The delights of a country Services Club menu

This week I worked over the weekend in Grafton, a country town in northern NSW. We were booked in to eat dinner every night at the local Services Club. The menu was very typical of any Services Club in a country town in that there wasn't a single item on the menu that didn't clog your arteries somehow.

The menu had one dish with each type of meat, and then a couple of specials, including good old crumbed lamb cutlets, two salads (caesar and a green salad covered in a prawn cocktail) and then a wide assortment of fried entrees. The grilled fish (not too bad a start) was served with three types of potato: mashed; roasted in foil; and potato bake (bad finish). For good measure there was a thick creamy sauce lathered over the top of the fish. I didn't have this one...

The lamb cutlets were big and came with a large plate full of a variety of mashed vegetables, including potato, sweet potato and carrot. No greens.

In despair, I ordered a lamb dish that seemed a bit better and only came with mash, of which I could easily just have half. No veges were included, so I ordered a side salad, only to have it arrive drenched in creamy dressing! I learnt to choose basic meat cuts (eg. a steak), served with salad and a dressing on the side, so I could control what went on it. The club had a smorgasboard on the final night, which is a nightmare if you're tempted by an unlimited supply of deserts, entrees and different mains. I didn't do too badly, but was swayed by the cheesecake.

Then in good old country style, the training was catered with a profusion of buns, cakes, buttered biscuits, and hot meals for lunch, with a lovely catering lady encouraging everyone to eat more because they didn't want to take it home.

I ate reasonably well before I went to Grafton, and tried to minimise the damage over the weekend, so there hasn't been any damage this week, but it may not have hit my hips yet! We'll see what happens next week.

Because it's hard to get consistency in measurements each week, I'm only going to measure every three weeks now. Weight Watchers only get you to measure once a month, so I'll follow their advice.

Still on track...just

It's lucky I got a headstart, because I'm now back to being exactly on my goal line. I'm pleased I lost weight this week - any loss is a good loss. I ate less than usual on Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday to make up for a very special dinner on Friday night. I ate lots of salads with a bit of protein in them, and tried not to eat too many carbohydrates after 4pm.

That last point is an interesting one to discuss. It started appearing in diets about 13 years ago according to a Sydney Morning Herald article by Paul Goodyer in 2009 (find it here), and is a complete myth - a very popular one. Like most dieting, as long as you consume a few less calories than you burn each day, you will lose weight. I think for me, it's much more important to watch my snacking at night when I'm tired and watching television than to worry about excluding carbs. That will be my 'note to self' for the week!

In line with my 0.2kg weight loss, my measurements didn't really change. I had a great week for exercise, with a really enjoyable ride on Sunday from Bowral to Moss Vale and Berrima and then back to Bowral via Oxley's Hill. We averaged 18.4km/hr, which is pretty good for me!

Poppin' foods

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Mmm, snacks. I have a huge weakness for them and they are probably the reason I gained weight in the first place. My meals are usually pretty healthy, and I always exercise, but I just love those little sweet treats and salty sensations.

My favourite kind of snacks are the ones you keep popping into your mouth, think popcorn chicken, that coloured sugar popcorn, skittles, m&m's, any sort of lolly really, chips, the whole sordid list could continue forever.

So how can we get over this poppin' fixation? I've decided to replace my unhealthy poppin' snacks with healthy ones.

Cherry tomatoes - great when you need a sweet/savoury taste and they're nice and juicy.

Popcorn - I dry-pop these in the microwave. Put 1/4 cup in a microwave safe container of about 1-2 litres that has a lid (doesn't need to be secured), and make sure you also put a small container of water in separately. Microwaves don't like cooking dry things. Cook it on high for three minutes (800 watt) and stand by to check after two minutes. Remove the popped ones then, and put the rest back in for the final minute (to stop earlier ones burning). This makes about 2-3 cups. You'll only need one, and the rest can go away in an air-proof container for later.



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Pretzels - a small handful of the ones you get in the chips aisle (not the doughy baked kind) is much better than the equivalent handful of chips.

Almonds - eight of these are equal to about 1/20 of your day's calories, they're filling and full of lots of good stuff. Other nuts are okay, but are higher in fat and have less good stuff!

Cherries or grapes - only a small bunch of these, don't take a whole bag. They're good to take to the movies too.

And if you really need a lolly, the sours range from Natural Confectionery Co are better than most. You can have four of these for every lolly banana or mintie. One sour lolly is equal to one almond, but the almond is going to be a whole lot more satisfying and help keep hunger at bay.

I lost track and gained

I've put on 0.2kg this week, which is essentially a glass of water. I did drink a lot of water this week thanks to my Drink Water app. I was only drinking 1-2 glasses a day with 1-2 cups of tea and maybe a diet soft drink before, so it's possible I'm a lot more hydrated now and this has affected my weight. But there could be something else going on too...

All those people who say they have no idea how they put on weight can soon work it out if they recall a few key factors.

I always ask myself:

• Did I follow my meal plan (or did I even make or use one)?
• Did I track (write down) what I ate?
• Did I watch the size of my meals?

Then if I still can't work it out I look at:

• The amount of exercise I did compared to the amount of food I ate
• Whether I ate less on some days to allow for days when I ate more, for example when I've gone out to dinner
• Whether there was any health reason that might stop me from losing weight, or make me temporarily retain water
• Whether I changed something about my weigh-in

For those that have been losing weight for a long time, it may be that they've hit a plateau. This is where your weight doesn't change for several weeks despite doing everything right. At least you haven't put on weight! Try some new meals, a new exercise, or change the time of your meals and you might see the situation improve.

Once again, don't forget to check your measurements. For some reason, while gaining 0.2kg, the only measurement that went up was my chest, and all the others dropped. For the life of me I can't explain the chest measurement, so I suspect I've mucked it up. At least my boyfriend will be happy!

Considering the questions above, it's blatantly obvious to me why I didn't lose weight this week. I might have exercised, but I only followed a meal plan for about half the days, ate out three times in one week (going back for seconds of salads at a barbeque when I didn't really need to), didn't track what I ate, and ate about 500ml of ice-cream (I gave into a half-price special). I'll talk more about supermarket specials in a future blog...

The thing to do is not dwell on it, forget that week (apart from lessons learnt), start fresh and try again :)

I'm not addicted to apps...

My friend Dave's comment a few weeks back inspired me to look at apps I might use to help me with my weight loss. Here's my thoughts on the one he recommended and a few others I've been using along the way. I'd love to hear what apps you like too!

My Fitness Pal

This free app is really comprehensive. It has a huge food database, with Australian brands, and tracks how many calories you eat each day, adjusting your allowance based on your personal information and the amount of exercise you do. It shows a graph of your weight loss, and allows you to connect with friends using the app to share your progress. What I don't like is that even when you select cm/kgs for your units, it still sets your weight goal in pounds, measures your food in calories, and measures speed of exercises in miles per hour. On the up-side, there is a barcode scanner to simplify entering foods and entering your meals is much quicker on this app than on others I've tried.

Calorie King
This was the next app I downloaded. I use the online database all the time. I have a lot of meal plans from previous lives, and have been working out the kilojoules of my favourite meals for a while. This is an easy to use app with a HUGE database and lots of information about each food item.


iMapMyRIDE
My bike computer came to a tragic end a while ago, so this seemed a good app to try. I love it. You can delay the start by seconds or minutes, to allow time for you to put your phone away and put your helmet on etc before you start riding. It shows your exact route on a Google map, and measures the time of the ride. You've just got to remember to be quick to stop it at the end of your ride. Because it records all your rides, I've been able to see my improvements. It also has a great graph showing the change in elevation over your ride. It does have features for tracking your nutrition and weight but the database is really slow and seems limited - I haven't been inspired to use it. I didn't get the app for nutrition though - perhaps they should stop trying to do everything and do what they do well. You can share your routes with friends, and don't forget to try the sister apps such as MapMyDOGWALK and MapMyRUN. There's others too but you get the idea...

Daily Water
My doctor told me to drink more water. I drink a bit of tea, and an occasional coffee, but I'm the first to admit I forget to drink water. This app is pretty straightforward and tracks how much you've drunk towards a goal number of drinks. What I like is that (after paying a princely sum of $0.99) you can set reminders to drink, choosing times that suit you. I had a look at some others but they were a bit clunky or once again tried to do too much.


ShapeUp
This is a food and exercise tracker that I like much better than My Fitness Pal, simply because it works in metric measurements. It allows you to track the food you eat, and the free version also shows protein, carbs and fat goals for the day. A few of the features are only available if you join the ShapeUp online club, but I've found the free version adequate for what I need. It doesn't have a good range of exercises, but there's enough, and you can always enter a custom exercise. It doesn't have a food scanner.

My Shopping Lists
This app has revolutionised my shopping experience. I tried the ShopShop app, but that was too simple! What I like about My Lists is that you can have a range of lists that are registered under different shops. This means that I can have a list of things I might buy from Aldi, and another group of lists for Woolworths or Coles. It has a good database backing it up, and I also like that it puts your foods into categories according to how they are grouped in the supermarket, so you're not constantly scanning up and down the list. It's easy to mark things off and you can close categories once they're complete. There's lots of different measurements to enter, and you can also add prices. I enter in my weeks meal plan requirements, and then I've got it saved for when I use that week plan again.

Period Tracker
I don't really need to use this app to track my period, but it's got some added features that are really useful. Each day it allows you to enter in what symptoms you're experiencing, such as bloating, cravings, aches, nausea etc, and then your mood. This allows you to see whether patterns develop according to what part of your cycle you're in. There's room to add notes as well. If I know that I always crave sweet things at a regular time in my cycle, I know to be really well prepared food-wise. It might also let me tip-off my boyfriend that it might be an idea to avoid me at certain times :) No downsides to this app, and I'm only using the free one.

Sleep Talk
As I've said before, sleep is an important part of losing weight. I don't sleep that well, and I've been told for a long time that I talk in my sleep, which was my first inspiration for getting this app. Love it, love it! You start it when you're falling asleep, and it starts recording as a noise-activated recorder half an hour later. So far no talking, and only two cases of snoring for five minutes each, but I'm amazed at how often I'm disturbed while I sleep. One night it made 105 recordings, mostly of me turning over. A more standard night is about 40-50 recordings. You just sit it on the pillow or table next to you and it picks up sounds really well. This app allows you to see how the time you go to bed affects your sleep. I only wish it had a notes function, because then you could start to note factors influencing sleep each night, like what time you ate the last food before sleeping, stress levels etc. and start to compare your notes to how many times you were disturbed during the night. Ah, if only I were able to develop my own apps...

Darn those new scales!

I always struggle a bit in the third week. There were a couple of days where it felt like no matter what I ate, I couldn't fill the hole in my stomach. It's important to have something healthy on stand-by for these days, because it's all too easy to duck down to the local cafe or shop to buy something that will most likely be unhealthy. I treated myself to an ice-cream when I went to the movies, choosing the lowest fat one available, and I also went out for lunch and had fish and chips, but asked for my fish grilled and only ate half the chips, with a big salad on the side. You can't skip all these things, because you end up craving them and eating way more of them than you would under more controlled circumstances.

I bought new scales this week, which has made me wonder how accurate the last two weigh-ins were. At the start I used someone else's scales, and then for weeks two and three I used my old dial scales that only have a few millimetres between each kilo, making an accurate reading hard. I bough new digital scales, and my weight went up about 700g. It's important to weigh yourself on the same scales every week, at the same time and wearing the same clothes. I once found out that a pair of my boots weighed 1kg, so you can imagine how what you're wearing could affect your weight week to week. As you can see below, although my weight didn't really change, I did lose a little on my measurements. I'm glad I'm recording them, because it can be a bit demotivating just watching your weight!

I still managed five hours of exercise, but didn't do as much riding as I would have liked, because it was raining a fair bit. I need to harden up and get out no matter what the weather! I reached a goal this week, and managed to climb to the top of the rope at the climbing gym. I'm very proud of myself and will try and get someone to take a photo of me up there this week :)

Hut maintenance in the Snowies

For four days on the Australia Day weekend I joined my outdoors club SPAN on a maintenance trip to Derschkos Hut in the Snowy Mountains. National Parks allow you to take in one 4WD vehicle when you're doing work on the hut, so one couple took in their camper, which meant we had the luxury of a fridge and a few other extras. It also meant we were able to mountain bike into the hut without having to carry any gear.
After sleeping in Cooma on Wednesday night we rode into the hut, near Cabramurra and Mount Jagungal. I've only done mountain biking once before, and was pleased with how well I did, but I was still pretty scared on the downhills because of all the loose rocks. The ride took about 1.5 hours, across undulating country after dropping off Round Mountain.

I was exhausted when we arrived, so didn't join the group that decided to ride to Mount Jagungal and walk to the top. Instead I stayed at the hut and helped start cleaning the walls. Our job for the weekend was to paint the internal walls. We got nearly all the cleaning finished that night, then spent the entire following day painting. We were really pleased with how good the hut looked after we finished, especially after National Parks reclad the hut last year and the Kosciusko Huts Assocation painted it. It looks nearly brand new. 

On Saturday we mountain biked to O'Keefes Hut, about 7.5km each way, which took us four hours altogether, then we tacked on another hour to ride to Bogong Creek. HUGE day. We had a bit of fun riding through creeks, and enjoyed checking out the newspapers from the 1930's that line the hut walls. O'Keefes burnt down in the big fires of 2002, then it was rebuilt (my father was one of the team) in 2009.

We celebrated our final night with a few beers that had been cooled in the creek, then packed up the next morning to ride out again. I'm glad the ride was only 1.5 hours because it was baking hot. The forecast had said we would be riding out in rain, but the only rain all weekend was on Thursday night - gorgeous.

To finish the weekend, we visited the thermal pool at Yarrangobilly Caves. It wasn't as good as I remembered, but the river alongside was amazing. Clean, refreshing and the perfect temperature. Who needs a warm pool on a hot day?