Changing my diet one piece of toast and marmalade at a time…

I had a patient yesterday who desperately wanted to lose weight. As I gave her dietary and lifestyle advice along with the medicine that I had prescribed for her, I had to take stock of my own food intake and daily routine.

Would I be able to follow the advice I had just given her?

It’s so easy to tell other people what they should be doing [especially if it’s your job]. But as I said last week, I am at least 2 stones over weight and what am I doing about it?

I will tell you…

1.       I changed my breakfast routine. This has been hard but I am sticking to it. I don’t have toast and marmalade any more. I love toast and marmalade. Instead I now fry chopped onions, sliced courgettes and mushrooms in coconut oil or olive oil with sea salt and cracked black pepper, then shove in an egg. Sometimes I slice up kale or chard from the garden and add that.

OK, so I know what you are thinking. That sounds gross, is what you are thinking, and if you are slim you have the luxury of choice. But at some point, those of us who are overweight have to change what we eat and what we do or we will stay overweight. And one of the things I chose to change was the amount of bread that I used to eat – especially bread made with modern wheat [it contains amylopectin A, which raises blood sugar very high]. I am going to experiment with sourdough made with spelt flour [which doesn’t contain the amylopectin A] and introduce a slice of that every now and then. One of my sons-in-law makes excellent sourdough so it can’t be that hard to do at home…

And, by the way, don’t worry about the odd bit of coconut oil. Fat isn’t the problem with weight gain, but I am not going to argue about it now with the low-fat diet zealots – I just can’t be bothered...

2.       I have [mostly] replaced potatoes with pumpkin, squash or swede. This again is hard, but ditto to what I said above. A swede cooked well with plenty of black pepper, sea salt and some butter is OK. I allow myself roast potatoes when I visit other people if they have made them as I am not going to ruin the effort other people have gone to just because I want to lose weight. I just make sure I am more careful the next day. And if someone buys me chocolate, I don’t throw my hands up in horror and refuse it. I graciously accept and have some, then share the rest out, instead of pigging out on it all by myself as I would probably prefer to do.

3.       I walk more. I aim to walk every day. I try to walk before I eat so I use up fat stores and not just the calories I have just taken in. I have a brisk 20-30 minute walk around the docks, then back home for breakfast [or lunch]. If the weather is foul I will exercise indoors instead of walking. This takes the shape of short bursts of interval training. 30 seconds of running up and down the stairs, 60 seconds rest, then 30 seconds more exercise – I do that for 6 cycles at that’s it – exercise done for the day.

4.       I avoid red meat usually, and go for chicken or fish. I also use a lot more pulses and legumes. In fact, I soak black-eye beans or aduki beans, then cook them up and store them [rinsed] in the fridge to keep hunger attacks at bay. You know - the hunger pangs when you come in from town ravenous and just want a piece of toast and marmalade with a cup of tea. Instead [if I can hold my nerve] I put the kettle on and heat up some coconut oil, shove in some mushrooms and the cooked pulses I have in the fridge. I season them well, as they can be bland, but they stop me being hungry…

5.       Lunch is usually warmed up dinner left over from the night before, or I sometimes have fruit and organic full fat yogurt [but I avoid bananas], or I open a tin of mackerel or spread an avocado on Finn crisp crackers. I do not advise cream crackers and cheese from the point of view of; when do you stop? I could eat a whole packet…

6.       I have managed to train myself to not eat biscuits when I have a cup of tea. This has been one of the hardest habits to break, and is easier when the children aren’t at home. My kids buy stuff like ginger nuts, which is just plain cruel.

7.       Supper used to be a couple of slices of toast and marmalade. Now it isn’t. I try not to eat at all after dinner. And sometimes I succeed. If I am really hungry I try to manage on a handful of almonds or walnuts.

So – I will spare you a ‘before’ photo. But I may take an ‘after’ photo in 6 months’ time. But, yes, it’s going well. Thanks for asking….

WHAT TO EAT?

I have just bought and eaten a whole Twirl when taking my granddaughter to school. I had to bribe her, you see, and once in the shop by the chocolate counter I sort of found myself with the Twirl in my hand [I love Twirls] and was through the checkout and in the car park before you could say Cadbury’s.

But guys! I have a clear idea of what I should be eating, and why. I understand the dangers of consistently eating processed, refined foods. I am aware of how much better/thinner/lively I would be if I ate more fresh, raw vegetables. What I am trying to say is that the Twirl is not an isolated incident.

Old habits die hard, and I was brought up on the same diet that most people had in the 60’s and 70’s. It included a lot of toast, beefburgers, sausages and Vesta Curries. [I’m not complaining Mum, I enjoyed it at the time.] Quinoa hadn’t been invented and seeds were things you sowed in the allotment during the spring, not things that the nutritionally aware sprinkled on their porridge.

But here’s the thing; nearly all of my family have diabetes now AND THE WRITING IS ON THE WALL for me. I am a good 2 stones overweight and although I am losing a steady 1lb a week, which is healthy, I sneak a Twirl and a packet of ginger nuts for a reward and I put it back on again.

I was inspired recently by a woman in Norway. She paid a GP a lot of money for a diet plan that was exactly the same as the one in my head that I think I am on. Except she was sticking to it. I think she was sticking to it because she paid so much money for it and the one in my head costs me nothing.

So, I am making an announcement. The next time it is my turn and not Moo’s to post on here is 29^th – exactly a week away. It is one day before I go to Portugal on holiday [which is another thing but hey] – and I will honest-to-goodness post here if I managed to lose any weight by getting the meal plan out of my head and onto my plate and by pretending that I have paid shed loads of money for it.

Do you think I can do it?

LETS GET ON WITH IT...

Well, summer is over and autumn is just about upon us again.

This is the grown-up version of ‘What I Did in the Holidays’, an essay I always dreaded at school because we used to do such weird things in our family, e.g. as mentioned in a previous blog, Grave-spotting and Uncle Hunting. We never went away on holiday, except rarely and only to visit family. There were a few day trips to the coast, but these were very rare indeed, as our parents weren’t too keen on the chaos at the beach. Or the journey with squabbling kids in the back, though I seem to remember they were as bad as us for bickering, maybe worse. We could hardly get a mile down the road before we were all ready to give up the trip and go home.

It may seem strange but we enjoyed our summer holidays immensely despite the lack of trips abroad or days out. People didn’t tend to do so much of that sort of thing back then. We were left much more to our own devices, and this suited us fine.
It wasn’t easy, when tackling the inevitable What I Did  essay on returning to school, to make our holidays sound interesting, or entirely believable. At least, not to normal people like teachers and other kids. 

But at least when you are a child, you get some time off. Once you are an adult and have your own family, ‘holidays’ are never the same again. They are just everyday life on steroids. When the kids have all (just about) left home you’d think things would be a lot quieter. And so they are I guess, but YOU are also a lot older. So it still feels like chaos. 
I guess this is why pensioners spend their time cruising round the world and the rest of us spend our time dreaming of enough pension to do the same one day.

So, what did I do all summer?

Well, I’ve had some lovely moments... Visits from grandchildren, evenings eating ice creams on the beach and watching the sun go down, spending some time with my parents, starting an online photography course… The best thing all summer was the birth of another granddaughter. 

Oh, and we sold the house and are about to buy another. Anyone who has been through house sale and purchase will understand what’s involved in THAT.

While Saggy has been gadding about Norway and sorting out her Herbal School stuff back home, I’ve been working hard at my photography these last few months. To be honest, you can’t call it work. I really love it and I’m out most days with my camera and the dog. It’s not so easy getting my head round the technical stuff though. 

How I will miss those beautiful swans at the bottom of my garden when we move!

So it’s been very busy this summer.

I seem to have spent all my adult life waiting for a time when Things Get Back to Normal, but have to wonder if such a state of what I imagine to be Normal really exists! And just think – countdown to Christmas will begin before we know it…

So, as I embark on the chaos that is Moving House, I’m taking a deep breath and bracing myself for an even busier autumn. A few weeks ago I heard somebody say of me that I am someone who, when faced with problems ‘just gets on with it’. This chirked me up no end. I have always thought I was someone who makes heavy weather of things. Now I have a reputation to live up to.

It’s been a good summer, taking one thing with another. I’ve laid down some great memories. Now I’m ready to ‘get on with it’ this autumn.

I’m on holiday, OK?

Climbing the old lighthouse at Torungen

Somebody, [Moo], said it would be a good idea to write a post saying we were going to be on holiday so don’t go looking for a post over the summer because there wouldn’t be one.

This is fine in theory, and I agreed. And here it is. The only problem as far as I can see is that nobody reads our posts anyway, so they don’t know that there won’t be one for them to miss.

But because I’m the youngest and I always, usually, sometimes when it suits me follow the advice of my elder sister, I am writing this post. I am in Norway atm, on the Oslo Fjord. I don’t know where Moo is exactly but she will be chilling [1]. We have learnt to chill. It wasn’t invented when we were young but we are making up for lost time now.

I’m not going to start a rant about what life used to be like in the 60’s and 70’s, though frankly I could and I might make it interesting. But now we are nearing our dotage it’s about time we had a bit of chill, I mean we have been busy girls all our lives so, you know...

‘Chilling’ is a bit of a funny expression to be honest, particularly now when the weather is so hot. The other reason I find it odd is that I constitutionally do not like to get cold, so no, I don’t want to chill – I want a nice stable temperature.  I presume it means to take the heat off the situation in an emotional rather than a literal physical sense, but even here I prefer emotional warmth to chilly cold. Suffice it to say I will accept the word in the sense of slow down and stop working, relax and drink tea, especially if it comes with toast and marmite or at a pinch chocolate digestives.

Somebody said to me yesterday that they thought I was a very busy person. This cheered me up no end as I have always secretly worried that I am lazy. I think I am a lazy person actually, but one with a lot to do. But, I’m thinking that if I have been labelled a ‘busy person’ then by rights I deserve a chill time.

Fishing near Arundel. I caught a cod....

So, back to the Oslo Fjord: that’s where we are based but I drove three hours down to the south of Norway this morning. and I am sitting in a cabin in the shade. My husband is sitting outside in the hot midday sun reading a book [he will regret this later, trust me], while our Norwegian friend is getting the boat ready for an outing [2], while our friend’s wife is cooking us lunch. She is frying chicken fillets and tossing a crisp green salad. I spied a couple of bottles of red in the kitchen earlier, so although they DON’T HAVE ANY TEA [let alone completely no digestives and even less Marmite] I might just survive.

How’s that for chilling?

Notes:

1 Moo would like it to be known that she is not actually chilling. No. She is working out how to use her new camera so she can be a super duper photographer [my expression not hers] and fill ours and other pages with exquisite, cool images. So good luck with that, sis.

2 Our trip was to the Arundel region, and we climbed the old lighthouse, manned by the uncle of Morten Morland who is a cartoonist in London for the Times etc [by the way] and we went on a fishing trip and I caught a cod. Which the Norsk friend can clean and gut [thank you very much] and we will eat...

A POCKET FULL OF HARD BOILED EGGS

We used to call him the 'mad uncle' in the West Wing.

I should be clear that, even though we lived in half a manor house at the time, it wasn’t grand, and it definitely didn’t have ‘wings’. But the Uncle in question was, well, not entirely sane though it may be unkind to label him as ‘mad’.

He wouldn’t smoke a cigarette at Christmas until it had been thrown over the garlands hanging from the ceiling in festive loops. He wore his slippers on the bus. He sung us Goon songs, and he drew funny cartoons.

Uncle was our father’s identical twin brother and they knew how to play tricks. He didn’t have a moustache and our Dad did. When we were little he visited us at bedtime, and we said goodnight and went upstairs. I think you can guess what’s coming. My Dad came up [with moustache] to say goodnight. Then he went out and came back [sans moustache] and pretended to be Uncle.  But even with identical twins there are minute differences that family members know, these little habits and inflections of speech that separate out identical people to their families. I think we were traumatised when we felt we didn’t really know if our Dad was our uncle pretending to be our Dad. Or if our uncle was our Dad pretending to be our uncle. This sort of thing scars kids.

It was never clear if it was Uncle’s idea to collect names on graves, but it provided one of the most interesting and enduring activities of our childhood. ‘Uncle Hunting’ must surely have come from him though; especially as it meant going out after dark in the country side, armed with torches, and involved his sons, nephew and nieces roaming around looking for him.

Even though he could be a challenge in later years my parents valiantly took him on holiday with them; they flew to the Channel Islands, they went to Germany, and they included him on one of their cruises. The point of cruises is they have masses of food, at point of need, all round the clock. Breakfast was a highlight for Uncle, and he had a particular passion for hard boiled eggs; I think the war generation never got over rationing. Uncle would go to the breakfast buffet and after consuming a normal breakfast he would stuff every available pocket with hard boiled eggs ‘for later’.

He was not the most moral of men, but we knew nothing of this when we were young. And though we thought he was funny, as we became older it became clear that often adults in the family found him a bit irritating…

And this is how I remember him: as two people really – a weirdly funny half-mad Uncle – and a man that got a bit lost towards the end of his life, where the close bond that should have tied him to his twin got so strained it broke. A warning for me to take care with relationships that I am not found guilty of harming those I love by taking them for granted or being selfish.

Uncle on left with beard. Dad on right without.

LIFE IN A RED HAT

Woke up this morning thinking thank goodness I won't be getting any more electioneering junk mail through the letterbox. Does anybody actually read this stuff anyway? I was getting to screaming point as every day I had to wade knee deep through leaflets to get out of the front door.

Why do these little things annoy me? A sign of your age, I hear you say. Well, maybe. I have noticed a certain tendency to irritation sometimes. It's only the little things though – litter louts, people walking their dogs on the beach where it's not allowed, people who park inconsiderately – that sort of thing. But the things that matter I take calmly. Anyhow, on the whole I do feel I'm entering a new free and easy phase of life.

Here are a few tell-tale signs I've noticed recently…

1. I’ve started muttering. This is the next stage on from talking to yourself. I know what I'm saying but anybody listening won't understand a word. And I don't care if nobody listens or understand either.

2. I don’t mind going out in scruffy clothes. In fact, I do it on purpose most mornings. I get dressed into what I call my dog walking clothes (because that's what they are). I deliberately do my hair how I think a mad dog lady would do it, as close as you can get without chopping it off in a straight line at chin level. I put on battered old trainers and a raincoat I've had for over ten years and I'm good to go. I don't give a tuppenny toot if people think I'm a bit odd. In fact, I rather hope they do. It's my way of enjoying myself.

3. I’ve started to Say Something if necessary. Yesterday a cyclist whizzed up behind me and the dog on a shared pedestrian/cyclist path and made me jump out of my skin. I found myself calling out after him, you've got a bell, why don't you ring it? Luckily, he didn't stop and thump me. I find myself Saying Something before I've had time to think. This is happening quite often now.

4. I'm prepared to take my camera out and about and take photos from strange angles and not care if I look silly! And I probably DO look silly, believe me.

 So I realise I must be practically into Red Hat* territory now. This brings a new freedom and its great! I've been looking forward to this for years, and I intend to enjoy it.

*See the poem by Jenny Joseph ‘Warning’ 

I MADE A PLAN....

Friday morning was supposed to be sunny until 9.00. Thinking of all the good advice I give people about planning their day [see The Back of an Envelope and an Eyebrow Pencil] I made a plan. I wrote what I had to do down and attached a time limit to them, and then ranked them in order of importance urgency. Note: this generally entails getting up early so it might put some people off.

6.00am Get up, have breakfast, clear up, make bed*, get dressed. Pack boot of car with bean plants for my allotment and Althea officinalis for the herb allotment. Plus a boot full of cardboard because Charles Dowding told me to, in preparation for 2 tonnes of compost.

*[If husband not still in it].

7.00 Drive to allotment, unpack car and plant bean plants and Althea officinalis plants, do some weeding, tie up some canes. Try to avoid glances from other allotmenteers who are probably wondering where I have been for the last three weeks. Easy to avoid glances if I hide behind weeds…

9.00 Head back home. Shower. Hair wash. Oh, divine! Clear up kitchen and answer emails. Put a wash on.

10.00 Work on assignment for college. It’s about resources. I’m nearly at 3,000 words and I must say it is not inspiring. Two hours should crack it…

12.00 I’m a good girl. I spent 2 solid hours writing and researching and I’m ready for a break. Have an early lunch. Clear up kitchen and make a plan for Alice to follow so she can cook dinner for 17.00

13.00 Out in the garden, hanging up wash, potting on courgettes and squash into bigger pots, writing a ‘sowing and planting’ list. Whatever month it is I always have just missed something. When I first look it is too early, so I wait and then it is too late. How does this happen every time? Take carrots and parsnip; I avoid the frost, then I miss the opportunity – where did it go?

14.00 Tidy office/pharmacy and dispensary ready for students at the weekend

15.00 Spend an hour writing part of a module study guide for the herbal medicine course.

16.00 Make a spelt bread sourdough and a rye sourdough and feel like I’m ‘back to basics’ in a rustic kinda way. Just don’t ask me what happened to my chickens last week.

16.30 Tidy garden room, just a bit.

17.30 Have dinner. Organise clear up. Work day is done. Now I get to relax with a book or laptop feeling smug that I have motored through the day getting things done. It works because I don’t have to make choices, the list tells me what to do. If I don’t have a list I get distracted and don’t achieve so much.

TBH, the smuggest feeling is that 2 hours at the beginning of the day. …