRONie. I picked Hilary up from her aunt's house about fifteen miles away from where I live (narrowly escaping the very generous offer of tea from said aunt - which Hilary later informed me would have come with blueberry muffins!) and we drove back to my house on a rather circuitous route because we were talking so much that I missed the road I should have taken. No matter! We got back here and opened the bottle of wine she had brought with her, and sat on the sofa and just talked and talked as though we had known each other for years; I can honestly say I felt no awkwardness around her once I had met her although I was nervous as all hell at the prospect - would she think I was totally mad? would I think she was totally mad?. It was so funny - we had a lot to say to each other, obviously most of it around CRON but not all of the time.

I had already mostly prepared what was going to go into our dinner.


I'd measured everything into portions and entered them into CoM and crunched it. I was worrying that she would think this totally extreme but no - just normal. Cool! It was just such a relief, we both agreed, to be able to have CoM up in the kitchen and the scales and subtract and add as we prepared our food and not worry (that much!) about judgement. As it turned out, we were adjusting the meal right up to and after we ate it - which amused me.

The menu. Green veggies - asparagus, sugar snaps, green beans, spinach, rocket and edamame. The protein was in a mixture of Total 0%, low-fat cottage cheese and a small amount of low-fat feta, with fresh herbs (mint, basil, coriander) stirred in. And then of course there was the chocolate tofu pudding, topped with blueberries.

Here is Hilary with her resveratrol supplement....

... and me, having forgotten to do something with my hair. In my defence, and indeed Hilary's (although less so!), my camera takes the most appallingly unflattering pictures.

We did try to take a picture of the computer with CoM up, just to prove our CRON geekiness, but the flash wasn't playing ball with the screen.

Shortly after we had eaten everything, it was time for me to take Hilary back towards Wells. I hadn't realised how tired I was getting but it hit me just as I waved her off, and I drove back here with windows open and music blaring. At dinner we'd been discussing how healthy we were in general and how we rarely got colds; when I got home my throat was aching a little and I was feeling sort of buzzy and chilled - oh no. Hubris! But after some sleep, even though it is incredibly early in the morning (and, in fact, still yesterday in Canada according to the posting time of the comment I just left on Hazel's blog!) I feel much better now, which is a relief.

In short, great evening. I really hope that one day more of our paths cross in the real world.

Bring the Sun Back!

Yesterday's brilliant warm sunshine inspired me to come over all summery when thinking about tonight's CRON meal. Lots of steamed green veggies with a herby creamy sauce and maybe some toasted almonds, and tofu chocolate pudding in my dinky espresso cups topped with blueberries and possibly hazelnuts. It's even all entered into CoM.

Of course, today is more of a hot soup, baked butternut squash and quorn sausage sort of day. That could be done. I shall see how things feel later. It's got so chill, I want to hibernate again, and I am craving wintry carbs. Specifically, I am craving the heavy, dense pumpernickel bread with raisins and seeds that I picked up at the weekend and sliced up and put in the freezer to stop me doing precisely what I have been doing all day and toasting it in 30g chunks. It is oh so delicious but the carb line in CoM is pushing at the edges of the screen and making a break for freedom.

However, I still do think I need to raise my calories a little more - I've not been close to 1100 a day for the last week or so, and I was floppier in the gym this morning than I should have been. If I keep them as low as I have been, I'm not sure the weight loss will actually stop where I expect it to (around 110-112lbs, based on previous experience) and that might not actually be a good look in July, still three months away. So eating the pumpernickel is not a sin.

Might post photos of the CRON-a-deux later on.

Later. Et voila.

New Day

Yes, well. I was very tired yesterday, and when I am tired, I whine. And yesterday's post was a whiny post again. Today I shall make a concerted effort not to mope.

I do find CRON on the road hard to do, and I take what I perceive as my failure to do so too personally. In retrospect, the weekend's food wasn't bad at all. Yes, on Saturday, I ate toast and cereal to the tune of approximately 300 cals, but at least the cereal had B vitamins. After that, the lunch that was not spinach-and-mushrooms (and I was slightly taking the piss out of myself in yesterday's post when I wrote that that was what I needed) was rather delicious homemade falafel with tiny amount of hummus and tzatziki, and lots of green salad, and all I ate after that was some more rocket and an M&S edamame and green bean combo which I have already estimated in CoM to be less than 100 calories. Sunday may have had toast, but nothing else truly disasterous. I just get too frustrated by my own hunger at times, and more so when P and I get out of eating sync, because then I feel like a pig for feeling hungry when he doesn't, and I end up social-eating trying to forestall hunger but doing exactly the reverse (toast, cereal). It really is a fine line to tread but it wouldn't be so fine if I just cut myself some slack. The hand of the CR Almighty is not going to reach down and slap me silly because I eat some empty carbs, and there's little point in reaching my tenth decade if all I've done with the preceding six is fret and stress and whine and present myself to the world as totally insane.

Anyway, today is a new day and it's already started well with my new favourite breakfast of Total 0%, LLBY (can't get enough of the stuff now, I don't know what's changed!), ground flax, gojis, pumpkin seeds, almonds, a chopped brazil nut - all mixed up together in the pot - with whatever fresh fruit I have available on the side (today it was kiwi) and a glass of my soya milk, and a couple of cups of cocoa and water. Yum. And now I am going to take all that lot to the gym, via the grocery store where I need to shop for stuff to cook a CR meal for Hilary Grace when she visits tomorrow evening.

Enough Already

Thank you for the messages of sympathy left on the last couple of blog entries. I would say that surely not much else can go wrong - but considering my grandmother has now fallen over and broken her shoulder in the hospital bathroom, I'm not hopeful that this dark cloud is moving off just yet. I just feel so helpless.

Even so, life goes on. I kept CRONing all last week, with calories a bit lower than usual, so I now know that my weight drops like a hot potato when I go under a 1000 cals a day. At one point the scales were on 112lbs, but not for long - and this weekend gone was a Stratford one, so my eating has not been as great as it could be and I imagine that will show... but do I care? Yes/No/Yes/No... *sigh* I really don't know. Yes and no.

P has been making comments about me eating the bare minimum I need to get along, and how I am looking at food just for the "drugs that are in it" and not enjoying the pleasure of eating for eating's sake. True enough, I guess. I'm feeling low enough right now to wonder if CRON is another box I have locked myself into to validate my issues around food... I just don't know.

Poor P. I was totally out of whack yesterday because I ate cereal and toast at breakfast (second breakfast, actually, I'd had my yoghurt and LLBY and gojis and nuts and seeds when I woke up, hours before he did), and I was just shaky and horrible on empty carb overload, and I needed to eat again when he didn't... He puts up with so much, but I think even his tolerance would reach its limits if I had responded to his question "What do you need?" with "Well, actually darling, I need 250g spinach, 200g mushrooms, 7g LLBY and a teaspoon of flax oil with 15g almonds and 6g walnuts to balance my Omegas; oh, and some hard-boiled eggwhites would be nice too..." - and who can blame him?!

I just really do hope that I am not doing damage to myself in attempting to do exactly the reverse.