Food is fuel ... not therapy!!!

I am a happy person, I genuinely am.  Anybody who really knows me will tell you that, and it isn't a cover up or a shield.  I am happy.  I love to laugh, and I love to make others laugh too.

I always see the best in life, I don't tend to let things get to me and get me down, I deal with things, I don't stew on things and make more drama out of them and make everything about me. I rarely argue (although I do nag!). 

If I don't like a situation, I will remove myself from it, if somebody hurts me or lets me down, I tend to leave them out of my life.  I don't like to feel used, so I won't allow people use me. 

I don't surround myself with lots of 'friends', I don't need to.  I have a very very happy and secure relationship with my husband, he is my best friend and the one person in the world I can truly be myself with. He simply gets me and I love spending time with him.

I have been badly hurt by too many friends in the past, it stays with you, so I find it hard to trust others and tend to keep most people at arms length.  I was bullied growing up, first of all in 1st year seniors, so I moved schools and it happened again, and both occasions were by jealous girls who 'fancied' boys who apparently fancied me.  Not my fault, but girls can be very malicious, and vicious and cruel, and jealousy is an ugly, ugly trait.  I may sometimes feel a little bit envious of something somebody has or has done, but I am not a jealous person.  I make my life, I am responsible for it, if I truly want something, I will make sure I work hard to get it, I don't expect anything to fall into my lap and I don't think anybody owes me anything.

I come from a loving family with parents who I have always known love me and each other, have always had security,  I am very, very lucky.  I knew I could go to my parents about the bullying, and I knew they would sort it for me, and they did, and it stopped, and I enjoyed the rest of my school life.  But it still stays with you.

We have had some hard times as a family, like most people.  The hardest being when my elder sister Lynn died at the age of 26 from a brain tumour, she had fought it from the age of 18/19, I was 24 when she died and still living at home, amongst it all.  To lose somebody close to you like that devastates you, it really does, and it stays with you all your life.  Life does go on, but it is always there with you.  I wouldn't say it gets easier, you still miss them dreadfully, you can't help but wonder every now and then 'what if', but you learn to live with it, and without them.  I still hear in my head the noises she made on the night she died.  She knew her time had come, and she wanted us around her, she hadn't been able to speak for months, but she found the strength to muster up this noise that called us to her.  I still hear that noise.

I am telling you all of this because I believe it is these 'situations' that have led me to be a comfort eater over the years, as so many people are.  However, so many people think that comfort eating is a result of unhappiness, it isn't so.  It can be for a number of reasons, it is a crutch, a way of coping.  As happy as I am with my life, I still have issues which will always be with me, and those issues every now and then rear their ugly heads and grip at my stomach.  I have always made them go away by filling it with food.

But then that becomes an issue in itself, because as a result, you put on weight, and that becomes another demon.  I don't need therapy to tell me that, I know that.  Eventually however you have to ask yourself, is the food helping?  And you know it isn't, you have always known it hasn't, but finally you wake up to it and face it and decide enough is enough.  It takes away your confidence and your self-worth.  So you have to decide, are you going to let it continue, or are you going to take control?

I finally, at long last,  decided to take control.

 

~BREAKFAST~

 

I am not a tomato lover.  My Mum loves them and eats them like sweets.  I put some everyday in Matthew's lunchbox, luckily he loves them too.  I read once they can help fight against cancer, that is why I give them to him, he hasn't got cancer ... so I guess it must be right!! ;)

Joking aside, they contain lycopene, a very powerful anti-oxidant that helps in the fight against cancerous cell formation as well as other kinds of health complications and diseases.  When they are heated, the benefits of the lycopene actually increases.

But despite knowing that, I am still not a lover.  I cannot eat the core of a tomato, it makes me gag, even just the thought of it.  So I will always thinly slice around the tomato and leave the core, its just one of my many weird traits!

But this morning, before heading out on a lovely long walk, I really wanted fresh tomatoes on toast ... so that is what I had, with a little salt and a lot of white pepper, and it was good!!

~LUNCH~

 

We ignored the weather warnings and went out for a nice long walk today, and the sun shone all day.  Was going to take a picnic but just decided to take a couple of Magical Energy Bars with us which were very welcome at the end.

 

When we got back home I knocked us up a smoothie of sorts.  This was simply some fresh strawberries, frozen raspberries, frozen yogurt and almond milk.  Blitzed it all together with a hand held blender and hey presto!!!


Delicious, filling and so refreshing.  Even Matthew loved it, not normally a smoothie lover, nor am I to be honest, but this was more a fruity shake!!

Smoothies get a bit of a hard time, it depends on what you put in them, but what can be better for you than all the freshness that went into this one, no added sugars, all natural goodness, well, probably some sugars in the frozen yogurt, but I only put a tablespoon in so not going to kill me!!!

~DINNER~

 

I very rarely do a roast dinner on a Sunday, we normally have one mid week sometime but never really feel like one on a Sunday, but when shopping on Friday I spotted a lovely rib of beef on the bone in Waitrose and it was reduced, so snapped it  up!!

We love our beef rare, still moo-ing, and I usually find it hard to get it spot on, but today was good.  I crack some black pepper over both sides of the beef and then sear all sides in a very hot dry pan.

I then make a 'trivet' in the roasting tin of carrots, parsnips and onion and place the seared beef on top.  Then put in a pre-heated oven, about 180oc and for this joint I cooked it for about 55 minutes.

Whilst that was cooking I par-boiled some potatoes and sweet potatoes, gave them a good shake to rough them up, then put them in the actifry for 30 minutes, no oil, just the hot air to crisp them up.  I had been given some more runner beans from my colleague at work so shred them up with a runner bean shredder and let them simmer away whilst everything else cooked.  When the beef was ready I took it out and let it rest, and put the roasting tin back in the oven to let the trivet of veg cook a bit longer.  You can't have roast beef without good old yorkie puds.  These weren't handmade by me, but I did pick them up from a local farm shop, so had been hand made by somebody!!

Once everything is cooked and served up, I made the gravy with the runner bean water.  I should say I make all the gravy from scratch using all the juices etc, and sometimes, very rarely, I do.  But normally, and today, I just use some good old low salt gravy granules and stir till thickened!!

See, it doesn't have to be laden in fat, a roast can be as healthy as you like, and a little addition like the yorkie pud makes it feel naughty but nice!

A lot of people hate their beef rare, I have always loved it and all I would say is, why would you pay out for a good joint of meat only to cremate it and lose all its natural juiciness and tenderness.  Cooked like this, the knife goes through it like butter, and you appreciate the full flavour of the meat, don't knock it till you try it!!

~EXERCISE~

 

Matt and I love walking, it hasn't always been so, I used to find any excuse not to, even driving down to the local shop which is about 15 houses away from us!  But now we love it, and we love photography, and wildlife, so we combine all 3 whenever we can.

 

Today was a gorgeous day, so we headed on out to a local nature reserve called Chigborough Lakes.  We have never been here before and it was beautiful, I love being near water anyway.  Sitting down on the grass bank with Matthew, next to a huge lake, with nobody else around, watching nature at its best, dragonflies, damselflies and other such critters, you can't help but smile at life.  We walked for about 2 hours on and off, with the sun on our faces, feeling the stresses just ebb away with the water, a fantastic day.

Thanks again for reading
Jo
xx