Coming back so soon!

The Natural Way has made such a profound impact on my health (and Geoff's for that matter). I can't believe its been a whole year and a bit since I last posted on this blog... but the great news is that my disciplined eating actually did pay off in the absolute best way possible! My body became ripe and ready for carrying a child! Geoff and I are currently about 4 weeks from meeting our little girl!

I have continued with reasonable eating throughout the pregnancy - and even continued to eat lots of fruit, although, the temptation to eat comfort Winter food has been really big, we plough through our fruit bowl at a rapid rate & we've got into the habit of keeping the nuts out in jars in order to snack healthily.

..and the great news is that at 34 weeks I had only put on 11kg! :)

I am sure that I will be posting some more about this as soon as she's born & I kick into a weight-loss mission in order to lose any excess pregnancy weight that may be lurking around my body... I hope that breastfeeding will assist me in my on-going mission & that together with The Natural Way, I can achieve perfect weight and perfect health....

.....now where did I put those jellybeans.......

In Continuation...

...of efforts to continue on with The Natural Way, I have been sticking to my high water consumption & trying my best to not combine proteins & starches (not easy)....acid with sweet fruits (easy).

The fruit shop down the road from us was selling huge punnets of fresh figs for R10. I had some seriously yummy smoothies with apple, banana and fig!

It has been quite tricky with the rather brutal onset of Winter as it is very hard to keep my starch portions down with all the soup being made & eaten. I even made a batch of 'health' rusks (oats, cereal, nuts and seeds - probably not the best combined, but I MISS my rusks!!) ....so I thought I'd share the recipe:

Breakfast rusks

• 230 g margarine (I used butter)
• 400 g sugar (I used half molasses & half brown sugar)
• 3 extra-large eggs 
• 50 ml peanut butter (I used cashew butter)
• 5 ml vanilla essence 
• 10 ml bicarbonate of soda 
• 250 ml milk (I used buttermilk)
• 240 g cake flour (I used half rice flour)
• 10 ml baking powder 
• pinch of salt 
• 160 g coconut 
• 160 g oats 
• 120 g breakfast cereal flakes (I used much more - muesli, AllBran & CornFlakes)
• 50 g peanuts, finely chopped (I used pecan nuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, linseeds, sesame seeds, and I also added dried cranberries)
• (and just about anything else you can find in your pantry - raisins - seeds -- nuts -- carob/chocolate -- GO WILD!!)

 * Preheat the oven to 180 ºC (350 ºF). Grease one 37 x 13 x 10 cm loaf tin with margarine.

 * Cream the margarine and sugar together. Add the eggs one by one, beating well after each addition.

 * Add the peanut butter and vanilla essence and mix well.

 * Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the milk and add

 * Sift the cake flour, baking powder and salt together.

 * Add the remaining ingredients, mix and add to the margarine mixture.

 * Blend. (Add a little more milk if the dough is too dry.)

 * Turn the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for about one hour or until a testing skewer comes out clean when inserted into the centre of the rusk mixture.

 * Cool, slice into fingers and dry at 100 ºC (200 ºF).

 * Makes about 40 rusks.

I have not lost any more weight.....but I have bought a couple of new pairs of jeans (smaller) and not put on any weight! :)

Day 91

Have I mentioned how much I LOVE pineapple? If I could be a fruit, I'd be a pineapple. Not only are they exotic and quite frankly, rather "fancy", therefore a seriously beautiful addition to any fruit bowl; they are also totally deliciously out of this world!! (The best thing about living in the Eastern Cape was the ready & cheap supply!).

Geoff and I had croissants from Olympia for breakfast, so I decided to have my fruit for lunch > a pineapple, apple & almonds blended smooth with my Braun stick blender. Shame: the poor thing has started making a nasty noise when in use. I have had it for 5 years, so ts had a pretty good run with all the cake mixing, soup blending, smoothie making & food chopping its had to do!! (I probably need a more industrial one!) 

Day 89

We went through to George over the weekend & I weighed in at 2kg's less on 2 different scales! YAY! (as my scale has been broken I'm not sure when they were shed) I only have 6kg's to go so I'm more than half way to my goal. Winter has arrived in FULL force so it is very hard not to delve into the cupboard containing the hot chocolate / Horlicks / etc to drink them with piping hot, steamed milk made with my coffee machine.

I went to gym yesterday & plan on going again tomorrow if it isn't as miserable to drive there as it would most certainly be if I attempted it in this weather. I checked my weight *(clothed) yesterday and the gym scale was not quite as kind as my mom and my gran's, but I'm sticking to their scales. Its 2 against 1.

Day 83

My scale is broken. Geoff stood on it funny when he got out the bath and it is officially at its end. Its probably better because it didn't work very well anyway!

We've been so incredibly busy busy busy so I've not had much time to blog...hence the catch-up on blog updates today (not that I really had time today, but I was missing my blog time...I even spent some time on Facebook & Twitter!!)

So its day 83 and I'm doing reasonably well. I don't know if I've lost any weight because I've been surfing instead of gyming so have been out of contact with measuring devices (+ aforementioned broken scale issue). The great thing though is that I'm fitting into clothes that were previously almost written off for lack of hope of fitting into them again.

I quite like what I'm seeing in the mirror too ;)
(plus I feel lighter on my surfboard which is always good!)

I'm still having issues with too much chocolate. I've had a tiny bit of flu & being unwell & the onset of winter mean that I have been craving comfort food. I've been quite good on the combining side of things. Its so hard not to have lovely fresh bread with a thick chunk of cheese...but I've not had any & the most difficult thing is to synchronise with Geoff & not have more than 1 carb / protein meal in a day...

I've probably been drinking a bit too much coffee. Its been decaf, but the issue is the milk (luckily I don't have sugar in tea or coffee.) My sister & mom have also introduced me to decaf Five Roses so Geoff and I have switched to that - it tastes like the caffinated stuff > Perhaps its just a marketing hoax?

I've been buying pineapples at the market shop near us (Rodgers)  -  3 for R10 !
Avos have also come down in price which is great....and I just ordered a serious amount of nuts and seeds from Ambassador foods today! You can even order online from them: https://www.ambassadorfoods.co.za/

Day 61

This past weekend was Easter weekend. So, Easter, together with the fact that we moved on Thursday (nothing is in it's right place & the fresh food I had just got squished beyond edibility)...and that there was a stuff up with my barley grass order so I have not had any for a week....

As a result, I let go for the weekend (from Thursday) and let rip...mostly on Easter egg packaging!

Sunday started with chocolate for breakfast...I went to a braai at my sister in law's on Sunday & there were chocolate eggs before & between each stage of the meal....I ate so much chocolate over this weekend that by the time yesterday (Monday) evening came around, I actually just could not eat any more chocolate...! (I'm not surprised to find a couple of pimples brewing today)

Miraculously, the scale is tipping towards another 1/2kg loss... (perhaps because I've been combining chocolate...with chocolate!!! + getting lots of moving-related excersise) ...I've also been eating lots of fruit.

I've been very excited about 'Rogers Fruiterers' which just so happens to be the closest place from our new home to buy our food. On Saturday, I bought:

2 Pineapples + 4 Avos + 3 Peppers + 3 huge Bananas + 1 huge punnet of pink grapes = for R31 !!

I collected my barley grass this morning from the post office & had the recommended nut shake from Mary-Ann's "100 days" email this morning:

Take a cup of raw unsalted cashews or almonds and blend them in your food processor or blender until it is as fine as possible. Add a pineapple to this and dilute with fresh apple or orange juice. Have this for breakfast (multiply by as many people as you are serving if there is more than one of you.)
Add some frozen berries to make it particularly delicious!
Remember that the more often you eat throughout the day the less likely you will overeat at suppertime, so make sure you eat your snacks in between meals as suggested in your weekly program

Day 49

We've been packing & going all sorts of admin that never seems to come to an end. The only thing for it is chocolate. I am afraid to say that I have been eating some & that I have also been drinking WAY too much coffee.

That's probably why my weight has stuck this week.
I still feel skinny though :)

On Sunday I went to gym. Monday we walked to Fish Hoek & back & Tuesday we walked to Muizenberg & caught the train back. I had a big gym session yesterday so the exercise is going well.

I bought a bag of pears at Pick 'n Pay the other day that are so tasteless. I just don't think that pears are naturally tasteless...they must have done something to them.

I was also so surprised & I almost cried, because, although it is quite irritating when squeezing fresh lemon juice, to end up with pips you have to dig around for: breeding pip-less lemons is totally uncalled for & quite frankly, very sad. I feel like nothing is pure as 'nature intended it' any more. I don't even mind pips in grapes: I just don't add those grapes to my fruit smoothie.


This whole thing fits in with the general societal standard that legs / beards etc should be shaved. Its just not natural...but we do it anyhow so that we're not the only one who's leg-hairs catch the sunlight making them obviously & luminously visible. Plus I quite like beards...but only on men! It's natural!!

No pips in lemons feels worse. It just doesn't feel right.