Health Diary Week 35: Food, Exercise and a Positive Mind

Cake for Breakfast?!

Dad’s Birthday cake baked by Mum

Home
<<<Week 34

Hey all. I’m going to jump straight into things this week…

Food and Nutrition

So, let’s have a look at what food was on my plate, the healthy and not so healthy choices and identify any tweaks I could make to improve my nutrition…

Breakfast:

It didn’t exactly start off healthily! For breakfast on Monday and Tuesday, I had leftover birthday cake (yep, cake!) – ‘Is she really trying to lose weight?’ I imagine you thinking. Well, my reasoning was I’d eat the cake at some point, so why not have it as a meal (instead as a snack) to reduce total calories. The slight flaw to this logic was it also reduced my key nutrient and fibre intake from my usual fruit or grains/cereal, although to be fair I probably made up for it with everything else I ate:

Breakfasts: Cake, fruit & cereal

Lunch:

Lunches were My Typical Salad (5 days) accompanied by either hash browns (cauliflower or courgette) or rice filled vine leaves. Additions included Padron peppers, artichoke hearts, white asparagus, celery or coleslaw. Other days I had an Itsu satay rice noodle pot and This Isn’t Bacon bun with Mr Organic tomato ketchup (yum!):

Lunches: Typical salad, satay rice noodle pot & not-bacon bun

Dinner:

My dinners were amazing (has to be said)! I love a plate of nibbles, so I had pasta salad, hummus, baby cucumber, radish, silverskin pickled onions, Applewood cheese, gherkins and green olives – delicious! Twice, I ate Vegetable Risotto – I’m so excited broad beans are back in season! Mum made Nana’s spaghetti – a simple dish with white cabbage, ‘bacon’ and tomato-based sauce – tasty! Also, Mum re-attempted cauliflower steaks (very successfully) – cooked whole and marinated in tahini, garlic and spices. We also tried the Beyond Burger, accompanied by low fat oven chips:

Dinners: Pasta & nibbles, veg risotto, Nana’s spaghetti, cauliflower steak (I ate it all), burger & chips

The Beyond Burger was tasty, but left my gut feeling a bit uncomfortable. It contained coconut oil, which triggered my curiosity of how it compared nutritionally to my favourite Plant Pioneer burger. Although the Beyond Burger was lower in sugars and salt, both burgers were in the same traffic light category^[1]. I concluded, the Plant Pioneer option was healthier, because of less calories, higher fibre and lower total and saturated fat content:

Beyond Burger versus Plant Pioneer Burger. Plant Pioneer wins for health!

Snacks:

Okay, let’s have a look at my snacking… Of course, I ate chocolate (equivalent of 2 – 4 squares each time), although I didn’t eat any on days I had cake. I ate fruit twice, including mango, pineapple and golden kiwifruit and an indulgent strawberries and Elmlea plant cream. Savoury snacks included Shore seaweed puffs, Itsu crispy seaweed thins, Graze chilli and lime mixed nuts, Dragonfly bubble and squeak cake, handful of crisps/nachos and some leftover pasta:

Snacks: Fruit, chocolate & savoury snacks

Exercise

My physical activity increased by 82 minutes compared to last week, totalling 395 minutes (over 6.5 hours). It included 227 minutes walking (164 minutes brisk) over 5 days – I’m pleased to report I’m feeling less anxious about going out walking. Also, I completed 90 minutes on the exercise bike over 2 sessions and 141 minutes Wii Fit over 3 sessions of aerobic, yoga, muscle and balance exercises:

My balance skills are atrocious, as demonstrated by my Wii Fit ‘Heading’ and ‘Penguin Slide’ scores! Can I blame my dyspraxia[2, 3]? The 70 minute walk (NHS Active 10) was barely noticeable chatting with my friend Elise

Weight, BMI and Fat Results

Although I expected no weight gain, I was relieved the scales reflected this, because my poor sleep might have had an impact (as well as the breakfast cake!). So, I’m happy to report 1.4 lb (0.6 kg) weight and 0.4% fat loss:

Week 35 results: Phew!

Positive Thinking: What Made Watson Smile

This week’s results made me smile, but there’s more! ‘What [else] Made Watson Smile’…

I’m 26:
I’m 26! – Well, according to Wii Fit. When I re-started using Wii Fit (after several years), my starting age was 47 – I’m 44, so I was disappointed, but not now:

Veg Box:
Abel and Cole veg box delights of artichokes and Padron peppers (I love both!) – we griddled them to accompany our typical salad lunches:

Widening my Bubble:
Widening my physically distanced social bubble to include my neighbour, Elise and family. I felt it necessary to see other people to protect my mental wellbeing – although it’s lovely to hear about friends visiting with each other, it also highlighted my lack of social contact over the past 98 days^{[4, 5, 6]}. Anyway, enough of that – this is my happy section! Elise pointed out how the tree (below) looked like a friendly monster:

Continuing Professional Development:
Another interesting MyNutriWeb lecture, this time by Dr McArdle (Registered Dietician, Chair of the BDA Diabetes Specialist Group) on ‘Carb Confusion: Carbohydrates & Type 2 Diabetes’. My take home messages were: one size doesn’t fit all; low carb can work short-term only and it depends on individual preference:

Solving the Mayo Mystery:
Mum and I had been searching for the missing Vegenaise aioli for about a week – then we remembered (independently) we’d never received it because it had been out of stock!:

Image: Follow Your Heart

Jasper the Cat:
Jasper, the adorable cat rolling around on the driveway while I was doing my Wii Fit – well, until he distracted me! Before I knew his name, I called him ‘The Orange Cat’ – our first meeting  a couple of years ago was when I awoke to see his paws on the side of my bed and his big eyes staring at me!:

I caught Jasper stalking for birds by the bird table. When he realised I’d spotted him, he decided to act adorable!

I hope you enjoyed this week’s ‘What’s on Watson’s Plate’. Thank you for reading and feel free to follow my bite-sized updates on Instagram or Facebook. See you next Wednesday for another catch up.

>>>Week 36
<<<Week 34
Home

References

1. British Nutrition Foundation, 2018. Helping you eat well: Looking at labels. Available from: www.nutrition.org.uk/healthyliving/helpingyoueatwell/324-labels.html?start=3.
2. Dyspraxia Foundation, 2019. Dyspraxia in Adults [online]. Available from: https://dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk/dyspraxia-adults/.
3. National Health Service, 2020. Dyspraxia (developmental co-ordination disorder) in adults [online]. Available from: www.nhs.uk/conditions/developmental-coordination-disorder-dyspraxia-in-adults/.
4. Verduyn, P., Gugushvili, N., Massar, K., Täht, K. and Kross, E., 2020. Social comparison on social networking sites. Current Opinion in Psychology [online], 36, 32-37. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.04.002.
5. Webber, R., 2017. Psychology Today: The Comparison Trap [online]. Available from: www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201711/the-comparison-trap.
6. Appel, H., Crusius, J. and Gerlach, A. L., 2015. Social Comparison, Envy, and Depression on Facebook: A Study Looking at the Effects of High Comparison Standards on Depressed Individuals. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology [online] 34 (4), 277-289. Available from: https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/10.1521/jscp.2015.34.4.277.

More from What’s on Watson’s Plate:

• Week 34: Positivity
• Week 33: Jenga!
• Week 32: A Little Excursion
• Week 31: The 50 Challenge
• Week 0: The Starting Point (I’ve got to do this!)

• WordPress
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram