Week 5 - Low Carb Bootcamp - time to get rid of all the Valentine's treats!

[BIWI]

I rather suspect that a lot of us have been so far off the wagon this weekend that it's disappeared over the far horizon!

having to post on the spreadsheet may sober us all up, in more ways than one!

I hope any cheats were enjoyable. There's nothing worse than deciding to cheat and then not liking it.

But from now, it's time to buckle down and get back into the swing of things. If you did cheat, please don't complain that the scales aren't being kind to you. It's an inevitable consequence.

So let's focus on a really strict week, recognising that this is the end of our first half of Bootcamp.

Good luck to us all

Oh, I have no delusions on that score Owl. I bought the farmhouse and left the farming to others. The workload is just so physically constant. You can't just think "fuck it" for a month, can you?

What happens to the single ewe who didn't fall pregnant @verylittleowl? I'd hate to think of her being ostracised by the others

I ate 2 Fatt Bar chocolate bites earlier and I'm still paying the price. The main ingredient is chicory extract which can apparently cause gas and bloating. I'm not used to feeling bloated at all and not enjoying it

Oneborneverydecade She's out with the rest, don't worry :) If I had more sheep, I would have split them up, to start with twins would have stayed in the village and been fed very lightly, singles and empty would be out on the hill with just a mineral lick, and then be brought in and fed from 6 weeks before lambing, which is when the lambs do most of their growing. As it is, they're all out and being fed, to save my grass, and I'll have four slightly tubby ewes who are having single lambs, but I'd rather that than the ones with twins having not enough milk to rear them.

NSV ... i’m going to have to get DH to take another link out of my watch strap, it’s becoming lose and losing data when it occasionally comes away from my wrist! And when he bought me it for xmas I was originally worried it would be too tight! It was snug and now I can get two fingers between the strap and my wrist!

@ouchmyfeet

Swede dauphinoise for *@ShagMeRiggins*

Well this is now officially my favourite way to eat turnip! Just had it with some gammon and buttered green veg. Gorgeous

Great NSV @ListenLinda, I keep waiting for that one

Rick Stein's Duck Cottage Pie (amended for Bootcamp by using celeriac and leek mash rather than potato mash, and mashing with a little cream rather than a greater quantity of milk)

It was delicious!

Served with Butterhead leaf salad and courgettes fried in butter, with the juice of half a lemon

Where are you all getting your celeriac from? Morrison’s by us doesn’t stock it, and Waitrose the shelves were bare

BIWI. That pie looks amazing 🤩

LittleMy I've seen them in Sainsburys and Waitrose.

@LittleMy77 Our Lidl sometimes has them in stock

@LittleMy77 lots of celeriac last couple of times I’ve been to Morrisons.

Tonight’s food looks delicious!

@ListenLinda great NSV!

Some delicious looking food tonight! I got celeriac from Tesco - made it in to dauphinois which was delicious! (So much so I polished off the leftovers in front of the tv).

Not very photogenic, but fajita bowls here tonight. Easy, tasty, firmly on our rota.

My NSV today was going to Aldi with the intention of having one, small, off plan cheat. But I found nothing to entice me! Unheard of. I did discover they have 3 different types of 85% chocolate, including buttons, so have purchased to try over the next couple of weeks.

I got my celeriac in Sainsbury's.

Haha @VeryLittleOwl don’t shatter my illusions. I choose to imagine you like Kate Middleton in tweed, with a faithful flock of happy sheep (as I sit in endless Zoom calls).

However, to dwell on my own grass, I am surrounded by supermarkets and can get celeriac whenever I please.

Has anyone ever tried the herbal tea by Bird and Blend? birdandblendtea.com/uk_en/tea/type/fruit-tea.html

It’s expensive but it has great reviews. Tempted but I don’t tend to do particularly well with loose leaf... I’m inherently quite lazy and faffing about with tea strainers doesn’t appeal to me. That being said, I desperately want Eton Mess tea! If it did indeed taste like that then faff I might.

Food today has been a little indulgent again:
Breakfast: coffee with double cream and yogurt
Lunch: fillet steak topped with whipped bone marrow
Dinner: leftover ramen with courgetti and a deliciously salty soy sauce egg which definitely benefited from long marination
Snack... errr, eight packets of Itsu seaweed thins that I bought for the ramen on Sunday but didn’t arrive on time - and 50g of 100% dark chocolate

Will be sorting myself out as of tomorrow and cutting out the dark chocolate and the snacking and the endless tubs of yogurt

@Lyrata - well, the faithful flock of happy sheep is right They're sweethearts and will follow me pretty much anywhere I ask them to go (a few of them are tame enough that they'll eat from my hand, which helps a lot). This was taking them back out this morning.

That’s amazing! Ahhh. Can I come and live with you?

@lyrata

Easy tea infuser

[quote VeryLittleOwl]@Lyrata - well, the faithful flock of happy sheep is right They're sweethearts and will follow me pretty much anywhere I ask them to go (a few of them are tame enough that they'll eat from my hand, which helps a lot). This was taking them back out this morning.[/quote]
Aww. What a stunning photograph, that should be framed!
Sheep have returned to the fields next to our street, I called DD through excitedly to see the 'land clouds' ambling across earlier. Some very heavy with lamb and clearly expecting multiples, one had a bad leg poor thing - I'm hoping it can still lamb?! We assisted a friend with a small hobby flock some years ago (there's a video on YouTube of DH unloading 8 or so from the back of a Citroën people carrier!) and I helped a poor ewe to deliver a stillborn - literally arm inside sheep situation. Poor thing.
I like to see them out there but the amount of work they take (and a lot of being moved to different fields!) surprised me as they always seem so self sufficient ambling about the fields.

Food been a bit crap today, was busy cutting hair (mine, DH, DS1 and DS2 - DD declined) and didn't eat until 3pm.
Ham, olives and cheese.
Had leftover keema with stir fried cabbage for dinner.
3 creamy coffees.

@ShagMeRiggins I've been so bored today that I've mainly been doing my own "colours" by taking selfies and drawing on my (digital) face. Am quite the expert if you're looking for an assistant actually think I'd soon be a junior partner

@VeryLittleOwl that picture I'd phenomenal- you have beautiful happy sheep and stunning views!

@ShagMeRiggins I'm presuming you mean you've ordered the heater as well to set your nails. For those ego do the full shebang from home please can you pass on recommendations?

@BIWI dinner looks amazing!!

So same shit different day here. The standoff continues, and I'm coping a bit better but still just want it sorted! Had a couple of lovely meals and 1 square of 70% dark chocolate which was beautiful in the old gob.

I've dropped a couple of sleeping tabs tonight.. went to sleep at half 9 last night, woke up 2 hours later at half 11 and eventually got to sleep at 7am. Bad times.

I never realised how important sleep is to aid weight loss. I've been reading about it recently.?I'm hoping that when I eventually catch up on the amount I've missed over the last couple of weeks I'll wake up a side 12

@lyrata 'indulgent food' is the very stuff of this way of eating. But 8 packs of Itsu seaweed??? Then I remember that I usually have the wasabi variety and therefore have to take it very slowly.

@VeryLittleOwl beautiful picture. My friend comes from a sheep farming family and every spring she decants to Galloway for lambing time. I imagine it to be idyllic, but I know that she has the same exhaustion as people do with a newborn baby...

VerylittleOwl that picture is amazing! We back onto a field with sheep but they all run away if I tried to take a photo!

@ChristMyArse on sleep, I am currently drinking a herbal 'sleep' tea (just Twinings, nothing dodgy ) I don't like the taste at all, but the combo of camomile, valerian, lavender, is really helping me sleep - sometimes I don't even get up in the night for a pee. I wake up, but feel so sleepy that I deal with the slight discomfort rather than getting up, and fall back asleep rather than getting up and looking at the time and starting to calculate how many hours I've been awake and how many hours I've got left to sleep.

Also in the midst of great family angst (my dc rather than me and dh). The phrase 'you're only as happy as your unhappiest child' feels strong at the moment.