Debt, word of the year, and a motto

Time to take stock and admit to myself that I am in debt again. I haven't been denying it, just pushing it to the back of my head really. There are a couple of reasons but mostly just being careless and spending whatever I felt like over the past month or two, along with one or two bigger ticket items. €320 for an injection into my hip? Yay. Anyway, time to get back of track. I bought a budget calendar from PositiveReduceMyDebt (who I've been following on instagram for a couple of months now) and have filled out some goals for January. 

1. 15 no-spend days
2. Stick to €25/week for food (given I ended up spending just over €90 already, this will be very tight)
3. No-spend year - exceptions for January: step ladder and watercolours
   

I have taking some money out of savings to cover some of the bills and will work on getting the overdraft back down to zero over the year while building my savings back up. I do technically have enough in my investment account to cover all of it but I want to leave that where it is if possible. Head down and onwards. And the same applies to food and eating and meal planning. I let things go completely to pot in December and while I enjoyed it, I also badly need to get that under control again. 

So, over the Christmas break, I made a meal plan for January, wrote a shopping list and on Sunday I cooked. My aim is to mostly only have to cook every second week or perhaps twice a month. I think time will tell on that one. On Sunday I made a big pot of vegetable soup, lemon chicken with veg and potatoes, and a chicken and spinach curry. 

My meal plan is not one planning exactly what to have each day but rather a rough outline and then I can choose what I want to have on each day. 

Yikes!

• Butternut squash and ricotta frittata (6 servings)
• Chicken and spinach curry (4 servings)
• Oriental lentil stew (4 big servings - new recipe, depending on what it's actually like, this may make more servings than 4, I think)
• Cauliflower and broccoli gratin (4 servings)
  
• Lemon chicken with potatoes and veg (6 servings)
• Honey chilli pork (4 servings) - except they had no pork in the butchers so I took the suggested veal instead. Without checking the price first. Veal is expensive. How carelessness leads to yet another drop on the debt puddle!
  
  

 

So that's 28 dinners. For lunches, I planned for potato and leek soup, spicy lentil and carrot soup, pumpkin soup, and vegetable soup. Since I didn't even use half of the cabbage I got in the vegetable soup I made at the weekend and still ended up with 10 servings, I don't think I'll need to make all of the rest of those this month. I am also having a week or two of eating some of the meal replacement pouches that I should have, but didn't, use in December. Essentially starting over with a couple of weeks of the transition phase that was supposed to end just before Christmas. That will actually take care of some lunches, too.

The only word I could come up with for a word for the coming year was support. It made me kind of uncomfortable though, so I tried to think of something else. Before realising that I was feeling mostly uncomfortable with the idea of needing or asking for support. Probably a good indication that it really is the right word for me this year. Support it is. 

And then on Saturday I read something in a tweet that I am also adopting as a kind of a motto for a while. If the right words come along at the right time for me, I'll grab on to them: Discipline always trumps motivation. 




Don't wait until you're motivated to do something. Don't wait until you feel ready to start. It may never come. Discipline always trumps motivation.
Decide the kind of life you want to lead and say no to everything that isn't that.
#2022

— Cécile Chemin-Gordon (@MuayCe) December 29, 2021

Feeling full

Just a quick note for posterity. Today was my first official day eating food again after 12 weeks (we won't mention the holiday). I had to get bloodwork done in the morning so I didn't get to have my breakfast (a meal replacement drink) until almost eleven o'clock. I did sneak in a Milky Way on the way back to the office from the clinic, though. Not at all in the plan but I felt like I needed to have something to make my mind believe not immediately flip out and start eating all the things.

For lunch, at around half past one, I had a serving of the pumpkin soup I made at the weekend (50.5 kcal, 3g protein) and 50g of feta cheese (136kcal, 8g protein). Total 186kcal and 11g protein. Target is 200kcal and 15-20g protein so not quite there. The 50g of feta was way too much - on paper I had wanted to do 25g but that seemed like such a small amount I decided to go for 50g. 200g is the standard pack size here so that was a quarter of the feta I had bought.

It was really delicious, even if my soup was a bit watery (I wanted to make sure I got 6 portions out of it). Definitely proof that protein is very important when it comes to feeling full, though. I don't think just the soup would have satisfied me. Now, however, it's half past four and I really need to have another meal replacement but I am still full. And normally I would have had a double portion of meal replacement soup for lunch. Mad altogether. 

Anyway, I can wait another three-quarters of an hour or so but I have aquajogging at quarter past six and will definitely need the energy for that. Tai chi then almost directly after that. I normally try to drink a meal replacement drink after tai chi. And then it looks like I'll have to have another one when I get home. I'll have to see if I have enough here to bring two with me. 

Overall, not a bad day. Especially considering some of my experiences during my holiday, I'm kind of surprised I am feeling so full. Need to hold on to this and make sure to keep portion sizes well under control from now on. The bowls that I never used to use at home because they were too small are now the perfect size and will be staying in regular rotation.

 

Buying food

Today is the final day of the 'fasting' portion of the optifast programme. From tomorrow, we will eat four pouches/meal replacements per day and replace the fifth pouch with a meal that has 200 calories and 15-20g of protein. 

I kept to the fasting regime really well, far better than I expected. And then three weeks ago I went on holidays for two weeks and, well, I did not keep to the fasting regime. I mean, I didn't discard it entirely but I did decide to eat some things while I was in Ireland. Not large amounts of things, and I definitely felt it in having an uncomfortable tummy for the day if I did eat, but I probably ate something on more days than not. And in the last two days, I ate quite a bit of chocolate. Still, from the first day back, I was back to the pouches and have kept to it. I presumably lost less weight than I might otherwise have lost but I assume that the bloods I'll be having done tomorrow won't be as good as they might other have been. Most of all, it was good to feel out my boundaries a little bit and recognise a few of the situations and foods that are likely to be problematic. I'm trying to take a more pro-active approach and actually deal with that kind of thing. My therapist is going to work on it with me over the next while.   

And with eating the food comes the buying of the food. Far more than eating, my spending has gotten a bit out of control over the last month or two and I need to rein that in properly now. I've just bought what I needed to get started this week but from next week/the start of November I plan to switch to a cash envelope only for food. My plan is to allocate €150 per month. That gives me €30 per week in 'five-week' months, or, in a 'four-week' month, €30 per week plus another €30 to stock up on things or buy more expensive items, like olive oil or the good balsamic vinegar or meat.

 Meal planning will be the order of the day for sure. 

I painted! But this getting fit thing takes up a lot of time

Well, I'm halfway through week 5 of the optifast program. Weightloss is going well and I'm not particularly suffering from pangs of hunger at all. Just every now and again when I haven't planned properly or something strange happens, usually with public transport. Like yesterday when I switched to wait for my tram - I had just missed one but the next was due in 12 minutes. And then none actually turned up for more than 40 minutes. Very unusual for here but it meant that I was more than an hour later getting home than planned. But it is definitely good to have a small amount of delayed gratification when it comes to hunger. Reminds me that I don't have to stop at the closest takeaway or restaurant or shop to get something to eat just because I'm starting to feel hunger. My well-nourished first world self could probably survive just fine with nothing to eat for a few days and can certainly manage an hour or two if things don't go to plan. That doesn't mean I won't try to avoid those situations, but it's a good reminder to try and keep in my head.

Leaves are hard to paint

I still don't much care for the sports therapist we're working with. At the moment he is solely focused on us measuring our heart rate and learning to recognise when we're entering the exercise zone* - whereas I am delighted and proud every time I actually do any kind of movement. Because compared to six months ago, when I was just starting to go swimming/aquajogging again and after one not-very-successful attempt was instructed to not try to do more than five minutes at a time to start with, the fact that I have built up to nearly an hour makes me feel pretty good about myself. Also, I bought the cheapest fitness watch I could find (€20) and it's ridiculously bad at measuring my pulse and I am really resenting having to buy another one (€40) for something I am not the least bit interested in having to use.

At the moment, I am doing one session of rehab sport per week (45 mins) on Wednesday mornings before work. Then on Wednesday evenings there's the hour of sport that is part of the optifast program - so far that has been walking. On Thursday evenings after work I've been doing aquajogging, which I really do love so much. Because of COVID restrictions the classes are only half-an-hour long but I try to get there as early as possible so that I can swim up and down for five or ten minutes before we start and try and sneak in another five minutes when we're finished, too. Being the last out of the pool after aquajogging means that the changing rooms are less crowded by the time I get there. 

I've signed up to start an online yoga course offered by work starting at the end of September. The in person class was on Wednesdays, so no use to me. And when talking about different sports with the optifast group, I was reminded of tai chi, which I did years ago and really liked. I vaguely remember looking for a class when I moved here and finding nothing. When I googled again recently, there are in fact three different tai chi schools here. How did I miss that? Anyway, I was thinking perhaps it would be too much but then a couple of days later they listed a beginners course starting this week and taking place on Thursday but later, so that it would be easy to get to after aquajogging. And today I signed up. Hopefully the next three weeks, with that double commitment on Thursdays won't take too much out of me. After that aquajogging is over and when it starts up again in October, it will be indoor and I have signed up for the Friday sessions.

Anyone keeping count? I think that should give me a better spread because at the moment, by the time Friday comes around I am tired and have no interest in doing any sport, or honestly, moving at all. 

Current timetable

• Monday: nothing
  
• Tuesday: nothing
  
• Wednesday: rehab sport (morning), optifast (evening)
  
• Thursday: aquajogging (evening, after work), tai chi (evening, after aquajogging)
  
• Friday: local choir for one hour every two weeks
  
• Saturday: nothing (but I try to tell myself I'll do some time on the exercise bike - so far this has happened once)
  
• Sunday: nothing
  

Future timetable (from end September/mid-October)

• Monday: yoga (online, evenings)
  
• Tuesday: nothing (kind of wanting to start going back to uni choir, which would be 2.5 hours on Tuesday evenings)
  
• Wednesday: rehab sport (morning), optifast (evening)
  
• Thursday: tai chi (evening)
  
• Friday: aquajogging (evening, after work), local choir for one hour every two weeks (later evening)
  
• Saturday: nothing (but I try to tell myself I'll do some time on the exercise bike - so far this has happened once)
  
• Sunday: nothing

This was supposed to be a sunset reflected in water

So, yeah, that feels like a lot. Especially considering the fact that I haven't been able to persuade myself to do much of anything outside work for the past couple of years. So far, I'm holding up ok though. 

I even went to a watercolours workshop last Friday. It was so much fun and although I'm not very good, it was enough fun and interesting enough that I'll keep trying things out at home, I think.

It got waaay better once we layered trees and stuff on it. Let's ignore the tree whose shadow is twice as wide as the actual tree. LOL

I can see myself getting as obsessed with making tiny thin brushstrokes as a good friend of mine who paints is. The one you see on this picture was done by the teacher using the exact same paintbrush as me. 

Anyway, not quite prizewinning, but definitely good enough to hang on the fridge.

I have booked a cleaning lady to come and do a deep clean on my apartment, which hasn't been getting more than a lick and a promise for several months now. My back was just too sore and I couldn't find my way out of the hole I was in. By now, I've caught up on all the washing up, caught up on the washing, and have gotten a bit more decluttering done. The plan is for her to clean the entire place and that should leave me feeling more capable of getting back to trying to TOMM every week day. 

I don't think this level of activity is genuinely sustainable in the long-run, but I have promised myself that I will really put a lot of effort into losing weight and, more importantly, gaining health and fittness this year. We'll see how things pan out over the next few months.

 

 

 

*There are technical terms for the different zones and formulas for working out your own range for each of them but I'm too lazy now to go and look at my notebook.

The fasting begins

Day one of our 12-week fasting phase started with a bang with me completely forgetting to bring one of the shaker things with me to work. I'll just had to do it the old-fashioned way yesterday and use a fork. Not optimal but it worked well enough. I think I'll buy a couple of small whisks for the office kitchen. And today I brought one of the shakers with me and it was much easier.

Food for the week

Yesterday went pretty well. I was only a little bit hungry a few times throughout the day but that is what is supposed to happen. When you sit down to eat lunch or dinner, it is normal for you to feel hungry. I've worked on that one and off over the last few years. Learning to hold back and not immediately reach for something the very second I feel hungry. There is, of course, the old Weight Watchers trick "if you feel hungry, drink a glass of water, do something to occupy yourself and wait twenty minutes". The idea being that many people don't recognise thirst anymore and think they're hungry when really they are started to need some hydration. 

The amount of liquid we are supposed to consume in addition to our five meal replacements is definitely a challenge. At least 3 litres every day. I have a 750ml bottle in work and normal fill that with water once in the morning and once after lunch. To drink three litres in a day, I'll need to fill it at least three times. That's 2.25l and then if I have a cup of tea or two at home in the evening, I'm just about there. I managed to get to 2.85l yesterday but I did end up having to get up a couple of times to go to the toilet during the night so my sleep was a bit disturbed. This morning I drank a mug of water before leaving the house. But I had therapy before work and since I started later, I'm still drinking my first bottle of water. I'm not going to kill myself with trying to do it every single day and if I don't manage it, I'm sure I'll still survive. I'm glad that water is what I normally drink anyway. I'll miss being able to drink milk but very glad that fizzy drinks are more of a once or twice a year thing for me. And of course having to quit drinking caffeine years ago because of migraines is undoubtedly a big advantage now. 

In really positive news, I managed to kill two mosquitos in my apartment last night, and don't appear to have any new bites today. The ones I collected over the past three or four days are mostly all looking red and swollen. That happens every few years and I've never managed to actually look up if it more related to the mosquitos being particularly horrible that year, or my skin/body is just reacting more that year.

In terms of appetite, the other thing I noticed yesterday was that once or twice during the day I really, really wanted to eat something. Not that I was hungry. But that I really wanted to be engaging in the physical act of eating. Interesting. We are allowed to chew a small amount of chewing gum (some gums, not all) but were also advised to try and keep it to a minimum, since chewing activates all sorts of signals relating to hunger and that's what we don't need at the moment. I'm going to try and make it to the recommended six-week mark before starting to do fancy things like adding (certain) herbs or spices to the soups, or lemon juice or ginger to my water, and I think I'll do the same with chewing gum. That one remains to be seen. 

In the plans for this weekend is tackling all of the washing up that has somehow built up again over the past week or so. Then I want to give the kitchen a bit of a scrub and enjoy the feeling of a clear and clean space for the next while. I'm excited to restart my store cupboard slowly and make sure in future to really only get the stuff I know I will use.

Happy Friday everyone!

Last day of eating food for a while

Today is the last day I will be eating actual food for a while. More than a year after I actually signed up, and after Corona-related postponement after postponement, last Wednesday the 52-week Optifast weightloss programme at my local hospital finally started. This evening is the second meeting, which means this evening I get to collect my first order of meal replacements and starting tomorrow, for a period of 12 weeks, I will be be eating five of those every day. We did a taste-test last week and I have to admit I was underwhelmed by the soups on offer. I had had such high hopes for the leek and potato. And I had a cup-a-soup just a few weeks ago, so it's not like I have an incredibly high bar for comparison. Still, I will be glad to have something warm on occasion, I'm sure. 

Today, I told everyone in work about it to ask for their support, warn them/apologise in advance in case the next few weeks bring a very moody or easily distracted Moonwaves, and to let them know that there will be no more sweets/cakes/treats to be found in my office. It's somewhat traditional for the secretary to have a bowl of treat out, for example in the run-up to Christmas. And I asked them specifically to just not let me know if someone bakes a cake and brings it in to share. While ultimately my success will be up to me, I am fully embracing the attitude of make everybody else help, too.

Forgot to take a photo this morning,
this is after the pile has been raided.

 In return, anyone who wants has the opportunity today to take any of the remaining storecupboard stuff I had. Despite my efforts to eat the cupboards down, I still managed to fill two large shopping bags. And I have to admit I also threw out more than one packet of sooooo far past its best before date, I'd better not risk giving it to someone else, items. My boss is going to take a small basket of things into care (olive oil, the good balsamic vinegar and that kind of thing), hide it somewhere and give it back to me when I start to incorporate proper food again. That will start happening at the end of October. 

After the 12 weeks of just meal replacements are over, we begin a transition phase, in which we slowly start to replace the meal replacements with actual food again. And that will bring us up to Christmas. Possibly not the best timing for the first two weeks of the stabilisation phase to be over Christmas and New Year but I'm sure it'll be fine. 

Obviously food is not the only component to play a role when it comes to dealing with serious obesity and eating disorders and this programme also involves a 3-hour appointment every week. There's a talk on some aspect of nutrition and group therapy. I think at the beginning these two sort of blend into one another and the psychologist and the nutrition advisor are both there at the same time. We get weighed and have a check-up with the doctor. And at the end, there is an hour to an hour and a half of sport. Gentle stuff like walking at the start, moving on to pilates, yoga, nordic walking and so on in the later months. The idea being to try out a good few different things and hopefully find things you like to do. About five times throughout the year there are longer appointments where a full blood workup and body fat analysis and so on are done. 

From a financial point of view, at €3,400 for the year, it's not exactly cheap. You are supposed to pay in instalments but I asked to be allowed to pay the whole thing up front and have done that. I just don't want to have to remake the decision every month to keep going. That feels more like pressure to me than an opportunity to choose the commitment again and I am fully leaning into doing whatever it is that will make this work. I have now been very overweight for most of the past thirty years. I think for a few months in 1996/1997 I managed to maintain around 85kg (about 188lbs for any foreigners here, or a bit less than 13.5 stone) for a while and that is the lightest I have been since I was a child. Honestly, I would be thrilled if I were able to reach that again, but at this stage, I'll take any sustainable weightloss I can manage. 

So, it has been a strange couple of weeks as I haven't much felt up to cooking but kept buying things to make x one last time, and y just once more. I've ended up having some strange combinations and because I normally try to be aware of portion size, it has been really weird to be erring more on the side of "well, I'll have more since I need to use it up". I'm glad it has felt so weird though, as it kind of proves to me that I have learnt a lot over the years, especially during the time I spent seeing a nutritionist on a weekly basis a few years ago. For posterity's sake, here's what's on the menu for today: 

Breakfast was:
Scrambled eggs and tomato with toast (3 eggs, 1 tomato, 2 slices of toast, some butter)
Oh, I also finished the crisps (about one very large handful), had three chocolate digestive biscuits, and a large mug of milk 

Snacks on my desk for throughout the day:
The last of the mixed nuts and sultanas
1.5 bars of ritter sport with cornflakes
1 banana
1 apple 

Lunch will be:
The last of the fresh veg, which I chopped and sautéed in olive oil this morning, then mixed with the last of the cream cheese.
2 small courgettes, 4 scallions, 2 small leeks, 1 tiny carrot, cherry tomatoes. I'll have that with some leftover chicken.
Oh, and I have the last few pieces of kimchi from a tin I opened at the weekend. 

With all of that, and considering our meeting will go from five to eight o'clock, I don't think I'll have or need dinner. Although I am going to try and make an appearance at a colleague's retirement dinner after the meeting, so I may be tempted to have some falafel there. We'll see.

More soups and stews

My efforts to keep cooking and eating healthily continue and I haven’t had a bad episode of backsliding yet. I’m not eating perfectly, could definitely do with cutting some more chocolate out but I have plenty of days now where the only chocolate (or sweets of any kind) that I eat is one or two squares of dark chocolate. Compared to days of yore, where I could easily down five or ten bars, this is a huge improvement. I did allow myself a “cheat day” last Friday (it was a very carb-heavy day) – it was good to do it because it staved off the beginnings of feeling cravings but half a cheat-day would have done, to be honest. 

I signed up for aqua jogging through the local community college, classes are held in my local swimming pool and I paid €56.80 for eight weeks. The first class was last Saturday and I really enjoyed it. Above all because I was able to do it! In November, I also signed up for a local gym so that I’d be able to compensate a bit for not cycling to and from work a couple of times a week. I went once and then we had a couple of weeks of good weather so I was cycling to and from work anyway. Then I hurt my back and wasn’t allowed to do any sport, including cycling. Then I got a cold. And then it was already halfway through December and, well, let’s just say I’ve ended up being one of those people who starts using the gym in January. Sigh. My plan is to go on Monday evenings after work and I did that last week. I thought maybe Wednesdays might be a good day to add as my second day but that didn’t work out last week. And then I checked my calendar and saw that not only do I have an extra choir rehearsal today (Monday), I also have an appointment with my dietician on Wednesday after work. I may bring my swimsuit with me as the dietician has a room in the physio practice that is attached to the local swimming pool (benefits of small-town living) and then I could go swimming for a while after my appointment. I may just bring my stuff with me and then see how I’m feeling on the day. Somehow at the moment the more “outs” I give myself from having to do something, the more likely I am to do it. I even ended up going to the gym yesterday afternoon, to make up for missing this evening. Although that was partially a procrastination effort, too, as I just couldn’t get in the mood to cook yesterday.

I even, despite my boast of healthy cooking and eating, got myself a “doner box” (doner kebab meat and chips with the garlicky sauce) on the way home from the gym, more procrastination. My sister rang just as I was finishing eating that and while I was on the phone to her I started gathering the stuff I needed to make what I had planned so that when we were finished talking, I could just start chopping veg immediately. So, this week I made a pumpkin soup and a lentil and chicken stew. The pumpkin soup is a bit watery looking but that happens to me with pumpkin soup a lot and will be fine, I’m sure. I used a smallish Hokkaido pumpkin (625g) and a medium size onion (125g) with a spoonful of coconut oil (thinking it might give a bit of the flavour of pumpkin curry made with coconut milk without actually using an entire tin of coconut milk). 750g of veg which will give me four portions of soup – according to Australian guidelines (there’s a discussion over at MMM on getting your full five a day of veg and two of fruit that was started by an Australian, hence the Australian guidelines) that about 10 servings of veg, or 2.5 servings per portion. 

For lunch today I had the last portion of beetroot soup from last week – had the last few portions of that with feta crumbled over the top so that I had some protein in the meal. Soooo good. And for dinner this evening, I brought a portion of the lentil stew I made yesterday. It is really good, even if I do say so myself and so I’m going to make a note here of what I put in it so that I can hopefully reproduce it in future. 

I used 300g (dry weight) of lentils, 400g of chicken breast chopped into small pieces, 250g carrots (2 chopped, 1 grated), 100g onion, 170g mushrooms (a small tin that I chopped into smaller bits – still don’t like mushrooms but it’s a cheap way of adding veg), 2 cloves of garlic (all I had left), a tin of tomatoes (240g drained weight) and 500g passata. I used olive oil to sauté the onions and chicken and added just enough water to cover everything (then cooked with the lid off to allow it to thicken somewhat). For spices, I used 3 generous spoonfuls of smoked paprika, 3 of cumin, 1 of turmeric, and 1 of coriander, with about half a teaspoon of salt and half of pepper. But the main thing is the smoked paprika, which gives such a lovely flavour. It’s very good with the chicken. The whole thing gives me 1,260g of veg and I reckon I’m going to get about six portions out of it, which will be 2.8 servings of veg per portion. I’m interested to see what my dietician thinks of it though – I feel like there’s way too much in it between the lentils and the chicken but I think I kept to the recommended portion sizes alright. 

The sample plans she gave me are great in a way as they are built around combining elements from three building blocks: veg, carbs, and protein. If you’re leaving out carbs then you can choose two proteins. Not eating enough protein, or not eating protein with every meal (better for keeping your digestive system on an even keel throughout the day) is still a bit of an issue for me but I’m sure I’ll get there eventually. Where I’m currently trying to find my way is because eating lots of one-pot meals in winter is not as straightforward as choosing something from each section for each meal as the stuff is all combined in advance for several meals. So, I’m bringing details of what I’ve been making to my appointment to see what she thinks. For now, I have 11 portions of food in the fridge (still have two of last week’s veg soup), which means that even for a ridiculously busy week like this week, there are no excuses for not eating properly. And I’ll be doing my best to keep up with washing the various Tupperware containers every evening, even if I’m home late, because more than anything else, keeping on top of the washing-up is very important if I’m going to keep actually going into the kitchen to cook!

P.S. Had two cute, random photos to share but blogger is not cooperating so it's just another wall of text this evening. :)

Almond, lime and chickpea curry with lots of veggies

Right, this whole A-Z thing is standing in the way of me blogging now, so I'm abandoning it for now. In the meantime, here's a recipe for a curry I made last week. I got the basic recipe from the Instagram stories of a guy called Bressie (musician and mental health advocate in Ireland, among other things) and then realised it had almost no vegetables in it. Since I am trying to increase the amount of veg I eat, I went ahead and added a load of them, only finding out during the week from my dietician that (for my weightloss purposes) sweet potatoes are considered to be carbs rather than veg. Same for chickpeas and lentils, although I knew that from having asked a couple of weeks ago. They are definitely "better" carbs, but nonetheless carbs. Oh well.

For most of the winter, I'm planning to cook and eat mostly soups and stews, and lentils and chickpeas will form the bulk of the carb part of my diet in that time. So, here's the recipe. It's very tasty and I will definitely be using it as the basis for more curries from now on. I doubled up on some ingredients to compensate for adding more veg.

Ingredients
2 tins chickpeas (I'll go back to using cooked dried ones at some stage but for now, tins are a big help)
1 tin chopped tomatoes (I used 1 tin and 1 carton of passata)
1 cup of whole, blanched almonds (1 just used most of a 150g packet - there's about 50g left)
Juice of 2 limes (I used a bottle of pure juice and threw in the equivalent of the juice of 4 limes)
1 onion (I used 1 large and 1 small)
3 cloves of garlic (I used minced garlic from a jar, 2 good heaped teaspoons)
1 red chilli
Coconut milk (the list of ingredients didn't actually list this so I just added a small tin)

Spices (I used 2 teaspoons each, the original recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of each)
Tumeric
Ground cumin
Ground coriander
Ground ginger
Paprika (I used a mild smoked one)

I also added in a large sweet potato (peeled and diced into big chunks), a large carrot (sliced), a leek (sliced) and a 100g packet of baby spinach leaves.

Instructions
Saute onion, garlic, chilli and spices. Add chickpeas. Add coconut milk. Add tomatoes. Then almonds and lime juice. Bring to boil and simmer for fifteen to twenty minutes.

I didn't do that. I just threw everything into the slow cooker, topped it up with enough water to cover everything and cooked the lot on low for about eight hours. Really tasty, really filling and just nicely spicy.

Dietician

As anyone who has been reading this blog for a while will know, I am very overweight. My attempts to lose weight have gotten less and less successful over the years in the sense that even when I start all over again, I don’t seem to be able to keep it up for more than a week or two, if even that. 

Last May, when I was visiting my sister in France, I spoke briefly with my sister about this, telling her about an article I had read about this luxury fasting clinic (sounds like a contradiction in terms but I think it sounds absolutely heavenly, you can read that article here "Enemas, laxatives and one nut: my ten days at a German fasting clinic") and how I’d actually like to go there. She asked me why I didn’t go to the doctor and ask if there was any equivalent for less-well-off people covered by health insurance. I kind of brushed her off but inside could feel myself getting very defensive just even from her really quite innocuous question. As these things go, I firmly pushed the thought out of my head but by the time summer was drawing to a close and my own attempts had never made it past a day or two, the idea of going to the doctor had worked its way sufficiently through my subconscious. It took me a couple of weeks of thinking about it to actually screw up the courage to go to the doctor and ask for help but I did it. And he was on holidays. Typical. 

Rather than traipse across town (my town is small, it would have been about a ten-minute walk) to the doctor who was covering for him, I sort of heaved a sigh of relief and told myself I’d go and see him when he was back from holidays. Of course by then I had lost my nerve again and it took me another while to actually go to him. Then it was a month or so of sorting stuff out with the health insurance place, getting all the right forms filled, stamped and signed correctly and all that kind of thing. And then, it sort of seemed to happen very quickly and all of a sudden I had my first appointment with a dietician.*

That was on 7^th February and today I had my third appointment. I thought it was great that it was working out so well to blog about it today but as it turns out, today’s appointment ended up being incredibly emotional for me and I’m still feeling a bit vulnerable and not wanting to talk about it. Perhaps I’ll find a way to come back to the topic during this A to Z and be able to write something a bit more positive. :)

On the whole, she is being a big help and I have made some progress. I’m a bit caught between knowing how much better I could be doing if I were just a bit better organised and trying to learn how to deal with the situations that my disorganisation lands me in time and again. And, as has been the issue for the last year or two, it’s the keeping at it that is the hard part. I have not managed to keep at it consistently by any means but knowing that there’s another appointment coming up in a few weeks is helping me to at least always keep coming back to trying to do better. I’ve lost 2.6kg (just over 5.5lbs), which to me, is really not a lot to have lost in eight weeks but at least it’s going in the right direction and I know that it’s changing habits and improving my overall eating which is the most important thing for now. If I can get that stuff sorted a bit better, then the weightloss will happen one way or the other.

* I’m using the word dietician partly because it fits nicely into my A to Z. The literal translation of the German word would be “nutrition advisor”. Feel free to substitute whatever word is the appropriate word for the profession that is actually regulated by the government in your country.