Banana Bread - How I've missed you!!!

So, I just about went to nirvana making this recipe for Banana Bread by the Merry Makers Sisters - so it's not 100% LCHF but I figured, if I'm going to have a treat I might as well make it a paleo, sugar free and gluten free one! I double the recipe, used xylitol in place of the honey and also added baking soda because my go-to carb and sugar heavy version had it and made a loaf - you could hardly tell it's a healthier version and I LOVE IT! I ate it with slabs of salted butter, so yummeh..

Unfortunately for me, those two slices I had amounts to something like 523 calories and 27 carbs - so IF I'm going to have this, I'll probably need to make it my only meal or something hahahaha! I'm thinking it won't blow me totally out of keto, but hey, it's a lifelong adjustment so I'll take the slow losses as long as I can still eat things I love like banana bread!!

In other news, we had some pretty bad news on Monday - my husbands' grandad passed away so I took the day off work and we spent some quality time together as a family. We went to this cafe we had planned to go to (Porto and Fi) and had lunch there. They had what seemed like a very low carb meal (Lamb cutlets with cauli rice + grilled aubergines) and I thought PARFAIT, I shall have zat! But turns out, the cauli rice was probably mixed in with some quinoa or some other sort of grain, which is trop des problemes in this scenario! I really think they should've put it in the friggin menu at least!

Anyhoo, in our time there we saw the waitress bring out pails upon pails of lovely, crisp looking curly fries (clearly a best-seller!) and I thought, we have to redeem this trip, so we ordered a pail to share. It was DIVINE and worth it I tell you. They were so crisp and crunchy and just *poofed* in my mouth at the slightest bite - yummmmmoooo! I had probably 4-5 curly wurlies and let hubs have the rest, and I was happy. It's been two days now and I haven't felt any setback so yayyyy! Can't afford to let slip too many times though, I really want this lifestyle to stick so I need to look at ways to recreate my fav treats - so maybe next up would be recreating french fries?? It'll probably have to be sweet potato fries which we all know is so damn good.. But maybe I can one-up it and make sweet potato mojo jojos mwahahaha.. That'll be awesome!

Clothespirations!

Can I just start by saying how delighted I am that overalls are making a swift comeback into the fashion industry?! Like, I seriously have never gotten over that fad and I just never had the chance to buy any that fit me and now it's back and I can't WAITTTTTT to get one!!

I mean seriously, just looking at ASOS right now is KILLING ME, I want all of them!!

OK, to be fair, some retailers like Next have already brought in some plus size ones that I could buy right now, but to be really frank, they don't look good on plus sized people!!!

Instead of looking cool, we'll probably just look like painters about to go and refurb something, especially if you get a scuffed up, vintage looking one, which is the kind that I really wanna go for!

The denim "pinafore" from TU Sainsbury's

I have to admit, I tried this one on at Sainsbury's (because I saw it in my size and I couldn't resist!!!) and if it HAD in fact fitted me, I would've bought it! But seriously, I could fit my top half in but the bottom was embarassingly tight, like cannot get my ass in and must unbutton everything from the waist down tight! Obviously the fit is very "skinny", so my desire to wear some overalls is hence on hold until I shed more pounds. Cannot wait. This is numero uno on my list!

I also have always, ALWAYS loved nautical themes. In fact, out of all my clothes, if they are not black, blue they are stripey and navy. Seriously. I am so boring HAHA! 

Navy dress from TU again - Sainsburys is my fav go to for cheapo clothes!

Again, I always wear tunics and skater dresses as it is, but I've never been able to wear them with bare legs! I want to so badly, but either it's because I have a large toosh or that I'm too tall, but if I didn't wear tights or leggings, it would actually be rather obscene! HAHA! So, I'm looking forward to being thinner so that I can wear short things and get a bit of a tan on my freakishly pale pins. 

Not to mention that I've never in my life gotten a tan on my legs, so they are very, very, disproportionately pale compared to my brown orang utan orange arms! HAHAHA...

I'd love to blog more about what kinds of clothes I've been dying to wear, but will do so later. It's a bit hard to edit photos when you're nicking time off work to do so lol, but I'll get there eventually :)

Day 35 : Lowest weight in over 6 months (and perhaps even more!)

Giving myself cause to celebrate - I waver in and out of wanting to detail every single bit of my journey and just cruising along, to be fair, I'm not even sure how long I've been doing LCHF since I restarted (for the nth time!) but I can safely say about 35 days.

How's it been so far? It's been GREAT! Apart from the fact that I keep dreaming of sweet foods, and about eating them (with all the guilt) and feeling a bit like I can't differentiate if it's a dream or reality!

This time around it's been slightly easier, no explosive poos and painful tummy aches YET - but I bet there will be when the yeast dies. I'm hoping to persevere through it because I really feel so awesome eating this way, and now that I've found comfort in eating cheese crisps with everything, and making said crisps in the microwave at work, I can do this FOREVER! Mwahaha :)

OH, and let's not forget, I'm not at 148kgs. According to MFP it's the lowest recorded weight I've had in a YEAR, so that's something isn't it?! Can't wait until I'm in the 130s though, because that would be truly awesome!

We had a really busy week last week, with our first really huge market stall (the biggest event of the market trader year apparently!) and we got in by pure chance! We were soooo busy I didn't even get to have the 4 coffees I had planned to have, and only had 1 and 3/4 cups before we were completely slammed all day and ran out of milk! Hahahaha! I felt fine though, and my husband had a swapsie meal with one of our trader friends (he runs a alp dumpling shop which makes the most amazing vege dumplings with a red pepper goulash - soooo yum!) but I had nothing apart from tuna and cheese crisps I gobbled down for brekky. Went home and had a Nandos, and the next morning I was 148kgs!

Talk about a mega win! Hahaha :)

So proud of myself for not using exhaustion as a reason to cheat, and eat nonsense. So proud of myself for looking the other way when my husband was GIVEN one of my most favourite meals, and staying strong despite not having ANYTHING to eat at all! I couldn't even "reward" myself with a latte because all we had left was skim, and skim is, as we all know, bad for you!!

SO PROUD of myself for staying strong and losing weight, and keeping to this for a whole month now. I can't wait to see what other rewards I will have from this.

More blogging to come up, I'm planning on writing that clothes goals post (i.e. the clothes I plan on wearing when I lose weight/what I think I will enjoy wearing!) and an updated activities reward chart for my weight loss goals. I don't yet have any travel plans this year, apart from possibly a xmas trip which I'm hoping I'll have lost a lot more weight for so I can have *some* treats, but we'll see. I'm still yet to go a few days without eating, so there's still a lot of mountains to climb!