Excess Baggage – 20 January 2025

The thing about consequences is sometimes they take a little bit of catching up with you, but be assured they will catch up. Remember how last week I mentioned the scales had been kinder to me than I deserved? Well, dear reader, this week they caught up and I saw the small gain I deserved.

What had gone wrong? Not much, but enough. It wasn’t full-on self-sabotage – which we all know I’m incredible creative about – but the impact was similar.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m following a combination of the allowance (rather than the plan) of the CSIRO Total Wellbeing diet and the largely Mediterranean-style principles of Dr. Michael Mosley’s plans. Last week, while I tracked and meal planned, I strayed from both. There were days when I went over my bread and cereal allowance. Plus, by Wednesday (confession time), I’d blown my seven indulgences “points” for the week.

As this is more about real foods and not eliminating entire food groups, the most significant learning can be found in those indulgence points. Essentially, anything that doesn’t fit into the main food groups falls into indulgences, which means pretty much anything that’s been processed. Processed meat such as bacon (my bête noire) and ham fall into this category, as do sugar (and other sugar syrups), soft drinks, sweet treats, alcohol, etc. Even my (now) beloved low alcohol beer falls in here.

As a rough rule of thumb, each indulgence point is worth about 100 calories, although it’s more complex than that. Tracking these makes you think twice when you choose. For example, an average (150 ml) glass of red wine is 1 point, a 375 ml stubby of full-strength lager is 1.5 points, and a 330 ml can of Heineken 0.0 (no alcohol) is 0.7 points.

If I choose to put mayonnaise in my coleslaw dressing, each 20g tablespoon will cost me 1.5 indulgence points, whereas if I use creme fraiche (or sour cream), that reduces to 0.7 (0.3 for the reduced fat version), and if I use plain or Greek yoghurt instead I don’t have to touch my “indulgence” points at all as this qualifies as dairy. Plus, I prefer the lightness of the yoghurt. See what I mean about choice?

Another example is using whole coconut milk in a Thai green curry, which equals 1.3 per serving versus 0.6 per serving for the light version. Given that light coconut milk doesn’t give the right mouthfeel – and we’re not prepared to compromise on flavour – I choose not to have Thai green curry unless I have indulgences up my sleeve. Priorities.

What I’d been doing in the early days of Project Excess Baggage was saving indulgences for my Friday morning croissant (2.4), the occasional teaspoon of butter (for those occasions when only butter will do – each teaspoon is 0.3 indulgences), a glass (or two) of red wine on Saturday night, and my no alcohol beers. I get to satisfy my cravings without beating myself up.

Over the last couple of weeks, though, a few other treats have crept in – most notably the Golden Gaytime I had on Thursday afternoon. For those of you reading outside Australia, a Golden Gaytime is not what you might think. It’s a heavenly mix of toffee and vanilla ice cream with a chocolate coating and biscuit crumbs. It’s also a massive 2.3 indulgences. In my defence, it was 38 C, and the box had been sitting in the freezer since before Christmas, and (voice rises dramatically and hysterically) I just snapped. Alright?!

While this sounds complicated, it isn’t – there’s an app for it – and I hope that at some point it becomes a habit for me to know without having to constantly have it front of mind. My brain’s like that, you see – I know the calorie and nutrient values of most food items, but am I aware of it? Nope. Not when it’s on my plate. I’ve already told you about my issue with boundaries – unless I mindfully put them in place they don’t exist. Hence the allowances.

Anyways, my point is that there was no rhyme or reason as to why I slipped; I just made poor choices.

While there was some calorie creep, tracking has helped me know where that is and what I need to do to rein it back in. As the saying goes, you can’t expect to do the same thing everyday and expect a different result. (Insert shrugging emoji.)

A lot, however, did go right – especially on the exercise front. I want to talk a bit about exercise next week so won’t go too far into this today.

Recipe of the Week – Pea Gnocchi

Serve this with broad beans, extra peas, chopped soft leafy herbs (eg basil, parsley), some toasted pine nuts, perhaps some fried pancetta.

This recipe serves two, but we had it as a starter so there’s still enough for two lunches in the freezer.

Ingredients

• 300g peas (frozen are fine), cooked in boiling water for a couple of minutes, drained, and chilled in ice water to keep their lovely green colour
• 1 egg yolk
• 150g 00 pasta flour, plus extra for dusting

Blitz the peas in a food processor to form a smooth paste, add the egg yolk and flour and blitz again until it’s formed a lovely sticky, green dough.

Tip onto a floured surface and gently bring it together with your hands. It’s a messy job, but someone has to do it – flour on your hands will help.

Roll out into thick ropes about 1 cm in diameter and cut every 3 cms or so to make little rectangular green pea pillows. I press a fork lightly into them, but you don’t really need to if you can’t be faffed with this step.

Dust your tray and your gnocchi with more flour or semolina so they won’t stick together (trust me, their natural inclination is to do just that).

You can pop them in the fridge until you’re ready to cook, or get on with making whatever accompaniment you’re serving with them and tossing that all into the pan with some olive oil that you’ll be tossing your boiled gnocchi into … read on. We cooked some bacon and then tossed the gnocchi through the bacony oil, but, as I said, read on.

When you’re ready to cook your gnocchi, bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. Once boiling, carefully tip your gnocchi in. Don’t just upend the plate and push them in though – remember I told you about their natural inclination to stick together? Carefully, but quickly, plop them in one at a time. Once they’ve floated to the top, let them boil for another couple of minutes before fishing them out of the saucepan using a slotted spoon and tossing straight into the pan you’ve cooked your other bits in. Toss it all about a bit till every little pillow is coated and serve with a good dusting of parmesan (or pecorino) and maybe another cheffy drizzle of green olive oil. (Apologies, my pic is blurry, but you get the idea).