May 13: So Bad For Me

How often do you eat foods that you know are bad for your body?

 

Um… CONSTANTLY!! I know that I shouldn’t, and I know that it’s wrong for me to do so, but I just can’t help myself. It just tastes to damn good, and is so incredibly satisfying.

In saying that though, I will at least acknowledge that my diet, generally speaking, is quite healthy. Dinners are usually vegetables or salad with some kind of lean protein like fish or kangaroo or chicken, and recently we’ve been getting into Quinoa, which is quite good for you… And I drink a lot of green / herbal tea. I’ve swapped sugar for Xylitol which is a natural sweetener, and not that nasty white stuff (although I use that for baking…!!) but my weakness is cake and biscuits.

Fuuuuuck me. I wish I could kick it, but I just can’t seem to. There’s a sugar addiction deep within me. It’s grabbed hold of something and it’s refusing to let go. I’ll easily polish an entire back of biscuits before I’ve even finished my cup of tea. Or, maybe before I finish my second cuppa. Put a cake in front of me, and I have to exercise ridiculous amounts of restraint to eat just one slice, because if you so much as turn your back, I’ll inhale that damn thing, and devour the crumbs and make that plate look like there was never anything on it. It’s disgusting, and so very wrong, but it just can’t help myself.

The absolute worst is cupcakes. SWEET BABY JESUS!! For me, cupcakes are like crack. And it certainly doesn’t help when there is a cupcake shop right outside our local supermarket… Everytime we go there and do some groceries… Cupcakes. Need to just rush in and pick up a few last-minute things for dinner? Grab some cupcakes. Just finished lunch before you go and do grocery shopping? Let’s just get some cupcakes for when we get home and have a cuppa.

I know that by comparison, our diet would be somewhere in the middle. It’s not ridiculously healthy, nor is it super unhealthy but there in the middle. There’s certainly room for improvement, but that requires effort.

May 5 – Kitchen Creation

Have you ever invented your own recipe? Tell us about it (or your favourite one).

There are two ‘creations’ that instantly come to mind when I read this…

Firstly, there’s my cheesy pepper rice concoction.

I first created this when I was poor student. I was doing really long hours dancing full time, and would generally come home feeling completely exhausted, and by time I was ready to have dinner, it was quite late. After going through my six-pieces-of-toast-and-two-cups-of-tea-for-dinner phase, (which at one point also became a breakfast phase!) I moved on to this creation. It all happened one night when I was craving rice. Nothing special, just plain, boring, rice. I don’t know why, but I just was. I would sometimes make a big curry or stew, and a big pot of rice, and then portion it up and that would be lunches or dinners for a week, and I would always make my rice substituting water for stock – usually vegetable or chicken.

I’d make it in the microwave, and it would always cook perfectly.

So this one night, I decided to just make a small single portion of rice. Using chicken stock, I cooked my rice to perfection and took a couple of mouthfuls. It needed something. So I hunted through the cupboards to work out what to add… A-HA! A couple of small tins of tuna. Mixed it into the rice… still needed something… PEPPER!! SO I mixed that in and then added some grated cheese… and it became this gooey, peppery, tuna rice dish that became an instant hit, and a new regular in my repertoire of cooking late at night.

The other ‘creation’ of mine is my watermelon drink. It’s something that I generally only make in summer, because it’s so refreshing – especially here when summer reaches temperatures up to 45 degrees celsius!!

So, in a blender I would put a small amount of juice – I would only ever use a special Apple & Mint juice from the supermarket, then I would cut up a whole bunch of seedless watermelon (enough to fill 2/3 of my giant blender) then a big bunch of fresh mint, a generous handful of ice, and another small amount of juice… and blend.

It takes a little bit for everything to blend and for the ice to crush, and it quickly fills the blender – so if you try it, make sure that you don’t overfill the blender, because once it’s all liquidised, it’ll overflow.

Then in a glass, I put some more ice, pour in my concoction, garnish with some more mint and VOILA… heavenly refreshment!!

May 5 – Personal Chef?

Would you ever want a personal chef, or do you enjoy cooking your own meals?

As it currently stands, I kinda do have a personal chef – Hulk does all the cooking in our household. However, when we have this discussion with people, I get this look from them as though they’re judging me because I don’t cook dinner, but I’m very quick to put those judgemental bitches back in their place by letting them know that if I weren’t getting home between 9:30 – 10pm each night, I’d be more than happy to be cooking dinner, and then that usually wipes that judgemental look right off their face.

May 2 – Eating Plans

Tell us how you wish you ate if it’s different from your day-to-day reality.

I would love to be the sort of person who could just wake up at stupid o’clock, go and do a workout at the gym, come home and make something ridiculously healthy like an egg-white omelette, then go to work, and have four or five small meals throughout the day, then come home to have a small meal before going to bed at 9pm and getting about nine or ten hours sleep.

May 1 – Meal Time

Tell us how you eat: do you sit down to three meals, eat several small meals, or grab a granola bar on the run?

I almost don’t even want to write this post, because I already know that I’m going to get flack for it, because I don’t really eat properly… well, I mean I do, but I also don’t.

Daily Prompt: Pour Some Sugar on Me

What is your favorite sweet thing to eat? Bread pudding? Chocolate chip oatmeal cookies? A smooth and creamy piece of cheesecake? Tell us all about the anticipation and delight of eating your favorite dessert. Not into sweets? Tell us all about your weakness for that certain salty snack.

 

For people like me, who have a real severe sweet tooth, having to pick one, has the same dread as a parent having to pick their favourite child. How can I possibly pick my favourite sweet thing to eat??

There’s simply too many choices.

At this precise moment, I could totally murder a family-sized custard tart… or an entire cake – like a chocolate Swiss roll, or a butter cake, or like a half-dozen chocolate croissants. Or an entire packet of biscuits – I don’t really care what type of biscuits, just as long as I get to eat an entire packet (or three) of them.

I have a weakness when it comes to sweet things and desserts. And I mean major weankess!! I just can’t restrain myself. In my drawer at work, more specifically my bottom drawer, is where I keep most of my food – like all my crackers, and tins of tuna, and powdered soup packets… but I also have my rectangular plastic container.

In that container I usually have it filled with a few different sweet-snacky things. At the moment I have a few individual packets of low-calorie berry-flavoured biscuits – they’re new on the market, so I decided to try them. In every flavour.

I also have these small banana and choc-chip two-bite snack cake things. Naturally there was three different flavours when I first discovered them, so had to buy a box of each, and have also slowly eaten my way through those as well.

Not to mention the odd mini packet of flavoured Tim Tams… or the odd chocolate bar…

Oh and when one of the parents brings a chocolate fundraising box to work, I’m gladly donating money to that… simply because I can get giant Freddo Frogs and Caramello Koalas for a dollar… A WHOLE DOLLAR!!

I don’t actually think it really matters what the item is, as long as it’s sweet and there’s plenty of it, I’ll go to town with it. Block of chocolate… it’ll be all gone within minutes. I don’t seem to be able to restrain myself, or slow down to savour the flavour, or enjoy the moment… my brain will see a block of chocolate, an entire cake, a box of truffles etc as a challenge and say ‘Right. See all of that?? How fast can you get that into your belleh?? You’ve got a 5-minute time limit. If you can’t finish that whole thing within five minutes, then you’re nothing more than an embarrassment. And a failure. A completely embarrassing failure. You make me sick. What the fuck is wrong with you? What do you mean you don’t feel well?? How dare you let that stop you?! GET OUT OF MY SITE IMMEDIATELY!!’

When I was younger, it was even worse. I had something called ‘The Oprah Box’, which was stashed away within the depths of my wardrobe. It was a red square box, and it was always stocked with packets of biscuits and lollies and blocks of chocolate. And I mean always!. Sometimes I’d get home late at night from dancing, and if I was staying up late studying, I’d attack the box. If my homegirl B came over, we’d attack the box together. There was always something in it.

It amazes me how I don’t have diabetes already. God knows I was certainly on the right path to developing it. I think because I actually eat normal food the rest of the time, and it’s actually pretty healthy, plus the fact that I’m quite regularly active at the gym.

As I finish this post, I’m currently sitting in the food court of a city shopping centre… people around me are eating Mickey D’s and it smells so. damn. good. I just wanna go smash down a couple of burgers, but I have to go to the gym later on, and I simply can’t do it to myself.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/daily-prompt-pour-some-sugar-on-me/

Dec 31: More Stuff in 2014

What do you want to more of in 2014?

In the lead up to New Years, I’ve been seen a lot of this on my FB newsfeed. I don’t really do New Years Resolutions, because I never stick to them… and most of the time they’re generic.

Just before I started to write this post, I saw a post by those Glamorous, Attention Hungry Bitches, The Mean Queens, which made me stop and think about what MY resolutions could be… They don’t necessarily need to be massive, nor do they need to be really generic like most people’s ie., I’m gonna lose 10kgs, I’m gonna put me first, I’m gonna stop smoking / drinking / being a shitbag etc.

Fuck that.

1. I’m gonna finish my December NaBloPoMo writing challenge!!
2. …Then I’m gonna go straight onto a January one!!
3. I’m going to make more of an effort to take better care of my skin: cleanse, tone, moisturise and exfoliate 2-3 times per week.
4. Have. More. Baths.
5. Read. I have so many books that I buy, but I don’t get time to read them. I need to change that. I think in a previous post I said something about reading one book per month. That should be pretty achievable… shouldn’t it??
6. Cook for my husband. Hulk always cooks, and even when I do (rarely) cook, he still wants to come into the kitchen and take over… because he can’t help himself and it’s adorable and annoying all at once… but seeing as how I have a heap of cookbooks just sitting there collecting dust, it’s time to start making use of them, and impressing my husband.
7. Think about giving up my weekend job… I enjoy my job, but I would also enjoy having a weekend as well.
8. Be more social – I need human interaction that doesn’t involve or revolve around work.
9. Work on my diet. Having dinner at 10pm after a 15 / 16hr day 4 nights a week isn’t good at all, but that’s our life… I don’t want to keep having late dinners and then even later nights… and I can’t just completely skip dinner either… I need to work something out.
10. Travel more. Whether interstate or overseas, girl, I need to spread my wings and go places.

Ten things is enough, right? I mean, looking back over at it, there’s certainly a lot more that I could add to that list, but I figure these are the 10 that I REALLY need to stick to the most.

Maybe I’ll re-evaluate in June ’14??

Dec 30: Less in 2014

What do you want to do less of in 2014?

I want to be less sleep deprived.

I want to deal with less bullshit.

I want to be less socially awkward.

I should be saying that I want to eat less chocolate, but let’s just say that’s not going to happen. Ever. I know I have a problem, so let’s generalise it and say I want to eat less unhealthy food.

Daily Prompt: To Boldly Go…

An impending new year gives rise to reflection and goal setting. What will your goals for 2014 be? It’s never to early to start thinking about self improvement!

Oh maaaaannnnn. Goal setting!? Really?!

So. Not. Me.

I guess that probably explains a lot. And let’s be honest here, the year isn’t over yet. It’s not even December. I don’t even have my Christmas tree up!! It’s too early for goal setting.

Goals for self-improvement. Jeebus. I think generally speaking, my list for self improvement would be the following:

• Make more time for my friends: This year I’ll admit to being too neglectful of my friends and not being very social. That needs to change next year.
• Read more books: I keep buying books, but my problem is I don’t actually dedicate time to reading them. That also needs to change next year.
• Start going to the gym: Now, I’m already at the gym quite a lot, but teaching classes isn’t the same as doing a workout for myself. I need to try and find time to do this.
• Get more sleep: going to bed every night at midnight, 1am, and getting up at 7am simply isn’t enough. I need more sleep, and I need to change that too.
• I need to alter my diet / meals: Getting home late and having dinner late needs to change. I think I want to try a couple of weeks of not eating dinner, and instead, having a protein shake or something for dinner. Most nights we’re not eating until 9:30 – 10 – 10:30pm and it’s not right. Something needs to change, but it needs to change and we need to actually stick to it!!

I think that’s more than plenty to focus on right now… However, there’s a huge difference between making goals and actually following through with them. Besides, holidays and Christmas are coming up, so I’ve got a few weeks of extreme laziness to look forward to. I can deal with all of this stuff after that. hehehe.

 

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/11/27/prompt-boldy/