Week 13 : IT STARTS NOW! (Again)

Well, I told you this week was going to bad. And I was not wrong. 1lb fatter. See how it creeps up when you get slack? In this instance, the term 'slack' means 'only having one fast day this week'. And it turns out that 'only having one fast day this week' also means 'having a fast day until I get home and eat several pieces of fridge cake'. Yes sir, things got bad…

Let's blame it on the Bank Holiday. It's an excuse to stuff your face, which is what I did. The BF and I went to a local burger bar and it was amazing. The food gets better every time I go. I tried to restrain myself by ordering plain fries instead of loaded fries with my chilli burger, but the moment BF's arrived (he ordered his with cheese, bacon and spring onion) I instantly regretted it. The burgers suddenly looked smaller than they used to — mainly down to the fact that we had not eaten a thing all day — so we though about ordering some chicken wings to go alongside if we needed them, but we were pleasantly stuffed by the end. I ordered a Oreo milkshake with added malt for dessert (even though I was pretty full) as it seemed like a nice way to end a very tasty meal. Plus, I knew the shakes came in just a normal tumbler size. At least, they used to.

Along came the waiter, placing what looked like a 1.5 litre steel vat in front of me. It was full of ice-cream and Oreos and malt and milk. But I was already full of burger and chilli and chips and mayo… It was really delicious, but I barely made a dent in it, which is unusual for me. Luckily, my BF managed to drink quite a lot of it after his ice cream (where does he put it? WHERE DOES HE FUCKING PUT IT???), so at least it didn't all go to waste.

Now, Mondays are usually my fast day, so if I didn't want to fast that day, I should've moved it to another day. But I didn't. Instead, I decided that as I was going to visit my mum on Tuesday I couldn't possibly fast then, and then Wednesday I wanted to run so I couldn't do that either… so my only fast day was Thursday. And that was a piss poor effort, let me tell you. I was fairly good all day, and then I just went home and caned several bits of fridge cake with tea, probably with some crisps as well. *Sigh* I think it was because earlier in the day, I had been writing the previous week's blog, and I realised I had 6 weeks until my weekend away with my uni gals. That made be realise I needed to get serious. But seeing as I had pretty much ruined the week with no exercise and only one fast day, there was no way I was going to lose weight. So I thought I would just eat what I wanted, and draw a line under it. I was OK with that though and I kinda felt good about having a fresh start with a challenge. 

I need to track more on the weekend, though. I end up eating so much due to boredom, and it's all the wrong food too. Well, it's the right food taste-wise, but the wrong food waist-wise — BOOM! At least if I know I've eaten most of my daily allowance by lunch, I will feel guilty and eat less for dinner (ha!). Next week I'm sticking to calories, drinking water, exercising and focusing on my six-week goal. 

OH, FUCKING HELL.

I almost forgot to tell you. So, by Friday, I knew it had been a week of epic fails, so a colleague and I decided to go out for lunch as we had recently been paid. A former colleague of ours was also meeting us with her baby and partner, but she was running late, so me and Work Mate decided to head down to the pub and order our food as we only had the one hour for lunch. Work Mate decided just to order some chips, but then she is tiny. I really didn't think a small portion of chips was going to fill me up (I'm about twice her girth), but they had a large chip option as well. Brilliant, I will order that. 

So we are sitting chatting and the waiter comes out and puts our chips on the table. I honestly could have died of embarrassment…

These chips tasted amazing — I WILL be going back!

I'm not even sure this picture does it justice. Suddenly — to anyone who may have been watching (mainly these two women who were just gawping at me from the next table, even though they were both bigger than me!) — it was quite apparent why and how I was double the size of Work Mate. I tried to distance myself from the chips as much I could, pushing them into the centre of the table, leaning forward to take one and then sitting right back into my seat whilst I ate it. I was hoping it would look like I was just a bit of a grazer who was nibbling a little, rather than some greedy pig hunched over a plate of chips. Oh, and I kept saying "You HAVE to help me eat these!" really loudly even though I didn't want to share them AT ALL. To be fair, it was only as much as you would get from down the chippy, and a normal person would probably manage to eat that. It just looked worse because of Work Mate's tiny bowl next to it… Yeah, let's blame her, stupid skinny bitch! Luckily, our friend arrived shortly and and I shoved the chip bucket in the direction of her and her partner and left them with it.

But I totally could have eaten them all. I just had to pretend I couldn't for the safety of general public.

Junk In My Trunk — Bank Holiday Special

So, predictably I just got fat over the Bank Holiday. Well, everyone else was treating themselves — why shouldn't I? My boyfriend was stocking up on multipacks of tomato ketchup flavour crisps, and my friend came down from Leeds so we were buying nice food and desserts… Recipe for disaster, but like we all kept saying — "Fuck it, it's the Bank Holiday!" 

And now I am paying the stupid price.

To be honest, I don't feel that bad — stuffing your face on holiday is to do with human rights or something. I had planned on being more mindful, but only because my mate was staying and we agreed that we wouldn't/shouldn't go mental on foodstuffs and would instead try to be good. She has been doing WW for over a year and has now lost a total of 72lbs. Yes, it is amazing and I hate her. (I kept joking all weekend, "You jammy cow… You're so skinny… Don't lose more weight… GET OUT OF MY FUCKING FACE YOU STUPID SKINNY BITCH!" — too much?) 'Being good' went out the window, ooh… about 34 minutes after she got to mine on Friday. (FYI — it went out the window because we went out and got wrecked, NOT because I kept shouting abuse at her. Probably.)  But I was fine with the decision to pig out because, secretly, I wanted to eat as many different forms of potato as I could all weekend. And lots of melted cheese.

In an effort to line my stomach before we all went out for another friend's birthday, I ate my own body weight in pasta. I mean, seriously — I'm surprised I managed to get drunk at all. I remember shovelling it in past the point where I was comfortable, but I kept thinking "It's your first meal today… You need the energy… You will feel sick if you don't… etc", and just kept lifting my spoon right into my gob. Thank fuck I was wearing a billowy top. A good night was had by all — if you get a chance to go to an Ultimate Power club night at any point, TAKE IT! It's fucking awesome. And not a wanker in sight — I promise. http://www.ultimatepowerclub.com/

I also visited another friend over the weekend to finally see the baby she had at Christmas. I must admit, she was very cute and hardly cried at all (I love a well-behaved baby), thus moving me closer to getting over my baby fear. However, she did fart on my lap, so it might be more of a 'one step forward, two steps back' kinda arrangement.

But let's get to the good part!

Great things I ate this weekend: corned beef pasta with cheese (it is brilliant), a homemade fry-up, a pub Sunday roast, mum's chicken curry, two luxury hot cross buns with butter, a wedge of billionaire's cheesecake, a pretty fucking awesome smorgasbord, more buttery food round my mum's, and chip shop chips. Ooh, and salt and vinegar sticks.

Shit things I ate this weekend: Burger King Whopper.

Fuck me, I can honestly say that was the worst burger I have ever eaten in my living memory. I mean, it's worse than a crappy frozen burger you made at home yourself with your eyes shut, worse than something from a dodgy van — THE WORST. I had gone shopping with my mum and we stopped at Burger King for lunch. I was toying with the idea of a cheeseburger (I'm obviously lying. You know fine well that I was eyeing up the Bacon Double Cheeseburger — it's the Bank Holiday, remember?), BUT THEN my mum made the point that for the same price we could get a Whopper. For some reason, I agreed, but I wasn't quite comfortable with this decision… Now I know why! The initial excitement of seeing the giant Whopper box quickly died when I saw that the bun wasn't toasted (I don't think it's supposed to be anyway) and it was just crumbling everywhere (TOO MUCH BREAD!), there was loads of ketchup in it and friggin' lettuce all over the shop. And I bet it wasn't hot either. URGH. And because bad food choices make me unreasonably angry, I blamed my mum for the whole thing. In fact, my constant moaning put her off her Whopper entirely — she didn't even finish it. But I assured her that it was shit anyway.

In other news, I totally forgot to tell you about a new American cake I found out about — The Icebox Cake! I was reading something on the Huffington Post website and I stumbled across it in an article and did a bit of research — and by the end of it my mouth was watering so badly that I knew I had to make it 'on the immediate' (I stole this line from Girls). It's a very simple cake that requires no baking, but it does need a night to set. Traditionally, it is made with a thin type of biscuit that is very similar to the biscuit part of an Oreo, but they are hard to source here, so I found a recipe that used chocolate-covered digestives. You layer some on a plate, they spread lightly whipped cream on them, then layer more biscuits, then more cream until it starts to resemble a seven-layer heart attack. I then grated chocolate over it and sprinkled some glitter, cos I'm fancy like that. And the results are below.

You creamy little fucker…

The overnight wait was pretty brutal. I just wanted to eat the bastard thing, and no amount of fridge-opening and dirty looks in its direction was going to make it speed up. But by the next night, when I poked it with the giant butcher knife I had been brandishing for the last 24 hours, I could tell the biscuit had absorbed the cream and it was finally ready to slice. OH MY GOD. It was epic — a really, REALLY good cream cake, best served with copious amounts of warm chocolate sauce. So my boyfriend and I did what any two sane people would do — eat so much of it that we were almost sick. Yup — by the end of the evening, I was already thinking who I could give it away to because the thought of it (accompanied by the strange smell of warm cream on my top lip) was making me want to vomit. So, we set aside quite a big portion to give to my mum the next day — this rash decision was one that I would soon come to regret… 

After a night's sleep, we were ready for Round 2 with the ice box cake and suddenly what was left in the fridge seemed pretty paltry for two people in the mood for a creamy, chocolatey, biscuity fix. In fact, my mum had to prise her portion out of my clammy, digestive-covered hands. But that aside, I was pleased that the results were as good as they were. With a bit more decorative piping-bag work, I think I would happily serve this to guests. But I do have a confession to make — I got so obsessed with this dessert that I ended up doing some regular (but secret) cake-scaping of my boyfriend's remaining piece… It was worth standing in a cold kitchen for, I tell you. 

Although… if I had been caught, it might not have been worth it. Picture: me. In pyjamas. Shivering by an open fridge. Stealthily stuffing cake into my mouth. With my utensil of choice — a bright green plastic knife from a picnic set. Nuff said.