It's all soft and sunny, with a playful little breeze alternately winding itself around my ankles then flicking back the sticky-outy bits of my morning hair. People have done their tai chi, chased their dogs along the street and partaken of the morning gossip accompanied by steaming bowls of broth and noodles.The buzz saws have begun their daily scream through layers of concrete, drills make me think of the dentist, and trucks disgorge cubic metres of concrete as though it was causing something unpleasant inside. All the while hammers, mallets and sledgehammers have begun their daily dance against the structure of the house immediately behind my apartment in their ongoing attempts to take it down.
My work is shortly planning on opening a second branch in north Phnom Penh on the edge of town. Staff are currently being polled for their branch preference. Would I like to work at the new branch? Hell, yes. Apart from escaping a building with serious feng shui issues, it would mean moving to a quiet part of town or even going semi-rural. Hmmmm, dreaming of semi-rural, garden, cats & dogs and oh yes, all those big insect critters that will be chasing me all over the place once they hear there's fresh meat in town. Nothing's perfect, but it would also cost half what I pay in rent to be in the middle of the action, so bring on those big, bad bugs. I can deal.
So, something to look forward to. Not the actual move itself, doing that again so soon after an international move could be termed masochistic, but the mere idea that my poor, assaulted inner calm could potentially be matched by the outer, morning calm of my surrounds fills me with anticipation. Sounds like good therapy for my thyroid too.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
end of month report card...
My students have reached the end of their first academic month and have been sent off to write their monthly reflections in their learning journals so it seems like an appropriate time for me to reflect also.
So how has it all been, what with starting a new job in a new country and all that stuff? Well, there's been the good and the bad, the highs and the lows. The lowest low had to be a schedule that stretched out, seemingly never ending, over entire days. That's been fixed (somewhat) but unfortunately the damage has been done. Once over-tired, the Hashi has limited ability to recover without taking weeks off not just work, but life itself. As a person who needs to earn a living, the compromise is to work and have no life the rest of the time and do this for months on end until you can't do it anymore and you have to quit your job. Hell, doesn't this sound exactly like the situation I've just come from? On a more positive note, my schedule should be much more doable next term - I just have to survive this one.
Even though rapid onset burnout is upon me, I have managed to get my dietary requirements sorted out and my food management has even improved a little. My biggest downfall is that when I get tired, I rely on the same old, same old dishes which are easy to chuck together and I could make in my sleep. This does lead to food boredom, not to mention general mental stagnation in the kitchen department, which is the precursor to breaking out of the plan and turning into the shameless wine and cheese hussy that I am. This time around, I have some new dishes which are almost at the I-can-make-in-my-sleep stage as well as a few tricks with flavourful sauces and salsas, some of which can be found in an earlier post. This should be just enough to keep me on the right train.
In order to negate the aforementioned mental stagnation in the kitchen department, I have been shopping for kitchen toys. I recently bought a slow cooker - yay. I got it home and unpacked it and instead of the plain, unoffensive brushed stainless exterior the box promised, it turned out to be a puciferous shade of pinky orange. Not so yay, but hey it works - and then it goes in the cupboard where I don't have to look at it. My most recent burst of consumer activity saw me become the delighted owner of a Black & Decker MY30PGCS combined microwave, grill & convection oven. It is sleek & beautiful in a rather feline way. I want to pet it. The best thing is that it does not have miles of extraneous buttons all over it like some kind of pox on the face. Simplicity. My last purchase was a bog standard food processor. I had been making do with a blender, a mortar & pestle, & big sieve and elbow grease to get things done so this should speed up the process, make it easier and significantly reduce the splatter factor in my kitchen. A forensic scientist would have had her work cut out for her stringing the patterns of my roasted red capsicum sauce splatter.
I still have no exercise plan. I still have no information from the doctor in Ho Chi Minh City regarding the internal tear which is preventing me from exercising. Note in this month's action plan to follow this up as a matter of some urgency. Although I do no planned exercise, I now have many stairs in my life. There are about 50 to get to my apartment and at work almost the same to get to the teachers' room, then I only have one class on the same floor and the resources, photocopiers etc are all on another floor so I really have a built in step programme, especially when you add in the heavy basket of stuff that I lug to and from classes. This is also one of the reasons I feel dog-tired at the end of the day. Again, the Hashi is slow to adapt so it takes many months before one can cope with an increase in daily activity.
There are some recent indications of improvement so it's not it all gloom. On my free mornings, I have made it out for a low fat latte a couple of times, and even managed some minimal wardrobe maintenance via a tailor. This level of extra activity on a work day is pretty much unheard of for me. Also, some days I have no pain in my hands (yes that's back and no, it's not arthritis - been there, tested that) and even better I'm having the occasional day when my eyes don't feel so puffy I think I must look like someone bopped me one. Yesterday, I even felt good for a few hours...
Overall:
Weight - have lost some
Feel - still mostly like shit but have had a couple of 'good' days in the last month
To do this month:
get medical report from doc in HCMC
try to go for a walk one morning each weekend (mornings are so lovely here)
try some new yogurt based recipes for sauces,
start driver's licence process (bouncing around in tuk tuks is quite energy depleting)
go to docs for regular TSH tests, thyroid maintenance stuff
So how has it all been, what with starting a new job in a new country and all that stuff? Well, there's been the good and the bad, the highs and the lows. The lowest low had to be a schedule that stretched out, seemingly never ending, over entire days. That's been fixed (somewhat) but unfortunately the damage has been done. Once over-tired, the Hashi has limited ability to recover without taking weeks off not just work, but life itself. As a person who needs to earn a living, the compromise is to work and have no life the rest of the time and do this for months on end until you can't do it anymore and you have to quit your job. Hell, doesn't this sound exactly like the situation I've just come from? On a more positive note, my schedule should be much more doable next term - I just have to survive this one.
Even though rapid onset burnout is upon me, I have managed to get my dietary requirements sorted out and my food management has even improved a little. My biggest downfall is that when I get tired, I rely on the same old, same old dishes which are easy to chuck together and I could make in my sleep. This does lead to food boredom, not to mention general mental stagnation in the kitchen department, which is the precursor to breaking out of the plan and turning into the shameless wine and cheese hussy that I am. This time around, I have some new dishes which are almost at the I-can-make-in-my-sleep stage as well as a few tricks with flavourful sauces and salsas, some of which can be found in an earlier post. This should be just enough to keep me on the right train.
In order to negate the aforementioned mental stagnation in the kitchen department, I have been shopping for kitchen toys. I recently bought a slow cooker - yay. I got it home and unpacked it and instead of the plain, unoffensive brushed stainless exterior the box promised, it turned out to be a puciferous shade of pinky orange. Not so yay, but hey it works - and then it goes in the cupboard where I don't have to look at it. My most recent burst of consumer activity saw me become the delighted owner of a Black & Decker MY30PGCS combined microwave, grill & convection oven. It is sleek & beautiful in a rather feline way. I want to pet it. The best thing is that it does not have miles of extraneous buttons all over it like some kind of pox on the face. Simplicity. My last purchase was a bog standard food processor. I had been making do with a blender, a mortar & pestle, & big sieve and elbow grease to get things done so this should speed up the process, make it easier and significantly reduce the splatter factor in my kitchen. A forensic scientist would have had her work cut out for her stringing the patterns of my roasted red capsicum sauce splatter.
I still have no exercise plan. I still have no information from the doctor in Ho Chi Minh City regarding the internal tear which is preventing me from exercising. Note in this month's action plan to follow this up as a matter of some urgency. Although I do no planned exercise, I now have many stairs in my life. There are about 50 to get to my apartment and at work almost the same to get to the teachers' room, then I only have one class on the same floor and the resources, photocopiers etc are all on another floor so I really have a built in step programme, especially when you add in the heavy basket of stuff that I lug to and from classes. This is also one of the reasons I feel dog-tired at the end of the day. Again, the Hashi is slow to adapt so it takes many months before one can cope with an increase in daily activity.
There are some recent indications of improvement so it's not it all gloom. On my free mornings, I have made it out for a low fat latte a couple of times, and even managed some minimal wardrobe maintenance via a tailor. This level of extra activity on a work day is pretty much unheard of for me. Also, some days I have no pain in my hands (yes that's back and no, it's not arthritis - been there, tested that) and even better I'm having the occasional day when my eyes don't feel so puffy I think I must look like someone bopped me one. Yesterday, I even felt good for a few hours...
Overall:
Weight - have lost some
Feel - still mostly like shit but have had a couple of 'good' days in the last month
To do this month:
get medical report from doc in HCMC
try to go for a walk one morning each weekend (mornings are so lovely here)
try some new yogurt based recipes for sauces,
start driver's licence process (bouncing around in tuk tuks is quite energy depleting)
go to docs for regular TSH tests, thyroid maintenance stuff
Sunday, July 25, 2010
What a difference a week makes...
One week back on Dr Phil's rapid start plan, with a few tweaks from moi due to the unavailability of most low-fat, non-sugar forms of things available in the West that make dieting easier, and the results are in.
To recap, I had gained and gone back up to 86kgs, dropped to about 83.5, gained to 85kgs 2 weeks ago, then last Sunday weighed in at 86kgs. Panic set in amidst the realisation that this was weight gain proper. I was feeling like shite and out of control. A serious weekend of kitchen activity set me up to restart the programme. So one week later what did it do for me?
weight - 82.5kgs (down 3.5)
waist - 32.5 inches (down 1)
Both of these are below what I had gotten down to in Vietnam before the great move across the border so cannot be put down to fluid management alone although that is, as always, a key piece of the weight loss puzzle.
To recap, I had gained and gone back up to 86kgs, dropped to about 83.5, gained to 85kgs 2 weeks ago, then last Sunday weighed in at 86kgs. Panic set in amidst the realisation that this was weight gain proper. I was feeling like shite and out of control. A serious weekend of kitchen activity set me up to restart the programme. So one week later what did it do for me?
weight - 82.5kgs (down 3.5)
waist - 32.5 inches (down 1)
Both of these are below what I had gotten down to in Vietnam before the great move across the border so cannot be put down to fluid management alone although that is, as always, a key piece of the weight loss puzzle.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Restricting calories is boring?
Well, it need not be and it need not be difficult either. Here are some simple little gems to brighten up your fish, your salad and your day. Please excuse the blur. After one day of working just fine, my camera is back to refusing to focus on anything except faces and it doesn't even have facial recognition. You may see strange amp things every time I use & and notice that the pesto is skew-wiff. This is because blogger.com is effing useless.
Mango Salsa .
1 red pepper, roasted, peeled & diced
1 ripe mango peeled & diced
1/4 C spring onions chopped
1/4 C cilantro chopped
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 lime juiced
Mix together.
You can also add chili but my tummy doesn't do this well so I leave it out and if I feel like some, add some Japanese chili & citrus sprinkle.
Note that barely a drop of fat goes anywhere near this. Still, it's not for pigging out on as mango is not a dieter's best friend.
Pesto
2 C fresh basil leaves, packed
Now this is not exactly how I did it as I don't have a food processor at the mo. I used a blender and tried to follow the order but it really wasn't happening so I tossed the whole lot in and pulsed the hell out of it. Not nearly as delicate a recipe as it's made out to be. Next time, I will tweek the ingredients a little; a little less oil, cheese & nuts, & a little more garlic and basil would suit my taste better. I don't like the flavour of olive oil much so would love to try making it with avocado oil but alas it's not available here. I count pesto as part of my daily fat allowance as with the next sauce.
Last, but certainly not least in the flavour stakes...
4 red capsicums
1 corm garlic (whole head)
2 Tbs olive oil
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
Salt & pepper to taste
Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees celcius. Put capsicums &amgarlic on baking tray and cook for 45 minutes, turning once. Sweat the capsicums off in a plastic bag for 30 minutes to make removal of skin easier. Peel, de-seed, drain & save excess liquid.
Put capsicums & liquid in a food processor & squeeze in roasted garlic pulp. Add oil & vinegar & process until smooth. Season.
Again, I adopted the chuck-it-all-in-the-blender-and-go-like-crazy approach with no harm done. Next time I make this, I will use less oil and more balsamic. A variation is to add a few chopped Kalamata olives. Note that 8 olives = 1 fat serve.
Enjoy!
Mango Salsa .
1 ripe mango peeled & diced
1/4 C spring onions chopped
1/4 C cilantro chopped
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 lime juiced
Nanami Togarashi
You can also add chili but my tummy doesn't do this well so I leave it out and if I feel like some, add some Japanese chili & citrus sprinkle.
Note that barely a drop of fat goes anywhere near this. Still, it's not for pigging out on as mango is not a dieter's best friend.
Pesto
1/4 C fresh grated parmesan
1/2 C extra virgin olive oil
1/3 C pinenuts
3 garlic cloves minced
salt & pepper to taste
In a food processor, combine basil & pinenuts & pulse a few times. Add garlic & pulse some more. Slowly add olive oil in a constant stream, scraping down the sides as needed. Add cheese & pulse until blended. Season to taste.
In a food processor, combine basil & pinenuts & pulse a few times. Add garlic & pulse some more. Slowly add olive oil in a constant stream, scraping down the sides as needed. Add cheese & pulse until blended. Season to taste.
Last, but certainly not least in the flavour stakes...
Roasted Red Capsicum Sauce
1 corm garlic (whole head)
2 Tbs olive oil
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
Salt & pepper to taste
Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees celcius. Put capsicums &amgarlic on baking tray and cook for 45 minutes, turning once. Sweat the capsicums off in a plastic bag for 30 minutes to make removal of skin easier. Peel, de-seed, drain & save excess liquid.
Put capsicums & liquid in a food processor & squeeze in roasted garlic pulp. Add oil & vinegar & process until smooth. Season.
Again, I adopted the chuck-it-all-in-the-blender-and-go-like-crazy approach with no harm done. Next time I make this, I will use less oil and more balsamic. A variation is to add a few chopped Kalamata olives. Note that 8 olives = 1 fat serve.
Enjoy!
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
the consequences...
...the scales don't lie. Sunday 11th of July, I weighed 85kgs (+1.5), then Sunday 18th July I had gained another 1 kg up to 86. With work dominating life, I was not cooking properly, eating properly and drinking too much wine to try to wind down in a hurry before I went to bed to start the whole thing over again the next day.
The 2.5kg increase was enough of a wake-up call to re-energise my dietary efforts and I'm happy to say that I'm back on the diet train. Well, for the past 3 days anyway. This has also been accompanied by an explosion of kitchen related activity in order to produce tasty stuff to keep me going during those times when all I can manage to do is hack a few bits of lettuce and tomato together. My poor little refrigerator is groaning under the weight of the food I have stuffed into it, and my freezer is full of pre-portioned, high quality protein options as well as myriad freezeable herbs and spices such as basil, kaffir limes & leaves, galangal, mint, ginger and even lemon grass. I finally feel prepared to take on my schedule.
The 2.5kg increase was enough of a wake-up call to re-energise my dietary efforts and I'm happy to say that I'm back on the diet train. Well, for the past 3 days anyway. This has also been accompanied by an explosion of kitchen related activity in order to produce tasty stuff to keep me going during those times when all I can manage to do is hack a few bits of lettuce and tomato together. My poor little refrigerator is groaning under the weight of the food I have stuffed into it, and my freezer is full of pre-portioned, high quality protein options as well as myriad freezeable herbs and spices such as basil, kaffir limes & leaves, galangal, mint, ginger and even lemon grass. I finally feel prepared to take on my schedule.
Long time, no blog
So how have I been coping with the new job, routine etc...? Obviously from the time lag in posts, not very bloody well! I started with a manageable timetable but that was changed due to a bereavement and I took over some other classes which had me stretched from 8am to 7.30pm on one day and about 9am to 7.30 on another. Us Hashi's do not cope well with days like that so I have had my schedule amended to something more reasonable.
Lesson #1 - Don't bite off more than you can chew.
Lesson #2 - Be your own advocate cos' no-one else is going to do it for you.
Next up - the consequences of letting life get out of control...
Lesson #1 - Don't bite off more than you can chew.
Lesson #2 - Be your own advocate cos' no-one else is going to do it for you.
Next up - the consequences of letting life get out of control...
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Work is a four letter word when you have Hashi's
It had to happen sooner or later; avoidance could not go on for ever; everyone (pretty much) has to do it; work, that is.
My new job started on Tuesday with an induction and with it came the aches and pains of upping your routine that is the curse of Hashi's.
I have 5 classes at 4 different levels; a general English class of students who failed their last listening exam which is taught as a listening and pron course, one of the intro to IELTS levels and then 3 classes at 2 academic English levels. All very familiar so should be like riding a bike, just a different model.
My earliest class starts at 9.45am on Mon, Weds, Fri while on Tues & Thurs I have one class only from 5.30 to 8pm. The reason I'm posting in this detail is that it is pretty much a dream schedule for managing thyroid disease whilst teaching full time. On the busy days, I start at a civilized hour, teach 2 classes, have a 3 hour break then teach 2 more classes. On the quiet days, I teach one early evening class.
My energy is virtually non-existent early morning and picks up throughout the day so I'm delighted that I have no early starts while the 3 hour breaks mean I can sleep, rest, get a massage or whatever I need to keep me going. And 2 really quiet days? That's not much more than popping out to the supermarket. It will be interesting to see how this completely different schedule will work out for me. I shall keep you posted...
My new job started on Tuesday with an induction and with it came the aches and pains of upping your routine that is the curse of Hashi's.
I have 5 classes at 4 different levels; a general English class of students who failed their last listening exam which is taught as a listening and pron course, one of the intro to IELTS levels and then 3 classes at 2 academic English levels. All very familiar so should be like riding a bike, just a different model.
My earliest class starts at 9.45am on Mon, Weds, Fri while on Tues & Thurs I have one class only from 5.30 to 8pm. The reason I'm posting in this detail is that it is pretty much a dream schedule for managing thyroid disease whilst teaching full time. On the busy days, I start at a civilized hour, teach 2 classes, have a 3 hour break then teach 2 more classes. On the quiet days, I teach one early evening class.
My energy is virtually non-existent early morning and picks up throughout the day so I'm delighted that I have no early starts while the 3 hour breaks mean I can sleep, rest, get a massage or whatever I need to keep me going. And 2 really quiet days? That's not much more than popping out to the supermarket. It will be interesting to see how this completely different schedule will work out for me. I shall keep you posted...
Kep
Ahhhh, another gorgeous sunset sitting on the end of the pier at the Sailing Club in Kep.
I had had enough of the banging of hammers and the whine of buzz saws that has over taken the central areas of Phnom Penh so escaped to the place that time forgot.
Kep is the embodiment of a forgotten seaside paradise struggling to resurrect itself but not quite knowing how. The Khmer Rouge unwitting made Kep a photographer's paradise by destroying all the holiday homes but somehow leaving their burnt-out, shot-out shells intact enough to withstand the coastal weather. Time has also added layers of vegetation to the black of soot and the grey of detritus to result in a verdant tapestry of colour, light, shade, angles, softness and hardness.
On top of this, Kep is very small and very intimate. There is not much there which is the way I like a place. A handful of restaurants, cafes and bars along with the famous crab shacks is all I really need to keep me amused. As well as frequenting the tropical beaches of Rabbit Island only 20 minutes away by boat, walking, cylcing and swimming keep a person fairly busy and Kampot is a mere 20 minutes of jouncing along in a tuk tuk away.
My only problem is figuring out how I can move there and support myself. Some little business in food processing or production may work out especially as the area already has orchards and a little cropping going on. Hmmmmmm, food for thought.
It is with great reluctance that I post this...
...and I've been spinning my wheels for several days in avoidance, but it must be done as I no longer have the excuse of no bathroom scales. From Monday morning:
weight 83.5kg
waist 33 inches
So the damage after 2 months is negligible (half a kg), however this was aided to some extent by my stomach issues rearing their ugly head whilst on a short sojourn to Kep. The result was a Saturday evening of chucking up what was pretty much 2 days worth of intake. Two main culprits - bread and roasted peanuts - didn't help the situation at all so avoidance tactics will be implemented.
weight 83.5kg
waist 33 inches
So the damage after 2 months is negligible (half a kg), however this was aided to some extent by my stomach issues rearing their ugly head whilst on a short sojourn to Kep. The result was a Saturday evening of chucking up what was pretty much 2 days worth of intake. Two main culprits - bread and roasted peanuts - didn't help the situation at all so avoidance tactics will be implemented.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)