Day 12

I don’t feel as though I accomplished a lot today, which is a little disappointing – my intentions are always good but then I meander through my day without achieving any of the umpteen things that really need doing. Like ringing the bank to find out why they charged me an unwarranted fee, or doing exercise.

The latter isn’t actually wholly true, because I did go to an evening stretch class, which sounds far more innocuous than the deep breathing, straining reality. I certainly feel a little more limber, but am very disappointed that I couldn’t at all do one of the positions – it involved having kneeling on one leg with your toes on the mat, weight on the foot of the other leg, then rising yourself part way off the floor. I was okay, of not brilliant, when lifting on the right, but couldn’t get off the ground at all on the left side and will have to practice. I ended the class pink and faintly damp, then proceeded to miss my stop tram stop and took over two hours to get home. But at least I’ve got the ball rolling on the exercise front, and it’s a process.

The other thing I did was buy a few truss tomatoes and 100g or so of mesclun salad mix, because I can’t take the anaemic Lite’n’Easy tomatoes another day. I had half of one tomato on my post-stretch return home, with a veggie burger. It was supposed to be on a round roll, rather than the sourdough bun supplied, but that was fine. Oddly, instead of the peach fruit cup, I got a tin of tuna and instead of the sweet chilli sauce I got mayonnaise, and I got one from each of the popular and alternative snacks. I have to say that the truss tomato made a massive difference, and I enjoyed every mouthful.

The additional snack today was a pesto chicken pasta bowl, which was fine, filling and quite warm on a cold Melbourne afternoon. For dinner I tried the roast turkey, which came with pumpkin, roast potatoes, peas and a slightly dull but serviceable sauce. I was quite peckish before bed and, as it was after midnight, had the fruit bun from tomorrow – heated in the microwave in had an attractive, hot cross bun taste and I didn’t miss the butterlessness of it.

I think one of the things I’m finding helpful about doing Lite’n’Easy is that I’m also getting used to not being full, and drinking a glass of water instead of reaching for food when I do feel a little hollow. Once my allocation for the day’s gone, that’s it until tomorrow. I’ve given away responsibility for my food, and there’s something quite liberating about it – except for deciding, once a week, which of the binary options I’ll have for each meal, what I eat is out of my hands. Provided I stick with that mindset, and don’t start adding things (with the exception of salad leaves and decent tomatoes) I think this could be really useful in the long run. This is certainly the longest I’ve gone without chocolate in the better part of two decades, too. – Alex