I’ve had a problem with a table that I’m trying in chart which starts at week 1 through to week 12. At the moment I am only in Week 3 and therefore have no data for weeks 4 – 12.

The problem is that the chart is looking at the data for weeks 1 – 12 and as the data is blank for wks 4 – 12, then the data is shown in the chart as a ZERO – so the line graph suddenly dips after wk 3 – Not what I want!

I still want wks 1-12 shown across the bottom axis to show that this data will be added as we get the data.

Solution:
In the formula in the tables add relevant formula to show an error if the cell is blank or zero. When there is an error in the table the chart (in Excel 2007) ignores the data – which is what I want. For example if the table summarizes data from another table, then =IF(A1=0,na(),A1).

Then use conditional formatting to hide any error values in the table so that the table is still good to be used in any presentations as well.

Are you ever really busy and just wish that you had a spare hour so that you could spend time doing some of the things that you really want to do? Then on the other hand, do you ever find that you have a spare hour on your hands and you can’t recall what it was that you were going to do when you had some spare time?

Unfortunately I find myself in this situation quite regularly; either there seems to be too much to do and no time to fit everything in, or I have time but cannot remember any of those things that I “just needed some spare time” to be able to do it.

At work I feel that I am reasonably organised in as much as I have two “lists”. One is my Current List or Daily List, that gets added to constantly and also gets things crossed off it ocassionaly, and the other is my Rainy Day List or Wish List which is where I add the things that I would find useful to do if I had the time. Whenever I have a spare 30 mins or so at work I slowly plod away at the Wish List and eventually I do manage to clear clear this list and achieve some useful analysis/tools, whatever it is that I’m working on, every now and again.

So, cut to the chase, in an attempt to try and establish some order in my home life I have decided to follow a similar procedure. Obviously the Daily List is something that I just do anyway as part of my routine for example – going to work, shopping, housework, etc. It’s my Wish List that I have trouble remembering because in my head I think that something is a good idea but I don’t write it down and so the idea has gone before I can recall it…

This is going to stop, NOW!! The Wish List is born…

Wish List

Some of these are pleasurable, some may not be so pleasureable but all are things that I will either enjoy or just need doing (list to be updated):

10 Minutes to Spare

• File nails and make them feel prettier
• Disinfect door handles
• register to be an organ donor – DONE!
• Find out when and where the next blood donation clinic is around and get booked on

An Hour to Spare

• Plan meals for the week and prepare shopping list (may not take this long if I was fully prepared but it currently takes me about an hour!)
• Put some items up on eBay for sale
• Check out eBay for bargains: dresses, shoes, bags, fabric
• Plan birthday and Christmas gifts for everyone
• Make a start/continue to buy/make gifts
• Make a list of things that should be packed when going away for a weekend so that you know exactly what you need and not forget anything!
• Plan some day trips for all ocassions: rainy days, sunny days, cheap or free. Then on the next spare day you don’t have to waste time wondering what to do.

Half a Day to Spare

• Pick a room and clear some clutter: bin, recycle or put away in its proper place
• Clear a wardrobe: recycle anything that doesn’t fit, fix anything that needs repairs (buttons, hems, etc), and make a note of anything that is needed (ie. more shorts if summer is coming and the old ones are all being recycled)

A Day to Spare

• Paint a room
• Do a load of batch baking for the freezer: pies, chilli, etc
• Have a day trip

I have run exactly 300 miles in my existing trainers which are Mizuno Wave Nirvana 4′s bought a couple of years ago. I’m starting to feel the wear in them now, it’s not so bad on shorter runs but since I started training for the marathon my long runs are quite long and I’ve started to get blisters on the sole of my feet on the inside.

I really like the fit and feel of the Mizuno’s and looked at getting another pair – only I could only find the same model at well over £100… so I did some searching and managed to find a review about a pair of Mizuno Wave Inspire’s – the reviewer specifically mentioned that they used to get blisters on the inside of their sole and hadn’t had this problem with these trainers, so I figured that was good enough for me and ordered a pair.

They arrived today! Yippee. I don’t have a run planned for tonight but I do have one tomorrow. I will see how I go in them and then decide whether I should chance them in the Wilmslow half marathon on Sunday or not…

I started to knit this lovely lacy top for my mum for her birthday.

Unfortunately it’s just over a week now until her birthday so I think I’ll have to keep this for her Christmas gift instead. Still I’ve managed to get quite a bit done this weekend and have finally figured the pattern out so that it now makes sense to me.

I know that mum will love the top as she saw it in one of my books and said how much she liked it – I just hope that she likes the colour.

Aha! Just having a look at the nutritional content of some breakfast cereals and realised that I was looking at the

per 100g

data instead of the per serving…. idiot!! Ah well, it also means that I have consumed less fat AND less calories than I thought I had – BONUS

I remember a conversation that I had with an old colleague some time ago (as a bit of background, he is a very dedicated athletic who is trying his best to get an Olympic place in London 2012) as he was monitoring the food that he ate as tried to reduce his body fat to improve his performance. He said that he was surprised at just how much fat that he actually ate even though he thought that he had a healthy diet – obviously so being the athlete that he was.

Over the last few days I would now have to agree with him, if you break my food intake down into protein, fat and carbs, about 25% is through fat – this astonishes me, as I, like my old colleague, thought I ate reasonably healthily….

Fortunately as I have been keeping a food diary I can establish where the fat intake actually comes from so that I can plan to reduce what is sensible to reduce. It would appear that I should be consuming just under 50g of fat daily and 10g of that is coming from my breakfast which really surprises me as 4g is from my semi-skimmed milk but an even higher 6g comes from my HEALTHY muesli!

I think that I am going to start buying proper skimmed milk for my breakfasts (that’s going to mean 3 different types of milk in the fridge now as my little girl is still on the full-fat blue top) and review my breakfast cereal to see if I can improve on the fat content.

A further 6.5g of fat comes from my salad dressing (extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar), now I’m not sure if there is an alternative to this as I love this dressing on my salad but I’ll have a look around and see what’s out there….

Generally the rest of the fat tends to come from vegetable oil used when cooking dinner and the spread used on my sandwiches at lunch. As I want to look for alternatives to sandwiches (not everyday though as they are convenient) my consumption may improve but I was thinking of houmus and pitta bread and there is still fat in that so I’ll have to have a bigger think…

Using My Daily Plate to keep an eye on the calories that I consume (and expend) is actually a real eye opener. It have calculated that I need to consume around 1,400 calories a a day in order to lose a lb a week. Based on everything that I have eaten so far today (and knowing what I will be eating for dinner tonight) I will consume 1,600 calories today – this means that I’m way over on my intake so have had to look into their database to see what exercise I can do (and realistically will do) in order to meet the deficit.

Fortunately I had planned to do some cleaning tonight and change the bedding so this should eat up (no pun intended!) around 90 calories, and then I will also be getting hte shopping delivered so will need to do the carrying and putting away, probably another 40 calories. I also started off the mixed fruit last night so I can bake a teabread tonight – soaking the fruit in some tea overnight – apparently baking uses up around 50 calories for 20 mins work.

This leaves me with 20 calories that I need to burnoff, but obviously I need to plan to burn more since this is all probable calorie burn! I have the top that I am knitting for my mum (which was going to be for her birthday but since that’s two weeks away now and I have barely knitted 2 inches that’s just not going to happen so it has now been moved to her Christmas present!) so I thought I could spend some time on that – aparently knitting burns around 80 calories an hour so it will be time well spent on both counts

I’ve been updating my budget recently and although I doing spend excessive amounts of money on food I don’t think that I am spending the money wisely if that makes sense.  I like to think that our family eats quite heathily however I had a shock when I stood on my MIL’s scales at the weekend and found out that I was 129lbs (9st 3lbs) – now I realise that this is not overweight, in fact it is actually alright for my height of 5ft 5ins BUT I have ALWAYS, ALWAYS weighed exactly 8st – no more – no less…

I was diagnosed with an overactive thyroid at the end of December 2008 after losing a stone within about a week (I looked positively awful) and was put on tablets to suppress the amount of throxine that my body produced.  Over the last year or so I have been taking then and now my throxine levels are reducing to I have had my dose reduced with the aim to come off the carbimazole in the next few months.  I have always had a sneaking suspicion that these tablets have been leading to my weight being more than it naturally would be (as they are effectively slowing down my metabolism which has always been naturally quite high) so I can attribute some of the weight gain to the tablets I am on.  Having said that I think that blaming a few lbs on the tablets is one thing but over a stone is just me kidding myself…..

So, along with training for the marathon which is at the end of May I have decided to keep a much better eye on what I eat, so much so that I have joined the My Daily Plate website so that I can track the calories that I am eating so see how heathily I do actually eat.  Some of it is quite shocking it has to be said, it’s only when you actually log that you have just eaten 2 chocolate biscuits that you realise how much fat (and calories) you have just consumed!!

Obviously this has led me to consider what food I actually put in my internet shopping basket as the fewer convenience foods that are in the house, the less I can eat (albeit this goes for my family as well but it would stop my DS from raiding the pantry – I swear that he devours 4 bars of chocolate in one go as he leaves that wrappers as evidence so he can’t deny it!!)

I’ve been perusing the internet for inspiration but admitedly get sidetracked, however I have found a couple of sites which I will refer back to (even if not for the recipes):

Aggies Kitchen

just looks delicious, at the moment she is looking a more vegetable based dishes which apart from being healthy and increasing fruit and vegetable portions, also helps with the budget as I wouldn’t be paying for more expensive meat. I have tried to have 1 veggie meal a week but I am lacking in inspiration and my veggie dish of macaroni cheese has sausages in it for my OH?!?

Jenn’s Menu and Lifestyle Blog

contains photos of practically evey meal that she has ever eaten, I swear… this is a great site as she also gives approx calorie counts.

I need to do some more digging around but at least I have made a start, just need to finalise a list for next weeks meal plans as I have already placed my order for this week!

I pulled my finger out and planned the weeks meals well in advance this week, actually it was quite hard because I wanted to add in some new dishes but couldn’t find any inspiration so had to give up! I want to start preparing more food from scratch but I don’t seem to find the time, for example I want to start making my own bread (I own a breadmaker so you wouldn’t think that it would be too hard would you?) but I don’t like the bread that it bakes so I just want it to prepare the dough and I’ll turn it out into a bread tin and bake it in the oven – I just need to buy a big bread tin since I only have a small one. I also need to start making flapjacks and cakes (fruit of course so there’s practically no butter/fat in them) but just need to organise myself. I make a lovely treabread a few weekends ago and was very impressed that it lasted the first half of the wee for lunches (ie. it was big enough to not be eaten in the first two days) but think it would be more practical to make two at a time so they last the whole week but need to buy another small loaf tin… as you can so this is increasing the amount of kit I need in my kitchen!

Anyway to the meal plans:
We usually have pizza on a Wednesday as it’s the easiest thing to have after I’ve been shopping as I get home late, then have to put everything away, but I’m expecting my delivery (2nd week of delivery in a row!) any time up to 9pm and so Wed has to default to tortellini as it’s about hte only thing we have in and the pizza will be deferred to Thursday – also need to start making our own pizza’s again as they tasted great and I have loads of tins of anchovies in the pantry!

Wednesday – Tortellini
Thursday – Pizza
Friday – butternut squash risotto
Saturday – Hamburger (homemade) and chips
Sunday – Roast chicken w/ roast potatoes and veg
Monday – Chicken curry with left over chicken
Tuesday – Carbonara w/ garlic bread

I also need to start planning lunches as they always get forgotten about, I’ve ordered some salad so I will be able to have salad for lunch towards the end of this week (which will help with the calorie intake) and need to start making up some cold pasta dishes – unfortunately I don’t have the means to warm food up at work which is a shame since I have LOADS of frozen soup in the freezer. I’ll looked at buying a Thermos flask to bring warm soup into work but I’m not sure how effective they actually are at keeping food warm as I don’t want to spend £30 on something that doesn’t actually work…

Here is my lift of gift dates and idea which I will update as I have a number of blanks at the moment:

Name	Date	Birthday	Christmas
DS	Jan	Already bought!	?
DD	Feb	Already bought!	?
BIL	Feb	Tile Socks	?
Mum	Mar	Homemade chocolate truffles	Lace top (started knitting beg Feb)
OH	Mar	?	?
Niece1	May	?	?
OH Mum	Jun	?	?
Niece2	Nov	?	?
Sister	Oct	Cat door stop (see prv post)	Popcorn Panache Socks probably in a little hamper
Dad	Nov	Ribble Socks	?
OH Dad	Nov	walking socks (just need a pattern)	?
OH Sister	Nov	Cat door stop (see prv post)	?
OH BIL	Nov	Standard black socks with the following music detail	?

I was planning on making the tile socks for my brother in law for Christmas but it’s just dawned on my how close his birthday is so best start looking at some wool for these. I think I might also make them for my OH BIL but he is really into his music so first I’ll see if I can find any musically inspired socks before committing to this.

I had already thought of making a cat doorstop for my OH’s sister but my sister also likes cats so I think I should make two and give one to both of the sisters!