My shopping receipt...

Ok so yesterday I came back from Uni and realised I had no food whatsoever to eat apart from pasta and the crap food. A friend also needed to go so we went together. This friend was somewhat supportive of what Im doing with regards to the shopping list and helped me out in what I should get. So here is the shopping list...

3 x Orange Juice
Fruit & Fibre
Deodorant
2x Sweetcorn (i love my sweetcorn I do!)
2x Tuna Chunks
2x Plum Tomatoes (apparantly good to make pasta sauce and liven food up)
Chicken Breasts (and plenty of it! how flippin expensive is that?!)
Wild Rocket
Beansprouts (now I love these - and theyre well cheap!)
Broccoli (great veg this is - well good for ya too)
Iceberg Lettuce (salad food)
Courgette (not sure about this one, but I was told to lol)
Tomatoes (salag again)
Ham (liven the salad up
Satsumas (for the occasional snack, they hit the spot!)
Red Onion (was forced to get this, the more subtle of the onion family - apparantly)
Mushrooms
Bananas (good for a bit of energy)

So there we go! Check me out!!! Very impressive even if I do so so myself. I gave away beer and pringles to the boys last night whilst watching England. Oh and also the ice cream - was hard to let go to be honest). The exercise is going well, played footy last night for an hour and today I did the Zone 1 Tube Challenge - such good exercise that is! running around for over 3 hours, up stairs, down stairs, sprints, lenghty jogs. Then I played footy again later tonight for the 5aside league - so now Im knackered!! hehe but it feels good. Im gonna go grab some salad. oh... after footy me n the lads went to McDonalds, i ordered nothing and ate nothing. temptation was so strong! i was resisted.

HELLO HELEN RICKARD!!!!! you said u wanted a mention - so there u go!

the first day of the new diet

ok so today has been hard to be honest. I woke up and ate nothing because i dont have any fruit in the house so I had to wait till lunchtime. I went down to Lords to watch Middlesex v Ireland in the cricket with the rest of the Ware boys. We tottled off to Tesco to get lunch. Everyone else bought beer, wine, pasties, sarnies. And i bought fruit. Not too happy about that but I was willing to give it a go. the boys though warned me, apparantly having a pure fruit diet gives u the squits, headaches and makes u feel ill. all of which i encountered. middlesex won, nice game, i got burnt by the sun! I went to church back in St A and left early to get the bus and then thought "hang on, i can jog home". its about 2 or 3 miles from church to home and even though knackered and with a bag I gave it a go. I got about half way and then my shin splints were killing me so i walked the rest. but that was good. i also decided that I am going to allow pasta, white meats, fish and veg into my diet and so tonight I had Pasta with tuna and sweetcorn and NO SAUCE. thats the crucial bit i think. I also am going to try and do 20 pressups and situps each day.

I predict a diet!

To change a Kaizer Chiefs song.... I Predict A Diet. Do ya see what I did there?! Clever init!!

So today has been a productive day and an enjoyable one. I had nothing to do today at all after being tragically dropped from the cricket team due to the thirds not having a game and all of them playing for us fourths. ah well. Instead I decided to do some study, which didnt really happen. I tried to sort out my situation at college where apparantly I'm failing (will update about that when its safe) and then arranged my folder. This puts me in the position where I know which work I have to do. I also tidied my room and did some washing :). Whilst doing all this I ate a whole tube of pringles, a bowl of cereal and a litre of orange juice.

Then in the evening I went to the pub with the lovely Taf and a few others. Seeing as I had no dinner I ordered Burger + Beer for 4 quid. I then had another pint and then me and Taf went off to the pool club. I had a pint of lemonade and then we went to H&H to get a chicken roll (naan bread) and a Guanabana each. I'm hoping you're noticing a theme here... I'm eating like a pig. I eat rubbish all the time and never actually have proper meals or fruit and veg. I think I'm getting bigger and I certainly feel unhealthier and fatter. Apart from football Im not doing any other exercise. This is bad.

I'm going to be doing pre season football training with Ware FC from June 28 and at this rate I wont even be able to stretch without getting out of breath. Pre season training is the hardest of all training. It is entirely about fitness and running for about 2 hours doing jogging, sprint relays and mixtures of the two. I want to do this so that I am physically fit and above the fitness of my young people that I play football with. At the age of 22 you kinda have 2 paths in front of ya really. You either go for staying fit and looking good or you let yourself go a bit and its damn hard to get it back. Thats why Im doing this now, before its too late. So what am I actually doing??

WELL! Im going to diet. But I hate using that word, it makes it sound so... girly. haha i know its not but you must know where Im coming from there! I like to think of it more along the lines of "eating healthily and exercising" - which im sure u agree isnt as catchy as "diet". So heres some bullet points of what Im going to do:

No fast food at all! (that includes H&H, Subway, random crap from Tesco)
No crisps or chocolate (the easy things to buy from Tesco)
Yes to as much fruit as possible (im going to try and eat JUST fruit for the moment - but they may change)
Excerise daily (if Im not playing footy then a jog of some length)
No alcohol (it really suprising how unhealhty it is for the gut, especially Guinness!)

Right now it is 01:45 on the 28th May 2006. Pre Season starts on the 28th June so thats one whole month. My challenge is to maintain it for that lenghth. Apparantly it takes 40 days of doing something for it to become a habit. We shall see! Wish me luck! I will try and keep you all updated.

This is going to be so random. I've finally uploaded the images from my phone and my camera onto my laptop so I'm gonna go through and upload and then comment even if its not in any logical order! Oh and also Rhian has been pestering me to blog again so here it is. just for you haha.


Awwww what a cutie! And my nephew aint too bad either hehe. Little old danny boy is now 10 months old and happily enjoying life. Unfortunately his useless father (my brother) doesnt know how to brush Danny's hair so he doesnt look 100% in this pic. I do love hanging out with the little one, he keeps doing new stuff but stays cute. happy days!!!

This wont interest many of you, it barely interests me to be honest. But on Easter Day I was heading into St Albans to watch the footy and the normal bus service had a green Routemaster!! I was amazed, it was pretty cool. Why on earth did TfL get rid of the Routemasters? they are such a charm of London.

Im not sure how many grounds I was on when I last blogged but I'm up to 95 now!! This one is Bishops Stortford FC and I was there for the East Herts Church Cup Final, shocking display of footy but 2 cracking goals. I've also been to Brimsdown Rovers, Fisher Athletic and Brook House recently. 5 more and I've hit that magical 100.

This photo says it all! Milton Keynes Dons aka Franchise FC finally got relegated. They put on a tremendous recovery through April and May but still went down - which made it all the more sweeter!!! GET IN THERE! The quicker they go to non league and become a nothingness, the better.

Ok so this photo has been a long time in coming! Back at Ware FC finally after a 3 year exodus into the wilderness of Luton. Just to briefly explain my support of teams... I grew up as a Ware fan since the ages of about 7! I went year in year out, week in week out up until I was 18 and went off to Luton. Although my support continued, I couldnt physically get to the games. I went to see Luton Town a few times but it just didnt click and then the fiasco with Wimbledon FC happened and I went to watch the new AFC Wimbledon which captivated me. Even though Wimbledon is twice as far away as Ware, I could only get to Wimbledon due this nations wonderful transport system (!). So thats where AFC Wimbledon came from and I still support the side, but now that I'm in Hatfield I can get back to watching my boys up at Ware. The support has increased but the results didnt. When I returned we were midtable and things werent looking great. Then it went amazing and we couldnt stop winning. We eventually won the league!!! First time in 53 years! We then also won the Roy Bailey Cup, a glorious double.

The 11-a-side conquest of YL Hertford is now over. We've moved to 5-aside, but here is the team photo from our last day in the league. A great bunch of guys.

happy times

Well Ware have won the league. the first time in 53 years that they have won the league. and i am delighted! i honestly never thought id see us win a league and this had to be the season to go up. its notoriously difficult to move from step 5 to step 4 in the non league pyramid, but due to restructuring, this was the season that we had to do it. and we thumped them all! Get in there! we had a big party on saturday as we were awarded the trophy and went to the club with trophy charged with brandy. happy days at the club at last. and we can still win a cup as well :)

We actually won the trophy without playing because Brook House beat Witham and most of the hardcore Ware fans were there, including me. That meant that Brook House became Ground 93.

The season and the 11-a-side outfit known as Young Life Hertford FC is now over. We finished in midtable nothingness but we finished in good spirits and we now move into the 5-a-side season which has already started. I feel fitter now and I hope that playing less footy over the summer wont change things.

i'm still single, but I'm happy being single. haha dont really know what else to say on that one, maybe it doesnt need anything.

University is going well. I surprised myself by passing last terms modules even though one of the essays was truly awful. But I'm not complaining about that one! :) Looks like I might actually pass this year and be a professionally qualified youth worker.

So yeah, life is good! just waiting for something bad round corner... keep watching!