Oxford and dinner parties

Another weekend has flown by - partly lazy, partly hectic, partly on plan, and partly flying by the seat of my pants.

Friday I got away from work after a very productive morning, and realised that a bit of food shopping was in order. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, food shopping when ravenously hungry requires a Herculean effort of self-restraint not to come away with the whole shop in your trolley.

Luckily for me, I managed to pull that off and left with a basket of tastey but healthy food. The makings of picnic style sandwiches was left in favour of pumpkin-stuffed pasta which is easy to portion out and eat with salad. The cakes were reluctantly abandoned in favour of a single wholemeal scone fresh from the bakery counter to be eaten with posh but low sugar jam. Mission accomplished.

And so the rest of Friday passed in a blur of somewhat hormonal eating of low-fat and healthy snacks and food, until I finally got bored of thinking of what to eat next and forced myself out the door for a late evening walk. After that an early night and a sigh of relief that I hadn't overstepped my points.

Saturday dawned bright and sunny (and well rested), and I jumped in the car to meander through the sunny lanes and pretty countryside to Oxford to meet my schoolfriend Kate. (Slowly being the operative word, since I appear to have a notice on the front of my car, asking every slow and idiotic driver on the roads to wait til the very last minute before turning out agonisingly slowly in front of me, causing much hard braking, gesticulating, and gratuitous use of the horn. Grrrrrrrrr.)

Saturday was always going to be a challenge as I was out for the whole day and then off to a dinner party in the evening. The tactic therefore was to just keep making the best decisions I could and see how it turned out.

I decided to forego my usual weekend breakfast which has a few more points in it, in favour of my normal workday breakfast of Rice Krispies with skimmed milk which keeps me full up.

After a quick bus ride into town (Oxford has a very efficient and ridiculously cheap park and ride system, so it seems silly not to use it) we had a mooch round the shops, where I fell in love with the most beautiful dresses for a black-tie event I've got coming up in July. They looked fabulous, but the budget dictates that I'm not buying anything just yet on that front. Sob.

Lunch was at the lovely G & D's where a bagel with sun-dried tomatoes and Swiss cheese was duly scoffed, and a single scoop of their amazing homemade icecream (Dime Bar no less!) was wandered off with for a walk in the greens around Christchurch College.

More shopping followed, lots of catching up, and a small fruit smoothie and half a shared gluten-free brownie at afternoon tea.

After a pleasant drive home, there was just time to get changed, yell a quick greeting to my flatmate and then stroll across town and over the common in the late afternoon sunshine to Amanda and Steve's for dinner. Staying away from the alcohol and avoiding seconds was the tactic adopted for the evening, and home to bed for about 1am. Honestly? I was over points. But not nearly as over points as I could have been, and I'd added in some activity where I could so I was happy enough.

Now for a slight confession. I was meant to go biking yesterday with a new group, but I woke up at 7.30am and it was raining. I thought "I'll see what it's like in an hour or so and then make a decision on whether to go" and promptly fell back asleep and didn't wake up til 10am!! I guess I must have been more tired than I thought. So there went the biking. Or rather there didn't go the biking. Another hungry, hungry day instead but I held it together with more low-point snacks and did ok.

I'm still doing ok today too, so so far Saturday is the only off day I've had in a week and a half. Much better than anything I've managed recently.


- Posted from my iPhone