hereandnow

I just got all my mail delayed from our place overseas. It’s all arrived way too late. There are so many overdue fees I feel sick. Plus the house isn’t insured due to a late payment - yikes! We’ve paid it now on the net but have to wait till tomorrow to call when they are open to confirm.

It’s just such a terrible sinking feeling… of course I’ve managed to get my head round it but my god soooo terrifying ripping open envelopes of things that are past due. One for the accounts of my business looking pretty stern. One i worked out had been paid in the interim but my lord it’s chilling. I immediately went downstairs and ate too many biscuits with my tea. Oh well.

It will all pass… does make me realise just how incredbly lucky we are to be able to have the resources to handle all this. Makes me think about those who don’t.

…my weigh-in day is Monday. But I have to say I’m surprised the scales haven’t budged down this week already. I think my body is in shock from all the exercise.

I am feeling very focussed though at the moment so I think I’ll have a drop by then with any luck. It’s soooo beautiful here at the moment that it’s a pleasure to be outside. I think I’m going to collect blackberries today and maybe do some jam. I haven’t made jam in a very long time so i’ll have to get some tips from my in-laws who are the preserving kings/queens - whatever. still no joy adding pics to my posts drats!

Okay so I won’t overdo it with the posts but it’s the end of the day and I was all good and did a good 40min walk this morning even though I did mammoth walk yesterday because I thought “I’m not going to rest on my laurels”. HOWEVER I didn’t plan for the hour and a half walk with the kids on the donkeys later in the day! I’m exhausted. i was changing the sheets on the beds in slow motion tonight.

Anyway the good thing is that all this ex kills your appetite! Hooray!

So yesterday we went to our new friend’s place for dinner. At the point I left the house I had a zero points balance for the day due to the uphill walk (in fact probably a negative points balance for the day as I underestimated the points earned in the walk if anything. I find ww works better if you underestimate your ex and over estimate your food if you have to guess a bit.
ANYWAY it’s lucky I was in a such a points privileged situation cause we had salad not too bad, but then rabbit stew and polenta which was absolutely delicious. AND TO FOLLOW THE MOST DELICIOUS CHOCOLATE CAKE KNOWN TO MAN. Ha! it was an 18 point dinner no sweat! My daily allowance is 18 points to those of you who aren’t WW savvy. So I’m still on track but only just!

The choc cake story is funny though as I asked the guy for the recipie as it was soo mind blowingly good and he said that because he was a scientist and worked to formulas all day he didn’t use recipies he just guessed! So then he went on to tell me what he had put in …

3 tablets of chocolate!! This is like those 150g family bars of dark choc - his wife gasped in horror! and this was for a little cake in a loaf tin!!!
3 eggs
1 tub of thick cream
sugar
….and finally a teaspoon of flour!
Hilarious!

Of course I could be mistaken on this because my french is dodgy but from the look on his wife’s face I think I am spot-on!

Anyway apart fromthat I am FEELING GREAT from my walk yesterday…like a new person and incredibly motivated.
I also read the best article in the new york times about eating for pleasure

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/dining/17diet.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

You might have to log in which is annoying but it’s worth it

Here’s a great quote from it

“Last year, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported on a study of 97 obese women, all of whom were avoiding high-fat foods. Half the women were instructed to increase their consumption of fruits and vegetables. By the end of a year, the women who were focused on adding vegetables lost an average of 17 pounds, 20 percent more than the women who were just paying attention to fat consumption”

Anyway the girls are home today so I’d better get back to kid-wrangling…will try to get at least 30 mins intoday AND have decided to keep a pot of No points soup on the go at all times as a stand-by.

…very pleased with myself today. Decided to do a big walk and my other half joined me to go mushroom picking. I was incredibly slow up the mountain and quite grumpy but managed to keep it to myself (mostly). I realise I get very defensive about my fitness but I decided that he did choose the walk which is pretty much straight uphill so he’s basically going to have to wait a bit isn’t he? I suggested another shorter flatter walk but he was keen on mushrooming so we did the mushrooming instead.

Once we got up the steep track (which was stunning but I was a bit grumpy and puffed to look around) it was absolutely beautiful and we did the mushroom hunting nice and slow which is how you have to go to find them.

Not much luck on the mushroom front - only a cup of girole (sp?) but still a great walk and a great addition to my walking challenge. Now I”m at over 10%of my 3000 hrs…hooray!

Trying not to use the extra points earned through exercise on food and eating lean protein avoiding carbs so I’ll have a nice drop soon!

…holding steady from last week’s weigh in though. Cutting out the carbs in the morning as a result. Started doing this yesterday and it’s amazing how cutting carbs down always makes me feel sooo much better. Maybe I should do a real low carb diet. The only problem with this is that I go a bit carb crazy after a bit.

Anyway it’s a lovely cool autumn day here. Went and did all the usual things to get the kids off to school then went and gathered eggs from the chickens and silver beet from the garden to make an omelette for lunch. Had only a 1/2 slice bread and little bit of roquefort. Then plums from the garden to finish.

Going to go for a long walk and do some watercolours this afternoon. I’m just starting so it’s all a bit of a catastrophe and I am not the best drawer so that’s the main stumbling block. I get board trying to get the sketch right when I just want to use the colours!

Anyway I’ve got to keep on top of the walking challenge and I’d like to do at least another 1/2 hour today which will bring me to 60mins for the day. 1.5 hours total for the challenge …still a long way to go.

So the challenge definitely got me moving. I’m logging in 30mins for today which isn’t much but better than nothing! The weather here is a bit grey and uninviting for walking but once you get out there it’s nice and the moutains are beautiful.

I think I am going to have to resort to my old psychological tricks where I just tell myself “I don’t have to walk 30 mins I just have to get out the door.” Because once you’re out the door in your walking stuff you the battles half over and you think “What the hey? may as well walk.” I fall for this everytime!

the other thing is to do it in the morning and commit to it of course. Because I had this realisation …you can spend your mental energy one of two ways 1) deciding if you are going to do it OR 2) Just doing it and deciding how you are going to make it enjoyable.

Anyway that’s it for me today…

…good luck thankgiving day challenge walkers! A and B teams go!

But especially… GO BUSY BEES!

Maybe the scales are toying with me but the weight is definitely coming off! I’m now back down to my set point weight of 72 kg (158.4 lbs) that I was pre-holidays. I think I was probably on the way to creeping up again but hadn’t quite established my body at the new weight. I imagine things are going to get a lot harder now!

Anyway I had a great day yesterday. The kids don’t go to school on wednesdays here so they were home and they played around in the morning around the house. I did a big ratatouille for lunch and ate a bit too much but it’s sooo delicious and it’s basically just courgette (from our garden) aubergine (eggplant) in a sauce made with tomatoes, onion, garlic and basil. I only used a bit of olive oil so it was mainly veges. I also added a bit of tuna on the side to balance it out, and some taboule which is about a point 100gms. So a really healthy lunch. Skipped the cheese course which is okay to do in France but basically everything else you gotta eat or you aren’t really having lunch. For dessert we had the plums from the orchard because they were on the turn. Some them are just so sweet!

In the afternoon we all went for a big walk. This was really lovely, we found wild blackberries, cherries and even some mushrooms. The kids love looking for mushrooms in the forest but the have to be watched pretty closely as their are only a few varieties that are edible.

I basically had the same thing for dinner which was fine by me as I loved it! Though The Diet Assassin struck again by bringing out a secret stash of choc pudding so in true French style we had them in little glass dishes and I had two tablespoons full and ate slowly with a small spoon … which worked because I was full from the veges. Did have some points durring the day when I really wanted to overdo it. I notice I really really really want to wolf down my food. It’s incredible to observe how this is is my habitual eating style … to pack it in…almost like I”m fueling up and i’m in a rush. Here they have tiny portions but they take agggges to eat. So they are eating more (spending more time eating) though they are actually eating much less. You know how the 1950s cookbooks have such tiny portions? Well they are still eating these portions here. But very slowly and usually in three or more courses. So for example lunch at my in-laws.

Course one: melon wedges  - one inch 2 per person

Course two: tomato farcee - roast tomatoes with sausage an herb stuffing two med per person

Course three: green salad with lots! of dressing (small portions mean they can get away with this

Course four: cheese - this is were you top off the meal but usually by now you’ve passed the 20 min stomach to brain transmission period ( you know the one where it takes your brain 20 mins to register that you’ve eaten and to turn off the hunger sensors? Yeah that’s the one.) so usually you just take a bit for the taste

Course Five: yogurt or fresh fruit. These are standard ways to finish a meal france. Usually the yogurt is plain and sold in tiny pots seriously 2oz /60g for fromage frais and 125gms / 4 oz for yogurt. They add sugar on top pretty liberally but YOU CAN when the portion sizes are so tiny!

So that was the menu for the family lunch the other day… no wonder they are all thin as rakes!

Also very probably water but who cares!

 Just been reading blogs about people going to extremes to lose weight…I really don’t think this is the way. Also lots of blogs about people denying themselves pleasure. Also don’t think this is the way. I really appreciate people writing so frankly because it lets me see that my own thinking is often like this - one extreme to another.

I do think that it is possible to be satisifed with small amounts of healthy food …but it’s really hard to get your head around this. I know that I frequently get panicked when i think i’m on a diet and i can’t have as much as I want as fast as I want as sweet and rich as I want. But the thing is …I ALWAYs feel sick and overfull after. I simply habitually over eat. So is it possible to really truly change habits? This is the question. Maybe this is what my weight loss project should really be about…. seeing if I can change the habits of a lifetime.

So I’m down a pound after the first day! I realise this is just water but “what they hey” It’s encouraging and I’ll take what I can get.

So the kids are at school - we saw them off on the little bus from the village which was very sweet. Then we followed them down in the car! After making sure they were okay with their first day at a school in France we headed off …soooo peaceful at the house. Almost eerie but really nice to have time to think and to tidy up.

As for the diet I forgot what a hassle it is to look up and calculate points…sigh. Plus the unexpected things like my husband bought the most delicious sheeps milk yogurt which was full cream I think though it had no notes on the side of the pot because that is how they do things here. So i sort of had to guess what it was. The portions here are sooooo much better for dieting though. The little pot was only 125 gms so it wasn’t so bad. We had some lovely salad and couscous.The tomatoes here are heaven in summer. My mother in law bought lots at the farmers market last week for canning and they are so perfectly ripe. Great with just a little salt.

The other thing my husband The Diet Assassin did today (he’s French and doesn’t know the meaning of the word diet) was by crossiants to celebrate the girls big day with a special brekkie. Yikes! I had to go with half with a bit of my mother in laws devine apricot jam and no butter. so it’s no point soup tonight!