A very positive weekend

Yippee! The fat lass seems to have her house back in order. Long may it last.

Planned and prepared a three course home-cooked celebration meal for lovely hubby on Saturday night (a tad early for our anniversary but I won't be able to do it while we are away). Although it was to be a major treat, I figured out (ahead of time) as many ways as possible to keep the fats, salt, sugar and calories lowish while getting some good healthy fresh stuff in there.

For those of you who'd like all the gory details it was seared scallops with smoked chilli 'cream' to start, home-made seafood paella for the main course, and a nice light raspberry juice and white wine jelly for dessert, again made from scratch. I bought a couple of pretty tall glasses from a charity shop to serve this in and am very, very proud of myself over this bit, which looked beautiful.

Whilst it didn't end up as an entirely non-indulgent meal (seafood = cholesterol, amongst other 'confessions'), what a wonderful boon the 'alternative' products on offer in the supermarket are for us 'health' or 'waistline' minded folks! Never mind a heavy, fat-filled, buttery, cream-based sauce for the scallops or to make the topping for the jelly - I could make something which looked sinfully indulgent but was actually pretty healthy and still tasted great.

All in all, I used just a fraction of the butter/olive oil my recipes suggested (a small rant coming up - who the heck writes those things? You do NOT need 4 fluid ounces of olive oil to cook a paella for heaven's sake!). I made good use of Splenda instead of sugar (adding some rosewater for a really decadent flavour), cut down (or out) as much salt as humanly possible (adding garlic or lime zest where needed for extra flavour), and went for fat-free fromage frais instead of double cream (OK, it's actually only 'virtually' fat-free but you get the point).

Knowing we'd be indulging in larger than normal portions in the evening (and including a bottle of bubbly into the equation!) I ate very sparingly during the day on Saturday and walked as much as possible... going in and out of town four times instead of just once, to do my shopping in little bits. Then, having indulged on Saturday night, I kept things very light yesterday and we walked for about two or three hours again. I had the ubiquitous washing and ironing to do too, so listened to music and danced around while I did it. It becomes, rather surprisingly, quite fun when you do it to a great beat. Just as well the neighbours can't hear me singing though!

All this activity means that there has been no increase in weight over the weekend, depsite the treat, and the scales have settled down happily onto the 65kg mark. That's a nice feeling and seems like a good point to get to before we set off on our holiday. Lovely hubby says I've developed hip-bones and that the belly is looking a bit smaller too (though I can't see a decrease) which is a nice thing to hear. It'll be interesting to see where I am when we get back.

It's Salsacise tonight again, and I plan another walk in my lunch break. I've brought in a nice healthy bean salad and 'light' cottage cheese to munch sometime today, alopng with my usual fruit, and it'll be 'whatever veg is left in the fridge' soup tonight (and tomorrow, probably).