Week 21/2013 and the TRUE cost of being off plan

Weigh in result: 1 lb on. 

It never ceases to amaze me, my ability to lie even to myself. On Saturday night I fell off of the wagon. I didn’t do what I said I was going to do i.e. continue to take photographs and work out the Syns.

Afterwards I drew a line underneath my ‘little’ mishap, but it kept playing on my mind so I decided to work out what giving in to cravings really cost me.

Financially 

I spent around £9 on Burger King (includes what OH ate but he didn’t eat much so I’ll just use the total), 50p on sweet treats, OH spent £5 on my bottle of wine, I spent £4.50 for my baguette at the boot sale and £2 for a bird’s nest custard tart. And let’s not forget £4.95 for an extra week of Slimming World where I might otherwise have been at target.

Total: £29.95

Calorie-wise

I had to estimate on a couple of bits but I ate around 4300 calories on top of my normal day-to-day calories. That’s 215 Syns, or two weeks’ worth if you want to look at it that way. 

Weight-wise

It cost me 1lb, plus guilt, shame and disappointment in myself.

So, was it worth it? At the time I thought so, but I think looking at it like this will make me think twice then next time I decide to eat a disgustingly fatty burger and god knows what else.

But I’ve been honest. And that, my friends, is progress. I think.

On the positive side I got lots of goodies in group today. My friend won the raffle but doesn’t eat radishes or celery so I got those, plus there’s a new magazine. Sometimes one will come out without much I want to try in it but I got tons of ideas from this one. And the new book too! I’m like a kid in a sweet shop!

Group Goodies

Food-wise I am still on that wagon and holding on for dear life. I even photographed the food I ate at our taster session. Although we didn’t do Man of the Year Awards. I don’t know what that was all about…

Work lunch – Yoghurt, pineapple, apples.

Taster night (1st course!) around 5 Syns.

Back for seconds, this was 2 Syns. The apple Betty on the right hand side was absolutely lovely. I’ll definitely be giving that a go myself.

Dinner – gammon, wedges, HEA of feta cheese, lettuce, celery and red onion.

Total Syns for the day: 7. I haven’t eaten my b choice yet but I WILL remember to take my Rocky Road HiFi Bars to work. I WILL I TELL YOU!

Taster night ideas – Lasagne cups (Syn Free)

Lovely Lasagne Cups

You know when you think you’ve invented something, but then remember you saw it on Pinterest yonks ago? Yeah that. I must have seen this recipe here and filed it away in some deep recess of my brain for future use.

Anyway, as my fellow members will know this week is the group Man of the Year awards and that means taster night! Normally I’ve found something I want to try before hand and am just waiting for a taster night to try it out on, but this time I was a bit stuck for ideas.

My brain must have been working on it while I was sleeping though, because I woke up with a clear idea in my head of what I wanted to do. The recipe I’ve linked to above looks very tasty but I decided to cut out the cheese and make them Syn free. I’m not going to tell you how to make Syn free bolognese because there are a bajillion recipes online, and anyhoo my method is to throw whatever I have kicking around into a pot, add some herbs and simmer. Easy peasy! Here’s what I did:

Ingredients:

A small portion of Syn free bolognese

Lasagne sheets

Fry Light

Method:

Boil the lasagne sheets, one at a time so they don’t stick together.

Spray a muffin tin with Fry Light.

Cut the lasagne sheets in half and place each square into a hole in the muffin tin. I used a scrunched up piece of foil to make them stay put.

Give another little spray of Fry Light and pop in the oven for around ten minutes until they’re brown and crispy.

Put a spoon of bolognese mix into each cup and serve.

I put a teeny bit of Parmesan in them which didn’t even add up to half a Syn!

Now I’ve had a little cooking session I haven’t really got much time or energy left for anything exciting except to listen to the new album by The National on repeat and learn all of the words for when I go to see them in November! I may mention that about a thousand more times between now and then…

Le bike

The bike is ready to go now, but I won’t have time to ride it until Wednesday. Well, I did ride it around the garden in my pyjamas but I don’t think that counts.

And lastly, here’s a picture of some funky tulips the other half bought me. Isn’t he sweet? Well, he has his moments!

Funky Tulips

And that’s it, so on to the food:

The usual work lunch – Natural yoghurt, apples and raspberries.

A little dollop of bolognese and a tablespoon (1 Syn) of Parmesan cheese, just to check it tasted OK. And the two lasagne cups shown above! I also had a HiFi bar for my HEB and 3 Mini Babybel lights for my HEA but forgot to photograph them. Oh and a couple of chunks of fresh pineapple!

Dinner – More bolognese! But this time with lots of salad because I’m feeling really bloated. I didn’t want to eat loads of starchy carbs and feel even worse. There’s also 2 Syns-worth of Parmesan on there.

Dessert – a coconut Greek style Mullerlight (0.5 Syns).

Total Syns for the day: 3.5. I’m thinking I will have a 1-2 lb gain tomorrow but only the official weigh in will tell. I’ll be keeping everything crossed it isn’t too bad though, after two days back on plan. Eek!

 

Saturday excesses

I drank the wine! I ate a Burger King! I ate a chocolate covered waffle! Strawberry cheesecake ice cream! A custard bird nest and a sausage, bacon and cheese baguette at the boot sale!

And that’s it. Line drawn underneath all that crud and I’m moving on.

I didn’t just buy food at the boot sale though, I got myself a new bike! Even if I’m not eating right I must still have something in my brain trying to make me be healthy.

I do already have a bike stashed away in the garage but it’s slightly too small for me so isn’t that comfortable to ride, and doesn’t have a seat. Bit of a downside that. My brother is currently tweaking it to make sure everything’s in working order, and when he’s done you get to see a picture. He seems to think brakes are more important than I do!

The man was telling me that my bike (it’s a Raleigh one) was made in the 80′s but is in really good nick considering how old it is. And it was only £30!

There is no food diary today since I’ve written the morning off (and couldn’t be bothered to photograph anything, the exact opposite of what I said I’d do in such a situation) but dinner was a lovely and entirely free meal of Lidl’s Salmon with Lemon and Black Pepper, wedges and salad. Delish!

I’d completely forgotten about taster night on Tuesday so I have to have a think about that. I have no idea what I’m going to make. My consultant is already doing a roulade so that’s out of the window… Answers on a postcard please!

And after a horribly short weekend it’s back to work for me. My employers are going through one of their phases where they are on our backs all day every day, making sure we don’t log off the system even one minute early, that we don’t go over our breaks by a minute and that we don’t have the audacity to stop for a quick chat. The plus side is that they get bored of this very quickly and everything goes back to normal!

Total Syns for the day: OFF THE SCALE! Tomorrow I’ll keep them at around the 5 mark, then it will be weigh day all too soon. I believe they call it damage limitation!

Frugal Hayley and Silly Hayley, plus Syn free rice pudding

I’ve been getting a bit dismayed at the amount of money I spend on Mullerlights, even when they are on special offer. And although I’m not overly worried about health implications related to all the sweeteners that go in them, all the same I’d rather eat as naturally as I can be bothered to is possible.

I thought about when I started drinking black tea with no sugar. I didn’t dislike it, but eventually I ‘learned’ to actually enjoy it. Now if I have tea with sugar in I think it’s disgusting. I’ve been teaching myself to like natural yoghurt in the same way.

Instead of my usual 12+ Mullerlights this week I bought 7 pots of Tesco Everyday Value Low Fat Natural Yoghurt (although it’s not fat free it is free on Slimming World) for 45p per 500g. Financially, that’s more like it!

This also gives the impression that I’m generally eating less yoghurt, which of course I’m not. But it should trick the other half, who is convinced I’m going to turn into a yoghurt one day. Although when I used to survive the night by drinking energy drinks he didn’t like that either. I don’t think he’ll ever be happy!

I’ve started to make a conscious effort to spend less money on food, partly so I have a bit more expendable income, and partly to prove to people that you don’t have to spend a fortune if you want to eat healthily. It really can be done.

As for today’s events only one thing of note has happened – I made my first attempt at Slimming World rice pudding! I looked at some recipes but decided to go with the simplest one and just mix a can of diet cream soda (so much for no chemicals, eh?) and 60g of pudding rice. Simmer until the liquid is absorbed and the rice is cooked and that’s it.

To be honest while it was cooking it didn’t smell all that nice, but when it comes to the eating it thankfully didn’t taste like it smelled. That’s one to add to list of successes.

And on to today’s food:

Work lunch – Natural yoghurt, banana, two apples and some raspberries.

Breakfast – A HiFi Bar (HEB).

Lunch – Avocado salad (9.5 Syns) with my HEA of feta. 9.5 Syns is a lot to spend on an avocado but I had a hankering for one and nothing else would do!

Dessert – Rice pudding with raspberries.

Dinner – Wedges, eggs, beans, courgettes, onions and HEA 2 of Parmesan. Followed by HEB 2 of a HiFi Bar. I decided to go Green because I wanted extra cheese!

Total Syns for the day: 35. It was going to be 9.5 but then the other half bought me a bottle of wine. I knew he was going to buy me something food or drink based and I dropped plenty of hints over the last couple of days about being up to my limit on Syns. It didn’t seem to sink in though! If I’d known he was getting wine I wouldn’t have had the avocado, but it should be 25.5 Syns for the bottle and if I keep my Syns low for the next couple of days I won’t be over on my total Syns for the week.

The sad think is I don’t feel like I’m going to lose this week, and I really wanted to be perfect. And after I avoided the bottle of wine I already have in the house! I could say no I don’t want it but he so rarely does anything like that I’m going to drink it anyway. It sounds stupid but this blog is all about being honest so there you have it. Although I would give advice to someone else saying it’s up to you what you put in your body and if the person cared about you they would want you to stay on track because they know that makes you happy. Unfortunately I don’t always follow my advice!

The important thing though- I won’t have any other Syns. I won’t I won’t I won’t!

GROSS!

If anyone has any ideas of something low Syn I can take to work for my lunch that doesn’t need refrigerating, then I’d be very interested to hear about it.

The reason I ask is that last night at work, when I went to get my lunch from the communal fridge, I had to move someone’s lunch out of the way to get to mine.

It was in a carrier bag just like mine, but the whole of the bag was sticky. That’s bad enough. It’s a really small fridge so you often have to move stuff around. The disgusting thing was that is was smothered in long black hairs. I’m fighting not to gag as I write this!

Unfortunately I only get a 30 minute lunch break and we are given a warning if we go over by more than a minute. It’s a long way from where we work to the canteen, so I don’t have time to go to my locker and get a cool bag and take it back again. At least not if I want to actually eat. Plus I always forget to put the ice packs back in the freezer. So it has to be quick, healthy and doesn’t need refrigerating. I think I’m fighting a losing battle.

Today I just had a little tidy up as the other half is over tomorrow. Hopefully the weather will be nice enough to go to a boot sale Sunday morning as I’ve only been to one so far this year. That’s just not enough!

Since if I keep going on about my exciting life it will just become to much for you, I’ll tell you what I’ve eaten today:

Work lunch – 2 cherry with chocolate sprinkles Mullerlights (3 Syns), a vanilla Mullerlight, two bananas and a kiwi.

Breakfast – a peanut HiFi Bar. I’ve found these are a great alternative for a Snickers.

Lunch – Thai style chicken and mushroom soup and rice, with a lemon and ginger tea. I used 9.5 Syns-worth of creamed coconut for this (I’ve got another portion for later) and it was really lovely.

A tasty little snack to accommodate my HEA – 3 Mini Babybel lights, lettuce and chillies.

Dinner – the rest of the Thai soup with coriander added, which arrived with my online shop this afternoon. It was even better the second time round.

Dessert – a Greek Style Mullerlight (0.5 Syns) and a cherry with chocolate sprinkles Mullerlight (1.5 Syns).

Total Syns for the day: 14.5. There’s always a little voice in the back of my head telling me 14.5 Syns means I’m greedy. But then my sensible voice reminds me that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with eating all of your Syns. After all this time it still seems too good to be true!