Tuesday 13 July 2010

Cocktail avoidance techniques

BNF and I had a bit of a row about money last night. It’s too wearisome to recount, especially on 4 hours of sleep, but the upshot is that I have cancelled my party. I feel a bit sad about this but there we go – I don’t have the money and I need to be thinking about saving for the wedding to boot. It’s just sucky timing that my 40th falls at this time – I should have been married for years by now! And also have grown out of saying things like sucky, possibly.

On the plus side, it means no precious points on cocktails tonight. It’s not an outstanding plus side but it does mean that I’ve come in very comfortably at 18 points today (assuming I don’t go mad and eat an avocado washed down with glugs of olive oil before the end of the day!).

I agree with Shauna that a diet system that demonises such things is all varieties of crazy, but there we go. When I was whinging about this before I started WW, I was grumping about joining a diet which tells me that marshmallows are better for me than avocado. I got advice (from Beth) that I just had to go with it and suspend [grumpiness]. I replied tartly that I was really looking forward to making a tricolore salad with marshmallows replacing the avocado. This was when I was young and naive and didn’t realise I’d also have to replace the mozzarella! More marshmallows? Mmmm, tomatoes and marshmallows – that classic combo! The Italians have NOTHING on this delicacy. Served naked, obviously (the tomatoes and marshmallows, not me) since I now know about the wickedness of olive oil.

So today I cut out the olive oil and I cut out the avocado and this has made a dramatic saving to my salad – now a mere half a point for leaves, cabbage, carrot, celery, pepper, cucumber and tomato. The half point is for a tbsp of balsamic vinegar; I couldn’t face my radioactive orange fat free dressing. I have even had so many points today that I had a Starbucks mocha light frappuccino (1.5 points) and can look forward to a Skinny Cow ice cream after dinner (ham and ratatouille). It’s a relief after yesterday’s hard slog to not be scrabbling around for points to save. Admittedly, I may not need them at the weekend as I have a rough idea of what I’m going to have - for breakfast and in the evenings anyway - and it's pretty virtuous, but a glass of wine would be lovely with my crab risotto (thanks Seren) – and my seabass and samphire. And there are those magnums if I have enough points! Yes, it’s all worth saving for.

6 comments:

Seren said...

Hurrah for wine and Magnums! And will definitely be trying that tomato and marshmallow combo at some point this weekend...

Sorry about the cocktail avoidance. I sympathise with the wedding money thing, it's such an expensive business that I was only half joking when I suggested to D that we elope to Copenhagen and get married in a park! It will all be worth it though - even the dearth of avocados.

Sx

Alice said...

So sorry you had to cancel your party :( I hope you can still do something really nice to celebrate.

Well done on the WW front. It is a pain that marshmallows are fewer points than avocadoes, but I guess when it comes down to it it's jsut calorie counting. Even if you're not doing WW, the fact of the matter is avocadoes ARE more calorie dense than marshmallows and if you eat enough, it will bite you in the arse (or rather end up on your arse).

But since you have knowledge about healthy eating, you just have to make the choice that it's healthier to eat half an avocado than 10 marshmallows.

Keep on trucking.. you'll get there.

Linz M said...

Ah boo to party cancelling. I have similar money woes myself presently and I don't have a wedding to pay for.

Despite last nights blip, I still believe WW works. I know it doesn't make sense from a health point of view to eat Marshmallows instead of Avocado, but you know even good fats are, well - fattening. It's most definitely sucky.

Fingers crossed you reap the rewards though x

Milly said...

Sorry to hear you cancelled your party, could you do something smaller & cheaper? I do hope you settle in to the ww's. I have done it for years on & off & for me it does work when I really stick to it. To maximise my loss I need to be point savvy aswell as just sticking to my allowance. When it's going well I try to stick to low gi, high fruit & veg, average carb, minimal bread & low alcohol. Basically boring! it does work though even for me & my slow metabolism. The current guidelines do suggest that you can have 1-2 teaspns of olive oil/ day so long as you count it. I would rather have the olives whole on my salad though (10per 1/2 point I think) Anyway I will stop being a ww bore!!! Keep us up to date with your progress & the classes are much better than they used to be. Milly x

Seren said...

The risotto - I must admit I was lazy and just used the NI to count 6.5 points for a quarter portion rather than count from scratch, so that may not be entirely accurate...however, I also reduced the amount of risotto rice slightly (think the recipe calls for 250g when halved and I used about 180g on the basis we seldom eat massive portions of carbs).

I hope you enjoy - sea bass and samphire sounds absolutely gorgeous too (sea bass is one of my absolute all-time favourite things - I generally need at least some mashed potatoes to go with it though).

Have a fabulous weekend and try not to fret too much about the counting.

Sx

Badger said...

Meringues are quite low in points too. They are really nice with strawberries.