Weight update...

It's all good, I've officially lost 11kg!

So I'm under what I was when I went on holiday to Henty, and off my diet!
The weight has come off more easily since I had a weeks break, and I can thoroughly recommend taking a short break if you are levelling off a bit. It seemed to do the trick for me.

I've had 2 fasting days of 500 calories this week, and I've tried to stick to 1200 calories on all the other days, just to make sure that I get back on the downward track. I'm so glad that I made that decision because now I know what to do next time I start levelling off and I won't be scared to have a break next time either. If I did it before, I can do it again!

I have 2 more kilos to lose before I get to my first goal! Then I'll set another chunk of a goal. Not too big, just enough to keep me going, that won't be the end goal yet! I've got quite a way to go, so I like to look at it in small, achievable goals.

Today, my daughter and I went to the Southern Highlands and saw the Tulip gardens in Bowral, there were stalls and shops, and we did lots of walking, and enjoyed the sunshine! We had lunch out, and debated what would be the meal with the least calories. I just had to take a bit of a guess at what my lunch was. It may have been as much as 700 calories, so I made sure I enjoyed it, and I had a very small salad with salmon in it for dinner. I had made up some lite jellies the other day, so I had one to finish the day, and it was only 7 calories for 1/2 cup!

It's been another great day, and I'm looking forward to a good nights sleep, and another sunny day tomorrow!
Liz

Holiday at Henty

Last week, my husband and I went on a sort of holiday to a place called Henty, which is a small country town not far from Aulbury in New South Wales, Australia. It took us about 6 hours to drive there from our home, quite a lovely drive. I had booked earlier in the year, to have a stall in the ladies lifestyle tent at the Henty Machinery Field Day event which is held over 3 full days each year in September. This year, it was the 50th Anniversary! I have been doing a stall there for the past 3 years, selling floral jewellery made from bread dough, hand painted greeting cards, and lots more hand made things, and its been lots of fun. The best part, is that we were so fortunate to find accommodation on a farm near the event, we have met the most beautiful people and we come home to wonderful home cooked, home grown dinners and a great family atmosphere to relax in after a very busy day! Thank you so much Kate and Graham for your warm hospitality, you always make our Henty holiday a pleasure!

The fields of canola are so beautiful with their bright yellow blooms at this time of year! I wasn't able to take too many great photos because we were getting up early and driving back to the farm late in the afternoon when the light was dim. This photo was taken out the car window on the last day of the event, on the run.

  

This is part of the farm where we stayed.

These are some of the shots I took as we drove from the farm on the last day

It was such a beautiful morning!

The event is held in a field that has a grid of roads and a few buildings, and each year, people come from all over the country and tents go up everywhere to make what resembles a town!

There is even a bank! A fabulous Farm Gate Market where they sell beautiful breads, produce, cheeses, wines, jams and sauces etc.

On the first 2 days, these roads were mud and slush this year, setting up in the rain is not much fun!

You can see some of the puddles in this picture.

That was the background for my holiday story, my main dilemma was that I knew there would be very long days, and not much control over the food I would be eating. The Country Women's Association were selling all kinds of slices and cakes with tea and coffee in the same huge tent that my stall was in. There were not that many healthy choices for lunch, and it is so hard to resist what was on offer at the farm. 

With all this in mind, I made a big decision before we went away, to have a holiday from my diet.

It was lovely to forget about weighing, measuring and saying no to food, but I did feel nervous about what would happen when I got back on the scales when I got home. I kept telling myself that what goes on easily should go off easily too, but there was a nervous feeling inside me.

Well, as I thought, I did gain weight! 1.5kg in fact! in one week.

This did my head in quite a bit to be honest. Even though I thought I had prepared myself for what would happen, it still made it hard to think that it was possible to get back on track and lose what I had gained! I gave myself a day to not think about it (even though I did), then I decided to do a 1200 calorie   day, but fell off in the afternoon by eating a whole lot of maltesers! Try again!

I had a talk to myself, and said "you can do this, you've done it before!"

The next day I successfully managed a 500 calorie fasting day, and guess what, I lost a whole kilo! 

I wondered if this was too good to be true, but after doing a 1200 calorie day yesterday, I was still the same weight, and today, I am fasting for the second time this week so I'm hoping that I might be back to what I was before I went away!

The moral of this story is that if you go on holiday from your diet, it is possible to get back on track, as long as you don't leave it too long after you get back, and be prepared for the weight gain disappointment, it plays powerful tricks with your mind. Make a plan and stick to it, you'll soon see good results if you hang in there.

I'm 100g off my 10kg goal!

A little something fresh and sweet.

This dessert is so simple and it's great for Summer on a non fasting day

The whole family will enjoy this one!

This recipe makes 7 (1/2 cup) serves - 39.4 calories per serve

Make up 1 sachet of lime flavoured lite jelly using a bit less than 1 cup of boiling water to dissolve the jelly crystals, and a bit less than a cup of cold water

Then

Place the contents of the can of traditional fruit salad in juice into the jelly

Use a half cup measure to serve the fruity jelly into glasses, bowls or tea cups

Place the jelly into a large covered container in the fridge for a few hours

Serve with ice cream and a strawberry

1 (46g) scoop of ice cream - approx. 94 calories

strawberry - 3 calories

this picture is worth 136 calories

Now that's a nice ending to the day!

It's official, after 8 1/2 weeks, I've lost 10kg!

Yes, you got it right... I've lost 10kg after 8 1/2 weeks, and I've done it on my own! Yes, I've had support from my Husband, who gives me lots of encouragement, and doesn't mind eating the new healthier meals I've been introducing him to, and my daughter, who is doing the 2/5 fasting diet in her own way too! It's nice to have people around you that are on a similar journey! I've also had encouragement from a neighbour up the street who has gone walking with me from time to time, there is also another neighbour who encourages me every time I see her taking her dog for a walk, or when she tells me about what she has been doing to regain her health and fitness, what recipes she is trying and what she's found that's helping her.

When I say I've done it on my own, I mean that I haven't paid an organisation or business to help me loose weight. I think this is a major thing for me because in the past, I have lost weight and have gone to one of those organisations, having to pay say $15 a week, or sign up with a credit card and always, there comes a time that you end up weighing up weather you can afford to pay that extra amount of money each week. If you, like me, have trouble spending that money every week on yourself, you end up making the decision to give up, and try to do it on your own, but the momentum slows and before you know it, you are gaining weight again.

Now that I have lost this amount on my own, I have proven to myself that it is possible, without too much trouble, to loose weight and improve my health on my own. This means that I won't have to make a decision in the future, to give up because its costing me too much money! That's a big plus for me!

The app I use (myfitnesspal) is also free, and is so easy to use! It helps you find out how many calories are contained in the food I eat, and you can log every day what you eat. I find it so good to plan what I am going to eat too. I can use what I already have in the fridge, and make up meals with things I already have bought. I can use up leftovers which is something that is also better for the finances. I have found that there is a lot of food wastage with other diets. That's what I've found is what I love about what I'm doing now, I can eat what I like, though there is some self control needed, it is really working for me!

I have to say that in the first two weeks, I lost weight at a faster rate, and as the weeks have passed, there have been ups and downs, the rate of weight loss has slowed, but it has continued to decrease. I am much closer to my first small goal, and I'm feeling good.

I celebrated my milestone yesterday with a visit to the hairdresser, and I bought myself a lovely red top that was on special! There was no coffee and cake involved!

Low Calorie Jelly Treat 

This is 1/2 cup serve of Jelly - 7 calories

with

19g Gippsland Dairy Yoghurt - Plain/Vanilla - 26 calories

Aeroplane Port Wine Lite Jelly

there are lots of other flavours as well

this picture should have had a strawberry on top - 3 calories

what a fabulous dessert, for only 36 calories (including 1 strawberry)

for those of you who have wanted to leave a comment but have been frustrated by this blogger system, I think you'll find that if you register with Google, then when you log into my blog (elizat123.blogspot.com), you sign in to your Google account, and then it will allow you to make a comment. I'd love to hear from you!

If you come in via the Facebook link, you need to sign in to your Google account to make a comment too. You'll find the sign in link at the very top right of my blog.

regards
Liz

Trying not to lose heart...

This week seems to be one of those weeks where I've  had lots on, I got busy and didn't always have time to make firm plans about food... Thus, I've tended to lose heart and succumb to the things I shouldn't be eating, or letting myself eat the things I feel like. That hasn't been the best plan.

As a result, I've had a few ups and downs with my weight. I'd put on 300g and then with fasting on 2 days, I went back to the same weight I was before, then I lost 300g but I've put that back on again, so I'm going up and down but over all, staying the same!

I think that if you deprive yourself for too long, you will inevitably have a binge of all the stuff you feel like you've missed out on. In some ways, I'm not sure if that's a bad thing, because you can surprise your body by eating a bit of bad stuff, and if you get straight back on and do the right thing, your body says to itself, ok, looks like I'm not starving after all, so you can afford to lose a bit more weight. I'm in favour of having a treat every so often. It help to make you feel like you're not deprived of the foods you love, and it gives your metabolism a surprise.

As I said in my earlier posts, I'm not an expert, but I have done a bit of research, and this is just what I've been thinking. It's my take on the 2/5 fasting diet.

Today, I was talking with my husband, trying to explain what I'm feeling, and I came up with the idea that being good and being bad, in food talk, isn't really what I'm on about. Even though that is often how I describe what I do and how I feel about food. What I am really trying to do is to take control of what I want to eat. I don't want to feel as though the urge to eat is because I've lost control. I want to eat when I'm actually hungry, I want to be in control of me! I'm sure that when people are trying to give up smoking, they want to be in control of themselves. They don't want their urge to have another cigarette take over! That's how I feel about food, I want my self control to win, not the smell of KFC or the taste of chocolate. I'm not saying I won't be eating the occasional sweet treat, but I want to be in control when I do!

Today, I've been busy crafting and shopping, I've made my own meals and stuck to today's plan, and I'm feeling hopeful that tomorrow I'll be a little lighter. It doesn't matter if I'm not, because I am winning the self control battle, and that makes me feel great!

Week 8 - my 2 fasting days for this week are over, but I'm trying to be good

Today I'm sticking to 1200 calories. I'm wanting to stick to real food that I love to eat, but I want to keep control of my portion sizes! That's one of the things that I have trouble with.

I find that I need to weigh most things and having my digital scales out on the bench is great.

This morning, I had my favourite breakfast again.

1/2 banana

100g Greek yoghurt not sweetened

2 flat tablespoons of my Granola sprinkled over the top

30ml skim milk for coffee

This time, I made a small pot of coffee and put the milk in a little glass jug. I used a pretty fine bone china tea cup, and it was so much nicer. I used the same amount of coffee that I would normally use in a mug, but it seemed to go further in the pot. I enjoyed nearly 3 cups of coffee even though I had used the same amount of milk and coffee I would have used in a mug on other days. Maybe it was weaker, but it felt special and I took my time enjoying the process of sprinkling the granola, and pouring the milk and the coffee into my special tea cup. This doesn't feel like a diet

271 calories 

Now for lunch

This was 2 cups of my new soup - 198 calories

A large glass of water

This recipe makes 17 cup serves and each serve is 99 calories

You could have 1 cup and then add other vegetables to make it a bit different but make sure you add the calories that you use for the extra veg.

It's a broth type soup with much less fat to remove than my other soup recipe

It's very easy to make and stores well in the freezer.

Bacon and Italian bean mix soup

300g short cut bacon fat removed and then weighed, diced

150g red onion diced (1 medium onion)

130g or 1 cup diced celery 

140g or 1 cup diced carrot

123g or 1 cup diced parsnip

4 ltr water

Pepper (no salt - salt makes the beans go hard)

Italian style soup mix 375g (McKenzie's)

You could also add some chilli powder if you like hot spice

Put all the ingredients into a 6ltr slow cooker

Cook on low overnight or 6 - 8 hours

If you like your soup a bit saltier, add it after the beans are soft

I love the way the beans go creamy in this soup, I think that's my favourite thing about it!

It also makes a great base, as I said before, you can change it up and fill it out, depending on how many calories you have to spend!

It's a very practical way to keep something nutritious with a good sustaining hit of protein up your sleeve for when you feel hungry and can't think of what to have or make.

for Afternoon Tea

I had a lovely refreshing berry drink made in the blender - 87 calories

Ingredients:

32g Weis Sorbet summer berries

120ml Emma &Tom's Quencher With Benefits - Cloudy Apple Juice

45g frozen 4 Berry Mix (Mccain season's choice)

250ml Diet Lemonade

a few ice blocks

use blender to make this very refreshing drink

My Dinner

Greek Lamb and Feta Salad with Roast Sweet Potato - 366 calories

Ingredients:

100g Lamb strips (no visible fat)

50g green salad leaves 

50g roast sweet potato

2x cherry tomatoes

20g greek feta cheese

50g snow peas

28g raw radish

20ml Balsamic Honey Mustard dressing (coles simply less)

80g lebanese cucumber

slice and dice as you like,

fry the lamb strips in a non stick pan with a tiny spray of oil

heat the roast sweet potato

 (I do a whole tray of pumpkin, sweet potato, garlic when I'm using my oven for something else)

 then toss together

enjoy with another glass of water!

what I loved about this dinner is that I used 20g of Feta cheese. Last night I was fasting and could only afford 10g.  I could really taste the difference with that bit extra!

I also love the taste of the lamb strips with the creamy roasted sweet potato!

I still had enough calories for Dessert!

Healthy Brownie with my Favourite Coffee Ice Cream

(the strawberry was saved from the berry drink on the side of the glass)

Healthy Brownie - 120 calories

69g Coffee Creme (Ice Cream) Prestige - 141 calories

strawberry - 3 calories

264 calories for the whole dessert

For this whole days worth of food, I haven't even gone over my limit!  Today added up to 1,186 calories, so I have 14 calories left. I also used up lots of salad things from the fridge, and I've frozen batches of soup and Healthy Brownies for another day! I feel very full right now and I even got a little gardening done. (I also broke the attachment to the tap for the hose, so I'll need to fix that before Summer sets in)

The Healthy Brownie recipe will follow (thats for another day, I think)

I look forward to your comments, hoping some new readers will send me some responses
share and pass it on if you like, I hope I'm helping encourage someone out there to start, or keep going
regards
Liz

It's Spring and a great time to start!

Here in Australia, it's Spring and it won't be long before we'll have to start wearing Summer clothes. No chance to cover up, no way of hiding the thick arms! This is what I don't like about this time of year!

One great thing about loosing weight, I've heard is that you don't feel so hot, or you feel cooler than you did when you were carrying more weight. That sounds great to me! Maybe I'll have less trouble with hot flushes this Summer. There is enough time for me to loose enough weight to make a difference before the really hot weather kicks in. That's another good reason to keep going, or for someone who hasn't started, to give this healthy eating plan a go!

Today, I'm fasting. I've weighed myself, and I'm the same weight as I was yesterday. That's ok, it's my second day of fasting this week, and I usually see the difference after my second fasting day. I'm getting to the stage where I'm having mind battles. You start to doubt yourself, and your resolve isn't so strong. I re read all my posts yesterday to remind myself of why I'm doing this, and that helped a lot. I also read some blogs on the same subject, to see how other people on the same quest were going. Both the blogs I found were very interesting and they were different because they were written by men. Men on this diet are allowed to eat 600 calories on fasting days. I don't know how to link these blogs into this one, but one was by Slim, and the other was by Bob. They both talked about having periods where your weight loss plateaus and there were lots of helpful comments about how to overcome those times when you don't seem to be able to budge those kg. it is helpful to find other people who are on a similar journey to yourself, sometimes they have come across things that may be helpful in your future.

I have made a small change in my layout on this blog, you may have noticed a space where you can enter your email address, so that you can be notified whenever I do another post. I hope this will be helpful to you.

I would also love to get some feedback from my readers! I'm getting to the stage where I don't know what to do next. I don't want to boar you, and I don't want to give up either.

Are the recipes worth doing? Have any of you tried any of them?
Do you need more 500 day menus? Or 1200 calorie day menus?
What other info would help you?

If you know anyone who might benefit from reading my blog, please share it
I am not an expert, but this is my experience, and I'm happy to share what I can with you.
Regards
Liz

Excuse me while I have a little talk to myself

You may be wondering why I haven't posted anything for the past couple of days! Well, as all good plans go...they, at some point go pear shaped! The point when this happens can change everything!

This is the point when a little positive self talk can make the world of difference and get you back on track!

Let me tell you what has been happening with me over the last couple of days. It all started on the day I made the cheesy cauliflower and Leek soup. I was wanting to find a different option for lunch on a 500 calorie fasting day, for those people who don't think that carrot and apple would work for them. I had this thought that the soup would be nice, but I wouldn't be able to have anything for afternoon tea. That afternoon, I felt so tired and weak, I ended up having a sleep and then made something for dinner and then felt tired enough to sleep again. I don't know if I was just sleep deprived, and needed a catch up, or my thoughts and fears took over and made me so lethargic, the whole point is, that it caught me up and made me doubt myself a bit, and next thing I was letting myself eat too much of things I knew would show up on the scales.

Within a day, I had gained 300g, and then another 100g the following day! I knew I had to talk about this subject here with you, but it's not really a subject I wanted to talk about.

Yesterday, I had that little talk to myself. It was important to nip the problem in the bud, and tell myself that I can get back and stick with the plan. I worked on sticking to 1200 calories yesterday, and I ate things I love to eat. It was Fathers Day yesterday, and I even worked out how I could give my husband surf and turf for dinner ( he loves prawns ). I drank lots of water and made a big pot of tea with orange slices and a teaspoon of Agave Nectar in it. That helped me to drink more. I made another batch of my chicken and vegetable soup, and all of it was so enjoyable to eat.

This morning, when I weighed myself, I have lost the 400g and some more. It was really just a hiccup , but I did need to tell myself what I had to do and how I was going to do it. Self pep talks can change things for the better! You should give it a go! Make sure you always end on a positive note!

I also need to tell you that I had the other serving of the Cauliflower soup on Friday, while I was working at our local Craft Cottage. I found that it was still delicious and I didn't get tired or sleepy. My thoughts and doubts about how sustaining it would be, had made the difference the first time I had it, and the second time, I was so busy, I didn't have time to think about being tired! Your thoughts can be so powerful and can physically change what happens in your body. It's so important to remember this, and make sure you are thinking positively!

Happy Spring, (or Fall) everyone! A lovely change of seasons!
Liz