Time for a clean up

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Bo

I’ve heard it so many times before: If you are trying to lose weight, make sure you don’t stock anything that can potentially tempt you. To be honest, if I’m going to be serious about sticking to a proper, healthy eating plan, I got to do what’s right.

So I finally cleaned out my sweet cupboard. By cleaned out, I don’t mean I sat down and ate everything. I literally threw stuff away and took the rest of the sweets to work (only to make my colleagues grow chubby!).

I have been meaning to do it for ages but never got around to doing it and every weekend, I’d just buy more and more goodies, adding to the heap.

My weakness is chips. I love chips! Any flavour but especially the chutney flavoured ones.

Funny enough, I am able to resist chocolates. In fact, some years have gone by when we’ve had to throw Easter eggs away because they’ve gone old.

Sorting through the cupboard, I was horrified that so many of the sweets had passed their expiry date. So much of it had to be thrown away as it was inedible. Some of the goodies I had no memory of even buying. Worst of all was that some of it were gifts from people that had gone to waste.

What’s left in my cupboard are packets of nuts, dried fruit (and maybe one bag of speckled eggs and a pack of caramello bears). But no more chocolates. No more buckets of sour gums. No more chips.

And it feels good…

Why do we allow things in our lives to gather dust? Why do we put off clearing out and getting rid of things in our lives that are only causing us to slip up or not accomplish our goals? How come we don’t see how unnecessary things take up so much space in our lives?

I love Christmas. I hate getting fat!

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Bo

I’ve been having more fat days than skinny days of late. I seem to wake up, climb on the scale, see that I haven’t dropped 2 kgs over night and proceed to be in the worst mood for the rest of the day. I know I shouldn’t weight myself every day and should gauge my weight on how my clothes feel. But you see, that’s just the problem.

My clothes have become tight so I know I’ve definitely put on weight. And what’s worse is that it’s just before Christmas so I don’t even have that 1 or 2 kgs to play with. I can just see myself going back to work after the holidays with camel toe!

It’s tough though. Trying to stay ‘good’ and on track when all around you, there are loads of delicious, scrumptious munchies is torture. But in an attempt to survive and do the best I can in order to not put on (too much) weight, I pulled out my dietician’s notes from a few years back. (Thank-you Melanie Levy!)

As I read through my notes, I picked out a few simple tips which I’m going to try and stick to…

Salads are fine as long as you avoid the dressing. Go for vinegar, not oil. Ditch the olives, avo and cheese.
Bread rolls are silent evils. Do you really need them?
Don’t be fooled by the vegetables at a restaurant. They are usually loaded with butter or even cheese.
Stick to the white meat.
Choosing to have the fish is not the best option as it is usually basted with butter or oil. Ask for dry-grilled.
Steak or chicken, grilled over an open flame is actually one of the safest foods to order. No side sauces.
Tomato based pasta sauces are better than cream-based ones.
If ordering pizza, ask for less / no cheese.
For desserts, choose jelly (no custard) and swiss roll.
Sugar based sweets are allowed. These include boiled sweets, gums, lollipos, marshmallows.
Opt for skinny cappuccinos or freezochinos (if made with water)
NO NOs! Potato chips, crisps, pies, peanuts ‘n raisins.

In the back of my mind, I do know that it is Christmas and it is a time of enjoying the time spent with family and friends as well as all the yummy dishes that we don’t normally eat during the year. Like gammon, christmas cake, trifle… *drool*. And I can always diet in the new year, surely.

PS: my running shoes are parked next to the bed, just as a reminder that a second helping of roast potatoes is simply not worth it in the long run…

The simple things in life are sometimes the best!

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Bo

I was recently sitting at the airport when I overheard a bunch of Americans having the most arb of conversations. At first, I battled to understand what they were going on about, but it was a very passionate, detailed discussion about a “Crunchbar”. I casually turned around to discover that they were talking about Crunchies – you know, the chocolate in the gold wrapper.

The one guy had bought a whole bag of these mini Crunchbars from the duty-free shop and was passing it around for everyone in his group to taste.

He described it as absolutely delicious especially the honeycomb which was the best he’s ever tasted (imagine the thick American accent as you read this). Having tasted one, his friend agreed that there was “nothing better” and promptly got up to go buy himself a whole bag of Crunchbars to take back home.

I found the conversation delightfully funny, especially since they were totally serious about it. It got me thinking.

I was informed by my dietician ages ago that if I had to choose to eat one chocolate, it should be the Crunchie because due to the fact that it’s almost 80% honeycomb, it has a very low fat content. That’s pretty much how I view the plain, boring Crunchie and ever since then, have never wanted to eat one.

But listening to someone else describing it in such an amazing, delicious way really made me re-think it and start craving one.

It’s like that with quite a few things in life that we take for granted. Things that ordinarily get forgotten because they appear to be so plain, so ‘normal’, so boring and yet are often so wonderful!

Like ‘peanut butter and jam on soft white bread’ – isn’t it just divine? Yet not something you find on the menu at Tasha’s.

Or Marie Biscuits with tea. Yum.