Saturday morning, 05-04-24

Good morning, everyone.  Apologies for last night.  When I got back from my day in London, I was just too tired to get anything done.

On with my 'things that help me' waffle.
Another thing that really helps me to keep on plan is Research.

That's a very posh word for 'keeping an eye out for ideas and recipes', isn't it?

While I have a range of tried and trusted base recipes that I really enjoy, it's very easy for boredom to set in and when it does I start to feel restricted.  

When I feel restricted, I start craving stuff.  

When I start craving stuff . . . well, you can see where it ends, can't you?

Fortunately, and using the SW concept of Food Optimising (I just call it adapting recipes), there are so many recipes and ideas out there that just need finding.  Thanks to the internet, Google and a wealth of sources, it's pretty easy to find.

Some of my favourite places:

    the Slimming World magazine is always good for a few recipes and, if you have access, the site has thousands of recipes and ideas

    recipe books and sites from places like Pinch of Nom, Slimming Eats, Chubby Cubs . . .

    non-slimming sites such as BBC Good Food, magazine sites like Delicious, OLive, Good Housekeeping . . .

    YouTube, Instagram, Tik-Tok (have I spelled that right)

    search engines like Google.  Just enter 'recipe for [whatever ingredient you have]' and up comes a wealthy of ideas.  If you add 'healthy' or 'slimming', it can refine.

The other area that I very lightly dig into is - I'm not sure what to call it really, maybe they are foody fads, I don't know, but I read up about food related topics like ultra processed foods and intermittent fasting, keto, high protein, high fat, low carb . . . and so on and so forth.

Most hold no appeal for me but every now and again I take a few things on board.  I'm a great believer in eating a very varied diet with plenty of fruit and veg which is why Slimming World works for me, so restricting or even cutting whole food groups is not a way I would willingly go but I am happy to restrict eating times and more than happy to cut down on the amount of ultra processed foods I consume.  I find the latter happens almost automatically when one cooks from scratch anyway but it is surprising how much there is out there.

I have no excuses for getting bored or feeling restricted, do I?

What I ate yesterday on Slimming World:

Er - not a lot really.
I had some fruit on the coach and nothing else until after leaving the Royal Albert Hall (guided tour) when, instead of the afternoon tea which the RAH cancelled yesterday afternoon, we went to a lovely fish and chip shop called Kennedy's.  The trip organisers have used Kennedy's before and they did a grand meal for us with really very little notice.
I had fish and chips followed by a slice of cheesecake and a very nice mug of coffee.  And they all well deserved the cheer, clap and generous tip afterwards.
No photos though, sorry.  It wasn't appropriate.

The evening was a bit of a disaster as I was so weary (still am, in fact) but not to worry - the new week starts here

Today's meal plans:

B:  fruit

(eaten half way round a walk)
SW:  syn free

L:  mushroom and bacon omelette, salad; fruit
I'll add some cheese too.

SW:  one healthy extra A and one syn for salad cream

D:  chicken koftas, salad, pitta; fruit
I found this recipe on YouTube - I like this channel, there's some very delicious recipes there - well worth exploring.  I'll put a proper link, not just the URL.  I'm not sure I will make the sauce as shown, I'll probably just make a mint, lemon and yogurt thing to drizzle over

SW:  probably four syns for breadcrumbs and the rest looks to be syn free

Exercise:  A walk from Tower Gardens to the lake and back again.