I'm sabotaging myself a bit and I should know better than to set myself difficult goals because they make me freak out a bit and then I seem to go out of my way to do everything possible to not achieve what I've set out to. It's funny, it was only when commenting yesterday on
Jen's post about keeping track of goals that I realised I've been doing exactly what I was trying to say I never do. I know strict goals don't work for me so why do I keep trying to follow the generally accepted wisdom that it's important? My budget was pretty tight for this month but there was enough money for each week. Because it occurred to me that if I managed to not spend quite everything and then have the same kind of month next month I would be able to clear my debt fully, did that make me even more determined to not buy anything that wasn't strictly needed? Well, yes. For about half a second. And then somehow I managed to spend just about every cent I have for this month in a week. You're selling raffle tickets? Of course I'll take a few. It's for a good cause (but hang on, I'm my own best cause, what the hell am I thinking of!!!) At least I did manage to bring lunch almost every day this week - thanks to the pulled pork I made in the slow cooker last week. It was far too much though - I forgot that I meant to freeze some of it when it was done so by yesterday I was a bit sick of it. The first three days of wraps were fabulous though. Fresh oakleaf lettuce from the market last week with some pork on top of that. Yum.
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| These are the spices (and the sugar) that I used for the pork last week, 2 teaspoons of each spice except the 5-spice, which I only used 1 teaspoon of. For the liquid I used a jar of my runny tomato ketchup, couple of spoonfuls of honey, Worcestershire sauce, cider vinegar and vegetable stock. |
It was a very stressful week in work though and I worked far too much and did not get half enough sleep, which meant that I also ended up spending money on taxis to get to work slightly less late a couple of mornings. So I need to be careful to get to bed at a decent hour every day this week.
Let's just call today the start of a new week and see how it goes from there. No big goals. But plenty of food in the house to see me through the week and beyond. I went to the market this morning and bought potatoes, a couple of leeks, lettuce and eggs. That was 8.50. Then I stopped at the Reformhaus to buy vinegar (the clear cider vinegar that I use for my hair) and while I was there remembered that I wanted to get some vitamin C. I started to feel a sore throat on two days this week and I really don't want to get sick again so I thought I'd try out the old trick of high vitamin C dosage for a while. Then, when I looked in one of the big drugstore chains, there was no simple vitamin C to be found, just mixes, almost all of them with vitamin D, which I already take in a very high dosage on prescription. Anyway, I found some this morning at the Reformhaus and I'm glad I got it, even if that was 9.50 I hadn't really been planning on (yeah, why is it I have no money again?).
I resisted the temptation to go somewhere for lunch or to buy a pizza, came home and had some toast. Much better. As I was sitting here running through the cupboards in my mind's eye and thinking that I really should do a proper meal plan, I realised that having one or two other things on hand would be very useful to round off what was already there. So off I went again, this time round the corner to Aldi with a decision to see what I could get for 10 euro. Really, what I wanted was to make sure I got a couple of jars of olives - these are my saving grace when I arrive home ravenous, I can eat a few while getting something heated up or cooked. I spent just over 11 euro, as I decided to buy some hard Italian cheese (just as good as parmesan) and that was 3.30. I also got two jars of olives, three tins of kidney beans, 1kg of flour, baking powder, a big packet of fish fingers, a tin of tuna, a tin of sardines, some quark and some grated cheese. Along with what I already have on hand I'm fairly well set now, I think.
Next Saturday I shouldn't need to get more than lettuce, apples and milk. I'm also going to start following the fast diet principles again and tomorrow will be my first fast day. I'm actually looking forward to it.
3 comments:
Work stress (or just busyness) is the thing that makes me self-sabotage all my goals, too. I get disorganised, look track of meal plans, eat badly, then get tired...bad cycle. Calling it a new week here, too.
I am a type 1 diabetic, so fasting is out of the question for me but all of your foods seem very nutritious. I do wonder about the fasting, though. One of my favorite co-workers is quite religious and she fasts one day a week as penance for any pain she may have caused others (she is the LAST person in the world to offend anyone...) and on those days, she gets so pale that I worry about her since she is thin to begin with but she says that it makes her feel wonderful. Still? It worries me.
I think fasting if you are already thin/underweight or, for example, anaemic, will probably always be a bad idea. I could lose 100lbs or so before I start approaching healthy weight so that's not so much an issue for me. And I've always been the robust type really. Don't worry, I am not at all into suffering and if I was having a fast day that just wasn't feeling good, I'd have no problem adding another meal. I'm only loosely following the fast or 5:2 diet as I've never really been into the whole counting calories thing so I don't actually slavishly try to make sure I'm only eating exactly 500 calories, I just try to stick to eating very light meals and making sure I have a 12 to 16-hour period of not eating. Usually I do that by not having breakfast, so I've already not eaten for say eight hours when I get up and am more than halfway there. Despite the conventional wisdom of breakfast being the most important meal, I will usually have a better day if I don't eat for an hour or so after getting up so I've found it easiest to make that the meal I skip.
I found the book really interesting. I definitely didn't plan on trying it but heard so many people talking about it I wanted to see what they were on about. But I just found it so interesting and even while reading was thinking to myself that a lot of what he was talking about as ways to work it into your life were things that were close to my natural rhythms anyway. I also liked the fact that he was very open about the fact that although there have been studies and tests done for years on fasting and it's effects, there have not been very many, and indeed, very few human ones at all. It's an interesting field and I wished I was a bit more 'sciency' as I'd like to be able to read some of the studies referenced or those being done today and understand them properly.
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