Porridge, Porridge, Porridge!

Today all I have eaten is porridge! I hadn't intended today to be like that - I'd been planning to have poached eggs on Vogel's soy & linseed toast for lunch...but we'd run out of eggs. I couldn't decide what to have for dinner as Liam is at work and the children were having leftover's from last night's cottage pie...

Last night's dinner

sneaky picture of (one of!) my portions last night - it was so good, and made by Liam whilst I was at the gym! :)

Anyway, back to today, by the time I'd fed the children, put them to bed, tidied up, washed the dishes etc, I had no energy to cook anything for me...so another bowl porridge it was!

First things first though, this morning's bowl was a repeat of my recent peach cobbler style porridge, this time with mashed banana, oats, milk, cinnamon and chopped tinned peach (I really fancied this again when I woke up this morning and after hunting around the back of the cupboard I found a tin BBE Oct 10...doesn't seem to have done me any harm!). I kept the toppings simple this morning and stuck to peanut butter...

Unfortunately I'm not overly impressed with this jar of peanut butter - too runny and not salty enough for my liking...I prefer a blob of cheapo regular peanut butter I think. Good chunks of peanut though, and porridge was still delicious so can't complain! :)

Lunchtime...after faffing about the lack of eggs and deciding no way was I dragging the baby out in the pouring rain, I didn't end up eating until about 3pm! For this porridge bowl I chopped up an apple, sprinkled with cinnamon and zapped in the microwave for a minute to soften...

while I prepared the rest of the ingredients - oats, milk, other half of mashed banana, more cinnamon and the apple, topped with (suet free) mince pie filling...

yummy, this was so good! Natural sweetness from the apple and banana, and tang from the mince pie filling. After a false start to the healthy eating yesterday (toffee popcorn and chocolate once the children are in bed anyone?!) and yet more weight gain, I decided to count calories today as the amount I've been eating has been ridiculous. I think the strong flavours have been key to helping me feel full...hence the need for saltier peanut butter! :)

Dinner was my 3rd and final bowl of porridge for the day. Back to the peaches, this time with frozen raspberries to make a peach melba type porridge...

I topped this with some leftover brandy butter my Mum made for me...

delicious...

this tasted so fresh and summery! To be honest the brandy butter got a little lost in it as it melted really quickly, but was a nice surprise when I came across a bit! I'm quite surprised that none of my bowls of porridge have involved chocolate today - I just went with whatever I fancied so would have happily added cocoa powder/chocolate but no, these were what came to mind. Now I've said that I'll probably have major chocolate cravings tomorrow!!

As I said earlier, I decided to count calories today. I sometimes use a site called Weight Loss Resources so set my loss for 1 pound a week (I've been on maintenance or not counting for ages but need to do something about the weight that's piled on!) and have added my 3 bowls of porridge to today's diary, the only other thing I've had today is lots of glasses of weak sugar-free squash. Anyway, after my 3 bowls of porridge, which in my mind isn't a huge amount - ok quite sugary/carby but not that bad - I only have 57 calories left for today! No wonder I've gained 10 lbs in a month considering all the snacks I've been scoffing as well as bigger meals! Admittedly no exercise today to give me extra calories, but then yesterday was first time I've been to gym in 3 weeks so probably another reason for weight gain!

So lessons learnt... I will keep up with my exercise (ideally 3 times a week) and I will reduce snacking/have smaller meals. I knew all this already but seeing how little I supposedly should be eating was quite a shock today! Haven't felt particularly hungry today, and my percentages of carbs/protein/fat are about right - WLR recommend 55% carbs 15% protein 30% fat and today I had 60% carbs 15% protein 25% fat so not bad considering I only had porridge! I don't want to get hung up on constantly counting everything but equally, I'm now the heaviest I've been since mid-September...what a waste of the last 3 months!! 2 months eating sensibly ruined by 1 month of pigging out on everything in sight!!

This post is turning into a bit of a ramble, sorry! Time to go relax in the bath and have an early night ready for a day on my feet at work tomorrow. Apologies for the repetitive food/photos today...good thing I love porridge!! :)