Late Lunch

I've been trying something new and have started eating my evening meal much later (around about 9pm). I have been trying to save some money and have buying the 3 for £10 gammon from Sainsburys. Yes I know, it's probably not the best thing I could be eating but it's cheap and fills a hole. I'm still recovering from Christmas fallout plus badly timed expenses such as the cost of a crown on my tooth, an upcoming eye test which will no doubt lead to new glasses being purchased. There's also me being a little silly and getting the new iPhone 4S - that one's on me but hey my old 3GS was really beat up and the home button was not consistently working, see I can rationalise it away. I was noticing that when I was eating straight after getting in from work I would end up getting peckish before I went to bed, eating far too much cheese etc and then feeling bad for having a weak spirit. So that's the main motivation of eating later.

As a desired by-product of eating later, I'm trying to spend the 2-3 hours from getting in from work to eating being productive as is one of my new year's resolutions. This has meant that I've got back into my online programming course that I neglected for long (embarrassingly long) periods of last year. In less than 2 weeks I've effectively coded the final assignment and am getting back to the previous assignment which I hit a roadblock a long time and left.
I'm also putting aside at least one night in the week to write on my blog(s) like now! I aim to write a number of posts and then schedule them across the next week or so. Nothing I write is truly that topical so it doesn't matter if there's a 4 day lag from when I wrote something to when it appears on the Internet. So if I get inspiration for a post I can choose to take a night away from the programming and get the idea down on paper, so to speak.

The above usually takes me up to about half 7, 8pm so that's when I go out for a walk. I take a 40-50min walk doing a circuit round the streets of Bridgnorth usually clocking in around 3 miles. My good friend Rob has become infatuated with the Appalachian Trail - the longest trail in the US I believe and he has (hopefully not so serious) designs on us walking in a few years time - a feat that takes good hikers approximately 6 months. Even if that never happens, walking is very good for you and primal for those interested. I usually pick a route that has a gradient and good ol' hilly Bridgnorth does not disappoint in that respect.

I think it's been going well so far (and even longer by the time this post appears) and I'm pleased at how productive I've managed to be. I have of course let myself have the odd day off from this routine, usually round the weekend but this is more recharging the batteries...

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Smooth move

In my continuing quest to eat healthier and more primal, I finally pulled the trigger and got myself a smoothie maker machine.
The aim is to get myself eating more fruit, particularly those that are considered more primal. These fruit are generally berries and not the high-sugar citrus fruits.

Yeah, so I want to eat more strawberries, blueberries etc but I'm not a huge fan of the texture. Now that would probably go away with time but it's difficult to get into new habits if the journey isn't very enjoyable.
The solution (at least for me) is to make a smoothie containing these desirable fruits. So I'm now in the process of working on a good recipe(s). Currently I can't be bothered with taking exact measurements - I don't have a beaker etc to easily measure 200ml of apple juice or scales to weigh 80g of raspberries so right now we're just throwing stuff together to see what works. Maybe I'll have to get to that point but for now we'll see how it goes - would ideally not want to make further purchases.
I'm taking inspiration from the awesome Innocent smoothies that give a breakdown of their ingredients on the side of their cartons. I've learnt pretty quickly that banana is a good base to get a thick smoothie - my first effort was sans banana and it was more bitty juice.

The ultimate aim is to get down some tasty smoothie recipes with which I will make smoothies to have for lunch at work. Personally I find it the hardest to stick to a primal diet if I'm away from home where I can't control ingredients, hobs to cook with etc. Right now, I feel that my lunch could be improved to make another step to a balanced diet. If I have a smoothie for lunch every day then it's going to be very easy to hit the recommended 5 servings of fruit and veg a day.
I welcome any recipe suggestions; I'm doing some Internet searching and trying some experimentation, hell if I arrive at a recipe that works for me I'll probably post it here.

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0 Days Without Crisps

Image via Wikipedia

It's Monday and time to continue a trend of promised new and positive habits only for them to fall apart midweek. Often that involves maintaining a regular (and high) attendance at the gym - there is really no positive benefit to going only once or twice in the week, well that's what I've found anyway. Another positive habit that keeps getting restarted is a better diet which brings me to the title of this post - the countdown ( or up) has started -- today is 0 days without crisps.

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I'm leaving on a Jetplane...

Continuing my posts detailing my trip to the US further and looking back on my Trans-Atlantic flights, a really big deal for me. I've only been on a plane once before (twice if you count coming back :D).

Unfortunately I didn't take any pix, the authorities may have thought me a terrorist after pointing my camera at airplanes and security personnel was my paranoia. Anyways, to brighten up the site enjoy another *random* snap taken on my travels.

Note: It's a pretty obvious sign that I play video games too much that I thought of the Dead Air finale from Left 4 Dead when getting on the plane...

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Part of your X a day...

Following on from positive rant about my progress made at the gym this is a quick look at my diet and my ongoing quest to reach a body shape/weight that I'm comfortable with.

Everyone is familiar with the recommended 5-a-day servings of fruit and veg. Now, it doesn't take a pro mathematician to tell you that one way to achieve this would be to have a portion at every meal, breakfast, dinner and tea, and pick up the other two portions via a mid-morning and a mid-afternoon/supper break.
Compound that with the recommendation that along with that we all should also aim for 3 servings of wholegrain wheat/fibre or at least that's what the animated cereal boxes before the weather tell me.
Now if you take those two recommendations, the only method of achieving this is to have either fruit and fibre or fruit-themed weetabix for every single meal of the day. Factor in all the other foodstuffs we should be eating, I read somewhere that you should try and eat fish once (it may have been twice) a week on top of that.

I am of course being a little silly but there is a quickly knocked up, rough round the edges solution to the problem. I am complaining as it seems pretty hardcore to actually succeed in hitting the target number of portions but I feel I am getting part way there, plus the other changes I've made to my diet which seemed to have had a positive effect (that is implied from the lack of negative effect)

When trying to start any positive habit, I've learnt some methods to hack out the result I want. The crucial lesson is to make small steps. Like with my gym attendance, at first I set myself a target of regular attendance, rather than actual targets in terms of distance run, weight bench-pressed etc and the same can be said with improving your diet. Now, I am the first to admit that my diet is less than perfect, but to increase my fruit intake I said to myself, hey buy a bunch of bananas and see how I get along. I evolved that into swapping a chocolate treat after my tea with a banana instead. I've now reached the point where if I choose to skip the post-tea banana or the house is out of bananas, I actually miss it. Now, that's taken a fair few weeks to build up the habit but it's now pretty much hard-coded into my daily routine.

As I alluded to above, I've also cut out pretty much all chocolate from my diet, the only chocolate I have now are the treats my Nan gives me whenever I go back home now. I still find myself every now and then thinking, "mmm, I could really go for a Mars bar," but not having them in the house makes the temptation only very slight.

I probably mentioned in passing the "fun" I had when I got some hardcore toothache towards the end of last year, I had to go in for root canal treatment. The cause of the problem was surprise, surprise too much sugar in my diet, particularly concentrate fruit juice. As a result of this, I've reduced the sugar in my diet which as there has been no noticeable negative effect, must be judged as positive. So pretty much every drink I have is sugar-free; I only drink Coke Zero now (if I have it in) which actually isn't too bad, it maintains the syrupy goodness I love, it's not for everybody, but it's something I think is pretty awesome. I've also dropped from 2 sugars to 1 sugar in my coffee at work. And speaking of Coffee, I've swapped over to Decaff which has not made me any more tired - it's all in your head that coffee keeps you awake.

There's quite a few more things I've done to achieve a diet that is a bit more healthy. I used to be an advocate for full-fat (blue) milk. They could have got me to go round people's houses and try to sell it, I was that much of a fan. I've managed to move from blue to green, and then from green to red, the semi-skimmed option which is the lowest in fat. I've also taken up drinking Cranberry juice (low in sugar variety of course) which is supposed to be very good for you what with all the antioxidants contained within (plus it apparently has more vitamin C in than concentrate Orange juice wtf!). I used to always snack around 10-11pm, so I'm slowly moving my teatime back in the evening to prevent munchies occurring before bed - I cannot sleep on an empty-ish stomach.

One part of my diet which still needs much improving is the fact that I still eat a fair amount of cheese. I intend to reach a point where, thanks to me finally learning how to knock out a cheese sauce, I will only consume cheese as part of the aforementioned cheese sauce to go with pasta. My Nan still likes to make cheese and onion quiche (and I still like to eat it :D) so that will eventually be the only other time.

I think I've been pretty successful in all these changes due to the fact that I've never set myself a target - "I will cut this food out of my diet by next Friday", and that way I've been taking those small steps towards my goal. It's not important how long it takes to get there, only that I get there eventually. Of course it may be better for some to set dates as part of targets, it's different for everyone. To quote scrubs

"A day spent wishing is a day wasted. If you want to be different, then be different" - Janitor

That being taken from the episode where Elliot has a makeover into the hot rocker chick with the messed-up hairdo.

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