Healthy You Challenge check-in

I’ve always struggled with motivation on Mondays. There is something about them that taps into my huge reserves of laziness. In audit we’d often spend Monday acclimatising: getting to know the new location, figuring out where the toilets and the kitchen were, trying to remember what all the client staff were called and doing some of the jobs that are easy in theory but quite often don’t actually work... Monday became a nothing day, filled with clockwatching. If the job involved staying in a hotel you’d not visited before there was also the gnawing worry about its potentially being a hideous pit in a tiny place with one option for dinner. (The job has given me an understanding of the purpose of chain hotels: you know exactly what you’re getting. I’d rather have the certainty of Premier Inn adequacy than the potential for either luxury or filth.)

It feels odd to be writing in the past tense, but it’s necessary... because yesterday was my last Monday in my current job. Thursday is my last day. Throw in the impending holiday and you have a thoroughly end-of-term mindset which has an unfortunate impact on my eating choices. I went out for lunch on Monday with a friend and had a burger... because the burgers were two for one and I needed to save money. This did not, however, force me to choose the cheeseburger over the chicken – I did that myself.

Then I grabbed a bar of chocolate from the office tuck shop – 240 calories of it. No particular need for it, a nagging craving which I justified as PMS. I’m on hormonal contraception: I don’t get PMS any more. And who are these excuses even for? It’s all very silly. Still, I have more or less managed to get back on track since.

The weekend got off to an excellent start. I was able to go to the Saturday morning Body Pump class for the first time in ages, and then I went for a run. I initially set the treadmill for 20 minutes, but wanted to get to 30 to prove to myself that last week was not a fluke. I made it, and thought “I can do 31!” At about 34 minutes I realised how close I was to 5K, so I kept going... and ran 5K in 37:30. Not a great pace, but a start... I was inordinately proud of myself, and celebrated with a soak in the hot tub and a steak sandwich for lunch. Not too unhealthy: we bought very lean steak and used oil spray to fry it and the onions, and had a big salad to go with it. Mmm, cow.

Dinner (after an afternoon of sedentary pursuits and kitchen-cleaning) was roast chicken with parsnips (roasted in honey and mustard), new potatoes and broccoli. Hugely satisfying and, again, not that unhealthy, with the dry-roasted chicken.

On Sunday morning we woke up fairly late, thanks to the hour that was stolen from us in the night (Curse you, BST!) and had a leisurely breakfast. The sun made us think of taking a walk, but by the time we actually got off our arses the weather had deteriorated so we went to the gym instead for a gentle bit of cardio – both of us were feeling a bit stiff after Saturday’s exertions. We then spent another quiet afternoon and evening at home, which was really nice and exactly what we needed. I did manage to make up some Thai-style sweet potato soup, in imitation of the awesome lunch I had on Friday from a cafe near work. It worked pretty well. Unfortunately I didn’t consider the effect that buying white sweet potatoes would have on the colour: the original was a pretty orange; mine is a nasty shade of greenish beige. Still tastes great, however.

No scales this week. I have decided to ignore them as a movement in the wrong direction (or not ‘enough’ in the right one) would ruin my mood and my enjoyment of holiday foods for days. I’m not planning to go nuts, but I do want to be able to enjoy the things I wouldn’t get at home without obsessing over 200g here or there. I intend to start at WeightWatchers the week after we get back, so will try to limit myself to the weigh-ins there.

Normalising normality

In one of the Two Fit Chicks podcast, a listener submitted the Blogger News that she had borrowed a ‘normal’ friend’s coat and been able to do it up.

I understand that victory. My two closest friends are much the same height as me and are much the same size as each other – I can remember how I felt when I joined them at that size and could finally experience the clothes-borrowing that was part of everybody else’s adolescence but which my lack of size-22 friends had denied me. We wear each other’s dresses and coats from time to time, and I still think “Hey, I can pass for normal!”

‘Pass’ is the key word there, because I very rarely actually feel normal.

I am sitting typing this in size 6 shoes, size 14 trousers and pants (which are both too big) and a size 10 jumper. My feet are exactly the average UK size, I believe, and since I’ve heard on several occasions that the average British woman is a 16, my clothes actually put me in the smaller half of the female population. The only, ahem, outlying item I’m wearing is a 30H bra.

But I still feel fat. In a lot of ways my mind still thinks I weight fifteen stone. It’s as if being morbidly obese, as well as leaving empty fat cells scattered across my body ready to absorb excess calories and reinflate, has left that space in my brain empty and dormant, just waiting for something – a look (real or imagined), a remark, a pair of jeans that don’t quite fit – to swell it into the full-blown mental scream of OH MY GOD I AM SUCH A BLOB LOOK AT ME LOOK HOW VAST I AM EWEWEWEWEWEW! My self-esteem is stretched and damaged and weakened in the same way as the skin on my inner thighs. And neither the clearly not-that-fat woman in the mirror nor the kind words of those close to me can repair it. "They're just saying that," I tell myself. If they know me well, it's kindness. If they don't, it's politeness. Which is stupid, because if I take that to its logical conclusion the only people whose opinion I can listen to are those who know and dislike me... WTF?

I worry about what all this crazy means for the future. I've long ceased to think that my life will be perfect when I lose weight - mainly because it's pretty damn good now (and I appreciate how lucky I am to feel that way most of the time). But the thing I do look to weightloss to improve is my self-esteem, and the rational part of my mind suspects that the irrational part may never be happy with my weight. I think I need to start working on my body image in tandem with working on my lifestyle.

One of my big goals when I started this journey at New Year was to wear a bikini by the pool in Cyprus. I bought it ten days ago. If I can find the courage to wear it, and feel comfortable in it despite my not-actually-totally-perfect body, I think that'll be a real step forward for me.

Another NSV

I've just eaten a pizza for dinner. It was one of the individual-sized Pizza Express ones you get in the supermarket, for those in the UK - everybody else, I think it's a 9".

As I took it out of the oven, I was so excited that I danced about a little bit chanting "Pizza pizza pizza!" It's not an item I've been allowing myself very often recently.

About half way through, I thought "Man, this is good. Why did I never used to buy these?"

And then it occurred to me: it was because they were 'too small'.  One of those was never enough to satisfy the giant pizza craving; it never left me feeling like I couldn't eat another bite and was entirely stuffed with melted cheese. Sure, I could have bought two, but I thought "Noooo, look at me, I'm no longer the girl who eats two pizzas at a sitting!" while conveniently ignoring the fact that the 1200 calorie monster I'd just bought had enough calories for two people.

But now I have pizza so rarely that it doesn't need to be the size of my car's spare wheel to get me excited enough to dance around the kitchen. And I'm happy and satisfied and best of all sated with a normal-sized portion.

I think that's a definite step forward.

Healthy You Challenge check-in

I asked for the scales back this morning, after some deliberation on whether that was a good idea or not. I didn’t experience the giant PLATEAU-BUSTING weight loss I’d secretly (and stupidly) hoped for, but I did lose the Evil Pound from last week, so I’m back to 67.8kg. I’m pleased with that, considering the social whirl since Thursday, which was the last time I weighed myself. (It feels so long ago!)

Friday was a normal day of normal eating, since I’d ruled out having two down days in a row ever again. I went for a pub lunch with my colleagues, and had fish and chips as I’d planned. The fish was delicious: the chips were disappointing enough that I was able to leave some. (Most uncharacteristic.) I compensated for this by having homemade Super Soup for dinner (billions of vegetables + no added fats of any kind + most of the contents of the spice cupboard = always win, always different). We were meant to go to the gym but both felt too tired and rubbish, so we enjoyed an evening of chilling on the couch instead.

Saturday we got up, enjoyed a bowl of porridge (with my latest idea for masking the taste of oaty sludge livening it up – apple sauce!) and coffee, and then headed to London to meet some people to watch the last games of the Six Nations. Our destination was the Eagle Ale House, recommended as a place to watch rugby, and it didn’t disappoint. We rocked up at about 1, and asked if they were doing food. “No, we don’t do food on match days,” was the response. “But if you want to go out and get something you’re more than welcome to bring it in.” Northcote Road is a treasure trove of the sort of pointless and poncy specialist shops you only see in certain places*, and that includes overpriced artisan food in abundance. I enjoyed a beef, rocket and parmesan ciabatta followed by an insane cake which seemed to be a caramel shortbread for people who didn’t like shortbread and wanted to replace it with MORE chocolate and caramel. The boys enjoyed what the Times recently claimed were the best sausage rolls in the world (or possibly just London, I don't remember or care) followed by a different beef sandwich and a tartelette aux framboises for the raspberry-obsessed one.

Lunch was vastly improved by being able to eat it indoors sitting down, so thanks pub! Other than that the pub was notable mainly for its wide selection of draught beer (not enjoyed by me due to designated driver status) and very friendly staff.

Wales won, Scotland won! Happiness in the SoupDragon household. Most people had gone by the end of the second (Scotland) game, and the three of us who remained decided that actually we wanted dinner more than to stay in the pub for France v England. So we headed over to Putney and enjoyed a ridiculously vast Lebanese feast for £10 each. I adore Middle Eastern food of any kind, and become a total pig when faced with it... am slightly apprehensive about how much I may eat in Cyprus.

Then we headed for home, and I must say that being able to go home, rather than sleep poorly on somebody’s couch, makes this sort of trip ten times more enjoyable. It was very nice to wake up in my own bed on Sunday morning and enjoy more porridge with the last rugby game. This confirmed that we’d made the correct decision the previous night as, like so many of England’s games this year, it was eye-wateringly boring!

We visited friends for Sunday lunch, then I helped make table settings for their wedding while the boys had a Call of Duty marathon. Home, tired, dinner, bed. Damn, another week.

*Painswick, Cotswold village extraordinaire, is a case in point. It has two or three shops, one of which is devoted to the sale of wooden toys. I'm sure that makes the residents feel much better about the lack of anywhere to buy sensibly-priced food... See also Northleach, Nailsworth, Clifton, Newton Mearns, Crouch End and sundry other corners of the country.

Working the NSVs

The Boy has hidden the bathroom scales (at my request, I hasten to add) in an attempt to stop my post-scale grumpiness ruining breakfast, and I am trying to focus on the non-scale victories. Fortunately yesterday provided me with some great specimens:

• After my Body Pump class last week I realised that I’d got a bit too comfortable with my weights – I wasn’t working to failure on any of the tracks, and I wasn’t feeling it the next morning the way I used to. So last night I racked up the weights on most areas, with the exception of shoulders – because I really, really struggle with that one anyway; I have such pathetic shoulder muscles – and squats – because the weight I was using before is already the maximum that my poxy upper body muscles can lift over my head. I felt the burn, and I’m still feeling it this morning!

• Then I went for a run. I’d initially planned to run for 20 minutes non-stop, but when I got there I thought “I can do another minute”. At 21 minutes, I thought “I can do 22!” Then I realised that if I went to 22:30 I’d have done 3km. Then I decided to go for 2 miles. By then I was nearly at 25 minutes, so kept going, and when I got to 25 I thought “Hell, I can do five more easily.” So I ran 4km in 29:40 (because I sprinted the last 100m). Which is the furthest and longest I’ve ever run without walking. I feel a little more optimistic about the 10K in July now!

Weekend plans: pub for Six Nations rugby for almost all of tomorrow, and lunch with friends on Sunday followed by an evening gym session. Not great food-wise, but I will try not to go nuts. No beer for me anyway as I’m off the sauce for Lent to try to aid weightloss.

Have good weekends all!

It might be time for a humiliating climbdown

I’ve been thinking a lot about my diet choices over the last couple of days. Alternate-day fasting has worked for me up to now, but the recent plateauing has forced me to consider what happens when I get to where I want to be, and whether what I’m doing now is preparing me for that.


ADF has certainly taught me one thing: that hunger isn’t disastrous. I know that I can survive on 500 calories for a whole day, even if it isn’t enjoyable. I think that that is a very valuable lesson, because it totally negates the argument of “I have to eat! I’m hungry.” I’ve learned not to use hunger, however intense, as a binge trigger (touch wood).

What ADF hasn’t taught me, however, is moderation. I have been trying to use my calories wisely on both up and down days in order to minimise hunger, but there’s no denying that eating 500 calories is extreme behaviour. There are maintenance techniques for this diet out there but I don’t think it’s sustainable behaviour for me personally in the long-term.

So I started thinking about alternatives.

Atkins, South Beach and their brethren I dismissed out of hand. (Atkins always made me remember a student dinner party where one guest, learning we were doing bolognese, said “Can I just have some minced beef with grated cheese on it?”)

Straightforward calorie counting isn’t really my friend, as discussed before.

I’ve tried Alli already – I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I lied to buy it online as I wasn’t overweight enough at the time, and there might have been something in that because it really didn’t work for me: none of the horrific side effects but no weightloss either.

The GI diet could work, but the lack of structure terrifies me. Maybe something like it but with more accountability and support?

And then I found myself on the WeightWatchers website. And the more I read about their new plan, the more I thought “Hey, maybe I could do that!”

I know, I know. Two days ago I said “Never again!” However, a major impediment has been removed. I didn’t want to go to meetings because I resented the time they’d take up and because they are usually at times that are either too early or clash with workout time. But (and here’s some News-with-a-capital-N) I have a new job which starts in four weeks. A job where I will spend every single day in the same place, not roaming the region like a particularly boring nomad. A job with a lunchtime WeightWatchers meeting just round the corner. So I can go without eating into valuable workout/relationship/plain old me time.

I love it when a plan comes together.

So... I will continue with the ADF (and keep working out) until we go on holiday in just over two weeks.

While on holiday I will eat more or less what I like, while trying not to go nuts and to stay active.

Then when I get back I’ll add a new eating plan to the Brand New Life mix.

Watch this space!

Healthy You Challenge check-in: I gave up drinking for *this*?

Warning: this post contains some bad language and several instances of petulance.


Today did not begin well.


Today began, as usual, with the scales. The scales didn’t tell me anything I wanted to hear. The scales told me that I’ve gained 400g (that’s a pound, for the metrically-challenged amongst you) not just since last week, but since yesterday, bringing my weight back up to 68.2kg.


I should take that shiny “10kg lost” badge down, really.


This has been a shitty week stuck on another plateau, despite my sticking to my programme. Here are the calorie counts (and exercise) for the week:


Tuesday: 1,985 and an hour’s skiing
Wednesday: 598, half an hour on the Treadclimber, 45 minutes of weights/strength
Thursday: 1,786 and a Body Pump class
Friday: 502
Saturday: 1,646
Sunday: 1,018, 40 minutes of weights/strength and 12km on the treadmill for a total of about 900 calories (Yes, 1,000 is not 500, but this is not a one-pound-gain-level fuck-up)
Monday: 1,786

I’m really at a serious loss to figure out how that translates into this:


Tuesday: 67.8
Wednesday: 68.2

Thursday: 68.0
Friday: 68.2
Saturday: 67.9
Sunday: 67.9
Monday: 67.8
Today: 68.2


I do not believe this to be the result of my body going into starvation mode. Anything I’ve ever read about this phenomenon suggests that it won’t kick in till you get below 1,000 kcal a day, and last week I averaged about 1,330. Given that my RMR is only in the region of 1,600 that’s not that low. And the whole point of the alternate-day thing is that your body isn’t supposed to notice that you’re not eating much.


Well, mine certainly hasn’t noticed.


It’s not muscle. The scales measure body composition and that has not changed. I suppose it’s probably water, but really, I am so over this shit. I am so over the stupid crap my body likes to pull where I have to struggle and struggle and suffer to lose one ^&*$”@# pound that I can then put on again by looking at food. I appreciate that I should be focusing on the health benefits of being more active, but to be honest right now they’re not massively in evidence: I don’t really feel any fitter; I still sleep appallingly; my skin’s still crap; I’m still permanently stressed and exhausted (thanks work!) - the weight loss was really the only result I was seeing. So I’m into the weight loss; so I like to see the scale going down: does that make me a bad, an immature, a less complete person? Does it bollocks.


I’m going on holiday in two and a half weeks. I wanted to get to 65kg by then. On the 2nd of January that looked like a sensible goal. Even last week it seemed perfectly achievable. But thanks to this random, apparently groundless regain it’s not going to happen. And that makes me want to kick things, scream and punch the wall. Perhaps that makes me a bad, immature person.

I know I’m supposed to love my body. I know I’m supposed to respect it for what it can do and not beat it up for what it can’t, but there isn’t much it can do. It’s clumsy and malcoordinated. It can’t even run 5K. All it appears to be good at is taking non-existent calories and converting them into all-too-existent fat. Compare that to my mind, and it’s not hard to see why I think of my body as the weak link in this particular chain. I try to treat it well: I give it the right quantity of food and make sure it gets plenty of exercise and enough sleep... and this is how it repays me? I gave up drinking for this?

I don’t really know where to go from here. Giving up obviously isn’t an option. I could try changing to another programme, but nothing else I’ve tried has worked even this well. The idea of going to a WeightWatchers meeting sets my teeth on edge, and I don’t think that doing the programme alone would work any better than plain calorie restriction. The GI diet and similar programmes which rely on your being able to judge satiety also won’t work – I’m perfectly capable of getting fat on low-GI foods because I’m still learning about portion control. I suppose I’ll continue with ADF, because the only alternative I can see is going back to where I was, and that appeals even less. But it does feel as if I’m having to fight very hard just to stay still.


So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Non-scale victory

Totally forgot something I meant to mention in yesterday's post, and I don't know how! The dress I bought on Sunday for the wedding next month was a size ten. An actual, off-the-shelf ten in a normal shop! I've been wearing Bravissimo 10s for about six months, but thought it would be a long time before I was out of the 12s anywhere else.

Now I just have to get my lower body to catch up. Who knew you could have a 30H chest and still be pear-shaped, eh?

Healthy You Challenge check-in

I weighed in yesterday morning at 67.8kg. I’m getting tantalisingly close to 66.8kg, aka 10 and a half stone, aka my lightest ever adult weight. (Achieved for one week only during my last month at university, the week when I went to my WeightWatchers meeting in sub-fusc and the leader told me how proud she was of me for coming straight from an exam. I was back up to 10st 10lb the next week, then there was celebration, graduation, and a graph that kept going up for about four years...) My current weight feels like Thursday: I can almost smell the delights of the weekend next mini goal, but unfortunately there’s some highly inconvenient work to do before I get there.

I learned a valuable lesson this week. I learned that if the pattern of alternate days I’ve got into doesn’t match some social event, and I need to alter it, I really must not do this by having two 500-calorie days in a row. We had people coming for dinner on Sunday night, so I needed that to be an up day, but Friday was a down. Friday was fine, no more than usual hunger levels, but Saturday... oh dear. By about lunchtime on Saturday I was fit for nothing but lazing on the couch, and by bedtime I was ready to eat the pillow and plagued by serious thoughts of bingeing. Lesson learned, and I feel a bit stupid because really, how difficult was it to work out that eating 500 calories for two days in a row is not a clever idea?

On Sunday we went shopping as I needed a dress for a friend’s wedding, and had lunch at Zizzi. We split some of their truly fabulous garlic bread with cheese, which got me thinking about the Two Fit Chicks podcast on goals that I listened to while driving home a few days ago: Carla said that you should be mindful in your actions, and always ask yourself “Is this behaviour going to take me towards or away from my goal?” The answer will sometimes be “far, far away!”, and you will sometimes do it anyway, but you are at least acting mindfully. I ate that garlic bread fully aware of its potential effects on my weight-loss curve, but I enjoyed every damn bite... And to compensate slightly I had prawn linguine for my main course rather than one of the cheese-laden or beef-heavy options.

Dinner was roast chicken: dry-roasted for fat-reduction after reading a Nigel Slater article in the Guardian recommending the method. It worked really well: the chicken was still beautifully moist and the skin lovely and crisp. It probably helped that I’d bought the most expensive chicken I felt I could afford – not sure you’d get such good results with one of the 3-for-£10 specimens Tesco also had. For dessert we had homemade gingerbread and custard... the custard was bought, slightly to my shame until I tasted it. Pudding Place make better custard than me, and I don’t mind admitting it!

Monday was uneventful. On Tuesday I had a super-beginning skiing lesson at our local dry slope. We only did very basics (go, stop), but it was highly enjoyable and I have booked in for a beginners’ course. The lesson showed me some of the mental progress I’d made. Skiing was an activity I’d tried a couple of times as a teenager, and found that my weight, inflexibility and lack of fitness rendered practically impossible. So for every task the instructor set us (except, perhaps, putting on the skis) there was a little voice in the back of my mind saying “You can’t do this! You tried! You can’t! You know you can’t! You’re going to fall over and make an arse of yourself!” But I was able to say “Well, I’m going to try. And even if I do fall over, well, so what? It would be a whole lot less embarrassing than refusing to try sliding down a very gentle five-foot slope, wouldn’t it?” I did try. And not only did I not fall over, I was probably one of the better ones in the group – turns out skiing is far easier when you’re not obese. Therefore I have a message for that little voice: SCREW YOU!

(That one tiny lesson took me further than I’d managed to get any of the previous times, so in future lessons the “I CAN’T!” at least will be based on fear, not actual experience. I find that makes it easier to fight.)

FAIL

So, I had loads to do at work today and planned to stay late. But about 5 I just wasn't feeling the office as a place to get work done, so I thought "Sod it, I'll get the normal train and work at home. Maybe I'll go to the gym, as well" (because of course I didn't go last night). So I tidied up the bombsite that was my hotdesk (seriously, how do I mess them up so much in three days?) and bagged up my laptop and all my files and dragged them to the station and got on the train.

You know how sometimes you're running through what you've just done in your head, and you realise that there's something that wasn't there that should have been? Well, about halfway home I realised that I remembered taking my house keys out of my handbag to unchain my laptop from the desk, but not putting them back in... one phonecall to a late-working colleague confirms that they are, indeed, marooned on my desk. And of course the Boy is in France. The only other spare set are with his parents sixty miles away.

Typically I realised this just after the big station with lots of trains back into town. I rejected getting off at Nowheresville 1 to wait up to an hour for a train back in favour of going on to Nowheresville 2 (my stop) to collect my car and drive back. So I drove an extra 65 miles and got home two and a half hours later than I should have done. And then I ate a load of granola out of the box

Work FAIL. Exercise FAIl. General not-being-a-disorganised-fool FAIL. Slight diet FAIL (slight because hey, it wasn't the whole packet).

Oh well, we live and learn. I hope.

Healthy You Challenge check-in and some musings

Weight this morning: 69kg exactly. That's 1kg down on last week. Of that, only 100g is muscle, which is a statistic I'm particularly pleased with, as I'm trying to lose as little lean mass as possible. Of the 8.9kg I've now lost in 2010, only 1.1kg has been muscle, and my muscle percentage, as measured by our body composition scales, is creeping towards 40%.

It's not been a bad week, food-wise. The Boy went away for the week on Saturday, so on Friday night we ordered a valedictory curry. We'd planned to split a tandoori mixed grill, which our (surprisingly good for a dinky village) local takeaway does very well, and a portion of chips, and I'd planned for them and eaten a smallish lunch accordingly. The Boy decided that he needed a bit more food, so ordered a curry too, of which I had a few mouthfuls, and I'd forgotten the mixed grill came with a naan, but little damage was done. I was particularly pleased with the moment when I dunked a bit of naan in the bottom of the mixed grill's box, was about to put it in my mouth, and then looked at it. Really looked at it, and said "I'm about to eat a lump of bread dipped in oil. That's not the sort of thing I do any more," before putting it in the bin. Progress is made...

On Saturday I got up at a truly horrible time for a weekend to take the Boy to the station, before coming home for a big bowl of porridge (my standard breakfast) and a Body Pump class. I love Body Pump. I'm hoping that if I keep it up I'll end up like the forty- and fifty-something women in my class with the fantastic bodies and the ability to lift weights that make my jaw drop slightly. They are proper inspirational.

After Pump I considered going for a run, but the class had left me tireder than usual (probably due to the ridiculous hours I worked last week) so I headed to the supermarket to shop for this week. I am shockingly lazy about cooking for just myself, so I stocked up on healthy easy meal options to stop me falling back on toast...

Sunday I'd planned to go for a run on the treadmill, but after 2.7km I just wasn't feeling the love, so I swapped to the cross-trainer for another 300 calories. Then I headed to the town to meet a friend for lunch and shopping for a dress to wear to a wedding in five weeks. After that we came home and enjoyed pasta with freshly made tomato, chorizo and bacon sauce - NOM. I was vegetarian until about three years ago, and I have no idea how I lived without bacon and chorizo.

Yesterday was pants, frankly. Today wasn't much better. I fully intended to go to the gym tonight, but I'm just too tired and too inertia-ridden. So I'm letting myself spend the evening in my PJs reading, knitting and blogging instead. I'm not moving,  but I'm not eating either, after the Thai curry I had for dinner (more NOM - well done Tesco).

While I was rummaging in the can cupboard looking for soup yesterday I found a tin of chickpeas I didn't know was there, so I think that my contribution to this week's Outside The Box Challenge might just be some hummus. More on that later I hope!