Maintenance Week Three

I spent Maintenance Week Three in Tunisia!  I had a wonderful holiday with Mum and Dad, with much good food and drink, sightseeing, spa and exercise time and rest and relaxation.  I'll post about everything we saw and did in a separate post, but as far as the food goes...it was fantastic!  We stayed in a large international hotel with a mainly - although not exclusively - English clientele and both breakfast and evening meals were self-service with hot and cold buffets.  There was a fantastic range of food, especially salads, and it was easy to eat both healthily and interestingly (which is not to say I didn't treat myself a lot!).  A lot of the hot food was targeted at the English market and was, therefore, not too adventurous but there was always a North African section which I enjoyed visiting every evening.

Each morning for breakfast I ate natural yoghurt with honey and sultanas, half an orange, half a grapefruit and a handful of dates.  The citrus fruits were fantastic, juicy, sweet and so tasty, and the dates were amazing.  Not at all like the dates we get here!  My breakfasts were supplemented as and when the fancy took me with a croissant or a pain au chocolat, bread, beautiful white butter and quince jam, or delicious French-style crepes (with maple syrup!).  Not all at once I hasten to add.  And...there was coffee!  Amazing, strong coffee in ginormous quantities with hot milk .  I was in heaven. 

Lunches were enjoyed out and about, and were usually a salad topped with either tuna or chicken, but the evening meals were where we really pushed the boat out.  To start with there was an amazing range of salads (these pictures don't show the half of it!).  Every day there were grated carrots, shredded white cabbage, shredded red cabbage, raw leeks, tomatoes, lettuce, radishes and beetroot, and on top of that there were always at least four salads made of things like chopped cucumber, ham, feta cheese and tomatoes, or boiled potatoes, or rice, peas, peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes.  There were also pickled veg and olives, and at least one protein-based salad, usually chicken, sometimes tuna and sometimes egg. 

I loaded up my plate with huge amounts of veggies, a tiny bit of carbohydrate and a tiny bit of protein...and sometimes accompanied it with bread and that amazing white butter. 

I usually had something from the North African section of the buffet for my main course...couscous didn't appear until two days into the holiday though, so when it did I got very over-excited.

The couscous was served with tagine of lamb and vegetables.

The other Tunisian speciality we sampled was something called brik.  Ours had potato, onion, egg and parsley in it (I asked the chef, and told him how delicious I thought it was). 

The desserts were always patisserie, crepes or ice-cream.  

Usually I only want a taste of sweetness after a meal so most nights I only had one little patisserie in a restrained manner...except when I had two, and on one notable occasion when I had three, and a big scoop of ice-cream!  Well, I was on holiday!   In the interests of expanding my cultural horizons I also sampled makroudh, a local date-filled pastry.

Delicious, especially with coffee.

 

To accompany our evening meals we had an extremely good Tunisian red, which was easily as good as a similar French or New World wine.

We also went to a wine-tasting and sampled many more...that was fun!

What can I say about all the photos...I get excited by wine!

Exercise-wise I did really well this week.  The hotel had a lovely saltwater pool, and I swam three times.  I got up to 50 lengths, alternating front-crawl and breast-stroke (I think that was the day after the multiple puddings...).  I also fitted in a run on the shores of the Mediterranean!  I ran from the hotel along the beach to the little local town then back along the road.  It was a brilliant run...running on sand is hard but my muscles told me it was good exercise a couple of days afterwards, and after running on the sand running on the pavement felt effortless!  I'm not sure how far I ran, as Map My Run does cover Tunisia but not in enough detail to work out where I'd been, and I didn't look at the clock before I sent off, but I'm guessing it was about 5k.  I love that bit in the middle of a run when you feel like you could run forever...I am dying to increase the length of my runs. 

I even took a photo of myself after my run like a healthy living blogger (that spare tyre has got to go...)!

Rather handily, the holiday ran Wednesday to Wednesday (by accident rather than design, I'm not that OCD about Weight Watchers) so I was able to weigh myself the day after I got back.  I'd weighed myself before and after on Mum's scales and there looked to be about half a stone difference, so I was thrilled to bits when I got on the Boots scales and they read 9st 2lbs!  BMI 22.2, body fat 27.3%. Excellent result after a wonderful holiday.