The new regime

Kick the Hell Out of Breast Cancer Diet progress!!

OK, so following on from yesterday’s post, I am taking things one day at a time. I do not have the energy to count calories and obsess endlessly about what I am eating at the moment. So, change is coming in relatively small doses until I can figure out what works for me. My first change is to completely revise my lunch time eating habits, which are probably what got me in this mess in the first place. I am aiming for loads of raw veggies, but I don’t find this on its own can stop me feeling hungry until dinner time, so I am trying to balance it with a little bit of something else. Trial and error! In any case, I am also going to try and cut way back on meat. Most of what I’ve read says I should become totally vegan. Hmmm. I don’t think I can do that, no matter how bad it gets. Therefore, I am hoping that I can have some things in moderation that I really love, but not as much as usual.

My wonderful brother Brian also has offered to indefinitely lend me his Wii and Wii Fit, which is amazingly kind of him and I can’t wait to give it a go!! 🙂 I do need to be getting a lot more exercise. Again, one day at a time and I will have to build up slowly. I really miss my horses, they were fantastic exercise, but they are now retired and have earned it!

Lori at Fairytales and Margaritas suggested I try mixing Ranch Dressing with my cottage cheese to make it taste less like baby vomit. I am delighted to report that, although eating it is still not up there with pizza, lasagne and chinese takeaway, it DOES taste almost bearable with the dressing. THANK YOU Lori!! 😀

So, today for lunch, I had more raw veggies, cottage cheese with ranch dressing, and a teaspoon each of red and green pesto. Oh, and, rather guiltily, three pickled (SMALL) chillis stuffed with cream cheese and preserved in olive oil. I’m sure they didn’t help the calorie count of my meal, but they definitely helped it taste better!!

And, it was almost pleasant!!

Plus, the scales had already relented to the tune of 2lb this morning. The other day, they told me I had put on a STONE- yes, 14lb, since my surgery three weeks ago. How is this even possible?? I am blaming fluid retention. It still hurt though! Sniff.

Random bits of news

I’m finally starting to feel back to normal health wise since my surgery. Today is the first day that I haven’t been feeling completely wiped out at work, which can only be a good thing! My wound is a little slow to heal, and the arm is still pretty sore, so I have an appointment with my lovely cancer nurse Rosey on Monday so she can take a look.

I’ve seriously made a decision to make some very major lifestyle changes. Since my diagnosis, I have not been eating well and because of the surgery haven’t been able to be out and about as much as usual.

I got on my scales yesterday and nearly died! They practically asked me to sit down for the bad news before giving me the read out (or, more likely, wanted my fat ass off them!!). I knew I had put on some weight but was seriously horrified by how much it was.

I have all my adult life battled with my weight, but now I have an extremely big motivational factor to make me make this work. I have been doing some research, and I really would like to try and massively reduce the amount of processed food I eat, and try as hard as possible to eat raw vegetables as much as possible. My normal lunch for example nearly always involves a pre packed sandwich and a packet of crisps. This is NOT part of the cancer survival plan and it can no longer be a part of my life.

I’m certainly not saying I won’t ever eat a sandwich or crisps again- that would be totally unrealistic and I know myself well enough to know that it wouldn’t last, no matter how bad the cancer gets! I just want to try and have a better attitude towards food.

For lunch today, I had a small tub of cottage cheese, two carrots and a third of a cucumber cut into slices. MAN, I had forgotten how shitty cottage cheese is. I really do detest it and will not be bothering again. Carrots and cucumber are both on the list of foods that I’ve been reading about as being good for fighting cancer, and they tasted a lot better without the minging cottage cheese. Maybe I can come up with something else to dip them in. Homemade hummus or something like that. 😀

There are also some recipes for vegetable juice combinations that I want to try, which sound absolutely gross but at this stage I am willing to do anything to prolong my life, so if that means drinking something which mainly involves broccoli and beetroot, so be it!

I am taking the diet thing one day at a time. I am going to stay with my aunt on Friday night and don’t really plan to stick to it then. So, I am off the wagon already!! 😀

Other news-

Ricky started nursery school properly on Monday. He looks absolutely adorable in his wee uniform! So far, he is having a ball and loving the new school. It’s right next to his daycare, and some of his peers in his daycare class are going too, so he’s got some familiar faces there anyway. I took some pics and will post them later. They aren’t very good, because he’s not really a morning person and was exceedingly grumpy and not in the mood to be photographed! 😀

My chemo is due to start on 26th September. It’s good to finally have a date for it.

Can’t wait to see the nurse on Monday. Mainly, this is because I have not been allowed to wear deoderant since my surgery, and whilst I **hope** I haven’t been secretly nicknamed “Stinky Suzy” by my colleagues, I’m living in constant fear!!!! Also, I have no feeling in that underarm and have no clue how to cope with the fact that I now have one hairy armpit and one clean shaven. It’s horrific!!!!!

So, those are my random thoughts for today. Cottage cheese and stinky, hairy armpits. How glad you must be to have read it! 😀

I must avoid the sticky toffee pudding!!

I’m heading out for dinner tonight to a new restaurant in Belfast called Drennan’s. I’ve read a good review in the Belfast Telegraph, and a friend of a friend ate there last weekend and said it was lovely.

 My friends Heather and Jacinta, who I’m meeting for dinner, are terribly subversive when it comes to my diet (in fact, I think the phrase “I don’t want to hear another word about your effing diet” may have been bandied about last time…lol…) and unfortunately in the spirit of eating out with great company, I fear my resolutions will all crumble and fall all too easily. Last time we went out, I had lamb shank, deep fried prawns in filo pastry and the dreaded sticky toffee pudding. All well known for their low calorific content, of course…as my mother in law says, if you haven’t cooked it, it’s calorie free, and all that.

 However I really do want to do better this time round. So I am putting on record my desire to change my eating habits, including when I go out, and I am going to make every effort to have soup or mussels for starter, steamed fish for my main course, and no pudding.

Yeah, Suze, good luck with that.

Will report my progress tomorrow! 😀

Chicken with Roasted Vegetables- Low Fat!

Bizarrely, it was my skinny husband who came up with this recipe. It’s dead easy, made in one pan and tastes amazing.

If you’re on a diet but noone else in your house is- like me- this is a winner, because you could simply cook some potatoes or rice for the other guys, and give them some cheese to go over it, whilst keeping everything low fat and low calorie for yourself.

The smell of this cooking is enough to send anyone to distraction! It’s gorgeous, full of colour and flavour, and you get a lot of food for the calorie count!

Also, I’ve given recipe amounts so that it will serve two, but it will easily adjust up or down as you wish.

Chicken With Roasted Vegetables- serves 2

2 chicken breasts

1 large red pepper

1 large yellow pepper

250g/punnet of closed cap mushrooms

2 medium sized courgettes (zucchini)

1 red onion

3-4 garlic cloves, left whole in their skins

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp fresh herbs (or 1-2 tsp dried if that’s all you have)- eg rosemary, thyme, coriander etc

salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Place chicken breasts in an ovenproof casserole or pyrex dish

2. Cut the peppers and red onion into 1-2 inch chunks. If the mushrooms are large, halve or quarter them. Cut the courgettes into slices about 1/2 inch thick. Put in a bowl with the oil and herbs, plus some seasoning if you want it. Mix together well so that the oil coats the mixture. It’s amazing how far such a small amount of oil will go!

3. Arrange the vegetable mix over the chicken, preferably so that it is completely covered. Tuck the garlic cloves in around the dish.

4. Bake in oven for approx. 30-35 minutes, until the edges of the peppers are looking a little charred.

Calorie count per serving- only 255! 🙂

That’s it- dead easy! Enjoy!

Diet- back on the straight and narrow

Well, the new scales are now in and I don’t have any more excuses, so it’s back on the diet for me today!

Of course, I’m going for dinner with my friends Heather and Jacinta tomorrow night, so I’m probably going to fall at the first fence, but I will try to keep it down to a dull roar.

My diet consists of trying to keep fat to a minimum and reduce my carb intake a little (but not to a massive extent, certainly not Atkins style). I try to stick within a daily calorie bracket of 1000-1250, especially as I am short- 5ft 1in. I eat as much raw and fresh fruit and veg as possible. I do buy low fat ready meals for my lunches in work, as somehow I feel like I’ve eaten more when it’s something hot, and sandwiches are so full of calories and fat, it’s hard to find one which tastes decent for my calorie allowance. Also, if I buy five ready meals on a Monday morning and leave them in the fridge, there’s no excuse for me to go to the shop at lunch times and be tempted!

I’m also going to make a concerted effort to be more active. I get very little exercise during the week as the kids are only really in bed by 9pm and then I have to start cooking dinner for me and Ian, but with the evenings getting longer, I’m thinking I can work in a walk sometimes!

I read a good article recently that said you were being unrealistic if you thought you could be good all the time, and that if you were being good 80-90% of the time, you were doing well! I hope I can stick to that!

I’m not really ready yet to share my current weight with the world…only my girls at the Common Ground know that, and they’re pretty good at keeping secrets, lol…maybe sometime down the line (in about 20lb’s time) I will be ready. I might try and post about once a week on how my diet is going though, just so I can (with luck) look back in a few months and say I’ve come a long way. 🙂

Goals-

1. Lose about 1-2lb a week

2. Try and stick within a 1250 daily calorie allowance

3. Eat more raw fruit and veg

4. Exercise more, and put more effort into the exercise I do get

5. NOT throw in the towel at the first sign of trouble!

The new bathroom scales have arrived!

My new Babyliss Weight Watchers scales arrived just now. Of course, even though I’m in work, I couldn’t resist trying them out!

Anyone who read my previous post regarding my last set of scales will know that they, after many years of loyal servitude, recently started acting up and I knew it was time to replace them.

The new scales are my first electronic set. The display is large and easy to read. You tap the glass with your foot, wait for a zero reading and hop on. As soon as you get off, it switches off, which is great! It has settings for stones, kg and lbs, and measures weight to the nearest quarter lb, which is pretty impressive.

So- liking the scales, NOT liking the read out. I nearly died! 😦

Back on the straight and narrow today. I have a lot of work to do!

New bathroom scales!

Our bathroom scales have been playing up for a long time. Now, to be fair to them, they are probably older than I am and I inherited them from my grandparents, both of whom have been dead for the last fifteen years, so they’ve led a long and happy life.

I have traditionally loved my scales because during my first attempt at dieting, I discovered that if you leant all your weight on your left foot, you had an extra weight loss of 2lb. Even though I am absolutely aware that this is cheating, I always count the lower figure. However, despite this wonderful and beneficial feature, I have recently become aware that they are getting less and less accurate.

Despite having been good this week, and VERY good yesterday, when I got on the scales this morning and leant hard to the left, they advised me that I had in fact put on 4lb since yesterday. This put me in an unspeakably foul mood for the rest of today, but has forced me to accept that my period of self denial is now at an end.

To this end, I have now purchased some ELECTRONIC scales from Amazon which I imagine won’t respond to coercion and will tell me, at last, just how overweight I am.

Here is the link-

http://www.amazon.co.uk/WeightWatchers-BaByliss-MS8320U-Precision-Electronic/dp/B000A6Q2ZG/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&s=personal&qid=1204126771&sr=1-15

Now, I am going to have to face up to my true weight when they arrive, which will no doubt leave me in a state of horror and incredulity for several months, and may risk my diet altogether. But it’s just something I have to do!

Once they arrive, I will write a review! If I can still type/speak…