This week has rushed past so quickly I can hardly believe it is Monday again already! This first week has gone very well indeed. I have been to the gym twice, and am feeling really good from all the fruit and vegetables. My best discovery has been cooking the porridge in the crockpot; it comes out really creamy, can be varied easily by adding different kinds of fruit, and it gives me lots of energy. So much so in fact, that we have decided to have porridge as the carbohydrate part of our breakfast every day from now on.
This new way of eating is surprisingly easy. I had not realised how cooking 'proper recipes' is more expensive, and you tend to eat larger portions. It feels a bit odd just poaching some fish or chicken and preparing some vegetables, but I have found that the simplicity feels good too. I am trying to be a little bit creative, by doing things like slicing tomatoes and baking them on top of fish in the oven, and sprinkling over some herbs and drizzling over some olive oil. That way I still feel like I am cooking, and not just assembling.
Shopping is so much easier, and cooking this way means that you are automatically eating no processed foods. I am really looking forward to the week ahead!
Monday, 30 June 2008
Sunday Menu
Breakfast
Orange juice
Pancakes with strawberries
Coffee
Snack
Carrot sticks
Lunch
Chicken caesar salad with croutons
Dinner
Pea soup, salmon florentine
Baked apple
Saturday Menu
Breakfast
Sliced orange and grapefruit salad
Boiled egg, bacon, wholemeal toast
Coffee
Snack
Banana
Lunch
Ham salad
Wholemeal roll
Snack
Apple
Dinner
Chilli and coriander prawns with rice and peas
Strawberries
Friday Menu
Breakfast
Orange juice
Yogurt with banana and muesli
Coffee
Snack
Dried pears
Lunch
Tuna salad
Wholemeal roll
Snack
Yoghurt with mixed berries
Dinner
Pea and chilli soup
Baked cod with tomoatoes and new potatoes
Thursday Menu
Breakfast
Orange juice
Porridge with bramley apple and cinnamon
Boiled egg
Coffee
Snack
Apple
Lunch
Prawn salad
Wholemeal roll
Snack
Yoghurt with mixed berries
Dinner
Tomato soup
Lentil Dahl with naan bread
Poached pear
Wednesday Menu
Breakfast
Orange juice
Melon balls
Poached smoked haddock
Wholemeal toast
Coffee
Snack
Kiwi fruit
Lunch
Smoked salmon, cucumber and cream cheese bagel
Green salad
Yoghurt with poached rhubarb
Snack
Dried pears
Dinner
Celery with cream cheese
Steak, sautee potatoes and peas
Mandarin oranges
Tuesday Menu
Breakfast
Orange juice
Bacon, egg, tomato, toast
Coffee
Snack
Apple
Lunch
Salmon, green bean and new potato salad
Yoghurt with poached rhubarb
Snack
Dried Pears
Dinner
Tomato Soup
Poached Chicken, jacket potato, broccoli
Bananas flambe
Sunday, 22 June 2008
Monday Menu
Breakfast
Orange juice
Stewed apple with slow-cooked oatmeal with raisins and cinnamon
Boiled egg
Coffee
Snack
Banana
Lunch
Salad bowl with cajun chicken
Wholemeal roll
Yoghurt with stewed rhubarb
Snack
Dried pears
Dinner
Vegetable crudites and salsa
Baked salmon with new potatoes and green beans
Pineapple rings
Coffee
Thoughts Upon Starting Out
I wanted to take my weight and measurements now, so I have something to compare them to later, some way of measuring progress and so on. It is so hard not to be discouraged, not to focus on my disappointment at being where I am now. The only way I can cope with it is to do a Scarlett O'Hara and push it out of my mind, and just get on with getting started. For this reason, I have decided not to weigh or take measurements again until 10 days of being on the Beauty-full eating plan, because according to Gayelord Hausser, that is as long as it takes to feel the difference.
I really want this new way of eating my way to retrobeauty to be about how I look as a whole, and not get too hung up on pounds, ounces and inches.
It is really tempting to think negative thoughts when you know exactly how much you weigh, and just how wide your waist is. Rather than dwell on it, I have decided to step in with rule one, taking care of yourself. Instead of beating myself up, I have painted my toenails and fingernails, and later I am going to give myself a facial and have a long bubblebath, and rub in lots of moisturising body lotion. In one of my favourite novels, the curvy main character declares that if she is going to have a large surface area, it is going to be well looked after!
I really want this new way of eating my way to retrobeauty to be about how I look as a whole, and not get too hung up on pounds, ounces and inches.
It is really tempting to think negative thoughts when you know exactly how much you weigh, and just how wide your waist is. Rather than dwell on it, I have decided to step in with rule one, taking care of yourself. Instead of beating myself up, I have painted my toenails and fingernails, and later I am going to give myself a facial and have a long bubblebath, and rub in lots of moisturising body lotion. In one of my favourite novels, the curvy main character declares that if she is going to have a large surface area, it is going to be well looked after!
Blueprints
Gayelord Hausser sets out blueprints for perfect meals in his invitation to beauty eating plan, or what he terms beauty-full eating.
Breakfast
1) Fruit juice (preferably made in your own juicer) or whole piece of fruit
2) Large helping of protein
3) Helping of whole grain bread or cereal
4) A large cup of milky coffee (most mornings I shall be having instant decaff)
Lunch
1) Fresh green salad vegetables, tossed with salad dressing
2) Your favourite salad protein, eg chicken, cottage cheese, prawns, boiled eggs etc
3) A carbohydrate such as a small wholemeal roll
4) A glass of milk, or milky beverage, or some yoghurt, or a piece of fruit
Dinner
1) Small salad, crudites, vegetable soup etc
2) Grilled lean meat or fish
3) One or two vegetables with potaotes, rice or pasta
4) Fresh fruit, fruit compote, cheese, yoghurt or fruit juice (again, from the juicer)
The idea is that you have a big breakfast, medium lunch and smaller dinner. You can have snacks between meals, but they should be based upon fruit or vegetables, or perhaps some crackers with cream cheese. When you get home from work he suggests a fresh fruit juice to unwind, and before bed if you need it, you could have a milky drink.
For the first week or two, I am going to be doing steamed salmon with boiled new potatoes and spinach kind of meals rather than proper 'recipe' cooking (eg shepherds pie and so on) while I get used to this new way of eating.
Breakfast
1) Fruit juice (preferably made in your own juicer) or whole piece of fruit
2) Large helping of protein
3) Helping of whole grain bread or cereal
4) A large cup of milky coffee (most mornings I shall be having instant decaff)
Lunch
1) Fresh green salad vegetables, tossed with salad dressing
2) Your favourite salad protein, eg chicken, cottage cheese, prawns, boiled eggs etc
3) A carbohydrate such as a small wholemeal roll
4) A glass of milk, or milky beverage, or some yoghurt, or a piece of fruit
Dinner
1) Small salad, crudites, vegetable soup etc
2) Grilled lean meat or fish
3) One or two vegetables with potaotes, rice or pasta
4) Fresh fruit, fruit compote, cheese, yoghurt or fruit juice (again, from the juicer)
The idea is that you have a big breakfast, medium lunch and smaller dinner. You can have snacks between meals, but they should be based upon fruit or vegetables, or perhaps some crackers with cream cheese. When you get home from work he suggests a fresh fruit juice to unwind, and before bed if you need it, you could have a milky drink.
For the first week or two, I am going to be doing steamed salmon with boiled new potatoes and spinach kind of meals rather than proper 'recipe' cooking (eg shepherds pie and so on) while I get used to this new way of eating.
Friday, 20 June 2008
Retrobeauty Rules
As I have been reading my cornflower blue guidebook, I have been jotting notes, trying to distill the main principles into easy to remember rules; here they are:
1) Take care of yourself
This is the most important thing of all. All the other points here stem from this philosophy. Don’t punish yourself; heal yourself, nurture yourself, CARE for yourself. The following points are ways of caring for yourself.
2) Know where you are going and what your motivation is to get there; have a main goal, and smaller goals to reach on your path. Do not make it all about weight- think about reducing in inches too, and gaining health, vitality, and a spring to your step. Celebrate each step on your path to success.
3) Have a role model or two; women who have realistic bodies that you admire. Tear out pictures of clothes you like, even if you don’t have the confidence or figure to wear them now. Get to know what you really like, as opposed to what you make do with.
4) Take a daily constitutional, or some other form of gentle exercise
If you take regular exercise, you will become more supple, elegant and poised. Your figure will be trimmer, and all that extra oxygen and endorphins in your system will make you feel on top of the world. Start gently and build it up. Take every opportunity you can to move your body, from walking to work to stretching before bed.
5) Drink your water
And lots of it. Almost everything I have read to do with diet, fitness and beauty agree on this point. Drink it up. One school of thought suggests you work out your weight in pounds, halve it, and drink this many ounces of water a day.
6) Be prepared
Have healthy snacks to hand, and slices of lemon or lime to squeeze into water. Have your gym kit washed and ready to go. If you know you have a big meal or such thing coming up, plan some extra-healthy meals around this time. Be kind to yourself; make it as easy for yourself as you possibly can.
7) Eat something fresh at every meal
Some fruit with your cereal, or a glass of juice; a bowl of vegetable soup, or a luscious fruit dessert. Fill up on fruits and veggies to keep hunger at bay and reap beauty benefits from all those vitamins and minerals.
8) Eat foods as close to their natural state as possible
Think wholesome and unprocessed, as in wholemeal bread and pasta rather than white pasta. No long lists of chemical names as ingredients. A wholemeal roll you made yourself is infinitely preferable to a slice of plastic ‘stayfresh’ bread. Choose whole yoghurt and eat a little less of it rather than ‘low fat’ or ‘lite’ versions which are packed with sugar or sweeteners.
9) Eat foods in season, where possible
This is not about making a rod for your own back or resisting all temptation in your path. Instead it is about feasting on strawberries in summer, and thick root vegetable stews in winter. Food in season will always be tastier and healthier and better for both the environment and your purse. Be guided by what is abundant at the market stall, grocer, or farmers market.
10) Keep on going
This is hard. When the initial glow has worn off of a new routine, you don’t seem to be getting anywhere, or you are simply bored, it is easy to slip back into old ways. Remember why you are doing this. Look how far you have come. Keep on keeping on.
And one for luck...
1) Take care of yourself
This is the most important thing of all. All the other points here stem from this philosophy. Don’t punish yourself; heal yourself, nurture yourself, CARE for yourself. The following points are ways of caring for yourself.
2) Know where you are going and what your motivation is to get there; have a main goal, and smaller goals to reach on your path. Do not make it all about weight- think about reducing in inches too, and gaining health, vitality, and a spring to your step. Celebrate each step on your path to success.
3) Have a role model or two; women who have realistic bodies that you admire. Tear out pictures of clothes you like, even if you don’t have the confidence or figure to wear them now. Get to know what you really like, as opposed to what you make do with.
4) Take a daily constitutional, or some other form of gentle exercise
If you take regular exercise, you will become more supple, elegant and poised. Your figure will be trimmer, and all that extra oxygen and endorphins in your system will make you feel on top of the world. Start gently and build it up. Take every opportunity you can to move your body, from walking to work to stretching before bed.
5) Drink your water
And lots of it. Almost everything I have read to do with diet, fitness and beauty agree on this point. Drink it up. One school of thought suggests you work out your weight in pounds, halve it, and drink this many ounces of water a day.
6) Be prepared
Have healthy snacks to hand, and slices of lemon or lime to squeeze into water. Have your gym kit washed and ready to go. If you know you have a big meal or such thing coming up, plan some extra-healthy meals around this time. Be kind to yourself; make it as easy for yourself as you possibly can.
7) Eat something fresh at every meal
Some fruit with your cereal, or a glass of juice; a bowl of vegetable soup, or a luscious fruit dessert. Fill up on fruits and veggies to keep hunger at bay and reap beauty benefits from all those vitamins and minerals.
8) Eat foods as close to their natural state as possible
Think wholesome and unprocessed, as in wholemeal bread and pasta rather than white pasta. No long lists of chemical names as ingredients. A wholemeal roll you made yourself is infinitely preferable to a slice of plastic ‘stayfresh’ bread. Choose whole yoghurt and eat a little less of it rather than ‘low fat’ or ‘lite’ versions which are packed with sugar or sweeteners.
9) Eat foods in season, where possible
This is not about making a rod for your own back or resisting all temptation in your path. Instead it is about feasting on strawberries in summer, and thick root vegetable stews in winter. Food in season will always be tastier and healthier and better for both the environment and your purse. Be guided by what is abundant at the market stall, grocer, or farmers market.
10) Keep on going
This is hard. When the initial glow has worn off of a new routine, you don’t seem to be getting anywhere, or you are simply bored, it is easy to slip back into old ways. Remember why you are doing this. Look how far you have come. Keep on keeping on.
And one for luck...
Taken not from this book, but from another, Pig 2 Twig by India Knight; do not talk about it to anyone you know. It is one thing for me to blog anonymously to the world, but quite another to talk about pounds and ounces and inches and servings of fruit and vegetables to my friends and family. Really, you may as well go around saying 'look how fat I am!'. No, it is much better to shut up and get on with it, and save your loquacity for your blog...
Beauty Is An Inside Job
~from chapter two
The people who make your lipsticks and eye pencils, the hairdresser who waves your hair- they talk a beauty language that you can understand. Their language does not even need words. you can see its meaning in the mirro, right there in the beauty salon.
But their kind of beauty still comes off at night. And even during teh day, it cannot always cover up the weary lines of fatigue and low energy, the sagging posture of a body that has poor muscle tone. They cannot give you that radiance from within that illuminates even a plain face and an ordinary figure, and makes them exceptional.
Oh, yes, that store-bought, manufactured beauty can put a moment's glow on your cheeks, a shine on your hair. With a skillful coiffure, clever makeup, a well-fitted girdle, you can look attractive when you go out. Cinderella looked beautiful, too, on her way to the ball. But you know what happened when the clock struck midnight.
At what hour does your particular midnight strike? Does your part-time beauty fade when the clock strikes nine?
To me there is only one true beauty foundation, whether for your complexion or your hips. It is manufactured inside your own remarkable body.
What Gayelord Hausser goes on to talk about is the importance of food and exercise to your body, beauty, and wellbeing. It is an alluring thought, a goal that I shall be aiming for in my quest to be a retrobeauty- to look good even without my makeup and girdle! (Or Marks and Sparks magic pants, which I think must be the modern day equivalent of a girdle!)
The people who make your lipsticks and eye pencils, the hairdresser who waves your hair- they talk a beauty language that you can understand. Their language does not even need words. you can see its meaning in the mirro, right there in the beauty salon.
But their kind of beauty still comes off at night. And even during teh day, it cannot always cover up the weary lines of fatigue and low energy, the sagging posture of a body that has poor muscle tone. They cannot give you that radiance from within that illuminates even a plain face and an ordinary figure, and makes them exceptional.
Oh, yes, that store-bought, manufactured beauty can put a moment's glow on your cheeks, a shine on your hair. With a skillful coiffure, clever makeup, a well-fitted girdle, you can look attractive when you go out. Cinderella looked beautiful, too, on her way to the ball. But you know what happened when the clock struck midnight.
At what hour does your particular midnight strike? Does your part-time beauty fade when the clock strikes nine?
To me there is only one true beauty foundation, whether for your complexion or your hips. It is manufactured inside your own remarkable body.
What Gayelord Hausser goes on to talk about is the importance of food and exercise to your body, beauty, and wellbeing. It is an alluring thought, a goal that I shall be aiming for in my quest to be a retrobeauty- to look good even without my makeup and girdle! (Or Marks and Sparks magic pants, which I think must be the modern day equivalent of a girdle!)
Once Upon A Time...
...there lived a librarian, who loved Marilyn Monroe films, worshipped at the style altar of Audrey Hepburn, looked her best in fifties-style dresses, and wanted to be Dita Von Teese when she grew up. She loved to read vintage magazines, and in her wilder daydreams reinvented herself as a burlesque star. Only one thing stood in her way. Herself.
She had never had a realistic idea of what she looked like; at sixteen, she was convinced she was huge, and yet when she looks at photographs of herself then, she sees that she was a skinny twig. Although since then she has grown curvy, she stepped upon the scales, and realised she had billowed past curvy....to fat.
She would love to wear stockings instead of tights, and sew herself a wardrobe of pretty, sexy clothes. Alas, she feels that if she wore them now she would look a little ridiculous.
Then, one day, she was in a secondhand bookshop when she stumbled across a treasure. As she held the cornflower blue book in her hands, she just knew it was special. She traced the silver title with her finger; 'Mirror Mirror On The Wall' by Gayelord Hauser, and opened it to see an invitation to beauty.
Upon taking it home and reading it, she decided that a lot of the advice made sense, and decided to use this book as a guide to her makeover into a retro beauty. Gayelord Hauser promises that if you follow his advice for ten days, you will be full of energy, vitality and beauty, and will want to carry on for the rest of your days.
So Monday will be the first of my ten days...
She had never had a realistic idea of what she looked like; at sixteen, she was convinced she was huge, and yet when she looks at photographs of herself then, she sees that she was a skinny twig. Although since then she has grown curvy, she stepped upon the scales, and realised she had billowed past curvy....to fat.
She would love to wear stockings instead of tights, and sew herself a wardrobe of pretty, sexy clothes. Alas, she feels that if she wore them now she would look a little ridiculous.
Then, one day, she was in a secondhand bookshop when she stumbled across a treasure. As she held the cornflower blue book in her hands, she just knew it was special. She traced the silver title with her finger; 'Mirror Mirror On The Wall' by Gayelord Hauser, and opened it to see an invitation to beauty.
Upon taking it home and reading it, she decided that a lot of the advice made sense, and decided to use this book as a guide to her makeover into a retro beauty. Gayelord Hauser promises that if you follow his advice for ten days, you will be full of energy, vitality and beauty, and will want to carry on for the rest of your days.
So Monday will be the first of my ten days...
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