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.