Smaggle

Play to your strengths.

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I usually avoid writing ‘diet’ posts because it seems to make people think that I have an eating disorder. FYI, I’m drinking red wine as I write this and I had a very sensible four squares of chocolate for dessert. I’m fine. I promise. I’ve also got enough junk in my trunk to last through months of unhealthy dieting before my stomach eats itself, so if we could all take chill pills before we proceed, I’d really appreciate it.

I’m actually writing this post after a few days of pretty hideous gastro in which I could stomach nothing but crackers, rice and dry toast. After three days of eating only refined, white carbs I feel like a slug. A bloaty, pasty slug. Normally I’m all over the good carbs – oats, grains, brown rice – and I’m bloody good at avoiding the nastier ones. If you’re keen on ditching the white stuff, here are a few tips to keep you in control without turning you into the person that asks for quinoa at a Chinese food court.

Take Away Asian Foods

Instead of heaping your beef stirfry on a pile of white rice, why not shred some carrot and lettuce and have a Thai Beef Salad instead?

Breakfast

Ditch your thin, tasteless toast for a slice of thick grainy bread or better yet have some porridge. Fruit and yogurt? A smoothie? There’s no excuse for eating toasted cardboard for breakfast.

Eating Out

If you’re eating communal Asian food, skip the rice. If you’re eating Italian, go for some chicken breast with a side of vegies. Order a main meal, with a side of salad. There are always options available, you may just have to ask for them or pay a little extra.

Lunch

If you need something more substantial for lunch than a tuna salad, add half a cup of brown rice, some lentils or chickpeas. Starchy white crackers or potato chips are unnecessary.

Dinner

Have what everyone else is having, but substitute. Spaghetti bolognaise? Grate some zucchini and have your mince sauce on that instead. Home made pizza? Make it on whole grain mountain bread instead of doughy pizza base. Stir fry? Replace the mountain of white rice with half a cup of brown. Easy peasy.

Snacks

Fruit, a boiled egg, carrot sticks, celery sticks or a skim flat white.

It’s really not that scary, you just have to be wary of  empty calorie foods. You are far better off eating 100 calories worth of cheese or nuts, which will provide essential fats and protein, rather than 100 calories worth of salty, white crackers which offer no nutritional value.

Admittedly, I’m not perfect. I’ll grab a tea biscuit with my coffee at a cafe or have a bowl of pasta for dinner if I’m too knackered to cook anything else, but most of the time, I simply respect my body too much. As the devoted girlfriend of a coeliac, I can also say that in general, wheat is not your friend. I’m not suggesting that you start buying gluten-free bread and baking with rice flour but honestly? Wheat was never really intended to be digested. It’s thought that the making of bread began in Egypt around 10,000 BC and was made in times of famine, as wheat crops were plentiful. They refined the wheat to make flour and invented ‘bread’ to stave off starvation. Since then bread has been the main staple in most countries during times of famine and war. It’s also food that can be stored for long periods of time and can be kept in reserves for when times get tough. I like to think of wheat or any refined white carbohydrate as ‘emergency’ food and should be consumed occasionally. This information is entirely unsubstantiated BUT, it comes straight from the mouth of a trained dietician. Plus it just makes sense.

I don’t want to spoil your fun though, so please, have a delicious slice of cake with a friend on the weekend or plow your way through a bag of crisps at the movies but just remember. Famine food = emergencies only. So if your stomach has eaten your arse and has started chowing down on its own lining, get yourself a baguette. Pronto.

Happy munching!

Worn on a quick dash out of the house to get coffee to keep me buzzing for a long evening of deadlines.

* Dress from Gypsy Road (Canberra ladies born mid-80s – Remember Gypsy Road? Near where Felt is? Closed about ten years ago? Yep. That’s how old this dress is.)

* Tights from Big W

* Boots from Red Paths in Canberra

* Coat from DFO Melbourne (it was $450 reduced to $150 and it’s pure boiled wool. Score.)

* Pashmina gift for my 21st

* Headband from Daiso

* Ring made by me

I got two different emails this week from two different people saying (quite nicely), that I NEVER smile. I do so too smile. Constantly. I just feel goofy smiling in outfit shots, like I’m in a K-Mart catalogue. So here I am smiling just for you! Look, there’s a dimple and everything.

Have you ever seen the film Amelie? In the early scenes of the film, a few characters are described by their unique likes and dislikes. Amandine Poulain likes cleaning out her purse and dislikes puckered fingers, and Amelie likes skipping stones and dislikes drivers who do not watch the road in old movies.

It’s been a while since I asked my readers to introduce themselves and I would love it if you would take the time to tell me your name and write a short Amelie list for me.

I’ll start…

I’m Carly.

I like to eat cereal from a mug instead of a bowl.

I dislike it when people pull lint from their pockets and drop it on the floor.

I like it when my father laughs and his cheeks devour his eyes.

I dislike two-tone watches.

I like it when old people enjoy ice cream cones.

I dislike people who wear shirts with missing buttons.

Please do share. The more obscure, the better. I’m so pleased to meet the real you!

You can also share on twitter and facebook too.

Have you all met my new blogger BFF Amy from Just a Titch? I’ve linked to her a few times and we’ve tweeted about important things like the lack of taffy in Australia, romantic comedies and our mutual love of Sarah Von. She’s all kinds of awesome. Teacher, writer, weight loss guru. Need I say more? Here she is.

This week, I had a rather unpleasant situation in which someone I dislike pointed out that I’d dropped the ball on something, as well as unleashing a host of other criticisms. At first, I thought it had just ruffled my feathers, but when I couldn’t shake it, I realized the worst thing ever: they were right. Is there anything worse than someone you sort of hate pointing out something you sort of hate about yourself?

The answer is no, friends. No, there is not.

If I’m being honest with myself, I have dropped the ball recently, on a lot of things. I haven’t been Crossfitting as often as I want to or should be. I haven’t been the educator I hope to be in some ways. I’ve been indulging more than is healthy for me, or than helps support my goals. Budgeting has been a little lax, if you will. In short: I’ve been letting myself off the hook for things I want to achieve. We’ve all been there, right? Please, please tell me I’m not alone in feeling like I’m not measuring up—not to other people, but to my own goals and expectations.

And it stops now.

There really is nothing worse than disappointing yourself.

Here are my tips and plans for getting back on track when you know you’ve done less than your best, and you want to fix it:

Stop, and assess the damage.

Don’t be dramatic. Is it really the biggest deal? Or, conversely: are you minimizing something that requires a lot of fixing? Take a second, figure out exactly what you can salvage or what you need to do.

Pout. Get angry. Whatever.

When my “situation” happened, I took time to go off campus, grab a coffee and shed a few tears in the privacy of my car. I let myself have my moment. I thought terrible things about the person who said the upsetting thing, got really down on myself for sucking, etc. And then…

Forgive. Move on.

It’s fine to be mad for a little while; moping for a week, not so much. Forgive yourself. Decide not to beat yourself up for things any more. Let it go. I know, easier said than done. But if you’re looking back at what you did, you’re not focused on what you can do now.

Make a plan.

Make a list of all the ways you’ve let yourself off the hook. Mine was rather long: not eating as well as I could, not hitting Crossfit three times a week, not handling some business at work, not cleaning my apartment for 15 minutes a night. For me, it included purchasing healthy lunch food and some good snacks for the next few weeks at work, forfeiting a night out in order to make Crossfit, re-teaching something and committing to really, really cleaning the apartment.

Don’t let it happen again.

When you’ve experienced the feeling of really, truly disappointing yourself, you don’t want to do it again. Figure out how to stop it from happening again. For me, it’s meal planning, picking set workout days, coming up with some killer lesson plans and resolving to do my 15 minutes of cleaning immediately after dinner. By taking steps to avoid the things that caused the problem in the first place, it’s easier to keep it from happening again.

Start now.

Sometimes, things take a bit to be resolved. But don’t let that hold you back. Find a tiny, manageable step and take it. Skip buying coffee and move $5 to your savings account. Decline lunch out so you’re sure to eat your salad. Apologize. But do something that sets you into forward motion towards your goal. We’ve all heard that thing about eating an elephant one bite at a time. Start bitin’.

Ask for help.

If you need help being accountable, don’t know how to tackle something, etc. it never hurts to have someone else help you stick to your goals. You can’t do it all yourself, sometimes. That’s okay.

Hopefully, you’ll be feeling good as new again soon.

How do you handle being disappointed in yourself?

I bought these pants on impulse a few weeks ago from one of those shopping sites like Ozsale. I’m so slack I can’t even remember which one. Anyway, they have pockets and everything so I’m calling them a fitted cotton pant and will not be pleased if anyone calls them leggings. I’m still choosing to opt for bum coverage though. One can never be too careful.

* Fitted cotton non-leggings pants from… Ozsale.. or something
* Dress from ebay about ten years ago. Seen here in 2008.
* Cardigan from All Saints Spitalfields
* Shoes from Wittner

I’m rather enjoying my camera remote… saves me from tottering backwards and forwards to the camera timer in my heels.

Oh by the way I’m only a few followers away from 700 on Twitter… I do love round numbers. If you aren’t on Twitter then feel free to give me some Facebook loving… I’m pretty close to 400 there.

Now, before you ask, no. That’s not a picture of the apple berry crumble that I made. Reason being? My man is a fatty fatty boom batty who ate the whole damn thing before I had a chance to photograph it. I suspect it will be a dessert regular from now on, so I promise to photograph it for you next time. Before Mr Smaggle inhales it. In all fairness though, mine looked pretty similar. Except that it was in a round dish… and I didn’t nonchalantly spill blueberries around it.

Ingredients

1 kilo of Granny Smith Apples

50gms unsalted butter

185gms castor sugar

1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon

500gms frozen berries

300gms of gluten free shortbread biscuits

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees celcius. Peel apples and chop into 1cm pieces. Just FYI this takes waaaaaay longer than you can possibly imagine. Perhaps sip on a glass of red and watch an episode of Gossip Girl while you do this. Melt 20gms of butter in a medium sized saucepan and cook apples for 5 to 6 minutes or until soft.

2. Add berries (straight from the freezer – score!), cinnamon and sugar. Cover and cook for about ten minutes until fruit releases lots of juice. Using a strainer or slotted spoon transfer fruit only into a 2L pie dish.

3. Bring juice to boil and reduce until it turns into a syrup. Add more sugar if need be. Pour syrup over fruit.

4. Crush shortbread biscuits into crumbs. You can use a food processor or just mash at them with your hands. It’s very stress relieving. Sprinkle crumbs over the fruit and cook for 35 minutes until golden brown.

5. Serve warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or gourmet yogurt. If you’re a total show off like me, you can serve it with home-made vanilla bean yogurt. Snap.

Oh and obviously you can make this with wheaty shortbread, although if you’re making non-gluten free crumble just use oats. They are delicious on crumbles.

Happy crumbling!

Any questions? Tweet me or face… book… me. I will never be comfortable using ‘facebook’ as a verb.

Make dessert? On a weeknight? A simple apple crumble? Pikelets with jam?

Try mulberry colored eyeshadow? Do your standard smoky eye but with dark red instead of grey?

Start your day with a mug of hot water? With fresh lemon juice?

Wear coral? Bring out the winter flush in your cheeks? Or the summer blush?

Braid your hair? A messy rope for ladies with longer locks? Small side plaits for girls with bobs?

Sit on a park bench? Feed the birds? Do nothing else?

Paint your nails bright red and wear a giant turquoise ring?

Keep under eye gel in the fridge? For a cool zing in the morning?

Do you want to hear something really cute? My dad has a best friend. Total bromance style. Bless. Anyway my dad’s BFF’s wife and her mother (did you get that?) happen to be amazing artists in print and ceremics respectively.

On the 6th August they are hosting a grand opening exhibition of their latest works to fundraise for WOW Working Wonders.

Have you heard of WOW? They are an amazing Canberra based charity that provide clothing, accessories and shoes for women to wear while attending job interviews, when they don’t have access to these items. It’s an incredibly niche but incredibly important charity that has been helping women in crisis situations, refugees and early school leavers to prepare for and find employment in the ACT.

It’s on Saturday 6th August, at Form Studio and Gallery, 1/30 Aurora Avenue in Queanbeyan. Tickets are $20 and that includes drinks and hors d’oeuvres.

It’s a fantastic event run by two very talented ladies. So if you fancy an afternoon of art and wine simply email primkowa@bigpond.com to buy tickets.

Please support Canberra artists and charities. It makes kittens happy. Seriously.

If you have any questions you can comment here or on Twitter or Facebook.