Just a little hiccup!

Had a nice and very healthy dinner tonight of sea bass fillet, sauce made with low fat creme fraiche and lemon slices, boiled potatoes, pan fried samphire and fennel - in total about 450 calories.
Then ate 100g of mango with low fat creme fraiche and bran flakes. 

Then 60g of tortilla crisps.... 

THEN 50g of sugar puffs with milk..... closely followed by 5 Jacobs cream crackers with goats cheese, half an apple and some grapes..... 

This additional "snacking" all added up to 1,000 calories!!!  
I was doing so, so well..... but at least I stopped after just a very small glass of white wine!!!

Cauliflower rice... the love affair begins!

I have made a really amazing discovery!

I read a post on the forums (on Weight Loss Resourced) a couple of weeks back in answer to someone asking about alternatives to rice (with curry, etc) and it suggested cauliflower rice.

I looked up how to make this, and it's basically whizzing some raw cauliflower in a food processor until fine (and it really does resemble rice!) and cooking it (without any added water) in a microwave. I placed my cauliflower in a microwave steamer, and cooked it on full power for 2.5 minutes.

It was served with a Quorn bolognese, and was actually surprisingly tasty and a really good, low calorie, low carb alternative. 46 calories for 150 grams of cauliflower, as opposed to 50g of white rice (that I'd usually have) is 177 calories..... so that is MORE for a fifth of the calories!

It even looks like rice! It absorbed the flavours of the bolognese when mixed in, and had all the same properties that I crave from rice (soaking up the juice, filling, etc)

Cauliflower rice with Quorn bolognese and stir fried pak choi and peas.

Middle Aged Spread....

Thalidomide.... or Flid.......

For those of us accepted by Thalidomide, the term "Flid" is an accepted word.  It's non-offensive, easier to say, and most certainly easier to spell!

All now in our fifties.  As we get older, this is probably the one single thing that is likely to cause us serious health problems, side effects and ultimately send us on our way..... is being overweight..... obese..... morbidly obese.

I am really interested in the whole weight loss for flids debate, as I am nine months into monitoring and changing what I eat.... and shock, horror, it is possible to loose weight without exercise/walking.

The only exercise I have done is swim for an hour about 6 times in the nine months....  I have managed to loose 22 pounds, in nine months just by monitoring what I eat and the calories it contains, and limiting myself to about 1,500 calories a day.

I have been educating myself about calories in foods.  It is possible to eat very well and loose weight.  I thought I did eat well, and didn't eat that much, but by logging everything I eat and working out the calorie content, I have discovered that I was probably eating about twice the number of calories I needed to in order to loose weight.

Sadly, certain things I have had to eliminate from my diet more or less entirely.  Pastry, red meat, pork, alcohol, sweets, chocolate, sausages, mayonnaise, bread, butter or spread… these are all things that contain far too many calories for me to use my 1,500 allowance to enjoy routinely, so they are now rare treats.

The other thing I discovered VERY quickly is that there is very little flexibility in my calorie allowance to let me eat out…. I DO eat out, but it is now an occasional treat rather than the usual things to do, and when I do eat out, I am careful to choose wisely.  I also have to work harder for the remainder of the week to stick within my calorie allowance if I’m still going to loose weight.

Takeaways wasn’t something I had regularly, and in the past nine months I have had just one.  Fish and Chips and is definite “no no” as a small portion of fried fish and small portion of chips would be my whole calorie allowance for the day (plus some).

The other discovery I have made is that I can’t expect to loose all of my weight in a short space of time.  This is going to take me a few years.  BUT, on the other hand, the longer I am calorie counting, the easier it becomes.  It has become ingrained into my very thinking.  I can manage to go to a coffee shop and have a coffee without cake.  If I want cake, I have a bite of Andy’s.  I am eating MORE now, I have to shop every week, and it’s costing me more, but I am cooking a lot more from scratch.  I am thinking about food more, as I have to plan what I am eating ahead of eating it and working out how to stay within calories each day.

The result of all of this (if I manage to do it) is that I loose a pound a week.  I like it because it’s that easy.  1,500 calories in each day = one pound loss at the end of the week.  A pound doesn’t seem to be a lot, but for me that’s what is achievable, and I don’t feel as though I am missing out too much.

Actually, I’ll re-phrase that.  To start with, I really felt as though I was missing out, but as time has gone on, that feeling has been replaced with a determination to loose weight!  This has been helped with loosing inches, and finding how much easier it’s become to carry out my own self-care.  Going to the loo, getting dressed – are all becoming much easier.

The weight gain....

All now in our fifties.  As we get older, this is probably the one single thing that is likely to cause us serious health problems, side effects and ultimately send us on our way..... is being overweight..... obese..... morbidly obese.

I have been overweight since the age of about 9.  It's never really caused me any issues, apart from making it harder when I was younger to get school skirts that fitted,  My Mum would have to buy a larger size and then take it it.  Because of my disability, my lower limbs are shortened and my mobility is reduced as a consequence.  I was always made to do sports at school, but lets face it... someone who is still less than half way along the track as others finish the 100 metres is hardly going to be an athlete.

So I grew up accepting that I was not really the "athletic type".  My disability gave me an excuse to go easy on myself in terms of exercise.  In my twenties, I joined various aerobic classes in an effort to make myself thinner.  Exercise alone was never going to work though.

Into my thirties and suddenly I was bothered by my expanding size.  I grew quite quickly from a size 14 into a size 18, then 20...  By the time I became pregnant with my first baby in 1985, I was probably a size 20.  But thankfully during my pregnancy I didn't put on much additional weight.

At this time I was going to Slimming World weight loss classes every week.  I'd start off all enthusiastic and the weight losses were good.  But soon the loss had slowed down and my old eating habits returned, along with most of the weight I'd lost.

I soon just gave up worrying too much about it.  I learned to be happy with the body that I had.  My self-confidence was ok. It was a bit of a pain finding clothes to fit, but I settled for a uniform of black elasticated trousers and a smart blouse over the top.

Welcome to my blog...

Enjoying my 50th birthday, rowing down the Thames with my family   October 2012

So it's only now half way through my journey to lose weight and to get fitter that I suddenly think how useful it might be to others for me to share my journey.

I'll share a little about myself for those who don't already know me.

I am Thalidomide impaired, a Thalidomider... a flid! 

Thalidomide was a tablet marketed in the late 50's and early 60's to combat the effects of morning sickness... given to many unsuspecting pregnant women with no clue as to one of it's most devastating side-effects.  I hesitate to say "unknown side effects" because actually there is evidence emerging now that in fact the German drug company (Chemie Grunethal) had been alerted plenty of times about damage to the unborn feotus.

But that is another story altogether.

Me as a baby, September 1962

I was one of those "Thalidomide babies", born in the September of 1962.  To an unsuspecting woman, my Mum.  Of course, one cannot imagine just how devastating that must have been and indeed, I may never really understand the full impact of having a baby as severely deformed as I was.  My Mum shares what she wants to about it.  As a Mum myself now, I can only imagine how her life was altered.

My Mum, Andree Simone Hortense Vaillant

Me at about age 3

Me, aged about 4 and one of my younger sisters, Michele

But my Mum, Andree, did a fantastic job of bringing me up.  I have two younger sisters who were born within three years of my birth, so my Mum had her work cut out!!!