Wednesday, 18-12-19

Good morning!

Regarding my aim to lower blood pressure and cholesterol, we need a bit of salt and it's pretty impossible to avoid really.  However, I've been adding too much, I know I have, so that must change.   I'm going continue to steam vegetables as I have a lovely double tier steamer pan, discovered a long time ago in Matalan and well used ever since.  The vegetables in the steamer sections never have added salt anyway and I will stop adding salt to the water too.  I often use reduced salt stocks anyway.  In a way it's very little change apart from adding salt at the table and I will stop that most of the time.
But I must have salt on my chips!

I don't have a lot of sugar in any form really, apart from stevia, so that's not an issue.

Yesterday more or less worked out OK.  No, the meal wasn't healthy or particularly frugal (although I reckon £15 for three courses was pretty good really) but it ended up as the only meal I had in the day.

I really didn't want any breakfast, only starting to feel peckish around eleven so was able to wait.  The lunch (dinner really) was enormous and I had . . .
chicken wings in a cranberry glaze - and I took off as much of the skin as I could
turkey, stuffing and cranberry pie with peas and mash - I ate the contents of the pie but left most of the pastry (not a hardship as it was very thick and quite hard) and I didn't finish off the mash or peas either as I was feeling rather full by that time
I ate all the dessert and very nice it was too.  half a portion of limoncello cheesecake and half of brownie with a hot cherry sauce (shared with Beth)
So all of that was certain to be over calories/syns/whatever
However, as a result, I really didn't start to feel in any way like eating again until nearly bedtime, well outside my 'window' so I didn't!

Interestingly, I'm not overly hungry this morning and I'm hoping a coffee or two will satisfy until after nine.

Today's plans are:
B:  porridge with blueberries and yogurt, mini yogurt drink
SW:  half a healthy extra A, one B and two syns

L:   home made soup of some kind, apple
Probably carrot based as I have loads and lentils go well with carrots, don't they?
SW:  it will be syn free and I may use up the other half healthy extra A to make it taste creamy.

D:  hash browns breakfast bake, sprouts and maybe broccoli as well, easy peelers
I know - it's not breakfast, but I want to crack open the new Pinch of Nom recipe book and I opened it at this recipe (page 38, if you have the book).  It does look and sound nice, simple and down to earth.
SW:  free, unless I use a tsp of oil to soften the onion, which I may well do and which will be two syns.

Body Magic:  an hour of personal training which is going to be a killer after two weeks being unwell and therefore not exercising very much at all.

Not a no-meat day today as there's bacon in the bake and I will use chicken stock in the soup but it's not going to be meat-heavy and should be pretty frugal too.