Mmm anyone for bread pudding?

27th January 2015

My life isn't perfect, but it does have perfect moments.

Good morning, good morning, who made it 5am?  Woken by my alarm, I might be waking up throughout the night but I'm having no problems going back to sleep at all!  I had a lovely day off yesterday, went for lunch with my bestie, didn't go for cake in the end, we decided proper food was in order and this is what we had;

Parsnip Soup - 6pp, chunk of bread 3pp, butter I put on bread 3pp = 12pp

Main course - Salt beef hash, beef - 6pp, potatoes 3pp, egg 2pp, oil 3pp = 14pp

Dessert - treacle tart 10pp (based on a slice of shop bought ones) & custard - 150g - 4pp = 14pp  Total - 40pp

Just goes to show if you fancy enjoying a meal out, it's more than doable on Weight Watchers, and this was worth my weeklies!  I even left about a third of my dessert as I was full!

The best thing about lunch yesterday wasn't the food, it was the giggles, it's a couple of hours away from it all where we just be us and enjoy the moment, two lovely old ladies came in and we heard them say we'd like to sit somewhere quiet and the man seated them as far away from us as he could.  Yep, we giggle a lot, I bet it burns calories!

Having that large lunch mean I'd only had a small slice of toast for breakfast, then for tea I had a slice of bread with a bit of cheese and beetroot on it, I just wasn't hungry at all after all that niceness.

I've got a fridge full of food that needs using, so no more eating out this week, I've got 3 crusty cobs left that are too hard to eat, so I'm going to make a savoury bread pudding when I get home lunchtime, I've also got spinach, peppers that can be used so will though it all together some how.  Ooo I could put it in the slow cooker I guess, but I want a crusty top I think.  You could even have savoury bread pudding as breakfast, afterall it has bread and milk and eggs in it!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees / gas mark 4

Line or spray a large rectangular baking dish with cooking spray

In a large bowl add the 6 large eggs (18pp), 250ml milk (2pp) and seasonings of your choice, I'm going to use  ½ tsp. dried oregano, ½ tsp. dried thyme, Salt and pepper) Whisk until combined.

Add in the bread (I'm using 3 cobs = 8pp but roughly 3 cups of cubed bread), about 4 cups of diced vegetables of your choice (peppers, mushrooms, squash, spinach, courgette, onions etc)

and 100g of cathedral mature lighter cheese 8pp (regular cheddar is 11pp). Mix well.

Pour into the baking dish and top with another 100g of lighter cheese (8pp) and sprinkle some more of the seasonings on top.  Cook for about an hour or until golden brown. Serve and enjoy!  ProPoints wise, your

Obviously that isn't a Filling & Healthy recipe but you could use low calorie brown bread to make it so, or even crumpets!   Mine is going to be 44pp but there will easily be 4 large portions there, maybe more depending on appetite.

I want to go make it now, but don't really think I'll have the time, lunchtime will do!  I'm tempted to throw in about 4pp of diced chorizo, or I have some cooking chorizo I could use, nom nom nom.  1/2lb loss a week is more than good enough for me because they I can eat MORE!

I will post a picture of the results later, this version I've never made before, I have done savoury bread pudding before but it's more tomato based http://wwbevsworld.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/what-would-life-be-without-emotions-x.html  or there's this one http://wwbevsworld.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/edward-scissorhands-im-not.html.  It's a great way to use up stale bread for sure.

Anyways it's 6am and I need to get ready for work, busy day as always.

Hope yours is a great one BeYOUtiful. 

Simple foods & slow weight loss - that'll do me!

26th January 2015

Change is painful, but nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don't want to be.

1/2lb on, I'll take that after my birthday week, I'm still on track for my 1/2lb a week target, total weight loss 1.5lb over 3 weeks.  I know most would want more but I'm enjoying my food at this time of year and I'm being lazy with my tracking, I'm hoping my meetings this week will motivate me to get back to tracking as that's our subject.

I've only just woke up, 7.44am and still in bed, that's late for me and typical I've got a 9am appointment at the doctors otherwise I could've lay there reading for a bit!  Yes a cervical screening test, not the nicest way to start the day but so important, please make sure you all have yours when you're called for them, I'll never forget Natalie telling me she'd got cancer which may have been caught sooner had she not missed one of those appointments.  The good news, after treatment she had her 9 month check up last week and alls clear.

We're normally ladies that lunch on a Monday but we're thinking of doing ladies what eat cake instead today, a nice slice of posh cake will be equal to a dinner, this is why I'm ok with the 1/2lb a week, the time passes so quickly anyway, heck look it's almost the end of January and I've enjoyed eating out all week and I'm 1.5lb lighter.  I'm in no rush, although I'm not going to lie there are days when I wake up and I want a stone off in a day!  That's usually after I've seen a full length photo of myself on Facebook, but then when I look again I realise it's not my body size that's annoying me it's my funny shaped legs and losing weight won't change them so I'll embrace the banana shaped legs and go back to being content with who I am.

Totally switching topic - we had our haggis yesterday for lunch with mashed swede and potato, Alfie loved his share, at 7pp per 100g, there was half the haggis left afer dishing up and Alfie was more than happy to step in.  Then for tea we had a fish finger cob, nom nom, 9pp of heaven that was, can't beat simple quick food.  It's definitely turning into my eat simple on quick meals this month, I'm just too busy to spend a long time in the kitchen and when I have got some free time, I don't really want to be in the kitchen, so my shopping needs to change for a few weeks.

But first I need to get to the doctors, so I'm cutting this short.

Have a great day, take care of you BeYOUtiful.

Are you ready for a Ready Meal?

25th January 2015

Nobody is superior, nobody is inferior, but nobody is equal either.  People are simple unique, incomparable.  You are You I am I.  OSHO

After my lovely blog yesterday about how me and Lynne were going to get back on it and track, I didn't! Actually I did track but let's just say it was nowhere near the numbers I was supposed to him, that was covered by the Big Mac and Fries I had for my lunch, I blame my mate Vicky for that as she keeps tagging me in Mac D pics to try and put me off them and it's having the opposite effect, it just makes me want a big mac meal! I just hadn't got the 'healthy' in me yesterday, I'm good again today - honest!

I spent the morning at the meeting I'm going to be running for 9 months, 9.30 at Wolverhampton Swimming & Fitness Centre, Bentley Bridge, It was a lovely meeting and I enjoyed watching Elle do her last meeting, a fitting one as 3 of her members achieved their goal weights, just incredible, she'll be very much missed this year I'm sure. 

  

I then spent a few hours shopping, bought me new pillows and checked out Aldi, got my Haggis for Dinner as today is Burns Night, nope I'm not Scottish but I do love their country and any excuse!

 I bought a ready meal from Aldi too, a Chicken Chow Mein, it was 11pp and not bad at all for £1.49, I always look and think they give a good guideline as to what you get in the Chinese takeaway. 

 

I pro-pointed a couple of other noodle ready meals whilst in there and one was 41pp!  OUCH!  

 

Both of those are 800g meals and should serve 2 people, how many people buy them and don't share them! 

 

Yes ready meals can be fab and they can be not so good, here are a selection I ProPointed whilst in Aldi, and the reason why I also check the ProPoints!  If you have a Farm Foods local, apparently WW meals are only 79p at the moment, and I think I saw them for 99p in Lidls yesterday too.

Jalfrezi - 14pp

 Sweet & Sour Chicken - 16pp

 Chicken Korma - 19pp

Tikka - 15pp

Well I have a good day of paperwork to get through so I'll say have a nice day!  I really do need to get some order in my office to make the paperwork easier - I'm like a broken record ain't I! 

'-) BeYOUtiful, everyone else is taken for. xx

Are you struggling?

24th January 2015

It is perfectly okay to admit that you're not okay.

 

Thursday according to the experts was the day that four out of five people who started a 'diet' for the new year will have given up by, a survey of 2,00 adults also showed that one in five failed to continue with a new year resolution on healthy eating within days.  The main diet-breaking foods were, chocolate, bread and crisps.

That's because they're looking at it all wrong "DIETS" don't work!  Weight Watchers is all about changing your relationship with food for good with a plan that's designed for weight loss, then maintenance once that goal weight is achieved.  Now that's the easy part!  Well it's easy to write and say out loud, doing it however.......

is not so easy, it just isn't - WHY? Because we're emotional human beings with a life time of habits that we've created and changing those is so very difficult, it's even harder to change them permanently.  We sometimes think we have, then something happens and BAM we're suddenly stuffing our face with whatever we can get our hands on.

This could be caused by external problems such as another person causes problems for you or money worries, oh there's so many reasons.  Or it could be caused by internal problems, the main one I think being 'pain', there's nothing worse than being in pain and that pain may not even be a physical one, it could be an emotional one.

Now in the past most people with a weight problem have turned to food as a comfort or a distraction at times like this and unfortunately most will always do it at one time or another, not always maybe, but....

How do you stop it?  I'm sorry I just don't think you do, I'm 45 now and I've been trying to get my weight under control since I was 18, I can do it for so long then I slip, the longest time has been over the last ten years, for 9 of them I've stayed within the realms of my goal weight, still going up and down a bit but not a lot, yet the last year I've struggled - a lot! 

Even this morning I woke up and my first thought was "Right today me and Lynne are both going to track and get back on this, I'll message her in a bit!"  It was probably the first thing I thought because she was talking to me yesterday about how she's off track again. I was great last week and the week before but this week started with my birthday and apparently it's decided to be a 5 day event!  It ends today though!

The fact is 'struggling' is part of the weight loss journey, people think a successful weight loss journey looks like the top line, but the truth is the bottom one is more appropriate, 

It's like life, you have up and downs, good times and bad times and your mood changes throughout, the same goes for your weight loss journey because that is part of your life and it's affected by everything in your life.

Your task is to cope with balancing it all the best you can, it's also to accept your behaviour when you can't (not give in completely though) and move on as soon as possible.  Don't beat yourself up, don't give yourself a hard time, forgive yourself for what you do. 

Because a huge problem out there seems to be - you don't want to eat, but you do and when you do, you hate yourself a little!

That is the worst thing you can do, it's why most people fall off the weight loss wagon completely because they have such high expectations of themselves!  They are very unforgiving of themselves and because of this, they're very all or nothing. 

That's the biggest change I've made over the last ten years and it's why despite my struggling with eating too much because it tastes good and is a pleasure to me, and also my emotional eating, I haven't gone back to where I started.  Because when I do have a bad day, or a bad week, I don't beat myself up, I understand myself, I take on board my reasons for my behaviour, I accept what I've done and I move forward.  I also try to work out what I can do to try and stop it happening again.

Some people might think I'm weird but I'm thankful for my weight struggle because it's made me the person I am, it's made me a kinder more compassionate person, it's given me empathy for others in similar situations, it's given me a job I love and it's helped me meet amazing people on a daily basis, it's also been the route to meeting the people I love most in the world after my family, I have some really great, true friends and all of them I've met through Weight Watchers. 

Enjoying food and emotional eating is part of who I am, it's part of my personality, and I love me completely so I've accepted those traits, I refuse to accept that it means I have to be overweight because it doesn't which is why every day when I get up, I think about what I'm going to eat and how I'm going to keep my weight under control and I've got Weight Watchers to thank for helping me learn all about how to do that and for introducing me to people who can help and support me on this journey.

Have a forgiving day BeYOUtiful, embrace the struggle and love yourself completely. xx