I am getting a pill mate to carry tabs so I start taking proper

Lets see what happens

the main points I remember is that my weight is yo yoing all the time, good one week and bad the next.

I keep forgetting to take my tablets

my gym is non existant.

I NEED my butt kicking to get into gear

I am looking at recipes to cut out the pasta rice and bread and to try and eat more protein. and the gym of course.

my immediate thought is: why has it took me so long to realise what i need to do

the best thing is that i have had 11 days off work so got chilled a little till i got phone call to

1. see if i can work = no
2. to say they wanted me to work at a different house as i know the guys  -  i know 1 of em and also changed my shift pattern

well its now 13th and am back tom so a bit iffy but am sure once i been there for a few hours will be ok.

Well I’ve done the shifts and was fine why I worried I dont know, and am actually doing another 2 shifts

I have decided that I will start again in the new year from scratch with my weigh loss regime etc and testing and will make it work this time.

This will give me time to search out recipes/meals I will and can use to cut my carbs down and also to work out what I am gonna achieve in the gym.

December has now gone and am feeling worse for not trying to kep any control on my eating. No doubt wen i weigh myself i will be heavy.

I was ill to start off and never ate so silly me also never took my tabs for a week.

after that felt quite down so wasnt bothered but did start taking them again but have not really bothered about testing and what i was eating. by now it was Dec

On Friday I made a shepherd’s pie with 500g lamb mince, garlic, rosemary, minced carrot, celery, mushrooms and onion.  What used to be a chore is a breeze with the food processor to do the mincing of the veggies.  I made a spot of gravy with some gravy granules/lamb stock cube/boiling water and simmered the mix for about 20 mins.  Then divided it into two, put half into a pie dish and the other half I froze.  I topped the pie with roast sweet potato and roast garlic mash.  Yummmm… this is very rich.  Just peel and roughly chop your sweet potatoes, spray a baking sheet with oil, spray the cubed up potatoes (approx 2.5 – 3cm cubes) and pop them in the oven gas 5, 375F, 190C for 20 mins.  Then slice a whole bulb of garlic cross wise so you can see the cloves cut in half and throw onto the baking tray, spraying with oil again.  Leave for another 20 mins until the sweet potato is blackened at the edges, a knife goes in easily and the garlic is squidgy.  Remove from the oven, put the roast sweet pots into the food processor, squeeze out and add the garlic cloves and whizz with a good lump of butter until it’s pureed.  Top the Shepherd’s pie with the potato mash and a goodly amount of grated parmesan and cook approx 25 – 30 mins until heated through.  We had this with some green veggies beans/sugar snap peas etc.  The sweet potatoes sound carby but are actually 17.7g carb per 100g and because this mash is so rich you only need a very thin layer of it on the top of the pie.  I estimate the whole pie had 250g mash on it – so 125g = approx 22g carb.  Bargain.  We had it again with green veggies and it was very filling.

Saturday we had a boiled egg and a piece of toast each.  After my flu jab we went into Truro to do some errands which serendipitously coincided with the annual Truro food fair .  We had a wander round the marquees and bought some hand reared free range pork rolled loin, some smoked cheeses and a really brilliant fennel and anise dried sausage.  We aren’t great ones for fast food, nor wandering about with food in our hands in the street.  So we went to Mannings for lunch.  See my review here.  After a great deal more shopping, including no less than 3 supermarkets (I decided Sainsbury’s was out of order price wise) we returned home.

I’d intended Saturday night dinner to be some bargain sausages I’d bought off Tesco butcher counter… smoky BBQ at £3 for 12, but we weren’t hungry after the lunch at Mannings.  So at 9pm we eventually had a spread of cheeses and the dried sausage we’d bought at the food fair, plus a terrifically ripe and wonderful Brie from Aldi where we’d shopped on the way home with a half peach and a fresh fig each in front of the TV and a glass of red wine.  I also baked a part-baked ciabatta from Tesco.  Pack said 1/4 pack was 28g carb and there were two mini ciabattas in the pack so assuming my half of the half pack was 28g carb.  The platter was really really lovely.  However, BGs were a touch high before bed which required a 3u correction .  Oh well, as I said earlier, you win some, you lose some, but it had been a lovely day out in the sun in Truro and a nice lunch and a very relaxed evening.

Sunday dawned dull and rainy – what’s new this year?  We had streaky bacon and poached eggs on top of crumpets… bit of a luxury and indulgence the buttered crumpets, but ever so yummy with the egg yolk soaking into them and 35g for the 2 I had.  Did a load of boring chores…. and then set to and made a chocolate and banana cake (recipe here).  Long story in some ways cos one of the reasons we’d gone into Truro was to get a new food mixer, we ended up buying 2 and I shall return one tomorrow as it was useless.  If you don’t want to hold the mixer but you do want it to work on a stand either buy one at over £200 or buy one where the bowl revolves at £49.99 (Breville).

So… dinner was the sausages planned for Saturday (extremely tasty) with Celeriac mash.  The night before when we were putting away the groceries, J pulled out a “forgotten” celeriac from the bottom of the fridge and I looked with embarrassment at the celeriac I had just bought.  I used the older one!  LOL!  I did a nice stir fried cabbage with it and some green beans.  We also had a slice of the cake and some raspberries and cream.

Monday evening I resurrected a Moroccan chicken dish out of the freezer that we’d previously been very disappointed with – last month’s Good Food mag cover recipe that had been pronounced “bland” by J and a friend.   I fried off more spices in olive oil and the dish really was amazing (note to self:  “Far more Cumin/Coriander/cinnamon but worth doing again!”).  The dish had lots of veggies in it inc. large quantities of butternut squash.  We had a small fruit platter… running out of low carb fruit and not wanting to load on melon/mango too much.

Tuesday saw me using up the Celeriac mash with Pork loin chops which I cooked in the oven.  At the last 10 mins I topped them with blue cheese.  I served them with asparagus and sugar snap peas.

Wednesday I managed to make the low carb pastry we both love:

• 350g plain flour
• 200g butter , frozen…. grate the butter and sieve the flour, add 8 – 9 tbs water and bring it together, place in fridge for 20 mins.  This does 4 pies for 2 persons rolled out really thin.  So quite low carb and very crispy and lovely!

I used the dough hooks on my new mixer which did actually take the pain out of the mixing!  I hoiked the chicken and mushroom pie filler out of the freezer… Wow!  We loved it and I did some cabbage in coconut oil stir fry to accompany it.

Last night I got a container out of the freezer and thought it was chilli cos I forgot to label it.  Ho hum… it was Paprika beef which we had with a dollop of greek yoghurt and new potatoes + some spring greens.

Life isn’t bad on this diet… life is pretty good really and carbs are contained.  Tonight being lazy I am off to make the sticky sausage and mediterranean veggie thing….

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I had 2 weeks holiday and ate whatever I wanted and fitted in with what we were doing ie work in house also no gym but was busy the first week so that would count.

The biggest moment for September is that was a bit worried about my blood test that was due at end of this month and was thinking maybe not to go this was mainly due to fact that the nurse on my last one  had said if i dont lose a stone in weight will need more med and i hadnt lost any,  but was persuaded by guys on the forum i should as good or bad its best to know what results are and to go from there.

the other thing I did was write a letter to doctors requesting strips to test, a week later getting a phone call to go and see dr. I prepped myself ready to go in re reading the letter I had written to make sure i was able to put my points forward but as things went the dr said yes straight away so no discussion was needed.

Yesterday I took my meter into the chemist and they are going to get the dr to do prescription to match my meter so I am away next week in Blackpool but have enough strips to test and will wait for my prescriptions next week.

I will go back for blood results about the 8th October so will print in oct thread

letter to dr

what i should add is what i was prepared to say at doctors if they said no

I was going to ask for a 3 month supply and also offer to pay half towards strips to help prove that I do indeed need to get the strips and after 3 months my hba1c would hopefully be reduced as my weight to help prove my point.

So I know the next few months good or bad I  will be testing at writing results down as well as what I have  eaten so in future I will know what i can and shouldnt eat to keep my bgs down. This I know will help so that I can organise meals and keep my bg within range

SO….. I have been threatening a food blog for a while now, but until today I haven’t found the discipline to sit down and write.  However, I’ve had a particularly nice week food-wise and tried out some new recipes so this is as good a place to start as any!

Last Saturday we invited some friends for lunch.  Now in their 80s they find it too much to come out at night for dinner, so it was lunch or nothing.  Now I’m not a great one for doing lunches, unless it’s hot and we can BBQ in the garden, because for one thing our dining room is rather formal and doesn’t lend itself to casual meals, plus I much prefer it by candle light.  That aside I find getting a meal ready for lunchtime a bit of a strain, but hey…. we wanted to see our friends.  With preparation time in mind I decided to “do something” with pork fillet, because a. it’s a bit of a treat, and b. it cooks fairly quickly.  I did a search on BBC good food website for “pork fillet” and emailed J at work with the link to the Pork with Black Pudding and Roasted Rhubarb recipe that I favoured.  As usual he emailed back “Yummmm”.  It didn’t occur to me at the time that it’s not particularly rhubarb season and that I might have trouble finding it.  Anyway, in the reviews below someone had used apple instead, so I knew that if push came to shove I could use Apple.  I was lucky, as I walked to work on the Wednesday I passed the local greengrocer who had a nice display of rhubarb outside.  I grabbed 5 large sticks and went in to pay for it… gave a loud gulp when the assistant said “£3.11 please” and teased the last crumpled fiver from my purse.  It transpired that I had bought about 3 times more than I needed!

I prepared the fillet the day before to save time, but it was incredibly easy to make, just slit the fillet nearly in half lengthwise, bash it with a rolling pin to flatten (bit of exercise to get the BGs down) and then peel the black pudding, slice it and lay the slices along the centre of the flattened fillet.  Finally roll it up and wrap it in the slices of streaky bacon.  Easy peasy.

On the actual day I was really pleased with the way the dish turned out and it actually looked just exactly like the picture on the left (which I “borrowed” from the Good Food website).

I didn’t do a starter, just laid out some Tzatziki and Taramasalata with some strips of Pita bread to have with pre-lunch drinks.  I always find nibbling, especially pita, a bit of a PITA! Do you inject and dig in, or just not bother with the nibbles?  On that occasion I didn’t bother.  I then served the pork with asparagus, roasted baby courgettes and what I call “smashed potatoes”.  New potatoes pre-boiled until soft and then squashed with your fingers or (carefully) with a potato masher….. then drizzled with olive oil and baked for about 25 – 30 mins until crispy.  Generally I tolerate new potatoes fairly well, plus the oil slows down the absorption a bit.  The really good news is that the Pork Fillet recipe works out at 9g carb per portion!

For dessert I made “chocolate cups” recipe in the archive forum which work out about 8g carb each.  We were going to follow with a selection of 3 cheeses, a blue, a mature cheddar and a creamy goat’s cheese made locally and I baked a part-baked Ciabatta to go with the cheese.  However, one of our guests is diabetic and takes little notice of it, therefore he was nodding off after the pudding, so we never got round to the cheeses.  I was pleased to see the worst post prandial figure was 8.5 at 1 hour.  Much later we eventually ate some of the cheeses, accompanied by a couple of ripe figs, for supper.

On Sunday we had bacon and eggs for brunch with some left-over black pudding I hadn’t used in the recipe and a slice of  toast each (Burgen for me).  There was some stuffed pork left over, but not enough for a meal for the two of us, so I got two small pork loin chops out of the freezer.  There was plenty of sauce, and I roasted some more rhubarb.  There were also plenty of veggies left over so I reheated them and voila, Sunday dinner with very little effort.  There was still left over sauce and J pronounced it “really delicious” and asked could I cook some chicken on Monday to use it up.

On workdays (Mon/Tue/Wed) I have the same brekkie, 2 x ryvita with some cooked meat (ham or similar) and some cheddar.  Lunch will be a burgen sandwich with a WeightWatchers Fromage Frais or yoghourt, so as that rarely varies I shan’t mention it again.  Monday evening I was ravenous but J wanted to make some phone calls before dinner, so he brought up the Tzatziki, Taramasalata and freshly toasted Pita strips.  Despite injecting 5u my BG shot up to 13.4 making me feel absolutely vile, so tired I didn’t know where to put myself… so J said he’d settle for a sandwich, but I said I’d throw an omelette together.  I put the defrosted chicken back in the fridge.  I cut up and fried the streaky bacon strips I hadn’t needed with the pork fillet, threw in some diced up red pepper and a few slices of tomato, added the eggs and cooked a few minutes until the bottom was solid, topped the mixture with some Camembert that was congealing in the fridge + a couple of slices of goat’s cheese and popped it under the grill to finish setting.  It was actually very very nice and carb free to boot!

Tuesday I finally got round to cooking the chicken.  I used 2 chicken breast fillets, cut a pocket into each with a sharp knife and put in a hefty teaspoon full of garlic and herb soft cheese (courtesy of Lidl) I then wrapped each in 3 slices of Black Forest ham (also from Lidl) and baked them for approx 25 minutes.  I cut one of those red pointy peppers into large pieces, cut a red onion into 6 wedges, added some cherry tomatoes and threw them all into a small roasting dish, tossed them in olive oil and popped them in the oven with the chicken.  I served them with the sauce from the pork, I cooked some green beans in the microwave and warmed the left over sauce from the pork.  All told this took me about 5 – 10 minutes + 30 mins in the oven  and it was low carb again.  Or it would have been had I not added crispy potato stacks from Souvlaki for the soul (scroll down the page the recipe is under the lamb recipe).  I came across that recipe when following a link Sedge made in the forum and was dying to try them.  They were nice, but actually I think the oven temperature given in the recipe is too low – it translates to gas mark 4 and they weren’t brown and crispy after the 40 minutes, so I turned the oven up and gave them another 10 mins.  To follow we had some raspberries and blueberries + a peach shared between us.

Wednesday I did the Sticky Sausages with Mediterranean Veg recipe except I used Tesco’s chorizo chipolatas, 6.4g carb for 2 sausages, plus a little bit for the veggies and 18g worth of mixed fruit for pud.  I did say to J that I was probably feeding him too much in the way of mediterranean roast veggies but his response was that he was more than happy cos he really likes them.

Thursday (today) I had to hang around in the kitchen “supervising” the gas engineers who have been called back again as the boiler is still making high pitched screaming noises.  Ages ago, before christmas, I was in W H Smith’s on a visit to MIL and I bought a “good food” mag, at the checkout they gave me a voucher to get Jamie Oliver’s “Jamie Does” cook book for £5 which seemed too good to miss out on.  I read it on our 5 and a half hour journey home, giving J a running commentary.  It’s sat on my bedside table since then and all along I’ve intended to do his “Lamb Fricassee” recipe.  So knowing I’d be stuck in waiting for the gas man today, I had taken 5 Lamb steaks I got on special offer out of the freezer.  As I write this the lamb is bubbling gently on the stove and the smell is amazing!  I don’t know the carb count, but it can’t be much, what is there in it that’s carb?  I’ll let you know how it goes.

By the way, the remainder of the hideously expensive rhubarb has not been wasted.  I washed it and cut it into 1″ lengths, popped it into a pyrex dish with a light sprinkling of Splenda and gave it 3 mins in the microwave.  J has been eating it with greek yoghourt for brekkie this week.

12/9  5.7 before eating got beef chow mein some beansprouts and mushrooms and had a few bts of choc after then at 1 hr was 8.8 and 2 hrs 8.6 and 3 hrs  8.7