Author: Oana

Healthy Living Challenge: Day 18 – Car crash and pizza

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This was an eventful day I am glad to see the back of. After work I drove into an industrial estate in Belfast to pick a DHL package (with more healthy goodies!!) but on the way out got crashed into. I had Emma in the car on the side that was hit but thankfully she was sleeping and  never became aware of it even. It was a minor crash and no-one was injured but my passenger door is jammed now and opens with a painful crack and my bumper is askew. Bummer! So no healthy dinners tonight, hubby took us out for pizza at Pizza Express. I had their light version, Legerra with Pollo because it had only 500 calories but found it heavy after almost 3 weeks of eating only healthy food. This is day 18, there are 22 days left of this healthy living challenge and I hope tomorrow everybody who drives by will stick to their side of the road 🙂    

Healthy Living Challenge: Day 17 – Easy Dinners. Again

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I was going to call this post Damned 69 ( a figure I associate with a lot of psychological distress) because my weight went up by 300 grams to 69 kilos this week and I was really pissed off this morning. But I suppose this things are normal when you try to lose weight and as long as I eat the right things a change IS BOUND to happen sooner or later. Anyway, these days I have been quite busy trying to run the house and various errands, see the G.P. over my strange back pain and keeping everyone happy. In consequence I had to come up with quick, satisfying but healthy dinners. I know you know I am Romanian. As a Romanian I was raised with dishes and ingredients that people here turn their nose to. Take chicken livers, for example. I love chicken livers, pork tongue, bovine brain…okay, I know I grossed you out, sorry. Yesterday I felt like having chicken livers. I had some free-range ones in the freezer from my butcher. …

Healthy Living Challenge: Day 16 – Plan your week ahead

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Remember I was telling you about my positive grocery shopping experience the previous week in Holywood? Well, we did it again last Friday and for me it was an opportunity to plan my meals for this week. No, I am not one of those women who does fish on Monday, chicken on Tuesday and Thursday and roast on Sunday with religiosity. For me it’s more a matter of having enough in the freezer and the cupboard to put together healthy but simple meals for the following seven days. We are also slowly transitioning towards an all-organic menu, at least when it comes to our fruit, veggies and eggs. I decided to set up a weekly order with the organic farm in Helen’s Bay and look forward to using my creativity and putting to good use our seasonal produce. You don’t need to spend crazy money to eat healthily. I am still experimenting on how to do it optimally on a decent budget but I would say ordering your fruit and veg from a farm and  …

Healthy Living Challenge: Day 15 – Listen to your body

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No, my friends, I am not going all weird on you here, I am just saying many times our bodies will tell us what they need in the form of cravings. Ahem, nice try, justifying to yourself that muffin or chocolate bar tonight but no, I am not talking about cravings for sweets and wheat. I actually believe people like William MD Davis, the author of The Wheat Belly who proved scientifically  and through thorough research that wheat is addictive.  I believe that once you come off wheat completely for a good two weeks, as I have done, your body starts “speaking” to you again, communicating its real needs. This week I felt run down due to lady pains and discomforts(oh, yeah, I really did it, I’ve talked about two of the most embarrassing and personal things a human being can talk about in two subsequent posts!!) By Wednesday my body was quite depleted of energy and I was…full of cravings. I actually made some of my Facebook friends suspicious when I announced I had …

Healthy Living Challenge: Day 14 – Alternative Eating

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I call it alternative because once you decide to eat healthily, you have to find replacements to the things you used to comfort eat. Like, did you use to fill up on bread and keep yourself awake with coffee, like me? Then you have to find things that keep you full and awake but don’t necessarily tip the scales the wrong way… To give you the motivation to change some of your habits, please take a moment and have a look at this chart I came across last week, while browsing Stumbleupon. Have you done it? What shocked you the most? For me, it was the fact that when hungry, most people would go for a 400-calorie burger while they could have 3 KILOS of celery for the same amount of calories. Okay, who could eat 3 kilos of celery, anyway but you get my point…you need to find alternatives to your go-to-snacks or meals if you want to lose the weight. So today I replaced what used to be my Saturday fry with a …