“Did she get tired or did she just get lazy? She’s so far gone she feels just like a fool. My, oh my, you sure know how to arrange things You set it up so well, so carefully Ain’t it funny how your new life didn’t change things You’re still the same old girl you used to be”
I know.
It’s Tuesday, not Monday. I’m a day late. Again. Bite me.
Easter weekend with those two bank-holidays kinda threw me though. Yesterday felt like a Sunday (They were showing Harry Potter on TV for feck’s sake…everyone knows that’s a Sunday afternoon thing!) And to be honest the fact that I was only a day out is a bit of a miracle really, all things considered. I mean, it’s April now apparently, but this morning I had to brush a load of snow off of my window-ledge so I could feed the birds. Yes, snow. And then the sun came out and I had to put sunscreen on in order to leave the house because I’ve been throwing enough acids at my face lately for it to be considered a hate crime. Snow and sun? This ain’t freaking Chamonix, universe. Get your shit together will ya?
Not that I’ve got my own shit even remotely together right now. This whole last week has been a bit of a miserable crap-fest for me. I’ve pretty much been relegated to the sofa for the past 7 days, with some really bloody annoying nerve pain and muscle spasms all down my left leg. Like, it was pretty funny at times when I got up to use the bathroom, my leg muscle would spaz out and I’d just collapse into whatever was next to me (the other half laughed quite a bit when I fell into a bookshelf and knocked all the books off and then headbutted the door – who wouldn’t find that funny?) but the Michael J. Fox routine soon got annoying so I basically just stayed put for the most part, doubled up on the diazepam and tried to sleep for as many hours as I could each day.
As for food, well I just couldn’t be bothered with it. I ate a couple of proper meals, but mostly I just decided to be super lazy and rely on snacky stuff. Handfuls of sliced ham, a bit of cheese, bags of pork puffs, nut butter and protein bars. Yes, I know this isn’t a normal healthy way to eat and no it isn’t my normal eating pattern, but I really had zero fricks to give this week and figured I was still eating ‘on-plan’ foods.
At least, I thought I was.
Yeah, well that didn’t turn out to be exactly right. You see, I’ve been including some protein brownies in my food intake ever since I pretty much started to eat low-carb. The label said that they contained 0.5g of sugar in them and I’d not had any problems with them over the past 7 months so I had no reason to think that they weren’t okay for me. But a few days ago I ate one with a cup of coffee a few hours after I’d gotten up and about 30 minutes afterwards, I started to feel a bit hungry. Knowing this was a bit odd my mind immediately dialled into that and started to get suspicious:
“That’s weird. I shouldn’t be hungry. I’ve eaten. I should be good for another few hours. Hmm…strange!”
At first I just put it down to my having upped some of my medications and grabbed some ham and cheese to stave off the starvo monster. But then later on, being the lazy bish that I was, I decided that instead of a real dinner I’d just have another brownie with coffee. (Yes, a shitty food choice, but you’re not my real dad, you can’t tell me what to do…or what to eat!) But again, not long after eating I felt the same hunger kicking in. And I knew that this wasn’t proper hunger, but those old sugar-craving pangs of old.
“This isn’t right! Have these things been reformulated on the sly? Have they increased the amount of maltitol in them or something?”
I don’t really have any problems with maltitol normally. At least I hadn’t up until now, but the packet didn’t stipulate the amount of sugar alcohols in each brownie, so I logged onto Amazon where I bought them and had a look for the nutritional breakdown on there. And what I actually found, sorta blew my mind:
“Less than 1g of sugar…blah blah blah…20g of protein…blah blah blah…3.3g of fibre…blah blah blah…and there’s only 24g of carbohydrates primarily from low GI oat flour.”
I’m sorry, there’s what in there now?
“24g of carbohydrates primarily from low GI oat flour.”
OAT FLOUR? BROTHERCLUCKING OAT FLOUR? SINCE WHEN HAS THAT SHIT BEEN THERE? I DON’T CARE HOW “LOW-GI” IT IS, I DIDN’T KNOW I WAS EATING 24G OF COCK-A-MAMIE CARBOHYDRATE FROM OAT FLOUR!
So I fished one out from the bottomless sack of protein bars that live under my living room table and looked a little more closely at the ingredients wrapper. Now, I don’t think I’ve told y’all this before, but I have pretty crappy eyesight that both struggles with tiny things up close, as well as not being able to make out most things in the distance. Don’t worry, I don’t drive a car or anything that could truly endanger others via my sensory deficiencies, but I am supposed to wear glasses to improve this little affliction. Only, I don’t. Because there isn’t a single pair of glasses out there that I don’t look a like a total penis in; so my vanity just precludes me from having better vision. It’s no big deal, if I can’t see something far away I either move closer to it (pro tip there folks – you’re welcome) or ask someone else to deal with it. Up close when reading I’m okay usually, but small print often just becomes that cliched blurb of ‘frick-knows-what’, that I’m either signing away the rights to my firstborn to (joke’s on them, because I’ve been sterilised) or overlooking the get-out-clauses that prevent me from suing a manufacturer once their product poisons me or makes all my hair fall out.
And upon closer inspection, I could see that it did indeed say that the product contained oat flour…an ingredient that I’d previously taken to say oat fibre which would have been fine. So yeah, it turns out that for the past 7 months I’ve been eating these things which contain within them “only 24g of carbohydrates primarily from low GI oat flour!” Fricking “only”. Get the frick out of here with your attempt to minimalize your bullshit, brownies. THAT’S MORE THAN MY DAILY CARB ALLOWANCE YOU TINY-PRINTED MISBEGOTTEN SNACKY-CAKE OF SATAN!! Urgh!
I mean sure, it wasn’t their fault that my macular shortcomings had caused me to misread an ingredient, but I’m a hormonally imbalanced harridan who can’t seem to do right, for going wrong, and this whole debacle has kind of brought out the inner Karen in me. Yes I’m to blame, but no, I’m not in the mood to be so magnanimous in my own defeat here. I’ve been eating that crap for months now. (Although I did read one comment about them having recently reformulated the recipe, rendering them no longer filing and satiating, so maybe this is a new thing and I’ve only just detected the extra carbs in my current batch? Possibly. It’d make sense I suppose, but they don’t taste any different to me since the first time I ate one, so I could just be clutching at straws.)
So there you go. That was my rather unsettling ‘moment of truth’ this week that pissed me off to no end. Because I now have to give those brownies up and they were one of my favourite (allegedly…but not really…grr…) low-carb snacks. They were seriously dense and filling, made for a convenient meal replacement when I literally couldn’t be bothered to move my fat arse and find something else to eat, and they tasted really good too. I’ve probably got about 30 of them in my stash because they were on a monthly reorder thing from Amazon, but I guess they’re going to have to go to the other half to consume now instead. FML.
Anyway, enough cathartic caterwauling for now, time to do this week’s weigh-in. Last week I was 14 stone 12lb (208lb) and this week the scale says…well it sort of keeps flashing between 14 stone 11lb and 14 stone 12lb; and if you’ve been around here long enough, you’ll know that we don’t deal in half-measures whatsoever here at Hydrangea Heights. That goes for weigh-ins too, so we’ll just round it up to the higher number and call this last week a flat maintain. Which, when you consider how many of those aforementioned protein brownies I ate over the last 7 days and how many carbs I must have been inadvertently consuming, is actually quite impressive, lol.
Going forward though, we’ll just have to be more careful when studying nutritional panels and not just read what we think sounds good, only for it to turn out to be another comestible nemesis-in-waiting. All jokes aside though, it is what it is and life goes on. I’m not going to be losing any sleep over this…but then I get prescribed plenty of hypnotics, narcotics and whatnot to out-snooze Rip van Winkle, any day, so lack of sleep is never really much of an issue with me. If I got any more ‘beauty sleep’ I’d be a freaking supermodel, and that just wouldn’t be fair to the rest of you. (Never let it be said that I’m anything else than a 24 karat gold humanitarian folks – once again: you’re welcome!)
But that pretty much wraps up this week’s weigh-in update I think. Now that I’ve realised that we’re actually on Tuesday, I’m going to have to go check out the meat and produce in the fridge because some of it might have gone beyond the ‘use-by’ date and will have to get flung out for the sea-gulls to feast upon. (I swear I have cultivated the most spoiled, bougie birdies in my locale; they actually turn their noses up at bread now, fully aware of the bountiful alternatives that lie just beyond my window. Bless!)
So wherever you are in the world, I hope that the gods of weight-loss are smiling down upon y’all, and you’re paying proper attention to your food labels. I’m here making these mistakes for y’all, so you don’t have to.
Hi folks. Today as promised is focusing on some of the newer products I’ve been incorporating into my diet lately. Amazon is both a fantastic way to source pretty much everything you want, AND a dangerous site that will have you discovering more and more things you never realised you wanted before today…but totally NEED now that you’ve seen them, lol. Seriously, my ‘Wish Lists’ are categorised into every different type of product, yet still have over 100 items in each of them. The ones for stationery, books, perfume and foodstuffs are the biggest, as y’all can probably imagine; but I’ve definitely been working my way through the new items on the foodstuffs list a lot faster. What can I say? Your girl loves her a good protein bar, y’all!
Anyway, for those of you who are at all interested in the kind of stuff that gets me through the day, here are a few of my new favourite items – all available from Amazon at time of posting. And strap yourself in, because this is gonna be a long one folks!
I love these little squeezy sachets! Nut butters are something that I’ve been starting to consume more and more of lately, because they’re just such a tasty and simple way to get some protein and fat into my diet. I’ve been trying a bunch of them out recently, but this brand definitely emerged as a strong favourite for a number of reasons:
It. Tastes. Great.
It contains only 2 ingredients: almonds and a touch of sea-salt. No added sugar or palm oil. Awesome.
It’s a small British company set up by the founder Pip in her own kitchen as she was initially making her own nut butters for consuming after running the marathon. It went from being something she did for herself, to a small hobby that saw her selling them at London’s Maltby Street Market every weekend, and then with the help of an entrepreneur’s grant, became the successful business it is today.
Being pre-portioned it’s very easy to know just how many calories, carbs & protein I’m getting every time.
They’re conveniently portable. Nut butters are notoriously sticky and messy, so I’ve never felt inclined to carry a jar of the stuff around in my handbag with a spoon, for on-the-go consumption. But these little sachets can be taken and eaten anywhere; any time you find yourself stuck having to work late or unable to eat the convenience foods provided for everyone else, one of these will help fight off the hunger pangs and provide just enough sustenance to spur you on through the remainder of your workload.
Great for kids. Again they’re convenient so you can always have one in your bag or glovebox, plus they’re free from artificial additives so you know what you’re putting into your children’s bodies too. A healthy snack, the packaging also has enough bright colours on it to entice the eyes of the most discerning little one, having a hangry strop.
Almond butter is pretty new to me (until recently I’d only ever eaten peanut butter) but seeing the lower amount of carbs it contains, I was keen to try it out. Initially, I bought a box of 20 sachets thinking that if I didn’t like the taste I could easily give the rest of them away to someone else, without having contaminated the remaining ones. But that totally wasn’t the case; in fact it was love at first slurp! Being all-natural the oils can sometimes separate from the solids while stored, so you do have to give them a good squeeze to mix it up before consumption and there’s a handy reminder to do so printed just above the serrated opening area, in case you forget; but the sachets hold up perfectly to a little manual manipulation. Overall the packaging just feels incredibly well thought out and definitely contributes to my desire to repurchase.
Like I said, this was the first almond butter I’d ever tried, so I don’t have anything to compare it to taste-wise. But I’m pretty hooked on this stuff for all the reasons already mentioned. I bought my box for £18.99 on Amazon, but you can also buy them directly from the company’s own website, for £20 – with free p&p for orders over £30. (Their sachets are also available in their ‘Peanut Butter Squeeze’ and ‘Coconut Almond Butter Squeeze’ varieties – both of which can also be purchased either from Amazon or Pip & Nut’s online store. NB: The ‘Coconut Almond Butter’ version isn’t strictly low-carb as it contains agave syrup.)
I know some people have mentioned that these sachets are a bit costly, for what is essentially just 600g of almond butter; but you’re really just paying extra for the convenience factor and I for one am more than happy to fork out a little more for something I can a/ take with me anywhere and b/ know exactly what the pre-portioned sachets are providing me macro-wise. If the convenience of portability isn’t important to you however, you can just buy a regular jar or big old tub of the stuff instead. A 1kg tub is £15.51 from Amazon, or £15.80 directly from Pip & Nut – and for those of you who develop a real taste for this stuff (which is highly likely if you’re anything like me, lol) there are ‘Subscribe & Save’ options on both sites, as well as discounted bundles to help save you a few pounds each month.
Yes, its another nut butter, but WHAT a nut butter! Seriously, this stuff is the best tasting peanut butter I’ve ever tried! It combines a deep dark flavour, with a thick and creamy texture and BIG crunchy pieces. Nom! To explain how this comestible work of art came about, let me quote directly from the ManiLife website:
“The deep roast crunchy was born out of a miraculous mistake in the Mani-kitchen. We thought we’d burnt the nuts. Then we tasted it… A deep, delicious flavour that our fans tell us is a life-changing experience!”
Talk about a fortuitous mistake! I am so glad that they decided to go ahead and market this unintentional creation, because it really does take peanut butter to a whole other level. Here are some of the reasons I really like both the product and the company:
It. Tastes. Great.
It contains only 2 ingredients: almonds and a touch of sea-salt. No added sugar or palm oil. Awesome.
It’s a small British company who thanks to their consistently great product have grown to become one of, if not the only majorly distributed peanut butter brand in the UK that produces in small batches.
They source all their peanuts from one farm in Córdoba, Argentina, thus guaranteeing the same level of quality every single time.
The peanuts they use are not only naturally sweeter but as they’re hi-oleic, they’re better for you too. They only use whole peanuts – high grade 38/42s – and never use splits (these are like the off cuts that a lot of brands use – they’re cheaper and less consistent).
The deep roast along with the hi-oleic peanuts actually brings down the amount of carbs per serving. Regular peanut butters would be around 12g carbs per 100g; this stuff is 10g per 100g and still packs a rich amazing flavour.
As the original creator of the deep roast they were the first peanut butter brand on earth to start thinking about roasting peanuts the same way master roasters think about coffee. ManiLife prides itself on creating flavour through craft rather than ingredients, which is something I really dig.
The 1kg tub comes with a little handle which makes it look like a little bucket. Who doesn’t want a bucket of yummy peanut butter, lol?
Before I switched over to a low-carb WOE, I used to eat a lot of peanut butter on toast with Marmite. Some people still eat Marmite on a keto diet, but at just over 3g of carbs per 20g (about 4 teaspoons) I’ve been holding off reintroducing it until a later date. But, the deep roast flavour of this particular peanut butter actually reminds me a lot of that PB&M combo I used to eat so much of. It’s not exactly the same (and if you hate Marmite, please don’t think you should avoid trying this product, because it is not the same thing) but it definitely evokes a rich umami taste like Marmite does. Being so intense in flavour, a little goes a long way when it comes to satisfaction. (Although, it does take a bit of self-restraint to not just nip back into the kitchen for another yummy spoonful!)
I was completely unaware of this company or of the existence of deep roast peanut butters at all, until Amazon suggested it in my ‘Recommended For You’ section. Of course that means I have no other deep roast peanut butter to compare it to, but I absolutely love it. And seeing that other companies have since started to include their own version of this product in their ranges, I’m guessing it’s become very popular with the nut butter loving masses as a whole. It’s even won an award, being the only Peanut Butter on Earth ever to win the highest level of 3* at the Great Taste Awards – high praise indeed! – as well as having been rated 10/10 by The Sun, The Metro and The Daily Mail.
This 1kg tub cost me £9.99 from Amazon, but you can also purchase it directly from ManiLife’s own website for £10.95. They don’t just make this deep roast crunchy version though, they also make it smooth and also offer regular roast in both the smooth and crunchy variety as well. I haven’t tried any of those yet myself, but if this one is anything to go by, I’m sure they’ll all taste great. They all come in smaller jars too and can be purchased in various bundles (on both Amazon and their own site), but one option that is only available from ManiLife directly, is their Mini Taster Pack. This looks like such a brilliant little idea, because it gives you the option to try all 4 versions of their nut butters, without committing to any larger jars or tubs that you might end up not liking. The taster pack contains 4 little 15g pots and costs just £2. Perfect. So if you’re curious about the ManiLife brand and fancy trying them out, why not head over to their site and get yourself a wee Taster Pack to see what all the fuss is about.
Holy moly folks; this stuff is THE BOMB DOT COM! Yes really. I’ve been a big-time coffee drinker ever since I was 10 years old and wanted to know what the deal was with the funny gurgling machine on the kitchen counter and the great smelling pot of liquid it produced each morning. Over the years I’ve experimented with various beans and blends from all around the globe, finding firm favourites in some lovely Ethiopian varieties such as the darker Yirgacheffe Kochere and subtler Sidamo beans. But it’s not always practical to fire up the coffee machine when it’s only me at home and I’m not going to be drinking more than a single cup. So, of course I also have a tub of instant on hand for those time when I’m slumming it, lol. The one I usually buy is the ‘Nescafé Gold Blend Barista Instant Coffee – 180g Tin’ which sounds a bit more expensive at around £8.50 a go, but the 180g tin is almost twice the size of a regular 100g jar of coffee and it really does taste remarkably good for a peasant brew, lol.
But enough about the coffee, this is about the creamer right? I take my coffee both black or with milk/cream – it just depends on my mood. But the almond milk I use for my protein shakes doesn’t taste particularly nice in coffee and whilst full fat heavy cream is perfectly acceptable in moderation on my personal WOE, I always end up throwing most of it away. It only keeps for a couple of days before it starts to go off and even if I buy the smallest pot in the shop, I never get more than 2-3 cups of coffee out of it before I have to tip the rest down the toilet. That kind of waste really irks me, but I never have more than one creamy coffee a day and the other half doesn’t like putting it in his own coffee. So up until now I’ve been using no more than a third of a pot before having to dispose of the rest. But this product here has changed all that for the better! Now I just have to add a couple of teaspoons of this creamer to my coffee and I get a lovely, rich, indulgent tasting hot beverage. But what’s so good about it?
It contains 0g of carbohydrate per teaspoon. Knowing how companies can round any carb amount under 0.5g per serving, down to 0g on their nutritional panels, to err on the side of caution I can consider each teaspoon to contain a maximum of 0.5g of carbs, bringing the total potential amount for 2 teaspoons up to a very manageable 1g of carbohydrate. (Do check the label though as older formulations show a different nutritional composition.)
It’s already sweetened with sucralose and erythritol which means I don’t need to add any subsequent sweetener to my coffee. (Normally I use 1 Splenda pressed mini-tablet in a fairly large cup of coffee.)
Because of that added sweetener, it’s also a nice thing to have on hand for those moments (cough*TOM*cough) when the odd sweet craving starts to rear its ugly head.
Now this might sound a bit weird, but it also makes the whole thing taste ever so slightly like an Irish coffee! This may or may not be to your liking, but I very much enjoy it. It makes my coffee taste very decadent – especially on a cold, wet, winter afternoon.
It’s just stored in the cupboard and unlike cream, won’t go off in a couple of days. This reduces waste and means I never have to worry about making sure I nip to the shop before it closes if I’m going to have anything other than black coffee the following morning. (No 24hr stores round these parts folks!)
I can’t remember where I first heard about this stuff, but when I found it on Amazon I just HAD to buy it. (The sugar-free version also comes in ‘French Vanilla’, ‘Chocolate’ and ‘Hazelnut’ flavours – all of which I fully intend to try – but the ‘Vanilla Caramel’ had the best Amazon reviews so I figured I’d start off with that one.) If I’m honest, I really wasn’t expecting much from it. I figured it might end up being a weirdly mix-resistant powder that left a grainy layer of silt in the bottom of my mug; rather similar to the disappointing result I got from adding a collagen powder to my coffee a few months ago. But I still had to try it out for myself and man, was I ever glad I did! This is one of those products that has been a real game-changer for me after I switched over to the low-carb WOE. It might sound like something trivial to some people, but a good cup of coffee can really help get you through the day. Whether it’s a strong cup to get you going in the morning, a milder one to help you to relax of an evening, or a mid-afternoon “hug-in-a-mug” that helps to tide you over until dinnertime, good coffee is one of life’s essential luxuries. And this sugar-free creamer just makes it much easier for me to enjoy my coffee at any time of day.
Pricewise, it cost me £7.30 from Amazon, for a 289.1g tub. The other half though that sounded a bit much for some Coffee-Mate, because he uses the regular one which costs around £1.50 for a 180g tub. This one contains 100g more than his does, but aside from being a completely different product (as opposed to the same stuff just with sweetener instead of sugar) it’s also an American import. I don’t know if they’re available for sale in the UK (the closest thing I could find online is ‘Coffee-Mate Light’ for sale in Asda and that’s a reduced-fat product that has glucose syrup at the very top of its ingredients list) but they’re sold by various small businesses / Amazon 3rd Party Sellers who deal in US grocery imports. I don’t know why this isn’t sold in regular UK supermarkets – especially now that keto has become so popular, normal and accepted by the general public. It’s certainly not weird to find a non-diabetic customer looking for a sugar-free version of various products. But alas, I was only able to procure mine from a US Grocery 3rd Party Amazon Seller and shall continue to do so for as long as I’m able. This stuff really adds a special something to my regular cup of joe. And if you consider the cost of a fancy-schmancy cup of flavoured sugar-water from the likes of Starbucks (about £2-£4 depending on your preferred concoction), it’s worth its weight in gold. Or a decent cup of coffee at the very least.
I couldn’t do a product review without including at least one protein bar, could I? Whilst the rest of the weight-loss community online all seem to be singing the praises of the new ‘Built Bars’ (I’ve yet to try them out myself because they contain sugar and seem to average about 4g of carbs / sugars per bar – but their flavour range does looks pretty impressive) I’ve been enjoying the odd ‘Caramel Pretzel Battle Bites Protein Bar’. And they really are quite scrumptious. Here’s what’s so good about them:
They. Taste. Good.
Despite being described as “A” bar (singular) each packet actually contains 2 smaller bars. I especially like this because I regularly eat only half a regular protein bar in one sitting (just enough to put something in my stomach before I take my meds, or a sufficient little sweet-hit at the end of a meal) thus causing me to leave half-eaten bars lying all around the house. Sometimes a bar can be sticky or crumbly, which means mess; but having a 64g bar already divided up into 2 separate half-bars prevents that. I also think it might be helpful to those wanting to limit their own intake, because it’s probably a lot easier to put an entirely separate bar away for later, than it is to stop yourself from continuing to eat the whole bar you’re already holding in your hand.
The texture is a lot different to most other protein bars. A lot of the time bars are made with extruded protein, but ‘Battle Bites’ are baked for a much softer, fluffier, cake-like texture.
I haven’t tried any of their ‘Battle Oats Flapjacks’ as they don’t fit in with my very low-carb eating plan (although the ‘Cherry Bakewell’ flavour sounds pretty freaking awesome to this very-cherry-bomb chick!) but the ‘Battle Bites’ bars currently come in 11 different flavour options – all of which sound very yummy!
Two of the flavours (‘Chocolate Caramel’ and ‘White Chocolate Toasted Marshmallow’) also come in boxes of what they call ‘Minis’ which comprise just a single piece from the regular 2-piece bars. Again these are great for those of us who like to eat just a half at a time; that they are individually wrapped may also help some people avoid the temptation to eat both pieces in one sitting.
They just taste like a nice candy bar. My other half isn’t a huge fan of protein bars in general because he doesn’t like the way a lot of them taste. But he will happily eat one of these as a snack, so if he’s having one of his epic gaming marathons and refuses to stop for dinner, I can at least get him to scarf down one of these to tide him over until he finally logs off and realises he needs to have a proper meal. (Yes, he’s one of those infuriating people who can consume all the junk, maintain a great physique and regularly “forgets” to eat – weirdo!)
So, I first tried this brand back when I first switched to the low-carb WOE. I went with the ‘White Chocolate Toasted Marshmallow’ version which tasted great, but having so many other brands out there to road-test, I almost forgot about these guys and took another 4 months before I came back to try another of their flavours. Again, they turned up in my Amazon ‘Recommended For You’ section and as soon as I saw what the flavour was I immediately hit that ‘Buy Now’ button! Yeah, I’m kind of a fiend for all things caramel and love that I can still have the odd sugar-free option in a variety of products. I also want to try their ‘Carrot Cake’, ‘Red Velvet’ and ‘Winter Wonderland Irish Cream’ flavours too – the WWIC one might make a really nice accompaniment to my coffee with Coffee-Mate Vanilla Caramel creamer…whaddaya think?
This ‘Caramel Pretzel’ one though has a taste reminiscent of ‘Caramac Bars’ or ‘McVitie’s Gold Biscuit Bars‘, so if you like either of those and you’re interested in a low-carb alternative, you’ll probably really like these ‘Caramel Pretzel’ bars too. If you’re looking for a low-sugar (2g) high-protein (20g) snack that won’t put a huge dent in your calorie allowance (220 calories per 62g bar), and you want it to actually taste good, definitely give them a try. I bought my box of 12 x 62g bars from Amazon for £18.95. But you can also buy them directly from their ‘Battle Bites’ website for £20 a box. Right now they’re currently running their own promotion where you can buy 2 boxes of ‘Battle Bites’ for £35, or 3 boxes for £48, so if you’re already a fan and fancy stocking up, now is definitely the time. There are also ‘Subscribe & Save’ options available on both Amazon and the ‘Battle Bites’ company website, if you’re likely to want to purchase these on the regular and save yourself a few pounds each month.
I think these are really good value for money. A box of 12 x 64g bars will set you back anything from £18 – £20 (prices seem to fluctuate a fair bit on Amazon, depending on demand) and that works out at around £1.50 – £1.67 per bar. That’s quite a bit cheaper than a lot of other protein bars out there, yet their taste and texture beats a lot of the opposition, hands down. They’re not the most serious protein bar out there, but they have great macros, are suitable for those of us with keto / low-carb lifestyles, and with a whole host of fun flavours available, they’re the perfect little treat to have on-hand any time you start to feel hungry, need an energy boost or just want all the taste of a truly decadent candy bar without any of the sugary, high-carb guilt. And what’s life without having the occasional hit of caramel to bring a wee smile to your face?
I know I’ve mentioned these briefly before, but they’ve really become a firm favourite of mine ever since I discovered them. I last spoke about them in my ‘Post Christmas Weigh-In’ post, where I talked about how they were one of the products that helped me to stay 100% ‘on-plan’ and continue to lose weight over the Christmas period. Not that I’ve ever eaten at all ‘off-plan’ since the switch to a low-carb way of life – or really even felt tempted to – but I knew that there would be a lot of desserts and chocolate about over Christmas and I wanted to go prepared to my parents’ house with my own sugar-free alternatives. And to be honest, I didn’t eat a lot of this Perlege chocolate during those days, but it was nice to have it with me as a small, readily available, ‘on-plan’ treat.
Now onto the things I really like about this stuff:
It. Tastes. Great.
On their website they state that the brand was born out of desire to “innovate on the chocolate market, with an exceptional recipe that would make people with diabetes or other sugar related disorders, forget that they cannot consume regular chocolate.” And they’ve definitely achieved that. This stuff tastes like regular, rich, decadent Belgian chocolate.
Their website also details how their recipes evolved over time to include a mixture of Stevia and fewer sugar alcohols, which makes the chocolate less likely to provoke gastrointestinal problems. I can absolutely attest to this. I’ve never sat and munched my way through multiple bars of this product in one sitting – I tend to have no more than 3 chunks (half a 42g bar) at a time with a good cup of coffee – but I’ve never experienced any negative side-effects from it.
This chocolate contains a really nice amount of cocoa, which makes each little chunk very flavourful and satisfying: their dark chocolate contains 85% cocoa and their milk chocolate contains 57% cocoa. I have yet to try the dark chocolate version, but in my opinion their milk chocolate strikes the perfect balance between deep chocolatey richness, sweetness and creaminess. (Perlege also offer a whole range of other bars that contain different flavours and ingredients – Pear, Mango, Orange, Blueberry, Hazelnut, Wafer – and even nice little boxes of pralines that would make a lovely gift option. Those of y’all who want to peruse and even download their product range can access the catalogue here. Not gonna lie, the dark chocolate with mango ganache sounds pretty fricking epic, lol!)
Perlege’s chocolate also comes in different sized bars and tablet slabs. I especially like these smaller 42g bars though because despite being dinky, the attention to detail is still immaculate, with the gold foil offsetting the paper wrapper in a way that makes the product look luxurious rather than tacky. It’s maybe only a small thing, but when you’re looking to treat yourself with something nice, the presentation definitely adds to the overall experience. Picking up, holding and then opening one of these bars feels a lot more special than just cracking open any regular candy bar. It’s more deluxe looking and that helps make eating this chocolate feel like a moment to be savoured, rather than a quick, mindless snack.
Being individually portioned into a smaller 42g bar also removes the temptation to eat more than you ought to. I mean, each 42g bar still contains 10g of carbohydrate, so they’re not something you can just munch on with abandon. It’s much easier to moderate my own consumption with these smaller bars because if I eat half of one a/ that’s not dissimilar to the way in which I regularly only consume half a protein bar and b/ the three pieces that make up half a bar are decently chunky; so when I pop a piece into my mouth the shape and size alone feels more substantive and satisfying than a piece of a flatter tablet of chocolate. I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone else, but since changing up my eating habits I’ve started to look at the different ways in which certain foods are not only nutritionally made up, but the ways in which they are also presented, structured and divided up. A lot of this is mind-games; a way of not necessarily fooling myself (’cause mama didn’t raise no fool, y’all!) but tapping into the different aspects of sensory perception that can mean the difference between feeling deprived and feeling satisfied. Yeah I probably sound like a crazy lady right now, but maybe I’ll try to go into it a little more and explain myself better in a separate post.
I purchased these bars in a pack of 3 for £6.99, from a 3rd Party Seller on Amazon, which works out at £2.33 per bar. That might sound like a lot for something quite a bit smaller than many regular candy bars on the market. But sugar-free products are always more expensive – the demand for them is far smaller to begin with. But the price-point also seems to reinforce the idea that this isn’t something to be scarfed back without thinking. We’re not talking bank-breakingly expensive here, just something that should perhaps be regarded as a slightly more considered purchase, treat-wise. By choosing Perlege over Hershey’s or Cadbury’s chocolate bars, you’re acknowledging that whilst you feel you deserve to have something decadent and tasty, you also deserve to spend a little more money on a healthier alternative to the aforementioned sugary bars. You’re choosing to prioritise better quality products consumed less frequently, over poorer quality ones consumed regularly.
So, obviously this chocolate is not something I eat every day; or every week even. However, since discovering the brand, it’s definitely become a “Shark Week” staple and I’ve always got a few bars tucked away in my ‘snack stash’. But as I mentioned above, it still contains 10g of carbohydrate per 42g bar. And I don’t doubt for one minute that the Keto Police would have a lot to say about how it’s not “clean keto”. To them I shall of course give the standard response of:
“Screw you; you’re not my real dad. You can’t tell me what to do!”
But more importantly, I’m in this for the long haul. I’m not “doing a diet” for some short-term gains and as I continue to lose weight, I’m also working on creating a more balanced, sensible and sustainable approach to eating that will hopefully last a lifetime. I’ve mentioned in a previous post how I used to eat chocolate every day with capricious abandon; caring not about the calories, carbohydrates or nutrition it was providing me. But that’s one of the habits I need to change in order to not only lose weight, but improve and maintain my health in the long term. Working on seeing something like this chocolate, not as an item for everyday, casual consumption, but as an occasional treat to be savoured every so often, is just one method I’m employing in order to become somewhat more intentional with my eating. Maybe I could be more stringent and strict with my food intake – and maybe I’ll look into taking that approach at some point in the future – but maybe, just maybe I should focus on trying to employ a little more moderation than total abstinence with regards to ‘treats’ – all whilst continuing to stick to my 20g max of carbohydrate per day.
Who knows. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe having the odd bit of sugar-free chocolate, a few protein bars and some diet sodas will be my undoing and I’ll have to look into omitting them from my diet sometime in the future. If that’s the case then sure, I’ll hold my hands up and admit that these products just aren’t suitable for me after all and I’ll adjust my consumption accordingly. But for now I’m going to keep on doing what I’m doing while it’s still working for me; taking care to ensure that it also remains workable as a long term strategy.
And that ladies and gentlemen, brings us to the end of our little product review today. As with the previous one, let me just reiterate that I am in no way affiliated with any of the brands featured. All products were consumed with my own money and I have received no reimbursement for these reviews. The only way a company can persuade me to give their product a glowing review, is by creating and selling something I will feel naturally inclined to want to purchase and heap subsequent praise upon. Not that any company could care less what this tiny blog has to say about anything, but it’s important for y’all to know that everything you read on here is completely genuine.
I hope you enjoyed reading about these 5 “must have” items; let me know if you’ve tried any of them yourselves, and whether or not you share my unbridled enthusiasm for them.
Today I thought I’d share some of the products I’ve started using and have been loving lately. In order for me to be sure that this WOE is going to be sustainable, it has to be enjoyable; and to be honest, I’m really loving getting to eat so much meat and big portions of cruciferous vegetables, I’m really not missing the potatoes, rice, pizza, pasta, bread, cereals and grains and it’s really satisfying to just open the fridge and see a whole array of locally sourced, healthy, fresh produce stacked up in there. But, whilst I really only eat one proper meal a day, I also like to have smaller things on hand that I can take my meds with or get some extra nutritional benefits from, whilst still tasting nice.
I’ve really been enjoying having a shake instead of lunch. I’m rarely hungry enough to want an actual meal around that time, so a quick protein shake keeps me going from morning to my evening meal. I posted a picture of the shake I had been using when I first switched over to low-carb (you can find that post here) but I’ve since change up the entire combo. I now use this totally different shake mix, which is a vanilla flavour and tastes so much nicer (I don’t know what it is about ‘chocolate’ flavoured shakes – and other stuff – rarely tasting anything like chocolate…but whatever!). Anyway, the new one is Premium Body Nutrition’s Whey Protein Powder:
Each 30g serving (1 scoop) comes in at 2g of carbs and it’s sweetened with sucralose. It cost me £15 for 1kg and you can find it on Amazon here. But I don’t drink it on its own; I add another shake mix thing to it, which is a keto collagen powder from GoKeto:
Also vanilla flavoured, it has 0g of carbs per 20g serving (1 scoop) and I got it for £27 from Amazon. You can find it here.
So I put a scoop of each powder into my BULK POWDERS Large, 600 ml Shaker Bottle:
And I love the little wire ball that these come with now; it really helps to mix up protein powders so they don’t don’t have any lumps in them. I got mine from Amazon for £3 (total bargain!) and you can find them here.
With my previous shake mix I was just blending it with water, but I’ve changed over to using a completely sugar-free almond milk now instead and it just makes the whole thing taste richer and more palatable. My current favourite is this one:
It’s by Alpro and is specifically their ‘Almond NO Sugars’ version (their regular one and their unsweetened one both have carbs in them) and this one has 0g of carbs per 100ml. Looking at the ingredients, I’m pretty happy to multiply that up by 3 and assume that 300ml also has 0g of carbs (which is the amount I add to the mixture of PBN Protein Whey Powder and GoKeto Collagen Protein Powder.) I just get mine from the local Sainsbury’s supermarket and I don’t actually know how much it costs (because yeah, I’m that bougie person who could never tell you how much a pint of milk costs, lol) but if you want to check it out there’s a bunch of info about it, along with all their other products on Alpro’s website here.
So that’s my shake mix combo which I probably have one of, every other day. Ideally I’d really like to be having one every day (to get the benefits from the collagen) but I don’t always feel like it. Some days my appetite is way lower than others and I can’t face eating until late in the evening; at which point I’m probably more inclined to go for something hot – during the winter months anyway. But that shake-mix combo tastes REALLY nice! It tastes like vanilla ice-cream or milkshake…it actually reminds me of the McDonalds thick shake flavour and the way I make it is nicely rich and not insipidly thin. It’s a great combo and really helps to assuage the odd craving for sweet stuff that still rear their ugly little head, from time to time. If you’re eating low-carb and you crave ice-cream, you should totally try this out.
And speaking of sweet stuff, we’re now onto the protein bars! I’ve probably tried about a dozen different brands since I moved over to low-carb – some are far better than others (some of them are pure minging, lol) and I currently have 2 different brands that I’ve incorporated into my WOE. This first one is my ‘everyday’ go-to snack. I’ll eat a piece of it with my meds after I wake up and if I don’t eat the remainder of it along with other doses of my meds throughout the day (which is usually what happens during the first day or so of ‘Shark Week’ when I’m completely wiped out with nausea) then I eat the other two-thirds of it in the evening with a cup of coffee. It’s a nice little sweet treat to look forward to and really feels like I’m eating a brownie. The product in question? It’s this little beauty!
They are the SCI-MX Nutrition Choc-Chip High Protein Brownies. I buy these in a box of 12 from Amazon, for £12 (that’s £1 per brownie-cookie – great price-point!) and you can find them here. So, what do I like about them? Well, everything lol. First off, they taste great. A rich, deep chocolate flavour that really satisfies choco-cravings. Second, they’re really dense and substantial, so you really feel satisfied after eating one. Third, the pricing is great. Protein bars and protein cookie products can be a bit costly and whilst I’m more than willing to pay for a good product that I can incorporate nicely into my low-carb WOE, I’m also always really happy to find a bargain (that’ll be the Scottish part of my heritage!). These brownie-cookies are 65g each (about the average weight for a protein bar / cookie / product) and any time I eat one I feel really satiated. In fact, I’m no longer really that bothered about trying to make any of my own keto-brownies to help with the old desire to revisit something reminiscent of a chocolate cake, because these brownie-cookies meet that need and I can eat one, safe in the knowledge that I have the nutritional value already calculated and individually wrapped – which removes the temptation to eat ‘just one more’ from a multipack. I love them, what else can I say?
Another bar that I’ve been enjoying is this one:
These are the FULFIL Vitamin and Protein Bars in Chocolate Salted Caramel Flavour. I buy the 55g bars in a box of 15 for £21 (they’re also available in a smaller 30g size, so be sure to check what you’re buying) from Amazon and you can find them here.
These bars aren’t for everyday consumption – not for me anyway – I like to keep these on hand for ‘Shark Week’, or the couple of days prior to it, when the desire to eat something sweet & chocolatey reaches another level of intense. The bars are very squishy/chewy and have a sort of a fudgy taste to them. They’re sweet, but the salt-caramel flavour cuts through that to stop it from being too sickly and they have a load of soy-crispies on the outside, to break up the overall squishy texture. And boy do they taste good! Too good in a way, because whilst they’re packed with 20g of protein and a bunch of vitamins, I don’t find that they physically fill me up like other bars do and it’s very easy to eat more than one of them in one sitting (something I did once, a couple of months ago during ‘Shark Week’). I think it’s might be because the ingredients state that they contain oligosaccharide which is a source of glucose. The overall carb amount is still under 2g per bar, but I do wonder if they still manage to cause a bit too much of a spike to blood glucose, to be something you’d want to consume regularly on a very low-carb WOE. I keep to under 20g of carbs a day and whilst – numbers wise – I could legitimately incorporate one of these yummy bars into my daily allowance, I still feel that they’re better off being kept for those moments when you really want to eat something that tastes a lot more sinful than it really is.
And that’s it for my little product update today. Being such a tiny blog it’s probably completely obvious that none of these reviews were sponsored in any way, but I figured I should just take a moment to state on the record that I am in no way affiliated with any of the products feature here and everything mentioned was purchased by me, for me. All reviews are my own, and I include them here as honest opinions of products I enjoy.
Ahh…it’s been another one of those weeks, folks. Filled with more silliness obviously sent from on-high, to test me and see how I’d react to the latest dietary spanner in the works. It’s a good job that I’m incredibly zen about this weight-loss thing being a guaranteed long, slow, drawn out process, because life really is coming at me with curveballs ever since I committed to this new, permanent, low-carb WOE. We had the fibro flare up in week 2. The TOM scale going up and down in week 4. Last week I managed to slip on my kitchen floor, fall and trigger a bout of costochondritis/swollen fingers, and now this week hit me with the wonderful side-effects from having taken a short course of Tramadol for the rib pain: really bad constipation! I’ve basically been a walking disaster area, ever since I began eating low-carb…so to have lost 30lb already, despite all the crazy bodily shenanigans, has actually been pretty awesome!
I seem to have lost my powers of clairvoyance which allowed me to “feel” whenever I had gained, maintained or lost though. With each new incident, I find myself less and less able to predict what the scale is going to say each Monday upon waking. (I’m still not doing the daily weighing thing…it just feels very counter-productive when I’m wanting to see the bigger picture on a weekly basis). But this week has seen me bunged-up and bloated with a wonderful bout of constipation, thanks to the Tramadol – which are famed for creating this side-effect in those who have to take it. It was a few days ago at about 5 o’clock in the evening when I realised what the problem was, so I didn’t have any way of getting to a chemist to buy some Dulcolax or whatever. I’ve never had to take a laxative before (salads and veggies having always played a big part in my diet) so we didn’t have any in our medicine cabinet. But here I was, bloated like a human space-hopper, too late in the evening to obtain any proper “relief”…so I had to get creative, lol!
In my house I had a huge stash of protein bars (various brands) and a large bag of sugar-free butterscotch candy. I’ve not been eating a whole protein bar in one sitting anymore and the butterscotch sweets which I had kept in a little tub next to where I sit on the sofa, had gone largely untouched. I’d bought them in case I needed to have something sweet after a meal, but after the first week or so doing low-carb, I no longer found myself wanting that single, sweet piece of postprandial, sugar-free candy any more. So I still had almost a whole bag still left. And knowing just how potent the effect that sugar-alcohols can have on one’s digestive system is when consumed in excess, I got to thinking that they might just be able to help me out of my current “predicament”. So I ate 2 whole protein bars that contained maltitol, swigged back 3 cups of black coffee with 2tsp of coconut oil in each of them and started to make my way through as many of those sugar-free candies as I could stand.
Which wasn’t as easy a task as I’d first imagined. I think they’re sweetened with a mixture of maltitol & xylitol and taste incredibly sweet. Not just a normal level of sweetness, but an enhanced, concentrated faux-sweet taste that obliterated my taste-buds and made the inside of my cheeks pucker. It was nauseating, but I wasn’t consuming them for pleasure…this was for “medicinal purposes”, so I crunched back a few more and waited to see if they would have the desired effect.
Which they totally did. Within 30 minutes my stomach had started to make all of those really bizarre gurgling noises and then…mission accomplished. So as I mentioned to someone else on the lowcarber.org forum yesterday: I’m not a medical professional, so don’t take any of this as actual advice…just know that if you’re ever in a (literal) bind and don’t have any Dulcolax on hand, a hefty dose of sugar alcohols and some coconut oil WILL do the trick. #LifeHack, lol.
But once that “situation” had been remedied, I was left “not knowing” just how this strategic binge of sugar-alcohols was going to affect my weight this week. I learned from about a month ago, that I cannot eat sugar-alcohols with abandon, as they interfere with my weight loss (my consumption has been restricted to just 1/4 or 1/3 of a protein bar in the morning, so I’m not taking my meds on a completely empty stomach). And I consumed quite a lot of the evil stuff in my attempt to “get things moving again” in my gastrointestinal tract. I’d basically just written off the past week as either a stupid gain, or a fortuitous non-move at best.
These things happen in life (although they definitely seem to happen with a greater frequency to me, if I’m honest) but this whole low-carb WOE is a permanent change of lifestyle & eating habits for me; not just some quick fix I can use to allow me to fit back into my size 4 dresses and have the guys at the office fall all over themselves to flirt with me (oh, that type of vain, deluded, cretin is definitely out there, lol!). No, I’m in this for the long haul and I had prepared myself mentally for all the potential forks in the road that I might encounter along the way. Gaining this week isn’t something that I’d lose my shit over. I’d just carry on sticking to my plan, knuckle down and work at making those next 30lbs disappear off to wherever the first 30lbs went to.
BUT!!!!
As it turned out, today’s weigh-in actually showed a loss of 5lbs! Not gonna lie, I was pretty shocked, but very pleased. Not just because I actually lost weight this week, but because my scale read 16 stone & 12lbs. That’s the first time my weight has been in the 16’s for over a decade. In fact, I don’t even know when I last weighed this much, because I didn’t bother weighing myself over the years. Didn’t even own a scale. But I know that I can now get into a tailored cashmere coat that I haven’t been able to get into in over 10 years. Which is awesome, because the coat is beautiful and I only ever got to wear it a handful of times – hopefully I’ll at least get to wear it this winter and then I’ll just donate it to a charity shop in Spring because it’s in immaculate condition and I have no intention of needing to wear a coat that size the following winter.
So…yeah! Another 5lbs gone as of this week. Good times. Absolutely loving how well things are going weight-wise (even if the fact that my clothes are starting to hang off me now, means I’m going to have to buy more of them…only for them to then get too big or me and have to buy even more new threads…and that just feels like such an unnecessary ball-ache, lol. I hate shopping!) The previous week was annoying (as many weeks have been recently) so with any luck, I might just be due a nice, boringly uneventful, upcoming 7 days. But then even if it does end up being about as newsworthy as the 18th of April 1930 was, knowing me I’ll weigh myself next Monday and find out I’ve somehow managed to gain a few pounds, despite remaining 100% on-plan. Because I will remain on-plan. This WOE is working for me. It is making me healthier, making me happier and incredibly easy to stick to. Why WOULDN’T I want to keep eating this way?
Anyway, that’s the update for this week. Hope this post finds you happy, healthy and doing well with whatever it is you’re working towards.
I swear if I didn’t have bad luck I’d have no luck at all. Yeah, yeah, other people have it worse and all that, but how in the name of all that is holy, is my scale showing a GAIN of 3lb, when I haven’t eaten enough food all week to warrant such a fricking liberty.
“HOW VERY DARE YOU, SCALE!”
Urgh…the past few days have been crappy as all hell. There I was, getting all excited because Autumn was on the way, the temperature was dropping and everything was going swell with the low-carbing…and then out of nowhere a really miserable flare-up hit me like a metric fuck-tonne of shit (yes I’m swearing a lot today, I’m allowed to, I’m miserable, sue me) leaving me unable to get out of bed for a whole day, obliterated by a massive bastard-behind-the-eyes headache the next and cursed with barely serviceable mong-paw hands for 3 whole days.
Now I know y’all are expecting me to relay some tragic tale of woebegotten snack-scoffing, but that ain’t me mister. Almost the exact opposite in fact. I’ve never been someone who turned to food when depressed – I actually lose my appetite when I’m sad – and I’ve definitely been down in the dumps these past few days. Couldn’t walk anywhere, couldn’t shower, couldn’t cook, couldn’t use the computer properly, couldn’t do ANYTHING, except chug back the meds and hope for the best.
Foodwise, I went one whole day without eating anything. Not intentionally, I just slept for a good 15+ hours and when I woke up food was the furthest thing from my mind. The next day I was still thoroughly uninterested in eating, but my soluble pain-killers were ominously swirling around in my stomach, making me worry that I was going to throw them back up (along with my other meds) and not know how much I still had in my system, in order to top back up.
So I did a kind of a stupid thing. I got through that day by eating three protein bars. Not something that sounds altogether extreme by anyone else’s standards, but having since gone back to review the ingredients list (yasss…I know…I should’ve been more careful when I first read them…but I didn’t get to the size I am today by making wise decisions, m’kay?) I found that whilst they were showing as having 3g net carbs, they contained sugar. I mean, it’s not gonna be a lot if they only have 3g carbs in them, but I KNOW that crap was in there in large enough doses, because by the next day they’d pulled me right back out of ketosis. FRICK, FRICKETY, FRICK!
The day after that my appetite reared its ugly head again, but I’m theorising that once I was out of ketosis my body might have decided that I was being a stingy bitch and just thrown itself into starvation mode. Because on that day I had 3 pieces of ham, a piece of cheese and a cherry tomato for breakfast, 2 pieces of ham in the afternoon and some sausages (0.5g carb each) with broccoli for dinner…and then today I wake up to find that I’ve GAINED 3 BROTHERCLUCKING POUNDS??
There is no god.
I’m not due on my period, so I can’t blame it on that. I haven’t been consuming more salt, so it ain’t that. I’ve been drinking plenty of water and taking my supplements properly. I just haven’t been eating that much…and what I have eaten was full of the nasties. It HAS to be the protein bars. My meds are the same ones I’ve been taking every day for years now and my caffeine intake has been pretty low. I mean, everything’s been pretty low intake wise, but when you’re not feeling well, it’s really hard to think about food at all – never mind entirely sensibly. If I’d known I was going to gain 3lb I would’ve at least tried to do it in style. Y’know…cram in a few McDonald’s Quarterpounders, fries and thick shake or something! Actually, that’s a total lie. The smell of a cheeseburger might just have been the final straw that sent me running to the bathroom to throw up, if I’m being honest.
So today is Saturday. I wasn’t planning on weighing myself until Monday as usual, but I just knew that I’d gained when I got up earlier. Weird that I could sense that, but whatever. I got the scale out and whaddaya know, I was right! (Yay me!) I have no idea how this is going to be come Monday on my regular weigh-in day – I won’t be updating my stats until then – but it’s a pretty disappointing kick in the teeth, this early on in my low-carb endeavours. I’m not going to let it get me down too much though and I’m sticking to the plan as normal today, but I just know that I’m going to have a lot of these set-backs along the way, thanks to my health issues that just up and rear their ugly head, any old time they freaking feel like it. Those protein bars will have to be relegated to the back of the cupboard for the foreseeable future and I’m going to have to find myself some other ones that definitely DON’T have sugar in them. Because their are going to be days when I simply cannot face the thought of real food, but need to have something in my system because of my meds.
I also have this shake to use as a meal replacement going forward, on those days when I simply cannot face proper food, but need to put something in my stomach:
No ingredients in there to be worried about, sucralose as a sweetener and it includes a bunch of extra vitamins and MCT powder (which may or not be helpful, depending on who you believe). I had it today for lunch. “Breakfast” was a can of tuna, slice of cheese & cherry tomato at 1am; that tided me over until I had that shake for “lunch” at 10am. Dinner this evening was 2 grilled burger patties and some broccoli at 7pm. I don’t think my appetite has dropped back down yet, so it felt a lot easier to consume 3 meals today, than it did a few days ago. The shake definitely worked as a meal replacement. I only made a small one with 1 scoop of powder/35ml of water/1 tablespoon of coconut oil/teaspoon of caramel flavoured sugar-free syrup. The taste of the shake is pretty gross on its own – very sweet – but when I added a bit of caramel syrup and a good bit of salt, it became far more palatable.
That should be enough food for today. If I really feel the need for anything else to snack on I’ve got some slices of ham and plenty of cheese in the fridge. Just 2 more sleeps until the next official weigh-in. Will I still be registering a 3lb gain? Will I have lost any of it back? Will I still be clinging onto sanity by my fingernails or will I have completely lost the plot? Who knows. You’ll just have to stick around for the next episode of “My Big Fat Stupid Carb Addicted Body And The Befuddled Brain That Operates It.”
Inelegantly Waisted 