- Breakfast: Bacheldre Mill oak-smoked strong malted bread, toasted, with homemade peanut butter, a small tasting of quince jam (made last week), plus bananas, apples and hot black tea with milk
- Lunch: Grilled mackerel salad with roast beetroot, apple and horseradish. I know mackerel and beetroot are supposed to be good together, but the combination keeps eluding me. This was okay, but not awesome. Maybe celery and cream would help.
- Snack: Banana and cocoa protein smoothie
- Dinner: Besan Cheela (chickpea flour pancake) with yogurt, apricot and ginger chutney, and Indian Cucumber Coconut Salad
- Dessert: Chocolate lava cake from the freezer with ginger ice cream.
I probably didn't need the lava cake tonight, but it's Saturday and I felt like a little treat.
Last week I decided, barring a few events between now and Christmas, I'm just not going to drink unless it's a truly special occasion. Basically, no more drinking at home. I've harped on about booze enough and really, all of my concerns and bad feelings would all just go away if I simply didn't drink. So, that's that.
It's weird - I've spent the last five years obsessing over my diet, trying to figure out the best way to eat to feel good physically, but alcohol has always given me trouble. I can say no to cookies, cakes, cream, and butter, but an ice cold beer gets me every time. But I'm realising that my attitudes towards food AND drink are askew. It's as if to compensate for my propensity to enjoy a few drinks on the weekend, I force myself to be fairly extreme in my food intake. But what I really should be doing is eating MORE of the right things. Instead of feeling this extreme need to be flawless in my eating all the time, I need to just chill the eff out and stop worrying about all this stuff and just BE. WITHOUT the possibility of a hangover to plunge my psyche into the pits.
I'm finding that if I want to drink less, or be less crazy about food, I need to really WORK at changing my way of thinking. Set myself up for success. Last week I took all of the alcohol in the house and put it away in a closet. Out of sight out of mind really does work. And with no expectation that I'll be having a drink, there's no anticipation. And then no feeling like it's "hard" not to have a Friday night beer (oh but it IS so good, isn't it?).
It's late and I'm not entirely clear on what this is all about. But I do feel like I'm learning. Learning what? Hopefully how to be sane, strong and happy. We'll see.
I did learn today that raw beetroot does funny things to me. I ate a piece while preparing to roast some beetroot and it instantly made my throat sore, and it's been sore ever since. Also, my chest is tight and my toungue is tingly. Is this a food allergy? Bizarre!
