Gingerjo’s Blog

OK, so Sunday is also a traditional lying-in day for me.  Again I missed breakfast but I figure this is probably a good thing since I’m having a roast chicken dinner for my tea - lovingly prepared by my sister while Mark and I catch up on the episodes of 24 and Lost that we can no longer get on Virgin Media and that she has kindly been recording on Sky for us.  For lunch I thought I’d try the other cereal I bought on Friday - Kelloggs Crunchy Nut Clusters with Chocolate Curls.

Hmm, well, if you had an explosion in the Kelloggs factory there’d be bits of different cereals all over the place.  Perhaps then, trying to make the best of the situation and save company profits, the staff might sweep up all these mixed up cereals, add a few chocolate curls to make it all look planned and deliberate, and then package it all up in a nice box and ship it off to the supermarkets.  This may well be what happened. It’s like you had a bit left in half a dozen packets of different cereals and put them together in the same bowl just to finish them off, then you went a bit made with the sugar.  I can’t say I approve.  Plus it’s less than 3 hours since I ate them and I’m already hungry.

Last night I had to pop into Sainsburys to buy some tea so I took the opportunity to invest in a couple more packets of breakfast cereal.  Now that I’ve noticed such a difference between the ‘fullness factors’ given by Weetaflakes and Oatibix I’m curious to know how the other varieties measure up - what is the most filling cereal? which one keeps you going the longest? which one tastes the best? 

Saturday is traditionally my lying-in day so I got up late and then had to rush out so I missed breakfast.  However, for my lunch (at noon) I tried Bitesize Fruit and Nut Weetabix.  It tastes pretty good, but then I’ve always been a fan of Weetabix.  There is a generous amount of fruit (raisins) which makes the cereal plenty sweet enough and you just know that you’re getting lots of micronutrients from those almonds and hazelnuts. The Weetabix doesn’t seem to swell up quite as much as the Oatibix - the consistancy isn’t quite as gooey once it’s absorbed all the milk.

By 5pm I was practically knawing my own arm off with hunger. I had missed breakfast though so it’s not a fair to say that Weetabix isn’t as filling as Oatibix.  I shall have to do a proper lunch comparison between the two next week.

Today’s challenge was a lunchtime meeting with a laid-on lunch. It was very difficult to resist those little tuna mayo sandwiches, but I did it and as a reward I had to wait two hours for the meeting to finish before I could have my little bowl of Oatibix at 2.30pm.  My work-mates at the other end of the office had been able to smell the sandwiches and were very impressed by my abstinance. I was quite proud of myself, but frankly it’s going to take me a lot more than 2 hours of willpower to shift my excess poundage.

Today I was doing my volunteer training and had a day off work so I got up later than normal and had my bowl of Weetaflakes at about 10.30am.  Since I was due in Bolton by 1pm I had to have my lunch at about noon - another bowl of Weetaflakes.  By 5pm I was STARVING.  Normally I’ve been having Weetaflakes in the morning and Oatibix at lunchtime.  They then keep me going quite happily until about 7pm.  Weetaflakes it seems do not give you the staying power that you get from Oatibix.

A couple of months ago there was a call for volunteers to help with ‘handling sessions’ for the ‘Made in Africa’ exhibition at Bolton Museum this Easter.  I stepped forward.  It’s not something I’ve ever done before, or ever considered doing, but the chance to learn about and handle some of the oldest human artefacts ever discovered doesn’t come along every day, especially in Bolton. They held the training session with British Musuem staff today.

(more…)

I went to an e-PR (that’s electronic public relations) seminar with a colleague last night.  It was very interesting although it perhaps didn’t go into as much detail as we’d have liked - pretty much it just gave an overview of the basic purpose and pitfalls of corporate blogging and podcasting.  It did, however, gave us quite a few ideas for how we might use these things at work, starting with simple activities and building on them.  It was also apparent that these things require rather a lot of preparation and we’ll need to train our colleagues before letting them loose on the digital world.  Obviously, we’ll need to get the hang of it ourselves first!

The best bit of the night though was popping out for a quick drink afterwards in a little tiny pub just off Portland Street in Manchester.  I can’t remember the name of it but it was very old-fashioned (no music) and had waitress service plus a free bowl of crisps - how good is that? 

Ok so it’s the end of day 1.  So far it’s been easy, but in fairness even I can manage 24 hours of food willpower.  For breakfast I had a bowl of Weetaflakes with 30% fruit which was surprisingly palatable.  Normally I don’t eat breakfast which I know is bad for me, but it’s partly because I’m usually late, no, it’s because I’m always late and the thought of getting up 5 minutes earlier to leave time for breakfast is too much for me to bear. I really hate getting out of bed in a morning.  Strangely I also find that eating breakfast makes me hungrier - it’s like I’ve opened the floodgates or something.

For lunch I had a bowl of bitesize Oatibix with raisins and chocolate which was yummy. I filled the bowl right to the top. I also ate it one bitesize Oatibix at a time which took ages.  It seems they are considerably more filling than the Weetaflakes though and I did think that I might explode about 20 minutes after I’d eaten them (I’m really glad I bought the small bowls).  I definitely won’t be filling the bowl right up tomorrow - it was quite an uncomfortable feeling.  However, they did keep me going all afternoon and I wasn’t hungry again until about 7pm.  That’s as much as you can ask from lunch really.

OK, posting this under Healthy Living is probably a bit misleading since I doubt very much if it’s actually healthy, but I’m going to try this Special K ‘Drop a Jeans Size in 2 weeks’ diet starting tomorrow.  Now it worked for my sister - she ended up living on Special K and chicken salad for 3 months and lost a couple of stone - I won’t be going that far.  Not being keen on Special K I’ve opted to try a couple of other cereals, made by Weetabix, for the moment.  I don’t think it makes much difference which cereal you eat because they are almost all under 300 kcal a bowl. I’ve even bought a couple of little cereal bowls to make the insignificant heaps of weetaflakes look bigger. 

Two bowls make about 600 kcal leaving 1200 kcal for my evening meal and tea and coffee during the day. The recommended total kcal intake is around 1800-2000 per day if you’re a female trying to diet - I’m at the top end of the scale because there’s a lot of me to begin with.  In principle it sounds easy.  Let’s see how I get on.