No matter how determined we are on our journey there is always the possibility of slippage from our path. As per my last blog it can be due to the little devilish voice of our Inner Saboteur or it can be other banana peels which land at our feet.
I slipped from my Keto path last Saturday. I mentioned in my last blog that we were without water to our home. It lasted for 3 days and created a lot of undue stress in our life.
Then on Saturday night we ordered a take-away from a local venue. I will not give their name as I had a chat with a very repentant manager who wanted to provide me with an alternative meal but I was not hungry after this incident. Basically as I was chowing through my healthy spinach side dish I felt something crunch and thought it might be a bit of grit, however in my next forkful I spotted a snail. Not just a tiny little spot of slime but an entire snail with his shell still intact.
It was all I could do not to barf. I could not finish my food and felt so ill. After my nausea subsided I was hungry and I went into the kitchen to have a forage around but nothing appealed to me. I spotted the notorious bag of popcorn mentioned in a previous blog, just sitting there, looking at me and I gave in and ate the popcorn.
That was my first slip and I admitted it to my Keto group and coach. Usually a slip would lead to me throwing my hands up and giving up and going off the rails indefinitely but I am proud to say I did not do so.
The next day I got up and got back on the Keto Horse. I did a ‘dirty’ fast (I had coffee with cream) until 2pm and I had boiled eggs on low carb toast as a late lunch. That night we ordered out again (from a different place!) and I had a salad with raw vegetables and some chicken breast kebabs with a tablespoon of satay sauce.
To help compensate for the extra popcorn carbs I swam the next day. In fact I have been swimming every day, from 30 minutes to an hour depending on how much time I have available.
My Monday weigh in showed that I had lost the previous week but I did not lose as much as I hoped, however I am just happy I did not gain and lose some of my progress.
As of this morning I have now lost over 10kgs (just over 22lbs). In addition to my swim every afternoon, I am also joining some of the ladies in my keto group doing a ‘Squat Challenge’. This week’s goal is 125 squats throughout the week. I might pop out a few while making a coffee, while watching telly, or while listening to a work meeting online as it is easy to just do 10 here and 10 there and they soon all add up. Next week the goal increases to 150 and so on for each week of the 4 week challenge. Hopefully I will get a J-Lo butt. Not a Kardashian butt because that is just too much jelly for me. J-Lo is mega fit and my girl crush.
However, some afternoons the weather is just too blustery to swim.
On Tuesday Norm popped down to do a shop so that I could cook the rest of the week to try and keep my carbs low. I had Vanessa coming to do a pedicure after work and knew I would finish late so I decided to fry the fish he bought as it cooks quickly. However, mid-pedi the phone rings and my pre-ordered food from Julie and Spiro arrived. Oops, I forgot I ordered it.
That night was Pork Chops baked with apple and onion, accompanied with butter braised ranch mushrooms. I limited my intake of the apple and onion to reduce my carbs.
This left me with a dilemma on what to cook the next day as meat often goes off very quickly in SA and I did not want to waste any of the shopping. I decided to make a creamy coconut curry with the chicken breasts. I chopped 2 red peppers, 2 brown onions, chili, and garlic and fried it with all of my spices to bring out the flavours of the dry spices. Once they had cooked a bit I added my chicken, one chopped large carrot and some cubes of sweet potato, a tin of pureed tomatoes, and a tin of coconut milk and let it simmer until the carrots were soft. I did not intend on eating it that night as the Kingklip needed to be cooked.
I marinated the fish in garlic and chili while I had my swim and then I fried it in lemon butter. I roasted sliced sweet potato in olive oil and made a fresh side salad with avocado, radishes, tomato, cucumber and lettuce.
On Thursday I had another order from Spiro and Julie delivered. I love both Mexican food and Indian food so this one sounded so divine that I decided it was worth the carbs. Chicken Tinga Tacos – Smoky chipotle shredded chicken, in a homemade soft taco with a pico de gallo salsa, avo and creamy feta cheese, accompanied with a black bean salad. Oh this was so heavenly! The flavour on the chicken was to die for. I wolfed it down and forgot to take a pic so I stole this one from the interwebs.
On Friday night we had the chicken curry I had cooked on Wednesday and it was delicious. Curry always tastes better the next day anyway. It was so lovely to be able to be able to do my exercises in the pool at my leisure without having to rush to sort out dinner, I just had to heat it up.
We have struggled with load-shedding all week. This occurs when the demand for electricity exceeds the available supply and planned supply interruptions are carried out, alternating the time across the country to relieve the grid. We were at a high stage all week which meant having 4 hours a day without electricity. We are supplied by the City of Cape Town but in areas supplied directly from Eskom (our incompetent parastatal energy supplier) people had 6 hours of no electricity so it could be worse for us. I missed several meetings because when the electricity is off the cell towers appear to be very weak as well and I could not even access MS Teams via my phone. Most meetings are recorded so I can go and watch the videos at a later time but when we already have up to 6 hours a day of meetings, when am I supposed to fit these in much less get any actual work done on my deliverables? It just adds stress to an already stressful work situation.
The electricity has been going off every night this week from midnight to 2am but I have been taking something to make me sleep and I have slept through it most nights. On Friday morning at 5am I was woken due to the heat and the sound of dogs panting and realised it was off again! I checked the load-shedding app and it indicated it was not off due to load-shedding. I could not hear our neighbour’s generator so I realised our meter needed topping up. I used my mobile data to go onto my banking app to buy a voucher and I woke Norm who had to sleepily disarm the alarms, navigate the security gates and locks to go to the dark garage with a torch and enter the incredibly long code to top up the meter. People in ‘first world’ countries have no clue how privileged they are to not have to endure all of this nonsense.
Last week we watched a new series on Amazon Prime. ‘As We See It‘ is about three twenty-something people on the autism spectrum trying to navigate life. Jack (played by Rick Glassman), Harrison Dietrich (Albert Rutecki), and Violet (Sue Ann Pien) live in a shared house and have been friends since pre-school. All of the actors who are playing people with autism are actually neuro-divergent as are some of the other cast. It is a sweet and funny series and gives you so much insight into the struggles that autism can add to the challenges of growing up. I give ‘As We See It’ 5 Kitten Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐.
Today Norm has gone to puppy class with Finn. Finn has a busier social life than I do. Last Sunday he went on a playdate with Uncle Mark and Uncle Hunter, his idols. When he got home he was knackered and slept most of Monday.
Finn has a new girlfriend called ‘Jeffrey’ (don’t ask me why she is named Jeffrey!) who lives around the corner from our house and when Norm takes Finn for his walks he flops down and waits patiently on her driveway for her to come out. If she does not come out he is terribly sad and when she does the two of them kiss and kiss and kiss. He is such a friendly doggy and has made friends all around the neighbourhood. Sometimes he is even friends with the Poms, if he can keep his giant paws off them.
I hope you all have a great weekend and week ahead. Please pray for the people of Ukraine as the images from there are just horrific. Putin is undoubtedly evil and soulless and what he is doing there is inhumane. Let’s hope that it ends soon with Ukraine maintaining their independent sovereignty and we are not pushed into another world war or that Putin does not take the nuclear route to destroy those countries that he feels have betrayed him with their sanctions.
Until next time, Kisses from the Kitten xoxoxoxoxo
Kitten in the City 