My new regime is going well, despite a busy 2 days being back at work in London by day and out by night.  One of the secrets to success (and saving money !) is to take food to work with me.

On both days I took in breakfast of a banana mashed in to a tupperware pot, mixed in with yogurt, chia seeds, 30 g oats and almond milk then topped with blueberries.  One day I used this yogurt made from coconut milk which was delicious.

I have just noticed it was a month out of date – oops.  It tasted ok though.

Breakfast was eaten at my desk with a cup of tea.

Lunch was also eaten at work; tuna in spring water, mixed with mayonnaise and served with lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber.

I popped out at lunch time for a walk and stopped for a skinny latte.  I am always rushing about and eating/drinking while I work so I decided to stop for half an hour and enjoy the drink.

Later in the afternoon I snacked on some raw veggies I had taken in to work.  These helped me to resist the Baklava a colleague had brought me back from the Turkish cafe.

That was actually me done for the day.  Yes, I ate nothing for the remainder of the day or evening after this snack.  I had 1081 calories which weirdly was exactly the same as the day before!  I met Lucy and Jacintha after work, who I worked with many years ago.  I resisted the wine and stuck to Diet Coke.  It is customary in the City to just go out for drinks and not eat so despite being out with them until 10:30 pm, we had no food.  My drinks were zero calorie so another light day.  Oh yes, I CAN DO IT 🙂

Deja Vue!  Same breakfast as yesterday.

Lara and Harvey met me for lunch and we went to Wagamama’s where I had the Pad Thai with chicken and prawns.  Wagamama’s dishes are surprisingly high in calories.  This was nearly 800 calories!

I had a miso soup with pickled vegetables too.

In the evening I was meeting up with my family in Chinatown and I decided to walk there.  If I had gone the most direct route it would have been 2 miles but I went for a bit of a detour.

I walk a lot along the South Bank and decided for a change to cross the Thames on the Millennium Bridge and walk along the North Bank instead.

This is the view towards St.Paul’s as I walked over the bridge.

My Dad used to take us for walks around London and he used to say look up and indeed you should.  If you just look in the ubiquitous plate glass windows at eye level you miss all the lovely architectural detail of the buildings above.

View towards St.Paul’s Cathedral from Ludgate Circus.

The Law Courts on Fleet Street.

The pub, opposite.

I was at University near here and always enjoying walking these streets.

This area of London is so familiar to me.

Yet also changed and different.  But always a pleasure to walk through.I walked past Covent Garden so nearly there.

I was meeting them in Chinatown.  No time for supermarket shopping though.

Lara chose the restaurant.  It was good.  The service was attentive and polite, the decor was all a bit dark but they had booths to sit in which we all like.  The price was average towards high for this part of town for standard dishes but they also had more expensive dishes (we didn’t have the Wagyu beef or other such delicacies though 🙂 ).

We shared some duck to start with.  I just had 1 pancake with plum sauce, cucumber,  spring onion and a modest amount of duck.

All the food was good and the portions were generous.

I had kung pho chicken, broccoli in oyster sauce and egg fried rice.  I only had one small bowl of rice and a small portion of my chicken and lots of broccoli.  However, I did also have some sweet and sour chicken which I think is probably the best I have ever tasted.  It was cooked with pineapple and pomegranate so the sauce was good but it was the texture that was so amazing.  The batter made them crispy and chewy and they were large enough pieces to contain succulent chicken.  I do sometimes wonder if a chicken has been near the sweet and sour chicken.  So I ended up having 4 pieces and they were quite large.  More the size of goujons than the standard nuggets.  I also ate lots of the peppers and onions.

I didn’t calculate calories and I know I would have a had a high days intake but I did walk a lot and I ate small portions so hopefully not too much damage.

I did keep off the booze again and stuck to jasmine tea.

We finished our evening at The Odeon in Leicester Square where we a watched Jack The Giant Slayer in 3D which was really entertaining.  I had no sweets even though the others all had some.  Even James who never eats sweets decided to buy some.  I resisted.I am pleased that I have had 2 days at work and 2 nights out and not eaten excessively or consumed anything really bad.  No alcohol, no chips, crisps, sweets, cakes, biscuits or any kind of snacks at all, even though I have been offered them and they have been eaten around me.  I will do this!