Red lentil curry with spinach and coriander

I definitely struggle with eating a range of different meals, and tend to eat the same meal over and over again.

About six months ago, I was at a friends house for lunch and they served up split pea soup which I was incredibly skeptical about at first but it totally won me over.  I remembered it the other day when I was going through the supermarket thinking I needed to diversify my diet.  I went to the legume section, couldn't find split green peas anywhere but found red lentils.

Not quite sure what prompted me to buy them, given I've never even eaten them before!  But, buy them I did and then I set about looking for a recipe, and I found one for a red lentil curry that looked really good.  I made it last night, it was sooooo easy! I modified it slightly, but also adding 25g of tomato paste and when it was cooked just before serving I added some chopped up baby spinach and some fresh coriander.  I also used about triple the amount of garlic and ginger... cause I'm trying to ward off vampires and a cold right now.  The former is true, the latter is not :)

The recipe recommended eating with basmati rice, which I normally would have done but I am trying to avoid rice at the moment.  Instead, I found some gluten free pita bread and toasted that to scoop it up and eat with.

It was soooooooooooooooo good!  Seriously recommended.  Not sure of the fat, carb or calorie count but the recipe on the site said one serving is less than 200g with 2.6g of fat.  I added extra ingredients, but either way it's still a really low calorie, low fat meal.

Umm... I'm not sure why I'm even talking about calories.  I hate calorie counting!  In fact, I don't do it at all.  Just the other day I was completing a survey in a hospital on the nutrition and calorie content of different types of food.  As an example, a salad with a tablespoon of olive oil.  I had no idea, I guessed around 400 calories. Urgh.

I also have no intention of becoming better at counting calories to lose weight. I don't really subscribe to the idea that you have to be so rigid and severe when it comes to losing weight.  I think (and I may be totally wrong), but so long as you are eating as naturally as can be (i.e. minimising the amount of processed, and pre-prepared meals) and avoiding as much as possible foods that don't work for your body then you can't really go that wrong.  As an example, I really think my body can't handle refined sugars and wheat very well, particularly with my PCOS.  So, I am avoiding those foods as much as I can right now.

In fact, I saw a gastroenterologist (hence the reference to a hospital visit) the other day, and we are doing some investigations into my gut and digestive system because ever since my hospital visits last year I am having some problems.  He suspects it may be IBS, and hopefully it's nothing more serious than that.  But I have a suspicion I may actually be gluten intolerant as well.  Ho hum, sounds like fun.

Anyway, I will come back soon and blog about that lovely hospital visit and the charming people skills of my specialist.  His fat acceptance levels were off the chart..... and not in a good way!

Here's a picture of my red lentil curry.  Yum Yum.

Red lentil curry with gluten free pita bread

The recipe made quite a bit, at least three decent sized meals worth.  So, that's what I had for dinner last night and lunch today.  I'll have it again for lunch tomorrow.

Back story anyone?

I'm 28, fat and I have PCOS and a septate uterus.  I hate that word, 'septate'. Everytime I hear it or think it, 'septic' flashes into my brain... I have a septic uterus. Urgh.

I'm not ready to have children yet.... well, actually that's not true. I've been ready since I was 16. So, let me rephrase. My relationship and my financial situation is not quite ready. But it's wayyyyyyyyyy up there on my agenda. It's something I want to seriously start thinking about, like, yesterday.

Sat here approaching my 29th birthday in a few months, weighing 121kgs (the same weight I've been for the last 8 years or so give or take a few kilos), I just wish I hadn't burried my head in the sand for as long as I have. 

I was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) in late 2005.  In early 2006 I was having an internal ultrasound to determine if I had any cysts on my ovaries as part of my diagnosis. A minute or so in, with my legs spread wide and feeling rather vulnerable, the sonographer - a insensitive bitch nice woman in her early 30s - starts uttering just the thing you want to hear when you have a skinny police batton like contraption shoved up your nether regions by a stranger...

Sonographer: "Oh, hmm... ok, that's weird.  I've not seen that before."
Me: (veryyyyy concerned) "what? what haven't you seen before, what's weird? Is everything ok?"
Sonographer: "Just give me a minute, I need to try and understand what I'm looking at here."
Me: "oh... god... errrr, ok"

I mean, what choice did I have?  The balance of power clearly lay in her gloved hands.

What seems like hours passed...

Sonographer: "I'll be a back in a minute, I just need to go and get a colleague to take a look at this with me.  Don't move please."

Fuck.

She comes back with her colleague.  They take a look together and then reach for the shelves and pull of a binder. They start flipping through the pages, pointing at pictures and pointing at the ultrasound screen.  They were trying to match up my uterus! Oh crap!

Finally, the colleague leaves. I ask the sonographer to please explain what's going on. I can't handle much more of the suspense.

Sonographer: "Do you have two periods a month?"
Me: (what the hell??) "Umm, no. Why?"
Sonographer: "Are you periods extremely heavy and painful?"
Me: "No, when I get a period (about 4 times a year) its quite light and pain free.  Please, tell me what is going on."
Sonographer: "Well, it appears like you have two uteruses."
Me: "Excuse me? Two what? Is that even possible?!?!"

Turns out, it not only is possible to have two uteruses, but also two vaginas and two cervixes as well.  Who knew??  I certainly didn't. She booked me an appointment to see the consultant again. I went through a few more ultrasounds, 3D and 4D, and was diagnosed with a septate uterus. Not two uteruses at all, but rather one uterus that has a dividing wall of sorts splitting it into two cavities.  I can have a very simple operation to remove this, a hysteroscopy, but was told to go away and lose weight before it could be done.

If I don't have this operation, my chances of having a miscarriage are approximately 50% and if I did manage to carry a pregnancy my risk of pre-term labour are off the chart.  So, I need to have this operation if I ever want to have a baby of my own.

Life got in the way and here I am about three years later still needing to lose weight to have the operation.  Losing weight would also helped with the bad back I have as a result of a slipped disc caused by an assault two years ago and also with my symptoms of PCOS.  So why haven't I taken the bull by the horns years ago? I dunno.  Life, laziness and fear I guess. Fear that even if I lose weight I still won't be able to have my own family.

Enough of the psycho-analysis.

I'm angry!  Through my work, I was speaking with a top fertility specialist in the UK and he recommended me to a particular fertility surgeon in London to do the surgery. He said that because its a relative simple procedure, that the consultant telling me to lose weight first was bollocks. A brush off.  Fat people get brushed off by doctors all the freakin' time; doctors who rely on a bullshit BMI system to calculate someones health.  It's bollocks.

So, with renewed hope I went along to my GP and got a referral for said specialist.  I waited for my appointment which came through after six weeks.  I went along only to see somebody in the wrong department because my GP had got the referral wrong.  The registrar I saw made me another appointment for a months time to see the consultant I should have seen in the first place. 

I went to that appointment on the 11th of December and the consultant wasn't there, I saw one of his colleagues instead. After asking me whether I smoke (no), drink (no), have any heart problems (no) he said, incredibly awkwardly, that I would need to get my BMI down to under 30 before I will be considered for the elective procedure.

I didn't elect to have a uterus abnormality that requires me to have surgery before I can have a baby.  That was not something I chose! I've done my research. As far as procedure's go, it's a fairly simple one that would be over in less than 20 minutes.

I was dismissed from the clinic and driven into the depths of despair for the next week. 

So, now here I am.  28.7 years old.  I need to lose approx. 30kgs ASAP so I can have the hysterscopy and start thinking about having a family.  As it is, having PCOS is going to make it incredibly hard for me to lose weight.  If it takes me a year to lose the weight, that makes me almost 30. It can literally take years for someone with PCOS to conceive, even with fertility treatment. 

Tick, tick, tick tick

I need to get started!