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. 

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 &amp 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

Nanami Togarashi

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

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. 

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...

Roasted Red Capsicum Sauce

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!

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.

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...

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...

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.