Sunday 30 December 2012

Hang on what day is it...

I am completely confused is it Sunday? Hmmm I better check that out incase it's not and I am going back to work sooner than I think. Probably not helping myself watching a Cat playing piano there is some weird stuff on TV right now....

Anyway firstly thankyou for the new people who have found my blog today and enjoyed it and to those existing readers thankyou too x it is great to know people read my rambles.

I did another day on plan today and feeling good about myself though today has been a hungry day. I managed to wake up slightly earlier today and decided I had to try my new non stick pans out so decided on a sweet omelette with fruit and yogurt.

The omelette is made with three eggs, sweetener and vanilla essence. I put some fruit and yogurt inside and had the extra on the side. Of course this was also accompanied by coffee....where would a day for me be without coffee!

A different mug this was my secret santa present and its great!

I decided that as I have a huge pile of both actual and kindle books and comics to get through I was going to spend today mostly reading.

I didn't get as far as I wanted as the comic pile was huge but it was nice and relaxing.

Lunch was a simple cheesy pasta dish

It's orzo cooked as directed with mixed veg and mushrooms added and half a tub of low low. Nice simple and on plan!

About an hour later I was hungry again maybe all this reading is making me hungry. I fancied some chips so decided to make some yummy slimming world chips.

They were sprayed in BBQ fry light to make them complete syn free and were yummy. I'm always impressed by how my chips look considering I just bung them in the oven on a net thing.

After my chips I ended up having a nap which was good but boy did I wake up confused. I was completely unaware of where I was and concerned that Rich and Doug were not there...unfortunately I've watched too much walking dead so instead of thinking rationally I thought zombie apocalypse. Okay maybe I shouldn't nap I came downstairs and found Doug sleeping on the sofa so the world was safe phew.

You won't be surprised by the fact I was getting hungry again but me and Rich had sofa glue so it took us a while to get up and start cooking. We did posh shopping this week as we had a voucher for waitrose so Rich got some Heston Blummenthal sausages so it was sausage and mash for dinner. I had quorn pork and apple style sausages (1 syn each) which are gorgeous. Im not overly keen on quorn sausages but these are really good. 

I had batch made some syn free gravy a few weeks back so had some of  that with some veggies nom nom! For pudding I used my final HEB on two hifi bars with fruit and yoghurt and a meringue crushed up. It was sweet and yummy and healthy and did I say yummy.

Tomorrow is NYE so it's unlikely I'll blog tomorrow evening. I am going to be doing an EE day as we are having a special dinner and will also be enjoying some wine. Happy New Year to you all and lets make 2013 a skinny year

Saturday 29 December 2012

Arsenal 7 TV 42....with extra noms

Well another day on plan ticked off and it has been a good day today. Firstly last nights dinner was gorgeous! If you have not tried mayflower curry yet I would really recommend it. 


Packed full of veggies and it tasted so nice. The whole meal was 7 syns (4 for the mayflower and 3 for the rice). I do try and cook rice from scratch but when Rich is on a late it is easier to chuck in an Uncle Ben's pouch. We had this whilst watching Quantum of Solace and I fancied something sweet afterwards.

Good old banana and custard yoghurt! Love these ones.

So onto today, I actually woke up kinda late for me and pretty hungry. After successfully trying a fried egg over Christmas (yes I've not had one before) I decided to try and make one today. I was successful but it did confirm that we needed new pans.

I had two linda mccartney rosemary and red onion sausages, mushrooms and spaghetti. Of course I also had my coffeh (Rich will get the relevance there).

After breakfast me and Rich faffed around a bit deciding whether we were going to go out to get him a new TV but in the end the decision was made that we would as I had found some new pans in Argos I wanted.

Bargain price of £32.75 and they are lovely non stick ones. I unpacked them then decided it was lunchtime for me so I sat back and had my lunch whilst Rich set up his TV....who'd have thought they'd be so complicated!!

Lunch was gorgeous I had three sweet onion ryvita's (HEB) four dairylea light (HEA) plum tomatos grapes and quorn ham. I really enjoyed this it was so simple but yummy and set me up for the football...

I was not looking forward to the game at all infact I expected us to lose but infact we won 7-3...blooming amazing!! During the first half I was playing with my new nail art kit that Rich's amazing mum got me for christmas and it took some practice but I have black nails with paw prints on...only problem is the paws are pretty small as I need to practice so I will probably play with it again tomorrow and put up a picture.

Once the football was done it was dinner time and we had decided to have hunters chicken/quorn fillet. This dish is gorgeous and so simple.

The quorn fillet is wrapped in quorn ham (Rich had chicken in bacon) and the sauce is 8floz of passata, 4 tbsps balsamic, 1tbsp worcestershire sauce, 3 tbsp sweetener and a tsp of chilli. I topped this with my HEB of cheese. For any veggies reading the worcestershire sauce is not vegetarian but there is a veggie version or you could leave it out. I served this with lots of veg and sw chips. We havn't had this in a while but it is gorgeous so will need to do it again soon.

Syn wise I had only used 3 up to that point on oil so decided that a chocolate fix would be good. 

Good old 5 syn freddo. Rich was nomming on his harribo at the same time and also gave me two of those which I discovered were 1 syn for the both so that takes the day to 9. I am keeping the syns low so I can enjoy my bottle of wine on Monday though whether I will drink it all I do not know. 

So thats me for the day two days back on plan under the belt and lets hope I can continue until weigh in.

Friday 28 December 2012

Ooops I did it again and jumping back on the wagon

Apologies for the lack of blog again but Christmas was kinda busy then back to normality of work.

Now first things first I faced the scales last night and gained an almighty 9lbs! It's amazing what one week off plan can do and yes it was a week as it went downhill the minute I walked out of group last week. But the line is drawn and now I have a new focus as on Christmas day my lovely boyfriend Richard asked me to marry him. I of course accepted and now my goal is to get into a gorgeous dress for our wedding (when we work out when this will be haha).

So I decided to do a bit of a collage of some of the food that caused the big gain...oh and of course the ring!



You will see that even yesterday I didn't get back on plan. This isn't everything I had but I kept forgetting the pictures. You will notice one meal looks sw friendly and that was it. 

I ended the collage with the new book, we got these last night and Ive had a quick peak through but going to properly read it over the weekend. 

I jumped right back on the wagon today and boy did it feel good.

I am back to work now so I have more of a routine. I started the day with 35g of dorset fruit muesli (reduction from the previous 40g :( ) water and coffee. I had forgotten how much I love this cereal over the last week or so. I added blueberries to the cereal so got some good old superfree in.

Today went quite slow and by lunch time I was starving. 


When I got back from group last night I did a bit of a raid in the freezer so I didn't have to prep much. The brownish stuff is mushy pea curry with extra peppers mushrooms and courgettes. I had one packet of the bear yoyo leaving the other one for a mid afternoon snack if I was hungry. I really enjoyed my lunch and felt quite chuffed by having two good meals.

The afternoon flew by and I am now off work for 4 days (only did two this week too hehe). I left work at 4 and did a few errands once I got a response from Rich on his dinner preference (curry). I headed home and took the Dougle out on a walk for those who do not know this is Doug

He is the best exercise for me I love walking him so I am glad I can get back to doing it. Weather dependent I may go out for some longer walks this weekend.

During the walk I realised that I hadn't had my second healthy A and got very excited about milky coffees. Once we got back and I changed I made myself a latte and decided to have my other yoyo pack to keep me going.

Now the coffee was 1 syn due to these little beauties. They are syrups like you get in Costa and I had a tsp of the vanilla one in my coffee. It was gorgeous!! I still have enough milk left for another coffee later :D 

Rich is on lates this week so no dinner yet but we are having mayflower curry with lazy rice (microwave rice) I am going to do the prep in a bit and will show you how it looks tomorrow. It will be a 7 syn meal as the rice is 3 syns now and the mayflower is 4. 

My aim for the next weigh in is to get as much of the 9lb gain back off again. Hope everyone had a good christmas xx

Monday 24 December 2012

Tis the season to be a bad girl....

Oh dear...I have crashed the wagon. I tried to drive it in a straight line but veered off into kahlua and custard.

Yesterday was a weird day for some reason me and Rich woke up about 5.30am we ended up getting up and breakfast consisted of coffee. I then decided I was too tired so went back to bed for a nap. When I eventually got back up again I was hungry so cheesy pasta was on the menu.

It had extra mushrooms and garlic and herb philli and hit the right spot.

It was for a very lazy day for us I didn't fancy doing anything other than reading my book which I did until it was time to think about dinner. Now as I'd had a few days where I basically ate what I wanted I craved something healthy.

I decided to make a quorn mince cottage pie with carrot and swede mash on top. It was packed with courgettes, carrots, onions, garlic and mushrooms. I also added chopped tomatoes and some stock. We topped it with cheese too.


Even though this was packed full of superfree I wanted more with dinner. 

Lots of sprouts! I love sprouts and the huge amount of veg was satisfying. I have just noticed the Doug cameo on this one he is probably munching on something.

I did have a naughty pudding afterwards in the shape of a mincemeat filo and custard with a nice glass of kahlua.

Today has been a bit of a grab anything day whilst I have been packing and watching Nightmare Before Christmas. We are off to the midlands when Rich finishes work until boxing day so it is unlikely I will be blogging until Thursday. 

Merry Christmas to everyone I hope you have a good one.

Saturday 22 December 2012

The christmas madness begins

So apologies for no blog since Wednesday but the back end of this week has been busier than normal.

Thursday foodwise i can barely remember but I did go out in the evening for a frozen yoghurt date with my friend. The frozen yoghurt is actually syn free and the only syns were a bit of honeycomb and whatever the glace cherries are. You will notice though that whilst the plan is not abandoned it is not being followed much in the leadup to christmas.

Yesterday was a stressful day as our toilet was leaking into the kitchen which disrupted my plans a little but at least that is now sorted. I went out with the girls last night for dinner and to see The Hobbit. I had already made the decision that I was going to enjoy the meal. The starter was a cheese bake which appeared to be a lump of cheese in a tomato based sauce. It was very tasty though. As the main course I had goat cheese wellington and even took a picture.

It was gorgeous and so filling and i enjoyed every bite. I then enjoyed some yummy profiteroles completely off plan there.

The movie was great and when I got out I was quite awake so went and did out food shopping about 1am. Some good body magic there.

Today has been good in the sense that I was able to walk Doug for the first time in four weeks without having to get Rich to harness him up so that was an achievement for me. Unfortunately I was craving bad food and wanted a McDonalds breakfast. I didn't have one and instead did my take on a sausage sandwich and added cheese and mushrooms. It was gorgeous and better than a McDonalds would have been.

Lunch was again on plan and nice, just simply cheese and broccoli pasta with added mushrooms and kerry low low. After lunch I finished up watching the football then had a nice bubble bath.

Dinner was not as good on the plan as it should have been but I fancied having the same as Rich so I did. We had sw chips and mushrooms done in garlic and herb philli. We also coated some chicken in the philli wrapped it in bacon and then in some filo. It was gorgeous and wouldn't have been too bad on a normal week but my syns have not been good since wednesday. We then commenced having a few drinks partaking in some Crabbies alcoholic ginger beer and kahlua. I will certainly make sure tomorrow is more plan focused but I am prepared for a large gain on Thursday.

Happy christmas to anyone reading this and I hope you have a good one :D


Wednesday 19 December 2012

Award time

Okay first things first I am absolutely over the moon tonight and I lost 3.5lbs at weigh in and hit my 3 stone award!

I really didn't expect to have lost anything and infact thought I'd put on so this gave me an amazing boost. The next weigh in will be after christmas so next week will be about damage limitation not going mental. This doesn't mean that I won't be enjoying christmas though.

We had our party at group tonight and it was such good fun, our consultant Vicky made us sing a christmassy song which was a good laugh. She was also modelling this amazing shoes

Before I discuss the rest of the day I just want to do a shout out to three special people who have supported me on my journey so far. Lynne, Tracy and Jen have been there and kept me going when I was struggling and are great friends x

Love these ladies and they all did fantastic tonight too.

Now I asked Jen to take a picture of me at group tonight but I am still working on my posing

Modelling some low syn wine which I may have to go and get some off hehe it tasted really nice. So this is me for those who don't know what I look like.

Anyway on with the day, its been another quiet one but an exciting one as my new toy came this morning

I have been playing with it all day and think I have got to grips with how it works, I just need to make sure I don't break it.

Food wise it has been a good day. Breakfast was linda mccartney rosemary and red onion sausages with my little pony spaghetti and some veggies with parmesan cheese.

I had this with some coffee and squash
Thankfully normality resumed today and I was back to my normal coffee consumption.

Lunch was mushy pea curry again which I also took for taster. I love mushy pea curry its so tasty and super speedy

I need to make this for Rich but find a way of disguising the mushy peas as he doesn't like them.

That's all for me now I am now going to enjoy a bit of Michael Buble. He is lovely hehe

Tuesday 18 December 2012

New toy time and small food day

Okay so today will be lacking in food as I have just not been a hungry person today. As you may remember from yesterday I was struggling mood wise and had run out of my meds. I am pleased to confirm that I have new meds now so normal service will be resumed.

I woke up thirsty but not hungry but breakfast is important so I made sure I had something.

Yes it's not my normal breakfast but as I said I wasn't hungry. I didn't even want coffee so I must have been feeling off ;)

My morning was taken up with arguing for a new phone and I succeeded. Tomorrow I will be the proud owner of an iphone so at least I will be getting my friends messages!

Lunch has no picture as it was pretty non existent..so onto dinner now. I had a massive lazyitus issue but remembered we had spinach and mushroom cannelloni in the freezer so that was dinner sorted. I added some mini roast potatoes made from new potatoes too just to add to the meal.

I also treated myself to a bit of garlic ketchup and it was yummy. I followed it up with some blaumange...which one day I will learn to spell!

Tomorrow is weigh in and I don't think the scales will be kind. I definitely need my normal routine of work back didn't expect to be missing work this much to be honest.

Bit of a short blog tonight but normal blog service will also resume soon!

Monday 17 December 2012

A semi good day and dealing with the blues

Okay so there will be a lack of food pictures in the blog today because my phone lost breakfast and dinner was pizza (though I only had two slices).

Me and Rich woke up a bit late considering he had to be at work for 10 and I insisted we leave earlier as I needed milk for my coffee but before we left I had a yummy breakfast of dorset fruit muesli and blueberries with yoghurt...it looked nice honestly even if there are not pictures to verify this infact if my phone if being a right pest so this may be a pictureless blog...

Anyway after Rich was safely dropped off at work me and Doug went out for a walk and decided to try and find out what was at the top of a big set of stairs we pass daily. 130 stairs later we discovered our answer....nothing but it was good exercise and Doug loved it. He wanted to run up the stairs by had to walk at my slow pace.

Once we got home unfortunately the blues set in. Being at home for so long has been a bit wearing and unfortunately I had ran out of my happy pills on the weekend so began to feel not so fab which is why dinner tonight was naughty. I will be getting the happy pills tomorrow so I will be back to fighting fit and not feeling so icky.

Lunch was good though I decided to make a mushy pea curry partly for lunch but also so I can take some in for our groups taster and it was yummy. I packed it with lots of veggies and had it on top of a jacket potato. 

Oh look my phone cooperated and this one comes complete with Doug

As I said earlier dinner was bad but I just didn't have the energy to cook and in the end didn't eat much so I don't think it will be that bad. 

Hopefully tomorrow will be much more positive and full of good noms and pictures....darn phone

Sunday 16 December 2012

Lazy sunday with a smidge of cooking

Today has been a very lazy day where I spent most of it sat on the sofa. I woke up just before 10 and could already feel the Sunday lazyitus coming on and I had only just got up! Now previous Sunday's this has been my downfall but today I managed yet another day on plan and some (ooo brief chocolate interval as rich brought in my advent chocolate then) yummy food. 

I had a craving for spaghetti on toast today and even went a bit wild by having some butter on the toast. Not a bit of superfree in sight but it was what I wanted and the joys of the plan is that you can do this every once in a while.

I chose the Hello Kitty spaghetti again and it was good.

It was then time to play Gossip Girl catchup (ooo that bit of chocolate lasted) with copious amounts of coffee. It was lunchtime before I knew it and I convinced Rich to come assist me in the kitchen being productive so when it got to dinner time I couldn't be lazy. I was a nice girlfriend and made Rich a sticky toffee pudding but made him do the hard work ;) he is currently enjoying it which makes me happy and for once I don't want to steal it. I also made him prep the potatoes for the roast before I let him go enjoy his games and I got on with lunch.

Now today was always going to be a simple food day so lunch consisted of pasta n sauce with extra veggies and kerry low low cheese. Simple but tasty and I got some good old sf in this time.

After that was done me and Doug settled down for a bit of a movie sesh watching Hocus Pocus and Deck the Halls...both okay films but I did get a tad bored so way also reading my book The Snow Child which is a lovely book and I'd really recommend it. It has a wintery feel to it. It is available from all known bookstores on book or kindle...so read it :D

Now for some reason when it was time to think about dinner I was quite motivated to do it even though considering it was a roast it was simple. I had the yummy quorn roast with lots of veggies and even tried out making gravy in my soup maker. I make syn free gravy by frying off onions mushrooms and garlic then blitzing them and adding veg stock however due to a technical hitch...being that my chopper/blender has broken I decided to chuck it in the soup maker and hope for the best. The end result was perfect gravy and a couple of portions in the freezer for other lazy weekends. Now inspired by my friend Karen (aka the other karen) this picture comes with an animal model.

This is not an unusual pose for Doug he normally tends to put his paws up on my leg to watch me eat. He had inhaled his dinner by this point but clearly wanted my sprouts (hidden under the other veg). The quorn roasts are gorgeous and very tender and again there is some in the freezer for lazy meals.

I wanted to play The Walking Dead tv catchup after but didn't want to be eating whilst doing this so whilst Rich was watching QI (hey did you know stephen fry has been to prison we didn't until today) I set to work on eating my blamange.

It tastes better than it looks and makes a huge portion for only 1.5 syns. To make this you need sugar free jelly and yoghurts. You make the jelly as directed then chuck in the yoghurts and bung in the fridge.

Once this was inhaled by me I was still a bit peckish and remembered I hadn't had my second healthy extra. We had been discussing roasting cashew nuts on our group page and I decided to experiment with this after we checked with our consultant that it was allowed.

The end result was gorgeous


I coated them in a tsp of honey and roasted them for 18 minutes. I really enjoyed them and will be experimenting with different flavours.

All in all a good day and I am looking forward to the week ahead. This should (all things going well) be my last week off work and then its christmas and I have some fun plans this week including a date with a good friend and frozen yoghurt and a night out with the girls friday with a drink with another good friend just before. I have also planned on going exploring with Doug tomorrow and seeing where a certain set of steps takes us though this is weather dependent lets hope for good weather!

Saturday 15 December 2012

Being a SW angel

Yet another day where I have stayed on plan and I feel good about it. Hopefully I can continue this until weigh in and get my 3 stone before Christmas.

As it is the weekend so no work for Rich I had a lay in today. When I did get I needed coffee and I was hungry so I got to work on sorting breakfast.

My normal large coffee and water to have alongside this gorgeous sandwich. It is two Linda McCartney Italian sausages mushrooms and three slices of low low toastie cheese. It hit the spot majorly and filled me up. I then caught up on Eastenders which included a bit where one of the characters counting to 100 without blinking which I had to try and managed....this time off work is possibly sending me slightly loopy at the moment. The morning past swiftly broken only by a visit from the postman bringing me a Christmas present from a good friend and this little gem

My dear friend Kalli sent me a cute little Jack Wilshere figure for my work desk when I go back. For now he is currently sitting on the TV.

For lunch I decided to whip up a soup in my soup maker.

The recipe is as follows

4 carrots
1 red onion
1 sweet potato
1 litre of vegetable stock
Garlic
Tomato puree

I chopped it all up and chucked it into the soup maker and sat back. It was not only very tasty but nice and thick too. I followed this up with some grapes and 3/4 of an apple (the other quarter fell on the floor and was nabbed by Doug)


Afterwards I wandered of for a bath and a good read but I was distracted by Rich looking for his old xbox. The bonus of this search was him finding a bottle of southern comfort that had been sitting in a box since we moved.

For dinner we decided to have a fakeaway in the form of slimming world kfc but this time we experimented with using smash as the coating instead of breadcrumbs. Rich was also determined to make the beans bbq flavoured and thick like you can get in KFC. The end result was a yummy dinner

Instead of chicken I had quorn fillets shaped into goujons. We also had garlic mushrooms which were also covered in the smash coating. Inside was a bit of frozen garlic which melted well. It was a yummy dinner and the plate looks appetizing.

This was followed up by a yummy pudding of two hifi bars blueberries yoghurt and a flump and a southern comfort and pepsi max. The southern comfort was 4 syns and went down well. I am considering getting another but after Thursday I want to keep the syns lower.

Another funky glass from my cupboard. I should stop using this on Halloween I guess but they are so cool.

All in all a yummy food day and a good Saturday  I am now going to settle down and watch Eclipse on tv which is my favourite of the books.