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Weight Fluctuations

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English: Weighing scale, Galicia, Spain França...

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When I came back from the US I was quite annoyed with my progress. I’d gained weight. I wasn’t imagining it – my weighing scales was telling me that I’d put on over a kilo.

However a couple of days later I’d “lost” it again (or most of it anyway). That was bizarre.

I’m now more or less back on track.

Apart from the bad eating during my stay in Florida another factor that I hadn’t even considered is water retention. You can easily ending up holding on to a lot of extra fluids if you fly longhaul, but the solution is pretty easy – just drink plenty of water (thanks to Lee for pointing this out). So 48 hours later and several litres of water (and other fluids) later I noticed a significant “drop” in weight again. The only downside is that if you drink that much liquid in a cooler climate like Ireland you end up going to the bathroom a LOT!

 

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Spinach and Tomato Sauce With Pasta

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I’m really beginning to like spinach and having a couple of bags of frozen spinach in the freezer is fantastic, especially when I haven’t had a chance to do any real shopping, like this week.

There’s a lot of different pasta sauces that you can make without using meat or fish and this one is incredibly tasty.

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Spinach and Tomato Sauce With Pasta

Course Main Course
Cuisine International
Keyword pasta, spinach
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 25 minutes
Total Time 30 minutes
Servings 1
Calories 550 kcal

Ingredients

  • 2 tsp Olive oil
  • 1 onion
  • tin of tomatoes
  • 1 tsp of balsamic vinegar
  • 1/4 tsp of sugar
  • Oregano
  • 4 balls of frozen spinach
  • 75 g of pasta uncooked weight
  • Black pepper

Instructions

  1. Heat the oil and cook the diced onion and crushed garlic until soft
  2. Add the tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, sugar and herbs and simmer, uncovered, for 10-15 minutes.
  3. Add the frozen spinach and cook for 10 minutes
  4. Cook the pasta
  5. Drain the pasta and mix it into the sauce
  6. Serve with parmesan and black pepper (to taste)

 

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Post Florida Diet Post-Mortem

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Alligator in Gaylord Palms Hotel

Alligator in Gaylord Palms Hotel (Photo credit: blacknight)

 

Last week I was in Florida for a work related event. I had been worried about eating while “on the road” and unfortunately my fears were more than justified.

 

I weighed in this morning and I’ve gained over 1kg, which is NOT good. Whether that is due to alcohol or food, or simply the combination, is not clear. I’m not happy about it.

 

So what went wrong?

 

And what can I do to fix it next time?

 

It started pretty badly with the Hilton Dublin Airport. There are no salads or light options on their menu. Nothing. There are a couple of “healthy” options, but I’d have been perfectly happy with a salad. So I opted for a side salad with a steak. Total disaster. The salad was pretty “sad” looking and the dressing was horrible. It tasted of cheap vegetable oil! For a hotel like that you’d expect them to either have a proper dressing or to serve you the oil and balsamic vinegar and let you do it yourself. As I stay there a lot this is a real problem. Do I need to find somewhere else to eat before heading to the hotel or should I make myself a packed dinner?

 

Days when you spend up to 20 hours in airports are always going to be a bit of a mess. I avoided milky coffee and stuck to plain. Foodwise I just ate the inflight meals.

 

When I finally got to the Gaylord Palms hotel in Florida problems began.

 

Breakfast, as I’d suspected, wasn’t an issue. They had a very good breakfast buffet and you could eat plenty of healthy stuff in the morning and get a good start to the day

 

Unfortunately a lot of the restaurants in the hotel didn’t really “get” the concept of “healthy” at all. Pretty much none of them had anything flagged as “light” or “healthy”, which is odd, as it’s not as if Americans don’t have obesity issues ..

 

The first evening’s dinner was typical of the problems I encountered. I ordered a steak salad thinking I’d get salad with a bit of meat. Instead I got salads drowned in dressing, cheese and topped with some kind of battered onion thing! (I was able to move some of this to one side and avoid it)

 

For the rest of the week I tried to get “lighter” options whenever I could, but to be honest I found it really hard. It’s as if nobody in Florida ever eats light food..

 

The alcohol consumed during the week is a different matter entirely and is linked in part to the type of event I was attending. With  a lot of other events I’d probably have been overdosing on coffee, but I need to keep an eye on the alcohol consumption in the future.

Getting Clothes That Fit Properly

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Deutsch: Logo von Levi's. English: This is the...

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I’ve never been into fashion. I’m much happier wearing clothes that are comfortable rather than even bothering to consider what’s “in”. But when you’re quite tall and big (even ignoring the fact that I’m overweight) your options are quite limited.

If you’re a big guy it’s quite awkward to buy clothes and footwear “off the shelf”. Sure you can usually find something, but more often than not you end up having to go with the most bland option available.

Shoes, for example, are always available in average sizes in Ireland, but once you get into the bigger sizes (and I wear either a European 45 or 46, which is a UK 11 or 12) the options become more and more limited. It has got better in recent years, but it’s hardly ideal.

I remember years ago discovering Palais de la Chaussure when I lived in Paris. For the first time I was able to actually choose which style of shoe to buy! That was a whole new experience for me. (If you’ve got big feet I’d strongly recommend them).

With the advent of the internet you’re no longer limited to buying locally, which has made life a lot easier. Some of the online shoe shops offer a reasonable range in larger sizes, so buying shoes and boots from Schuh is fine for me.

I’ve also found a couple of online shops in the UK that have a good range of “big and large”. Big Tall Order, for example, stocks a lot of things that you simply won’t find in local shops unless you want to spend lots of time searching (I don’t!). When I wanted swimming shorts they had a good range to choose from, whereas any shop I tried locally only seemed to cater for fitness freaks or very average sizes.

Another thing I’ve found annoying is buying things like jeans. I wanted to get Levi’s and some Dockers, but for some stupid reason the Irish and UK site doesn’t carry the “big and tall” range at all. You’d swear we were all midgets!

You can, however, find some good options either on eBay or by going to the US Levi’s and Dockers sites. The only problem with buying direct from the US sites is that you need a US address and you can get caught for import duty and VAT. Even with import duty and VAT, however, you still save on Irish prices.

One downside to ordering clothes online is that they can take a week or more to arrive and in my case that meant that by the time some of the stuff arrived my waist had shrunk! Not that a shrinking waist is a bad thing – there’s a reason I have a belt! 🙂

Feeling Good About Yourself

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One of the important things about losing weight, for me at least, is motivation and my general attitude.

When I decided to do something about my weight I had to “go all in”. That doesn’t mean that I was going to do anything insane or completely radical, as I knew that wouldn’t really work. What it meant, however, was a change of attitude about a number of things.

Why do I want to lose weight?

There’s a number of reasons, but a very simple one is that I wanted to “feel good”.

I’d also like to look better. Being able to look in the mirror or look at a photograph of myself and not cringe would be a nice feeling.

Part of that overall “feeling” is reflected in how you dress and how you generally feel.

Put another way. If I wasn’t “happy” then I was going to have problems. I can’t get motivated or retain the self-control etc., to stick to a diet if I’m not relatively happy.

I don’t know if there are any “tricks” in this, but I do know that if I was on a diet where I was eating food I didn’t like I’d be pretty miserable!

Watching the graphs on the Withings is pretty cool (I even installed the iPhone app so that I can check it from time to time!) and keeps me motivated. The worrying thing, however, is realising just how much weight I’d put on over the last 3 years.

On the plus side, however, as long as I keep at this then the movement on the graph is in the right direction ie. downwards

 

Offloading The Problem By Ordering Diet Food

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I like cooking. I don’t like cooking for myself as much as cooking for others, but since I’ve been on this diet I’ve “retrained” myself to cook at least once a day and prepare proper meals for myself 3 times a day.

But I have to admit I’m very tempted by the idea of “outsourcing” the entire thing to someone else!

There’s a few companies offering a “personal chef” service for people who want to eat properly and lose weight, but don’t have the time, energy of inclination to cook for themselves.

While most of them are in the UK and US I came across one that is available in Ireland (there might be more) – Diet Chef.

Looking at the costs it actually works out to be quite economical. Sign up for 3 months and you pay about €50 / week, which is less than what I’d spend on groceries in a normal week.

The range of food they offer is pretty good, though I don’t think it would suit me, as you obviously can’t swap things around – you’re stuck with whatever you’ve ordered.

Now if I could only find a solution for eating whilst on the road I’d be happy!