Tips

I’m trying to figure out how to get back to the weight I was (just saying eat less run more doesn’t quite solve it). But these are all great tips, I agree with most of them…

http://likes.com/beauty/how-to-keep-the-weight-off?pid=78191&utm_source=mylikes&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=ml&utm_term=25791015

When it comes to weightloss and actually keeping the weight off, we all have to realise it’s about changing your life for the better – which means “sacrificing” laziness, fast-food etc.

I wouldn’t want to call it “sacrificing” it is more of a “trade” for the better :). But – changes in your daily life are unavoidable, walking more, less screen-time, eating differently (both in terms of what and WHEN). Then there are the small things.. like – not wearing baggy clothes. It is really important! Think about it! When wearing clothes that would fit even if you grew two sizes or more – how would you realise you did before it is too late?

When it comes to food – after all my diet-adventures i cannot find anything positive with artificial sweeteners, they are so much sweeter than real sugar, honey or syrup, they don’t taste as good and, from my experiences with aspartame, sugar-alcohols like Erythitol and so on, I’ve learned that they give you more of a sweet-tooth! You eventually get used to the super-sweet flavor! Stevia which is a natural sweetener, is also very very sweet compared to normal sugar. And also, many of the artificial ones have been reported as harmful…

Junk-food is just a no-no, of course you can eat it once in a while – but NEVER make junk-food, candy, ice-cream, soda or any other unhealthy food a habit! Especially not latte’s haha

You should, however, make water a habit, even an addiction if you can. Staying hydrated will make you look more awesome, your thoughts clearer and your belly quiet :). But don’t drink too much, (it can make your braincells explode and well… kill you).

I’ll just add: EXERCISE! Run, jog, swim, jump rope, dance – AND just move around throughout the day!

The bottom line – Calories is not something I think is good to count, once you develop this habit it is easy to slip into an unhealthy behavior like, say “a McDonald’s burger is just 500 kcal, I’ll eat this for breakfast and I’ll have 1500 kcal left, I can three bars of chocolate” NO! It will eventually make you eat more, get fat and perhaps even develop an eating disorder! (trust me I know)

However, it is good to know what foods are high in calories (like mayo, butter, nuts, some seeds, olive oil etc.) which ones are low (watermelon, leafy greens, shrimps etc.) so that you know what you can eat little and much of. It is also good to know portion size, but I highly recommend to stop eating right before you feel full. It is not easy to do this, but with the right portion size, you’ll manage 🙂

~Yours, Sockfusion

Korean Sushi-thingy

Decided to make some sushi for me and my little sister for dinner. One single problem – no fish at home. Therefore I made sushi, in a kind of Korean style. Like kimbap, but less Korean. She loves mashed green peas, so I made some – to replace wasabi. We also had champignons, shrimps, some parboiled bok choi, cucumber and kimchi!

Other than that, I made some sookju namul…

Now.. my tummy is full XD
Will rehearse some biology, pack a bag for the weekend and after that – SLEEP!!

~SockFusion

김치 – Kimchi

Ok. Bought some kimchi (simple version, just chinese cabbage) a few days ago, since I was really curious about what it really tasted like. It tastes like sweet chili sauce, but not as sweet. I’ll absolutely buy this stuff again, – or even make my own? (It seems easy, but most asian things are more complicated than they appear… (good) sushi is one example). For those of you who haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about when I say ‘kimchi’, I’ll explain;

Kimchi is a korean accompaniment to food. It is basically; fermented vegetables with red chili, garlic and sometimes ginger. The most common type of kimchi is based on chinese cabbage, but there are all kinds of variations, with radishes, leek etc. Korean people eat it, together with almost everything and anything. You could say, that it is used like sweet chili sauce or soy – either as an accompaniment or as an ingredient in dishes. There are even dishes specially made with kimchi, like kimchi stew (kimchi jjigea 김치찌개) or kimchi pancakes (kimchi buchim 김치부침).

One thing I’d like to try is cooking Nokducheon (녹두전), which is small ‘pancakes’ based on mung beans. Would be interesting, the only problem is the rarity of the ingredients. It’s not very often we have mung beans, bean sprouts or sesame oil in our kitchen… ~ㅋㅋㅋ

I only ate half of it, so I put the rest in a small glass jar – which there has been swedish “sill” in once! Glass jar changes nationality in half a second, from pure swede to real korean in an instant!

~한나

Hiking in Rain

I wanted to post this when it was still fresh, smoking hot.. no wait, literally that would be – soaking wet instead…

This weekend I went out hiking with my scout patrol. The weather was nice when we left but half an hour after we started walking… the rain came. Pouring down, cats & dogs, sheep, flamingos – everything. The hood on my jacket saved me from drowning and I had a cover for my backpack (Granite Gear Vapor Meridian Ki) but… there was nothing shielding my legs from the rain, since I was wearing jeans. I was soaking wet, as the bandage on my knee.. that unexplainable wound, hm. Several kilometers of walking , up hills and down the hills again, later we ate lunch under some fir trees* the others ate tortellini and me and a friend had some goulash soup with macaroni :). Eating outdoors is always so different from eating indoors, especially if you’ve been working/walking/running etc. – you have more appetite, also things taste better. Could be something with all the oxygen in the woods, I don’t know :P.

We continued our walking and eventually we arrived at the place where we were going to sleep. Now, most people probably think of tents when sleeping outdoors is mentioned. Now, that is too much indoors for a scout. We sleep in “vindskydd“, “weatherbreaks” which is “half a tent” you could say, it protects us from the rain and the wind as well (if it’s positioned correctly). We find fallen trees, preferably very thin (no more than 20 cm diameter, base) and tie some to trees we’ve chosen (I can’t explain the construction since it’s something you learn from watching). Then we throw a big piece of tarpaulin over our “vindskydd-skeleton” and tighten it up (so that rain-water can’t make seas and lakes in sinkages). One side is wide open, this is how we sleep.

We were walking somewhere near “Romeleåsen”.. or perhaps even on it! More pictures below!! 😀

Of course we have inflatable matresses, pillows and sleeping bags. But, it is still cold outdoor air we’re talking about and we’re in Sweden – so temperatures can sink pretty low. This time, april, it got down to about 3°C or almost 0°C. It was cold, REALLY cold. I know, because my sleeping bag isn’t working. I lied there, keeping myself awake so that I could keep on moving my toes about** and stretching my legs.. I got terrible cramps since I couldn’t stop shivering. I sound querulous, don’t I?

Well, when it was about 5.20 I got up and went to the “vindskydd” where my little sister was sleeping. Luckily, her sleeping bag was big enough to contain us both (and she’s nice enough to let me sleep there). Thank you Selma! :). Later on, we woke up and made breakfast. I cooked some oatmeal and put a package of chocolate oat milk in boiling water.. it was wonderful***… I also ate three sandwiches with jam and.. salami? Well, they had no butter and no cheese… so I pretended the salami was cheese. It worked XD. (marmalade or jam + cheese = awesome).

We packed our bags and left the place, heading towards a place where we could eat lunch. This time I ate some tomato-soup… while almost drowning in my own jacket. I was so damn WET and COLD. Could. Not. Stop. SHIVERING!!! However, the warm soup made me feel a little better and we continued walking towards the place were we got dropped off the other day. Eventually we got there and met up with our parents (now I sound like a kindergarten kid).

So, why do I do this? If I get all wet, walk all day, work like a maniac just to get shelter and almost freeze my toes off, why do I do this? Well, when doing this together with some of my closest friends and many other nice people, helping each other – all those things above are nothing. Of course, freezing isn’t something I’d gladly do – but I still had lots of fun. When people reach my age, they hang out with their either friends in school or at parties. I’m not a party-animal (nor human), neither are most of my friends, so this is what we do instead. We train leadership, teamwork, working together with people you don’t know, a lot of important things – while having fun 😛

Some say best friends last forever (nothings eternal though), but I’ve seen how so many people betray each other, how they do not care for each other. I might now know about how the future looks, but what I do know is that, my friends are not the kind of people who’d ever let me down. That much I can tell, when we suddently fit four people in a tiny tiny wooden shelter which probably was made for two, or when we’re the slowest patrol, since everyone waits for the injured. That much I can tell, which probably is a lot more than what the party-animals know about each other (nothing bad about parties).

* They don’t spread their roots as much as deciduous trees, therefore they stand closer to each other and work as.. a bad umbrella… but still an umbrella! (Not a sprinkler, at least).

** Last time I used this sleeping bag, my toes got really cold. When I woke up I couldn’t feel them anymore and they were all blue. Pretty scary since I was hiking a bit alone that time.

 *** This is what I’m talking about when I say difference between eating indoors and eating outdoors.

Some strange thing.. 

There were LOADS of these.. and I don’t even know what they are!

Commonly found in swedish fir tree-woods…

DO NOT touch toad… or lick on them (I didn’t) just don’t…

// Yours, sleepy SockFusion ^______^

Sugar & Irony

Just finished the recipe for Digestive Biscuits which i baked three days ago. So now I’m just sitting here, I’m “ill” today… was freezing and sweating at the same time yesterday and I almost fell asleep during the half math-lesson (not because of the teacher this time). I decided this was best, since we have a biology exam tomorrow and I’m not very prepared. ~I’ll be studying today 🙂

Other than that, I’ve started reading about sugar – which is a part of everyone’s daily life nowadays. It is very well-written and  easy to understand, even if you’re a novice in the subject. The author of the book (Sockerdetektiven hittar vägen till bättre mat / The sugar detective finds the way to better food) is a swedish nutritionist and health pedagogue by the name Maj Östberg Rundquist. Her aim is (translated into english by me) this:

“I want to contribute to increasing the interest in good food. The more you learn about how food affects health, the easier it is to choose healthy foods over food with questionable ingredients and low nutritive content. ” – Maj Östberg Rundquist

When reading her book I get icy shivers every now and then – because even though I know more than the average 17-year-old about food, I didn’t know things like ~Examplia gratia; That they dyed sugar with blue colour so that it get that snowy white colour. It is so damn unneccessary! I will return to this subject when I’ve read a bit more of this wonderful book, in the meanwhile – you can go check out the webpage belonging to her book, here.

But there is also irony in this – because I’ve been posting so many sugary recipes lately and I just started my day with a glass of chocolate oat milk, which contains sugar… But! You have to take things “with a pinch of salt”, baking is so much fun! 😀

// SockFusion

Brussel Bickies & Apple Chips

Since writing down the recipes and editing the pictures has taken so much time – I will now write about yesterday when it is almost morning … today! (No, it is not because I have to – it is because I WANT to…)

Yesterday (I wish I could say today) I woke up, awkwardly early for being on a weekend at 8 o’clock. Had some breakfast and started doing my homework. (Yes, you did read what you just read). Math, of course with all the sinus, theorems and formulas. It feels good when you’ve read a little more and finally understand things… Though, my head will still be spinning when my teacher is explaining something in class since he’s explaining new things when nobody’s done with the last thing he spoke about. Well well..

After a bit of math I spontaneously looked up a recipe for apple chips, went downstairs to the kitchen and put some in the oven (they were in there for 3 hours so I meanwhile I did homework). I still don’t know why.. but I did, and they were awesome! I also re-roasted my muesli..

For some reason, I didn’t eat lunch.. Instead I ate dinner 10 hours after breakfast… hm, broccoli included!

Later, I started baking – Brussel Bickies! And ate some, accompanied by apple and my obsession – Oat milk . The biscuits were done by 12 pm yesterday and I’ve been sitting here since.. just writing and stuff… XD

ok, the birds are starting to sing now and I think it is getting light outside… I better get to bed, 3,5 more hours and I’ve been awake for 24 hours… hehe

Yours, SockFusion

To me, a day off is…

… a day off – of course! But to my teachers, it is a day to study extra hard. That includes weekends and vacations. Sometimes, I just don’t agree with the education system, I mean – if we’re given so much homework and there’s so many exams planned that we have to study late at nights and on vacations and weekends to get good grades… How can they expect us to be awake and ALERT during the lessons?

It is an eternal struggle, exemplia gratia; Math!

• In order to understand what my math teacher* says during the lessons I have to study at home
• In order to be able to study at home I first have to understand what my teacher said during the lesson

In the beginning of the year, when we don’t have that much homework, things are fine. But then they give us more and more, eventually we have to prioritize the subjects that we aren’t allowed to fail and the subjects we’d rather study and been really good at – has to suffer. This means that we’ll get at least decent grades in the subjects we have to pass but we don’t get the high grades in the subjects we like and could have gotten really good at. Everything is rushed… students are being wornout since the teachers have expectations but doesn’t give us the right amount of time!

* But… it doesn’t really matter if I’m awake or not when listening to my math teacher – nobody ever understands what he says anyway…

So, today was a day off to me. I ate breakfast (flatbread! flatbread!) at 8 o’clock, not half past five as usual, watched some tv and surfed the web. I told myself yesterday to study – but a day off obviously inevitably IS a day off… Around two o’clock I went to Malmö with my mum, to pick up my sisters (they still had to go to school hehe…) and buy some shoes. Also, my little sisters friends mum (connections!) is a physiotherapist and she had offered to take a look at my knee! So she did and she said there was a lot of gnarls in my muscles… therefore she massaged it. It hurt, A LOT . So now it feels like my thigh/crural and knee has been hit by something… like a… physiotherapist. It feels like a big big bruise and it smells tiger balm/liniment. But! It does feel better, not as rickety anymore!

After some kneading we went food-shopping and I got THE LAST OAT MILK IN THE WHOLE STORE! *phew* I was lucky… I also got a free pack of bread… hehe (coupon). We went home and ate wheel-macaroni and mincemeat sauce (very common dish among swedish families with children). After that I tried roasting some muesli… unfortunately.. I should have added more syrup – which I don’t want to because it makes it unhealthy… But! I could eat it as ‘dessert’ with fruit then! healthy dessert!

If I make a good muesli – I’ll put up a recipe here  

Oh! Almost forgot! When I sat in front of my desk, surfing the web I heard something twitter and saw this little fellow… He/she is a Eurasian Tree Sparrow (“Pilfink” in swedish)… Wish it was a Blue Tit (“Blåmes” in swedish) though since they’re so cute..

Yours, SockFusion 

Drama

Despite the title, we’ll begin with the slightly “calmer” news.

• I’m free from school tomorrow! (A thing that only makes me and the rest of the people in my class happy, but still.. shared happiness is a little bit greater?) And… I still have a ton of homework to ‘machete’ my way through or something…
• Ate dinner with dad and sisters today , although I’m still a bit frightened of pizza.. because of one particular ‘incident’ a few months ago… (believe me when I say.. you don’t want to know…) I actually ate some today – Aaand I also had some.. Panna cotta – for the first time ever! 0_o It was good, but I think I can make a better one, hehe… will be one of my projects to come ;P
• Last week I ran too much, which resulted in this terrible pain in my left knee. Just a month left to the 5 km race in school! I have to improve my time, but things aren’t looking very good right now.. School nurse told me to go see a doctor
• I’m obsessed with oat milk . I really really like the flavour of it, since it reminds me of the milk that’s left when you’ve eaten some sugary muesli or something (granola/crunchy/start…). And I like oats. I believe this is one of my benefits, just as I like broccoli and dislike hamburgers, sponge-cake and low-quality chocolate… those things are impossible for me to eat…

And then there’s the ‘DRAMA’ of todays post… which is a video. I can’t tell you anything else about it. Just watch it… because it is just simply AMAZING.. I wish I was there…

Well, good night to you all – I’ll try to get some of the sleep I missed last night .. and the night before that.. >_>

// SockFusion 

Baking ^_____^

So today I was baking – again. This time, a little healthier. I woke up at 10 am but I wasn’t hungry (you know why if you read my last post). So I decided to wait and started to bake at 12 am, – swedish tunnbröd (click for the recipe). It took me at least two hours and afterwards I took pictures for the recipe. I ended up eating my “breakfast” at 6 pm… – this really proves how much I ate yesterday XD. Anyhow, the pictures turned out great and the tunnbröd tasted awesomely – much better than the kind you buy in the stores, which is powdered with preservatives and stuff. 

Yours, SockFusion 

Ouch, my belly!

Today my mum invited some friends for dinner, so I vacuumcleaned the whole living room. Then we ate massive amounts of salmon (both smoked and pan-fried), avocado, roe sauce, everything. A few hours later, my sister baked her famous mudcake and some meringues. I couldn’t eat any of it (I’m allergic to egg) so I baked some oatmeal cookies. We ate these things with banana, icecream, cream.. ugh – I try not to think about food right now because I’m so damn full of it my belly hurts! 

Though somehow I surfed the web and ended up finding this video of some people making a cake. Compared to what I do – this is set in a complete other dimension of baking and confection… Have a look!

Yours, resting from food-attack, SockFusion (in pain)