Speed Trials

That’s why it’s extra sucky that my Saturday didn’t start out too hot, because deep down, I worried that that’s as good as it would get, and it didn’t bode too well for the rest of the week.

I did not want to go for a run on Saturday morning. I tried to stall as much as possible. Finally, I got dressed, had this:

Greens+. Then headed out the door. I ran 7km in 40 minutes. Not super good, but the run was so miserable from start to finish, that I’ll take it. The whole way around my circuit, I thought of all the places where I could cut through, take a shortcut, or even just b-line it home. But I never followed through with those thoughts, and pushed forward, despite my misery. I was super stuffed up, and my nose was constantly running. My poor mittens, they’re my substitute tissues, and they’re now officially “gross”. I was also sort of phlemy, and I’m not a confident spitter, so I didn’t really know what to do with it, and it was fucking up my breathing. And just to add more bodily fluids, my eyes were extra watery today, but because it was so cold, the tears would freeze on my eyelashes, and because my mittens were full of snot, I didn’t really feel like using them to wipe my eyes, so my vision was all blurred too…

So, that’s that. The run sucked. I came back to a pretty messy kitchen:

but at least I was energized enough from the run to clean it from top to bottom, and start on breakfast:

I made oatmeal on the stove. Usually I just boil some water, pour it over some oats, and call it a day. But today I added 1/2 cup milk and 1/2 cup water to 1/2 cup oats and stirred them slowly and let them do their thing for about 10 min. I also added half a banana at the beginning; and some flax meal, 1/2 tsp vanilla at the end. topped with some cinnamon and a spoonful of peanut butter. It was AMAZINGLY good. I am a total stovetop convert. Wow. And so filling. I didn’t even think about food till 3pm. So good.

I went to run some errands, and hung out with Roscoe, who’s girlfriend is also in Florida, so it worked out pretty well. He’s doing really well these days, and he’s going to take two classes at Algonquin College in Sept: Cabinetmaking and Bartending. I’m so happy that he’s taking the cabinetmaking course, I think it will be tops. He also applied for an “outdoor sciences” course, but hasn’t heard yet. Our parents aren’t always the easiest to talk to when it comes to school (they’re pretty old-fashioned when it comes to degrees and ideas of the future) so it was good to just hang out with him and talk it out. We went to some pet stores looking for turtles, but they’re crazy expensive. He also wants a hedgehog, but I just keep thinking “not while you’re living under our mother’s roof!!” (she’s not a fan of anything with more hair or more legs than her).

Anyway, want to see something weird? My eyeball blew a blood vessecal a few months ago (maybe 10 months ago?):

Gross huh? It doesn’t hurt or anything, but I think it’s permanent. Like a vericose vein on my eyeball. Eew. I blame Artengine. No, just kidding, I blame the house we flipped. All this to say, I am so looking forward to Mexico!!! I need to relax!!! (by the way, check out my caterac in the middle of my pupil. It’s been there since birth. My right eye is well-fucked. Nothing to be done)

I had a snack from the Bulk Barn:

Dark chocolate covered almonds. The best thing in the entire world. Really. Chocolate hold on me is as tight as ever. Man, that shit is good!!

Then I made a lunch:

This was alright. I sauteed some tofu in a little oil, with some tamari, honey, ginger and chili flakes. Then I added some bok choi, cauliflower, sugar snap peas, and walnuts. I was going to serve it with brown rice, but for some reason it didn’t turn out, so I had crackers instead. Nice and sour/sweet.

I sort of lounged until about 5:30pm, then had this:

And got ready for Roller Derby.

Had a post practice snack:

And then I went to the Elmdale Tavern to see the Bible Allstars. They’re friends of a friend, and yeah, I could see the appeal, but really, I’ve been too spoiled with really over-the-top excellent rockabilly, and unfortunately, my refined palette for the stuff left the Bible Allstars a little wanting. But I’m still glad I went out. I never seem to go out anymore. Though maybe it’s due to the fact that I had a beer there, and came home and finished off the rest of the soy ice cream. Sigh. Now I’ll need to go for ANOTHER 7km run!!! (I’m just kidding, I don’t want to get into that trap of just exercising to eat, and eating to exercise. What a waste of both food and energy!!)

Yeah, I hit up a 4 hour drive before 7am this morning. Angelo had a last minute flight cancelation, and the only alternate flight he could find left Trudeau Airport at 6am this morning.

Though it was sort of romantic driving in the pitch black night with Angelo. Night driving is like driving into yourself, or so says Daniel McIvor, and I think he’s right. There’s a silence over the road, and the isolated farm houses along the highway seem so frail and fragile. Like tiny little beacons in a blanket of dark.

I got back home at around 6:30am, and had breakfast:

The last two slices of bread in the whole house, and the last banana, too. Good thing today is Fruit and Veggie Basket Day!! (ps. I also, of course, had my glass of metamucil)

I got to work and was still hungry (I had technically been up for 5 hours, so it was really like 11:30 to me) so I bought one of these “breakfast cookies” packages:

Each cookie is 100 calories, and I had one at 8:30, 10:00, and noon.

At 12:30pm I went down to the Café that I don’t like and spent about 10 minutes just walking around, looking at all the stuff I didn’t want to eat, and then went back to my desk empty handed.

I ate this instead:

Notice a pattern? It was 1pm by this point, and I still hadn’t eaten a single vegetable at all today. And save for that half banana, no fruit either. I was living on only grains, and that’s never good…

I left the office at 2:30 and bummed around the Byward Market for a while:

I ended up getting a meal I subsisted on when I worked closer to the Market. Bean salad / Coleslaw combo. The serving was generous, and I ate almost the whole thing. It was good and filling. Not the healthiest thing in the world, but hey, there IS cabbage under that sugary dressing…

I then spent way too much money at Ma Cuisine on baking supplies. I’m hoping to get some serious baking done this weekend, and so I bought a rolling pin, parchment paper, and a spatula. Then I headed off to Niccio for my hair appointment:

Another fabulous job by my girl, Karine. It’s sort of short on top and longer in the back (yeah, like a mullet) and it looks like a crazy mane ‘cos it’s so curly and all.

After the haircut, I had to pick up my basket at the Fruit Market, then I popped over to Hartman’s for some groceries, and by the time I got home at 6:24 I was tired, and hungry.

I made dinner AND put away my groceries in 15 minutes flat! Really, once I had finished taking this picture, it was 6:39pm:

I put away the groceries as I waited for my water to boil, then added some brown rice pasta and some frozen peas. As they did their thing, I mixed up some soy cheeze and soy milk with a little nutritional yeast and tumeric and heated the sauce in the microwave, then I drained the pasta and peas, added the sauce, and sliced up half a tofu pattie, and after a few quick stirs in the pot, it was ready to go. Nice and comforting, it was just what I wanted.

HOWEVER… I blame my tired state and general weirdness with my missing period for the next two items purchased today at the grocery store:

After counting how many are left in the box, I deduced that I ate TEN (10!) of these crackers tonight. Some with Peanut Butter. According to the box, that’s 250 calories.

And then, well, I have no excuse for this:

That’s right, you HIDE in that freezer, where you belong, Mr.!! I like to think that I only ate 125ml out of this 500ml container, but really, we all know I ate 250ml. That’s 420 calories, by the way.

That means I’m overdraught by 670 calories today. I better have a hell of a run tomorrow morning!!!

This week has been pretty Topsy turvy for me, and I was sad and confused as to why. This morning, my breakfast consisted of:

Two pieces of toast with PB and a pear. It was good, but I wasn’t satiated. On my walk to work, I was grumpy and hungry, but I could feel my winter coat tugging at its buttons. I waged a battle with myself over getting a second breakfast, and finally the virtuous side of me won.

I did go to Bridgehead, but it was only to get a tea. I managed to walk in, look at the croissants and muffins and baked things, and still walk away with just an Earl Grey:

Though look at the size of it!!! X-Large, baby!!
I like Bridgehead because their teas are all loose-leaf, and they fill their tea bags appropriate to the size. So I had a HUGE cup of very strong tea, as opposed to a HUGE cup of lightly flavoured hot water.

Then, mid-morning, something happened to me that I wasn’t expecting at all. All of a sudden, I had the urge to use the washroom. For those of you who may not know (and really, why would you care to??) this almost NEVER happens to me. I have had problems with that side of my health for well over two years, and only very recently have things taken a turn for the better. But today, I actually walked over to the bathroom with the principle goal of having a BM. And I did. And it was AMAZING!!!!

That’s when the realization hit: This weekend I went away, ate sort of sporadically (I was hanging out with drinkers, and drinkers tend to not eat real meals as much, I’ve noticed) and I left my Metamucil at home, and so my bowels were all out of whack. And while I didn’t really notice much over the weekend, I did start to feel its effects on Tuesday and Wednesday. Pair that with two 11+ hour days in a row, and you have a disrupted system, and its inevitable ..um… traffic jam. BUT, I had been taking my Metamucil daily since Monday, and now, on Thursday, I got back on “schedule”.

As soon as my BM passed, I definitely felt less bloated, less uncomfortable, but also more calm, and less obsessed with snacks. It was 11:30am by the time I looked at the clock, and realized I wasn’t hungry yet.

So, that means that my compulsive snacking was some sort of weird effort on my part to “get things moving”. And then I thought back to the last several months, and realized that I do this ALL the TIME – whenever I go a few days without a BM, I eat way more than I should, hoping to “push things along”, but it doesn’t always work (especially if I’m eating simple carbs) and thus the cycle continues.

Well, not anymore. Time to break the cycle!! The most important thing in my diet these days is my daily glass of Metamucil. I never photograph it, but I have it everyday. And now I know that I can’t let a single day go by without it.

At noon, I went for my run. Today’s was race pace run. I ended up running just under 5km in just under 30min. That’s not super stellar, and certainly not race pace, but it’ll do for now. Then I had lunch:

It had been sitting in the fridge too long. I should have eaten it yesterday. I left most of the sweet potatoe. And the dressing, for some reason, had way too much oil and way not enough balsamic vinegar.
I also ate three of these little guys:

Yum yum. I’ve only got six left (thank god! At 100 cal per three pieces… they’re scary!!)

At around 4pm, I got hungry, and ran across the street for my favourite:

Almonds and chocolate covered cranberries. I don’t know where the chocolate frenzy is coming from, but I hope it leaves me soon to move on to some other unsuspecting bystander…

By the time I got home, it was late, and Angelo had already had dinner. I decided to hit up The Table, because it’s so good, and so damn close to my house:

Sorry my meal is so blurry, I was trying to snap quickly because I’m still shy of clicking in public. vegan chili, barley and kale, steamed broccoli, and an onion pattie. Oop, see those two tempeh squares? Tasty.

Angelo had a piece of cinnamon and apple cake:

I had a small piece of vegan pumpkin pie, which I didn’t get a photo of. It wasn’t stellar. Ange’s looked way better, anyway!

It turns out that my job involves overtime. Like, beaucoup overtime. And while it’s not all bad, right now it seems like a lot. I’ve spent the last 22 hours out of the last 48 at work, and it’s not good. Meals have been sporadic at best, and I’ve been really snacky and eating a lot.

Now I could blame my impending period, but then, if I know that’s what’s up, then I should proactively stop it from governing what I eat…

Anyway, I’ve only taken photos of half the stuff I’ve eaten lately, so here goes:

Yesterday I had cereal and toast for Breakfast:

It was a novelty, for sure, but it didn’t fill me up too well.

I ended up eating this pretty hefty snack (along with an unphotographed tea):

That luna bar was more of a chocolate bar than anything else. I have to stop getting fooled by “health” packaging and realize that junk food comes under many different covers. (the apple was delish, though)

I guess I must have sparked a chocolate craze, because I chowed down on three of these beauties:

Nothing like melt-in-your-mouth chocolate. The packaging said it was dark chocolate, but the inside was pretty creamy, and sure enough, it’s got milk ingredients. Sad.

I had a Bread and Sons salad for lunch, which I ate away from my desk, hence the no photo.

My mid-afternoon snack was salty:

Triscuits and Cheeze. Nothing spells “little kid” quite like it!!

I ate dinner at my desk (some more peanut stir fry – with eggplant, tofu, bok choy, carrots, sweet potato, and probably lots more things I’m forgetting). It was good, and I don’t know why I didn’t get a photo of it.

Then I was off to my meeting, and got home at around 9:30pm (yeah, that’s a 13 hour day).

Angelo was out, but I did come home to this:

And since I’d already blown it on the sweets, I figured why not end in a bang!! I big ol’ beautiful date-y bang!

I mean, look at this thing:

It’s from Bread and Sons, of course. So good. But not what I needed at 10pm, right before bed.

***

So this morning, I thought I needed to have a bigger breakfast, to tide me over till lunch:

Yeah, that’s an egg white omelette with TWO slices of toast and peanut butter, AND the rest of my delicious carrot and ginger soup. It was good, and very filling.

I had to go to another meeting right at 10am, so I didn’t get a mid-morning snack. At around 1pm, I had just enough time to run back to my desk and have this:

My emergency stash of All Fibre cereal that I keep in my desk (I have a constant supply of fat-free soymilk in the fridge at work, for my tea.) Not much in terms of lunch, but the trail mix sprinkled on top gave it some legs.

And then I had a sugar boost:

Those darn chocolates. I’m going to have to give them away, or else I’ll just eat them all, little by little…

My meeting was still going strong at 7pm, but I was dismissed because I had dinner plans for Sacred Garden. It was terrific. Angelo had the “lamb” in red curry, and I had the green curry “chicken”. Both curries were great, and served with lots of veggies and some real looking “meat” stuffs. I left my camera in the car, though, so you don’t get any pictures (too bad, the meal was colourful and very pretty). We also had a fresh spring roll each, which was also way good. I love Thai!!

Angelo asked me last night what foods were “okay” now that I was off the South Beach Diet. I listed the Fruits and Veggies, the Beans and Tofu, but then, I don’t know, I didn’t really know what else to add back into my diet… So I did a little “time-wasting” at work:

First off, I found a couple of reviews of the South Beach Diet that made me happy to have ditched it:

Juliette Kellow, Bsc rd says: The South Beach Diet only requires serious willpower during Phase One. Nevertheless, this phase is extremely restrictive and the recommended weight loss of up to 13lb worries me. While most of us would love to lose almost a stone in a fortnight, it’s not a healthy way to lose weight and unfortunately, it’s likely to go straight back on once you return to less restricted eating habits.

Once you get past the initial phase, no major food groups are eliminated, plenty of fruit and veg are recommended and generally the diet follows the basic principles of healthy eating. I like diets based on the principles of the Glycaemic Index and South Beach certainly fits in with this (although I’m less keen on Phase One, which eliminates all carbs). Meanwhile, there’s no starving or fasting involved and it takes heart health into consideration.

In the long term, this is one of the better diets – especially if you avoid Phase One and start on Phase Two.

From Dietblog: To be honest, out of all aspects of the South Beach Diet, phase 1 is the only thing that I question. Agatston claims this phase is required in order to “break sugar addiction”. I really wonder whether this is necessary. Dropping carbs out of your diet often results in rapid weight loss for a short period, some will be fat, some may be muscle, and a lot will be loss of water.

The second phase of the South Beach Diet is excellent. It reintroduces whole carbohydrates along with good fats and lean proteins. It teaches you how to make good food choices, and how to satisfy your hunger.

***

I then found this “detox” program, which actually looks a lot like my ideal regular diet. And it answers Angelo’s question of what foods are “in”:

Foods to include in the plan

· Fruit – any fresh or frozen fruit (apples, bananas, pears, oranges, grapefruit, sultanas, raisins, pineapple, mango, kiwi, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, nectarines, peaches, melons, etc)
· Vegetables – any fresh or frozen vegetables. (carrots, onions, turnips, sprouts, cabbage, peppers, mushrooms, corn, peppers, potatoes, leeks, zucchinis, broccoli, cauliflower, leafy greens, tomatoes, cucumber, etc)
· Beans and lentils – any beans, including those that have been dried or canned in water. (red kidney, haricot, cannellini, butter, black eye, pinto, red lentils, green lentils and brown lentils, etc)
· Tofu and Quinoa
· Oats – Non-instant
· Brown rice
· Rye crackers, rice cakes and oatcakes
· Unsalted nuts and seeds – (Brazil, peanuts, almonds, cashew, hazel nuts, macadamia, pecans, pine nuts, pistachio, walnuts, sesame, sunflower, pumpkin, etc)
· Plain popcorn – without sugar or salt
· Extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar
· Garlic, ginger and fresh herbs
· Ground black pepper
· Honey
· Water – at least 2 litres a day.
· Herbal or fruit teas

Foods to avoid during your detox:

· Red meat, chicken, turkey and any meat products like sausages, burgers, and pate
· Milk, cheese, eggs, cream
· Butter and margarine
· Any food that contains wheat including bread, croissants, cereals, cakes, biscuits, pies, pastry, quiche, battered or breadcrumbed foods, etc
· Crisps and savoury snacks including salted nuts
· Chocolate, sweets, jam and sugar
· Processed foods, ready meals, ready-made sauces and takeaways
· Alcohol
· Coffee and tea
· Sauces, pickles, shop bought salad dressing, mayonnaise
· Salt
· Fizzy drinks, including diet versions

I got this list from Juliette Kellow BSc RD http://www.weightlossresources.co.uk/diet/dietitian.htm.

Just writing it out made me feel so much better. And though I made the proclamation that I wasn’t going to just post about food anymore, for the past three days, my poor little brain has been buzzing about food-related things that I’d love to write about. So maybe I should stop fighting it and come to terms with the fact that I have, gulp, a Food Blog. I liked taking photos of everything I ate, and I liked the unexpected fallout: an opportunity to take a moment to really look at what I was eating before eating it; an opportunity to present my food in an appealing way, which I should always do for myself, but am more likely to keep up for the sake of a cute blog; and an incentive to be more daring with my menus, and cook more at home.

And especially now that I’m not so much on a “menu plan” but more of a lifestyle where food tastes good, and I get to eat some of it, I’m even more excited to share with the blogosphere the joys of eating good food. Why, today I got so damn snacky at 11:30pm that I ran across the street and bought a handful of raw almonds and some chocolate covered cranberries. I was happily eating them when I felt a little sorry that I hadn’t taken a picture, even though it is not “diet friendly”, just because they tasted so good and made me so happy to eat them. I’m not here to punish myself anymore, I’m here to commune with the world and share the real joys of food.

It’s a little wanky, isn’t it? Well, I don’t care. I’m fucking happy these days, happy to be home, happy to be a real life roller derby ref (and on my way to becoming a real life roller derby player), happy to be running, happy to be eating. Things is good!!!