Last night I had another one of my favourite quick and easy meals, chilli. I didn’t have any veggie mince left so I had to make it with chicken-style pieces instead.
Sweet Chilli Quicken (serves four)
Ingredients: 300g Quorn Chicken-Style Pieces (or preferably beef-style mince)
1 Large Onion (diced)
1 Packet Chilli Con Carne Sauce Mix
150ml Water (only needed in the chilli mix you’re using requires it)
1 Tin (400g) Red Kidney Beans
1 Tin (400g) Chopped Tomatoes
Honey (to taste)
Olive Oil
Serve with brown rice
Directions: Start cooking the rice
Dice and brown the onion and Quorn chicken-style pieces in the olive oil (only brown the onion if using veggie mince)
Throughly rinse the red kidney beans, mix the chilli sauce with the water (or follow the instructions on the packet)
Add the red kidney beans, chilli con carne sauce and tinned tomatoes to the saucepan (and the veggie mince if using)
Bring to the boil then simmer for 10 mins. Stir frequently as it easily sticks to the bottom of the pan!
Bring off the heat and stir in honey to taste (if the chilli is too spicy for you add more honey or use less of the chilli mix)
Serve with brown rice, salad and a lime flavoured low-calorie drink
Alternatives: Instead of using rice serve in a wholegrain tortilla lined with lettuce.
1. Going to Ikea with Madeleine for a fun day out!
Our housemate decided he wanted to buy furniture for his room so we all went to ikea, with my friend Madeleine (who I hadn’t seen for MONTHS). We spent hours walking around looking at everything and anything. Madeleine and I spent most of the time taking photos of us trying everything out!
A massive Best Buy has just opened near Ikea (I think it’s the first one in Britian) and I really wanted to go but we were all ravinous with hunger so we went straight to Bluewater to get some food. We went to Ed’s of course :) I had my favourite- the bean burger combo (bean burger, fries, onion rings and coleslaw) with a diet coke. Dan had his favourite- a slick dog combo with a root beer and chocolate mint malt milkshake. So unhealthy but soooo good!
Ed’s Easy Diner- one of our favourite places to eat (amazing burgers! zomgosh!)
2. Trip to London with my Mum
I hadn’t been to Central London for ages so this was a really fun day out. We went on the London Eye (where my mum bought me a cute I <3 London hoody), to Covent Garden market, Leicester Square, Chinatown and Oxford Street. I was so exhausted for days afterwards, we did about six hours walking! I ended up doing yoga on the Wii Fit at midnight to try and loosen up a bit so I could sleep!
3. Enjoying the weather
We’ve been having plently of BBQs in the goregous weather we’ve been having! I love having a garden and we’ve been making the most out of it. It’s so nice to sit out in the sun, having friends over or even to just have our morning cup of tea! Snowdrop has been loving it too!
4. Dad and Grandma visiting
Saturday was the first time my Dad or Grandma had seen the house since we moved. It had been way too long since I last saw them. We went for lunch at this really nice resturant which is right by our house. I had a goat’s cheese and mushroom burger, expecting it to be a veggie burger but it was literally a slice of goat’s cheese and a whole mushroom in a bun with relish! It was really good though (and I’m not usually one for goat’s cheese). I had a soda and lime with it, that’s only the second time I’ve ever had that drink and it’s really growing on me. The perfect thirst quencher for a hot day!
Afterwards we went shopping. Dad and Grandma got me a blender, hand blender and iron as house warming gifts :)
I’m so excited about the blender as it’s means I can now make home-made soups and smoothies! Nom.
5. Getting into fighting shape!
Recently I’ve been trying to give my lifestlye a healthy makeover. I’ve started eating a lot better and been trying to exercise regularly. It’s been hard and I’ve had some setbacks but I feel so good for it. Dan said this morning that he was starting to see results and my skin is much clearer. If you want to read my fitness blog, leave a comment and I’ll email you the link.
6.Work as usual
After a nice few days off over Easter and some fun weekends it’s been back to work as usual, except with lovely warm weather!
Here’s a video of us on our way home from work one day:
(Dan’s not a big fan of cameras!)
7. New Shower!
After being broken for AGES we finally have a working shower! It was so nice to have one yesterday after I can’t remember how long. I do love a nice bubble bath, but not every single day. I almost forgot how quick showers are compared to baths! lol
8. Taking Photos
The warm weather and clear blue skies has really got me back into photography! Dan drove the country lanes route to work the other day especially so I could take photos :) We had some extra time another day so grabbed some lunch from a supermarket (I got sushi NOM!) and went to one of our favourite spots to eat it. It’s this little lake hidden down a quiet road which always has loads of ducks and an ice-cream van! It was so nice eating lunch in the warm weather whilst watching the ducks. Another day we went to these gardens I love so I could take photos of the blossom. I’ve also been using my tripod in the garden to take photos of the blossom. I edited the last two photos in Paint Shop Pro.
[edit]This is why I love blogging and taking photos! If I hadn’t make this post I’d probably have forgotten about everything mentioned in it. I really need to blog more often and definately take more photos, especally of people![/edit]
I absolutely adore curry so I’ve been having them a lot! :) Recent favourites have been Quorn korma with brown rice and potato & frozen veggies korma with brown rice. I also like to have red and green thai curries. Now that I have my own blender I can start making the sauces myself!
Quick Quorn Korma (Quorma): Serves 4 (I use the other two portions for the next day’s lunch)
Ingredients:
300g Quorn Chicken-Style Pieces (meat substitute) or Diced Chicken
1 Jar Low-Fat Korma (or your favourite) Sauce
1 Large Onion
Olive Oil
Serve with Brown Rice
Directions:
Start cooking the rice. I always cook my rice in my microwave rice steamer (add boiling water and microwave for 20 mins) to make it really easy.
Chop up the onion (or use frozen pre-diced onion like I do) and brown in the olive oil.
Add the Quorn/chicken and brown for a few minutes, then add the korma sauce.
Bring to the boil then simmer until fully cooked (usually about 10 mins for Quorn, 20 mins for chicken).
Alternatives:
Sometimes I use tinned potatoes (as they cook much quicker than normal ones, but you must rinse them first!) and veggies (either fresh or frozen) instead of the Quorn.
This is a pretty quick meal if you keep it vegetarian and you can pack loads of veggies in it to make it really healthy! If you are having just Quorn/chicken in the curry I would recommending serving with a salad otherwise this meal would seriously lack in vegetables!
Dinner was beanfeast (bean bolognaise), mashed poatoes and green beans with a glass of water. We were really low on food so this was the healthiest meal I could muster up out of what was in the cupboard!
My dad bought me a blender :) I’m so excited about this because now I can make soups and green monsters!
Exercise: 25 mins (based on the 5 Factor Fitness programme)
warm-up (twisting step machine)
dumbell chest press
dumbbell lunge
lower-body crunch
5 mins instense cardio (twisting step machine) – I will eventually increase this to 20 mins
stretching
Also, It was my kitten’s first birthday today. I guess that means she’s not a kitten anymore!
Exercise: Yoga (Wii Fit Plus) Time: 36 minutes Calories Burnt: 81 kcals Comments: I wanted to do something really gentle to ease back into exercising after having a week off for feeling unwell. I did this after a nap and it realy helped to wake me up and energise me!
Poses: Deep Breathing, Half-Moon, Dance, Cobra, Bridge, Spinal Twist, Shoulder Stand, Warrior, Sun Salutation, Tree, Downward Facing Dog, Standing Knee, Palm Tree, Chair, Triangle, Spine Extension, Gate, Grounded V.
I have been eating more since tuesday evening and feel better for it. If I want to keep exercising I’m going to have to eat more until I get fitter. I’m going to just take things day by day for a while, I’ll eat when I’m hungry and depending on how hungry I am that day. I need to be careful not to use this as an excuse to eat unhealthily though!
Yesterday I went into Central London to meet my mum and a couple of her friends. It was a really fun day out! I think I did about six hours of walking in total (which is why I needed a double portion at lunchtime!). I was absolutely exhausted afterwards but felt good too. I wish I had a pedometer so I could’ve worked out how far we walked. We went on the London Eye, then got the tube to Covent Garden, walked around there for a bit, had lunch, walked to Leicester Square, went in the Trocadero, walked round Chinatown and the market, had tea and cake, then walked to Oxford Street (after having walked in the wrong direction for ages first! lol). I was in London for about seven hours, at least six of those were spent walking!
Afterwards Dan and I went to his dad’s house. My back started to get really stiff and sore from the walking! Dan was trying to get iTunes to work for his little brother (he’s got the version 9.1 problem everyone else seems to be having). He decided in the end to just rebuild the laptop and try reinstalling iTunes (still didn’t work!) and so was on it until way past midnight. My back seemed to be getting more and more stiff so I decided to do some yoga on the Wii Fit Plus! It really helped loosen up my back and relax me ready for bed, although it’s hard to balance when you’re half-asleep! I was really strange doing yoga at midnight but I enjoyed it :) This morning I can feel it in my back and abs, so I’m considering doing yoga once a week as a toning/flexibility/relaxation workout.
I didn’t keep track of my food today but this is the exercise I did: Walking: 6+ hours Calories Burnt: over 1000 kcals Yoga (Wii Fit Plus): 30 mins Calories Burnt: 61 kcals
Half-Moon, Deep Breathing, Half-Moon, Warrior, Tree, Sun-Salutation, Cobra, Standing Knee, Palm Tree, Chair, Triangle, Downward-Facing Dog, Bridge, Spinal Twist
I have not been feeling good the past few days. My stomach has been hurting a lot and I’ve been absolutely exhausted. Last week I exercised about three times (a two hour walk and two runs) and I think by now I should be able to handle that but I couldn’t. I just felt like sleeping all weekend (this probably would’ve helped but I couldn’t as I was ridiculously busy). So I ended up feeling really really hungry all weekend. I ended up eating an absolute ton of junk. I felt less weak/tired but my stomach hurt even more afterwards (probably the shock of the junk after a fairly clean week).
I’ve come to the conclusion that I haven’t been eating enough (I’ve been trying to stick to around 1500 kcals) or at the very least I cut down the amount of calories I eat too quickly. Otherwise I wouldn’t have needed to binge. I think over the past couple of weeks my body has been coping, but only just, because as soon as I upped my exercise I can’t handle it anymore. So I’ve decided not to exercise for a few days until I feel less tired.
My stomach has been hurting a lot today, I ended up having to eat a bread roll and some biscuits after my lunch just to make it feel better. I think I’ve simply exhausted myself and make things worse by stretching out my stomach eating so much at the weekend. I need rest and maybe to eat more calories for a while. I think I’ll try eating 1750 calories for a few days and see how I feel. In the past few weeks I’ve gone from eating anywhere between 2000-2500 of really unhealthy calories suddenly down to 1500 kcals and I think it’s been a real shock to my system!
[edit]Re-reading this entry has really shown me just how exhausted I am. Lots of grammatical errors! I’m definately mentally exhausted as well. I’ve really been struggling to think straight the past few days, I can’t even talk/write properly right now! lol[/edit]
I have been ridiculously busy over the past few days which is why I’ve been MIA. I haven’t had anytime to exercise since friday night’s jog unless walking round Ikea for over two hours counts!
Dan wanted to cook meat spaghetti bolognaise last night which made me really happy because I had someone to talk to in the kitchen whilst I made my vegetarian bolognaise. I love it when we cook together :)
+ Meal One: Granola Bar, tangerine, tropical squash
Tea
+ Meal Two: 1/2 Spaghetti Bolognaise (Quorn mince, frozen veggies, mushrooms, onion, stock, salt, pepper, tomato puree, chopped tomatoes, mixed herbs, oil, brown spaghetti, little bit of grated cheese) and 1/2 Salad (iceburg lettuce, cabbage, carrot) with low-fat ceaser dressing, water x2
+ Meal Three: Rest of Spaghetti Bolognaise as above, half&half roll, cheese, 3 bourbon biscuits, water x2
+ Meal Four: 1/2 Granola Bar, apple
+ Meal Five: Spaghetti Bolognaise
Total Drinks:
Tonight is Home Group which means a LOT of cakes which I will need to try to avoid!
Today is calorie check day! I’ve been feeling recently that I may be under or over estimating the amount of calories in each meal, so I’m going to weigh everything I eat today to work out exactly how many calories there are in it. I’m hoping this will help calibrate my eyeballing!
I’ve been writing this in a diary/organizer I have (seperate to my main one) along with info about my workouts so I can see at a glance what I’ve achieved each week.
+ Meal One (9:05am):
50g Porridge Oats (just under 1/2 beaker I use to measure with) – 178 kcals
200ml Semi-Skimmed Milk (just under 1 beaker) – 98 kcals
5g Honey (1 small teaspoon) – 17 kcals
1 glass Tropical Squash – 4 kcals Total: 297 kcals Felt: hunger satisfied, tasted good!
+ Meal Two (12:30 pm): 400g Minestrone Soup (1 can) – 132 kcals
1 slice Brown Bread – 78 kcals
1/2 large Banana – approx. 60 kcals (I forgot to weigh it so I had to use Livestrong’s My Plate)
1 pint Water (2 glasses) – 0 kcals Total: 270 kcals Felt: Really hungry before as I waited too long to eat.
+ Meal Three (3 pm): 163g Jacket Potato (smallish) – 118 kcal
210g Baked Beans in Sauce (1/2 can) – 103 kcals
1/2 large Banana – approx. 60 kcals (I forgot to weigh it so I had to use Livestrong’s My Plate)
1 pint Water (2 glasses) – 0 kcals Total: 281 kcals Felt: I wasn’t overly hungry and felt very satisfied afterwards! I hoping hoping this means I won’t want a gigantic portion at dinner time and that I’ll be able to workout before making dinner. Usually I’m hungry when I get home so start making dinner straight away. And we all know it’s best to eat after exercise because exercise speeds up our metabolism! :)
+ Meal Four ( pm):
1 Tangerine – approx. 60 kcals (I forgot to weigh it so I had to use Livestrong’s My Plate)
42g Nature Valley Roasted Almond Granola Bar – 193 kcal Total: approx. 253 kcals Felt:
(I should have enough calories left for around a 300 kcal portion for dinner, I don’t often have dessert just a sweet low-calorie drink, or if I do it’s usually fruit)
After looking at the amount of calories I had planned to eat per meal I realised they the calories weren’t very well spread out throughout the five meals. So I switched things around to make them more balanced (I would never have noticed this if I hadn’t decided to do a calorie check!)
To do this I swapped the soup meal and the jacket potato meal around, so the lighter meal was inbetween the heavier ones (i.e. it now goes porridge-soup-potato). I had also originally planned to have my banana with my granola bar and tangerine until I discovered how manay calories it had! So to even things up I decided to split the banana between two lower calorie meals.
I know this seems kinda anal obbsessing over exact numbers but this has really helped me to see where I’ve been going wrong. I’ve kept feeling really hungry at the end of the day and having a massive dinner. I realise now that before I wasn’t eating enough calories earlier in the day and wasn’t keeping each meal mostly equal in calorie size. I know when I do keep calories more consistant in my meals it makes a huge difference in controlling my hunger.
This is a fun little experiment on myself. I may do this a few times until it sinks in and I can just guesstimate on a daily basis successfully!
Timings of Meals:
A major thing I noticed today was that because I had my breakfast so late and waited too long to have my second meal as well, the timings of my meals were all wrong. I felt hungry because I wait too long at first and then not very hungry later because meals were too close together. I need to control this because if I don’t eat when I should (I kept getting distracted today) I end up getting vamished and then completely binging out. I’m going to work on having breakfast earlier and spreading my meals out better to keep my hunger levels from ever dipping too low. Waiting too long to eat so I’m really hungry = very dangerous for me!!! I can’t be trusted when I’m hungry! lol
Exercise: Jogging
Distance: 1.86 miles
Time: 27 mins
Average Speed: 14.5 mins/mile
Calories Burnt: 228 kcals
Comments: Furthest I’ve jogged so far so I kept it slow and kept a steady pace so I could complete it! I sprinted at the very end though. It went well and I didn’t feel too bad afterwards but I was absolutely exhausted for the next two days!
+ Meal One (8am): Porridge with honey, tropical squash
Green tea with lemon
+ Meal Two (12:15pm): Salad (lettuce, pepper) with mixed beans, roasted veggies, extra light mayo and 1/2 can cream of tomato & pepper soup, water x2
+ Meal Three: Brown egg-fried rice, Quorn and vegetable stirfry, water x2
+ Meal Four: Banana
+ Meal Five: 1 slice cheese & tomato pizza, a few chips, canned spaghetti in tomato sauce, strawberry pro-biotic yoghurt, hot-cross bun with jam and butter, Fresh Organic Local Apple Juice (NOM!)
Total Drinks: 6 (That explain’s why my throat was so dry last night!)
[edit]Dinner was by no means a healthly meal buy we ended up going to Dan’s grandparent’s for dinner with only a few hours notice. Although the food is pretty unhealthy Dan’s Nan makes fairly small portions and I had just enough notice not to eat my granola bar and tangerine (which saved me around 250kcals). I shouldn’t have had the hot-cross bun but Dan’s Nan had obviously bought enough for one each so I felt it’d be too rude to turn it down! I think if I hadn’t had dessert at all I might’ve stayed under my calorie limit for the day. It is rare for us to go there for dinner though so it doesn’t happen too often! I think in future when I go to people’s houses to eat and can’t avoid unhealthy food I will try to ‘save up’ some extra calories during the day, not eat all my dinner if it’s a ridiculous portion (such as ate Dan’s dad’s where the portion sizes are about 3x too big) and not have dessert, or only have fruit for dessert. I’m not going to get annoyed at myself for this because I’ve learnt from my mistake and how to handle the situation next time![/edit]
Over the past week or so I have been reading a lot of fitness blogs and have found a wealth of advice and recipes. I have also learnt several important lessons. The main one being that getting fit and healthy is a slow process. It’s not something that can or should be done quickly to meet a deadline. Instead it is a life-long change and commitment with challanges but also rewards along the way.
In my previous, younger, attempts to get healthy I was always looking for the holy grail ’quick-fix’ but that just doesn’t exist when it comes to shaping up! I used to drastically under-eat and over-exercise and never be happy. For a while I lost a lot of weight. I weighed around 116 pounds and I’m 5′ 6.5″, this was WAY too low for me. My blood pressure plummeted and I often felt dizzy and weak. On top of that I was miserable. I had such a warped view of myself that I thought I was hideously fat.
I slowly realised that there was a problem. I needed help. I went to a doctor and found out I was suffering from depression and anxiety, although I didn’t directly discuss my weight. It took me a while to deal with it but eventually I pulled myself out of the situations that were causing me to be depressed and went back to my old habits with food. Now, my old ways weren’t that great either!
I’ve always been obsessed with food. When I was little I could eat whatever I wanted and not put on any weight at all. Sometimes I even ate more than my dad! I simply loved food and would often have second helpings at dinner. Then I started senior school and an all girls one at that. This did not help things at all! I was constantly surrounded by girls, most of them skinny, rich girls. Most of my friends were through school so I didn’t even often see guys outside of school. The problem with an all girls school is that all those self-esteem issues you get are multiplied by two! There are twice as many girls you feel you need to compete with, twice as many girls who are thinner than you and twice as many girls who can afford to buy all the new makeup/clothes/other crap that you felt you needed in senior school to look good and be accepted. So I began to feel tremendous peer pressure.
When I was younger I was very active, always playing outside with the neighbours but as we grew up we drifted apart and most of my spare time/socialising moved to indoor settings. Other than P.E. lessons and occaissonal sports clubs I joined I didn’t exercise. At all. Of course this meant I started to put on weight. I couldn’t cut back on my food because I had such a built in habit to eat gigantic amounts of food by then. All I cared about was the flavour and the enjoyment I got out of eating, even if I was full! I have definately had a problem at both ends of the spectrum- under-eating and over-eating.
Starting senior school just made this whole situation worse. I felt pressure to be thin, covered in makeup, have my hair done and to have new and expensive clothes but I couldn’t afford all this stuff. But the other girls could. So I soon started to feel inferior, I wish I could somehow tell myself then how stupid that was! This wasn’t helped by the fact that I was watching programmes like The O.C. and celeb-watching like any other tennage girl. The worst I felt the more I ate, same old story. After a while I got fed up with being fat and started under-eating and over-exercising. If only I’d realised I needed to change the TYPE of food I ate, then I could’ve eaten healthy portion sizes instead of starving myself.
Of course the weight fell off but then I would binge out when I felt miserable. My state of mind was not good. I was always irritable, couldn’t concentrate in class, had zero motivation to do anything and often felt unwell. I started to get interested in nutrition but would often fall into the traps of fad diets such as The Zone and The South Beach Diet. Amongst the rubbish I did learn so genuienely useful things though. One of the best books I read was Skinny Bitch which is more about overall good nutrition than loosing weight. I highly recommend it!
After I got myself out of all my ‘trigger’ circumstanes (which included deciding to avoid anything celebrity related) my self-esteem and self-confidence rocketed. It was a slow process but I am now the happiest I have ever been in my life. There is still some things I need to work on but at least I’m getting there :) (This couldn’t been so much easier if I’d just got some professional help!)
After restricting myself from food for so long I just gave in and enjoyed myself. Now I know this isn’t great because I ate really unhealthily and put loads of weight on but this was the right thing for me. After years of stress, depression and anger I just needed to let go! I never dealt with any of this at the time through the usal suspects (i.e. drink, drugs etc.), I had just been keeping it all bottled up. So I need to spill! And I did and it was great! I let all the hurt and anger of the past few years out and felt like for once I was in control of my own life.
I’ve recently got to the stage where I feel like I’ve got it all out. I’ve had a chance to breathe, to do what I want for a change, to get over my depression, to finally have the courage to make new friends (in the depths of my depression I didn’t leave my house for days on end or socialise at all). Now it’s time to move on with my life. I am back up to around the weight I was before I started crash dieting and now I’m ready to tone up and get fit!
Until recently I was definately eating too much and not the right things but a few weeks ago I decided to change. My life has got so much better over the last year and a half (mostly due to the amazing talks I’ve had with Dan). I’ve got more self-confidence, I’ve made friends, I have a boyfriend who thinks the world of me and moved in with him, I’ve truely found religion, I’m nicer and I’m happy. Of course there have been slip-ups along the way but I am genuienely happy for the first time in YEARS. I don’t need all that fake-media-materialistic-rubbish to be happy. And I also don’t need to look a certain way to be happy.
My main inspiration for starting my new, healthy lifestyle came when I found Antonia’s blog. I loved reading all the articles and tips she posted and wanted to learn more! I started reading a lot more blogs (I especially like Liz’s, Tiffany’s and Angela’s) and started this one. I switched to five smaller, healthier meals a day and started to exercise. I also gradually switched the type of foods I was eating and tried new products. I switched all white carbs for brown, I started eating low-fat cottage cheese on toast (NOM!), I experimented with making my usual dishes healthier, and I started buying way more fruit and vegetables!
I know I have a long way to go but I know now that I’m the right track. I need to learn more, keep making my food healthier (e.g. I’ve realised today that I really need to start watching my salt intake) and gradually increase my exercise to 5-6 days a week and up to around 45 minutes as I get fitter. My latest goal is to start trying new recipes and really learn to cook. I want to try a new recipe every week to improve my skills/catalogue of meals I can make. I also want to buy this amazing looking cookbook called Cooking Know How which I found out about via this post on Julie’s blog.
As long as I keeping taking it step-by-step, set myself mini and long time goals and not get derailed by set backs (as in the long run they don’t matter that much), I know that one day I will reach my goal, and until then I will enjoy every step of the way!
Welcome to my blog! I'm Danielle, a twenty-something blogger from England. I love cats, vegetarian cooking, pilates & being creative.
I will be marrying my fianc� Dan on 18/08/12. Dan is my best friend, he knows me inside out and makes me ridiculously happy :)
Dan and I live with our three cats Alfie, Bonnie and Snowdrop, who you can read more about here =^..^=
This blog is just my little place to keep my memories and express myself!
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Bible Verses
"If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don't fuss about what's on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds. — Matthew 6:25-26 (MSG)
Sweet Chilli Quicken
Welcome to my blog! I'm Danielle, a 
