Being Monitored...

Today is not a normal day with regards to activity but completely typical with regards to food, ie it is 3pm and I haven't eaten a single thing. So as I type I am tucking in to something grabbed from the University's cafe bar.

I'm not usually in University on a Tuesday. My work (the day job) is really fantastic in that they let me do a 'compressed week' which means working all of my hours over four days and then taking off every Friday to work on my thesis. However, today I was subjected to the dreaded  PhD 'monitoring event', so I had to swap my days around somewhat.

I commute in and live around 40 mins from the University (on a good day and, let's face it, the A55 doesn't often have 'good days') so left around 8.10am in order for me to be in, arrived, set up and settled in time for my presentation at 9.30am with some of my fellow History/Archaeology PhD students having the same day as me. We had all presented by 12.30pm and then we each had individual interviews after lunch.
Due to me going first (I think it was in chronological order with regards to our research and being the only archaeologist in the room today it was inevitable as my research preceeds the others by around 2000 years!) the lunch break wasn't actually long enough for me to get lunch before my interview (apart from an amazing 'Wild Encounter' tea with egg timer for measuring strength and length of infusion- love it!). Hence why I am only just eating now.

Wild Encounter tea with three egg timers for measuring the strength of infusion

About three weeks ago I would have had this under control. I would have prepared my breakfast last night and it would have been in a portable container so I could have eaten it at Uni (Slimming World 'Overnight Oats'- genius!) and I would have been shopping so I would always have a handy MugShot to hand for lunch. But I am currently not in a state of organisation which means I haven't eaten a thing, just lots of black coffee (at least not accompanied by a rollie which have now been completely rejected from my lifestyle).

This is the trap, and this is why I fell spectacularly off the wagon yesterday. I didn't have anything prepared to eat and didn't want to eat anything naughty so I didn't eat until I left work, which is silly. By this time I was so hungry and fell into my danger area- the petrol station. I perhaps wouldn't have stopped if my tank wasn't completely empty (I tend to drive until I have less than ten miles left in the tank for some reason) but the garage is where I originally fell down when I put on weight a few years ago- it's so easy to snack and drive! So not only did I snack and drive but then went home and ordered a curry- and not even a particularly healthy one. Honestly, what's wrong with me!

Don't get me wrong, I have never been a huge size and I feel lucky for that as the amount of biscuits I can put away is more than the cookie monster, but I have been a lot more comfortable with my weight the last year or so. I was at my target weight for my wedding earlier this year (a honeymoon, a second holiday and a fun-summer-turning-30 later and I have put on a stone, eek!) and I now need to head back to where I was happiest and healthiest and try to stay there this time.

So, I have grabbed something from the Uni cafe and thanks to Slimming World being so flexible I picked up a noodle pot. No, not a pot noodle, but something which is much more healthy. I used the Syns calculator to  work out what the 'damage' would be and it is only 1.5 syns thanks to its free food allowance (yes, you can eat carbs with Slimming World and no, you don't have to count every single thing you put in your mouth!). It seems too good to be true as it is very tasty and should fill me up until dinner. However, as that is probably six hours away (we eat late due to hubby's profession) I may pick up a banana or something similar later.

I have about an hour and a half before I meet up with the other PhDers to go for a celebratory 'It's over for another year!' drink (diet coke for me, or maybe a quick sole G&slimlineT) so I will go over my notes from my interview (it went really well by the way, will have a draft of my entire thesis finished within a year, phew!) and then pop down to check out the new PostGrad hub which has a drop in session today to see what they are offering. As I live away I try to make an effort to see things and make contacts where I can as doing a PhD can be quite lonely.

I was supposed to go to the library to return an overdue book but I brought the wrong book with me. Great! I'm not at my best at 8.10am in the morning. No exercise today as no time but have my Street Fit dance class tomorrow at 7pm so hope to be able to do day job, potentially drive to Bangor, return book, do a little work and then be in Conwy for 7pm for dance class. It's unlikely I will manage all of this, especially as I have to average 9.25 hours a day at work to enable me to take one day off a week, but it's good to have something to aim for, right? Wish me luck!