Ep02: So You Blew It!
- Selena Bean
- Sep 15
- 7 min read
"Occasional squalls- and other cross winds"
"Wouldn't you know it I'm not Perfect"
I have been so good on this regime. Nearly seven weeks have passed, and we have eaten some of the most delicious food. Every meal has been an absolute pleasure to munch my way through. It has mostly been fair weather sailing and anyone looking on would say, "Aren't you doing well!"
August the 6th I began on this voyage, and I can tell you, I haven't been the model of an exemplary wholefoods, plant-based blogger. Things happen!
Along the way there have been a few squalls, but mostly I manage to reef in the sails and ride through into the sunshine. Every now and then though, the squalls can last a bit longer and those are the ones where you really have to batten down the hatches.
"What are you gonna do?!"
-Selena Bean
"What happened?"
So there I was, minding my own business when some meat arrived!
What are you gonna do? Your sister Darlene turns up and wants to eat stew. On goes the pot and the meat browning sends the house into aroma overdrive. Every fibre in each well-tuned nostril is tingling with excitement at the memory of Darlene's cooking.
If anyone can turn a tough bit of old beef shin into a gourmet dish, just because she and the butcher call it Osso Bucco, that's our Darlene. Coupled with a bit of mashed potato, the creamiest you've ever had, made by yours truly, and what a meal it was.
Next arrives one of my other sisters, Marlena, with a chocolate cake. I told her chocolate was off, but Marlena being Marlena, she wouldn't take no for an answer. What are you gonna do? Of course, half of that was gone before I thought of cutting it up and putting it in the freezer...which I then discovered had turned off a couple of days earlier and everything was thawed out!
Now what are you gonna do? Oh no, all my pre frozen, in reserve bean dinners and curries and a couple of months' worth of cooking are now thawed. The last of our meat reserves, which were probably never going to get eaten anyway, now have to be eaten, so, the regime is blown! We have already eaten half of a chicken that I had to roast up. And I have to cook up a couple of lumps of pork and a pack of beef mince.
To top it all off, there's the weekly visit to Charlene's music group where they have all kinds of off the menu items that we share for lunch. Another sister in case you were wondering.
Down go a couple of cream donuts and white bread sandwiches with ham and egg. What are you gonna do? At least I laid off the sausage rolls and chocolate fudge slice!
"Was it worth it?
If you are going to break the regime, it had better be worth it!
The Osso bucco and mashed potatoes were definitely worth it. Every mouthful was as expected from Darlene's cooking. Meat that melted in your mouth and a sauce full of warm, rich flavour, thickened only by the island of mashed potato it surrounded. Definitely worth it! 10/10
The chocolate cake. I looked at it sitting there on the bench, soft buttery icing smothering the as yet uncut cake.
"I'm not eating it, but I want to see what it looks like inside," I said as I cut into the soft brown sponge. "I'll know by the look whether I am going to consume these calories. No point if it's not top notch.
Initially, I thought it looked a bit dry, around the edges, but the centre was dark and moist, and it was impossible to not eat the slice I had cut, nor the 2nd, nor the 3rd and dare I say it, nor the 4th. They were thin slices mind you.
We couldn't think of who to share it with and I felt obliged to try and eat it all because the quicker it was gone, the quicker I could get back on course. As long as that cake was sitting around the house, the longer I would be beating against the wind.
Thankfully I put it away before we devoured it all and the next morning, I cut it into slices and put it in the freezer. The texture was just right, not too dry, nor moist, very soft and the icing was heavenly. The little decorative chocolate buttons were the piece de resistance and elevated the whole thing to a 9.5/10.
The donuts and sandwiches?
I love a good egg sandwich, but these are bakery sandwiches, so not very well seasoned. The ham is ultra processed, not like lovely thin slices of real meat from your Christmas ham. And the bread, it's so white, it almost isn't there. Not a wholegrain to be seen. 6/10
The donut met my level of donut satisfaction. It was a nice fluffy dough (some of them are hard and dry), the cream was fresh, not mock and the sprinkling of icing sugar just right. A wee dollop of raspberry jam made it into the donut of yore. Even though this was a lovely squishy donut, I have had squishier. So, for that I gave it a score of 8/10.
The chicken. Well, that is truly delicious and I'm going to give it 10/10. No question!
Overall, excepting the sandwiches which were nice but not "great", all of the squalls were worth it. If the extra calories are going to be physically detrimental, at least make them mentally beneficial.
Even though the cake was right up there in score. mentally it felt worse to eat than the chicken. The correlation between weight and cake is ingrained. The rush from eating the cake, the physical pleasure from eating something so decadent is short-lived.
The guilt of eating it rushes in to fill the void left by the moment of euphoria that tasting something so divine brings.
The chicken, on the other hand has a slight amount of guilt associated with the fact that I should be on plant-based food and not eating chicken at all. There is at least some nutritional benefit from the chicken calories.
Chicken + cake nutritionally, in my way of thinking for the moment is as follows: you ate a huge amount of cake. A small amount of nutritional value in the butter and eggs but it provides a day's worth of calories for very little benefit.
Add in a whole lot of chicken and you have a high calorie, high protein day. Now this is fine if it goes on for only one day. I am in no way advocating this as sound nutritional advice, but creating some justification in your head helps with the mental torment. The wind will change tomorrow.
"You don't suddenly look 102 kilos!"
I set out on this voyage in February at 102kg. At the beginning of the plant-based leg, seven weeks ago, I was weighing in at around 92kg. Today I am down to around 88kg. Almost 2 months, a loss of 4kg. Not a lot, but a loss all the same.
Considering how much food I eat compared to before, you would think that I would be putting weight on not losing it. Eating more vegetables means eating a bigger volume to get the required daily calories.
I am happy with a loss of 2 kg per month. Nice and slow. After all, my goal is to get off the meds and losing weight is a means to that end, not the ultimate prize.
"Nobody can see the cake on the inside; it is just in my head."
-Selena Bean
Learn and adapt to the new way and make it sustainable. Just because I let slip yesterday and ate a huge amount of chocolate cake, or osso bucco and mashed potatoes two weeks ago, I am not going to either drop dead or suddenly look like I looked in February. Nobody can see the cake on the inside; it is just in my head.
"What are you going to do about it?"
You can't go around fearful of eating the wrong thing. My heart sank when Marlena turned up with the chocolate cake. I felt the anxiety of having to resist the cake. If there is no cake in the house, it is easy to resist.
But there is always cake. It turns up everywhere. There are birthdays, and weddings and funerals. There is always cake. And there is always Marlena who always thinks she owes you something for some favour, of which you have no recollection, that you did for her all those years ago.
You just have to resist. When the tide sweeps you away, go across the rip and find your way back on the course. Go and cook something that will make your heart sing and your tastebuds harmonize. Grab one of your frozen precooked meals and heat it up. It was probably great or you wouldn't have frozen it in the first place.
"There is always cake. And there is always Marlena"
-Selena Bean
"Did you blow it, really?"
Every time my sisters get involved, I crumble. Food in our house was always a source of joy and they don't all see this new way of eating as normal. Darlene will never give up meat and Marlena will never give up cake. As for Charlene, we're at the mercy of her and her bakery boxes.
But as long as they are not around, and they are not around all the time, I can stay the course. Up the sails me hearties, we're back on the high seas, braving fair weather and foul, but we shall cross to the other side.
No, I haven't blown it, just indulged in a bit of living when it happened my way because deprivation is not my style.
I may have veered off course, but I'm still sailing. Wind and tide are no match for this old pirate!
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