Good morning everyone,

Welcome back Thin and please don’t slow down your posts. The tooth… darn it…. terrible timing…hope it gets sorted soon.

Joffy – thank you. It really does help to have this lovely group of online friends. I’m imagining those clothes sizes and how fantastic is that! Well done.

Re cooking and bread – my first thought was “What’s a dutch oven?” but then I rememvered it as one of those black cast iron thingies that people take camping. I’m sorry I have to skip the breadmaking stuff. I’m intolerant or allergic to every grain except corn, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like eating them. I have a weired form of intolerance for some things where part of the reaction is addiction or compulsive eating (all medically tested), and bread is one of those so eeading about it and imagining the smells is a bit torturous.

FD yesterday was fine till later in the evening when I was doing stuff in the litchen, tired, and kept nibbling little bits of various things. Let’s face it – just about all food is tempting in those conditions, so I need to take my own advice and Walk. Away. From. The. Kitchen! I need to be doing something busy with my hands in the loungue room or go downstairs.

Must go,
Onwards and Downwards,
Merry

Good morning Frangi, Jody, GDSA, Thin, Cinque, and anyone else who’s reading but not posting right now.

Frangi, I hope that soup provides the daytime filler that you were looking for on your FDs.

Thin, good luck with the dental appointment, I hope it’s a minor problem than can be fixed relatively cheaply. The last time I broke a tooth (on a raw carrot stick) they tried filling it but the nerves took about a year to settle down with the threat of a root canal hanging over my head.

GDSA, a BBQ on the verandah sounds lovely. I think spring and autumn are the best time for outdoor eating – too many flies for my liking in summer.

Cinque, the vegemite toast sounds good, but it’s a FD for me so I’m settling for a pot of tea.

Jody, I like the idea of the Lekue silicone bowl. I had seen a picture of them online but hadn’t quite realised that you were meant to use them for everything in the process.
I went to classes in the 1980s and learned to make bread by hand. Then in the 1990s I bought a breadmaker, but I quickly found myself using only the dough cycle to knead and prove the dough then I’d shape it myself and bake it in the oven. It didn’t take long to realise that I could pretty much achieve the same thing with the dough hook on my mixer. So I got rid of the bread maker. Because of the arthritis, kneading the dough myself is not an option anymore, so I’m grateful to have the help of an appliance for that part of the process. I do sometimes use a no-knead process, but I find it works better for lighter doughs and I use some pretty heavy and coarse grains and flours.

There’s no sun here and the temps are still stuck in the mid-teens, but it’s definitely fine enough for a walk today. I really need that.

Frangi – I hope her performance goes as well as Joffy’s daughter’s did.

Penguin I have a question about the British education system. I was just watching a feature on the BBC news about GCSEs and I want to put what I saw in context. Is GCSE the year before A levels and then O levels? I hadn’t previously realised there was a national exam system that came before A levels. (In Australia I think our equivalent is years 10-12, the last 3 years of high school here.) The kids they interviewed seemed to be 16 years old – all complaining about the new marking system.

I just saw an story on the BBC news that 41% of 40-60 year olds in Britain don’t manage even one 10 minute walk per month. Thant’s all the hint that I need that it’s time to get of my backside and go for that walk I’d planned today.

LJoyce when I was at school in the UK 30 yeas ago!!!! The GCSE’s replaced the O levels which were sat at the age of 16. You could then stay on at secondary school for a further 2 years and sit your A levels if you wanted to go on to Uni and further your education or leave school after sitting your GCSE’s and get a job!

LJoyce. O levels ( Ordinary Levels I think) are what my generation took at age 16. Since replaced by GCSEs, A levels (Advanced?) are taken at 18 years. The ages are not fixed, the very bright can take them sooner and you can add to your total later in life. Every few years they mess around with the system – O levels were a straight exam with 2 grades – pass or fail. GCSEs included an element of course works done during the preceding year and had multiple grades. A levels always had grades.

There is a national suspicion that over the years the system has been dumbed down, which is why they are changing it again. My own experience is that about 17 years ago, when I still worked, I went to our HR people and said “I want an assistant, someone with common sense who can read and write” The response was “You need a graduate” . I pointed out that I left school at 16 with O levels and was told that the world had changed, and even for a graduate they would put a literacy test into the selection procedure! These days there is an assumption that every one goes to University. It has the value of keeping the young off the un-employed lists but is producing a frustrated generation with student debts and a degree that potential employers don’t value.

Hi Penguin & Thin – thanks for the explanations of the British education system. It’s not the only country to worry about falling standards. We’ve been bemoaning falling standards for decades. At the end of the 1980s I decided I was sick of the direction my career was going (I was an auditor and was not enjoying it). I decided to do another degree part time with a view to eventually changing careers. I did a Bachelor of Education. Because the university had been worried about the standard of literacy that their graduating teachers had, they took the drastic approach of imposing a literacy entrance exam on everyone starting a BEd. They tested 6 different criteria, including things like spelling, grammar and comprehension. A couple of weeks later I was chatting to the Language lecturer – she was one of those who’d marked these exams, she said that out of over 300 students I was one of just 6 who passed all 6 elements of the exam. For those with minor flaws they gave them study materials to work through themselves. For those with more fundamental problems, they ran remedial tutorials for the whole of semester one then retested them – if they failed again they were kicked out of the course. The university’s view was that the literacy standards in schools wouldn’t improve until the literacy standard of the teachers did.
As it turned out the BEd provided a change of career without me even needing to leave the government department I was working for. Just as I was finishing the degree they offered me a move into a role as a workplace trainer – I really enjoyed that. I did that for nearly a decade before doing yet more part time study and moving into a the data analysis and stats field – I had finally found my perfect niche, just a shame it took so long to figure out.

thinatlast. They have obviously been changing these things forever. I did my O levels in 1960. I still have the results notice – 7 passes (just the word “pass”, no grades then) and one fail. The failure was in German, in which I subsequently qualified as an interpreter. I could have stayed on, but in those days working class kids didn’t go university. At 16 years I left school and became a Police Cadet. I was considered unusually well qualified – there was a basic literacy entrance test. Now they demand graduates. From there I became an RAF Officer, then fairly senior management in a national company. By the time I retired I wasn’t qualified to do the jobs of the people I was training to work for me, or any of the jobs I have ever done. Some of our security guards were graduates. Our HR people talked of applicants with degrees in underwater basket weaving, but to be fair I never saw one. That was in the good old days – I have been retired 15 years.

Good morning all. Happy Saturday 😊 My daughters performance went very well, unfortunately for her though the teachers are seriously lacking in talent and imagination so I’m glad she only has the rest of this year to go there! Had another friend round for a cuppa in the evening so this kept me fasting much longer than I anticipated! I then got a frantic call from my son to say he had stacked his bike and cut all his face so a mad dash out to pick him up and then get him nursed and cleaned up also left me fasting even longer. His face is quite a mess, grazed battered no bruised with a very fat lip but he was ok. I finally got something to eat around 9.30 last night and as it was so late I just settled for some cruskits and cottage cheese and a yoghurt! Happy to report that with my 3 days of fasting this week I have dropped 1.9 and my BMI has dropped 0.8. Will try and stay healthy over the weekend but tonight is take away night so I’ll save up my cals for dinner!!! Lots of washing, ironing and housework to catch up on today so I’ll be keeping busy! Have a great day all 😉

Good morning all.

Frangi, sorry to hear about your son, hope he feels better soon.

GDSA, well done on the clothes shopping – at this rate that spare room might need to be a walk-in wardrobe and not just a gym. I had to get ruthless with my tendency to hang onto things when my huge built-in wardrobe became too full. I now have a self imposed rule that for every new garment I put into my wardrobe I have to take one out and donate it to charity. So far it hasn’t been difficult because there are always garments that I don’t really like anymore or don’t look as good as other options. Because the majority of things come from charity clothing stores I find it easier to part with things even if I’ve barely worn them. If I’d paid a lot of money and felt I hadn’t had my money’s worth I would find it harder.

Penguin, my dad was an amateur photographer and he preferred taking slides. We used to have family side nights. We still have his slides – we found them all when we had to clear out his house. I just did a bit of a search for a gadget that would do this task for you – I found plenty in Office Works, but they are an Australian chain. Then I decided to look at amazon.uk, they have some too: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Film-Scanners/b?ie=UTF8&node=430591031 – the majority are for photo conversion but a few are for slides and negatives.
I was subjected to the same expectations about university that you described. I had a lot of pressure from my parents to abandon my obsession with going to university and get a job locally. They didn’t understand why I wanted to go to university and they didn’t want me leaving home (I was still just 16 when I finished high school, so it was reasonable for them to not want me living away from home.) Not only was there no history of tertiary education in my family it wasn’t common in the rural area where I lived. When I started high school there were over 200 kids in my year, by the time I got to year 12 there were less than 40 and only 7 of us who went on to university. I was actually the first member of my extended family to ever graduate from university. Things have changed now, as a lot of my cousins children have a university education – but times have changed, it’s almost the norm these days. I think the lack of job opportunities in the Riverland has contributed to this with a lot of kids feeling like they need to leave if they want a stable financial future.

Yesterday’s FD went well, but I couldn’t stop thinking about food while trying to get to sleep last night – mainly roast chicken with stuffing for some strange reason. I might have to cook a roast for dinner, although it won’t be chicken as I can’t get through a whole bird by myself – I get sick of the leftovers before I get through the chicken. I do have a recipie for stuffing made in a baking dish rather than inside a chicken, so I could still do that.

Another overcast but fine day here, so I should get a little time in the garden and hopefully a walk as well. Hope you all have a nice weekend.

Such interesting stories Penguin – especially funny about failing German and subsequently becoming an interpreter. Also enjoyed LJ’s account of her various career changes. Things have changed so much over the decades. Back in my Dad’s day, you’d get a qualification and then loyally work for one company for virtually your entire working life. I was saying to my husband the other day that the only constant I have had in all six decades of my life is The Queen! I know the Aussies can’t relate to that but just sayin’.

I went to a 30 year high school reunion (13 years ago) and there were quite a lot of old people in the room. It was a posh high school for girls, ranked 8th in the country at the time but I have no idea how that ranking was achieved. Anyway, Rosie, the one and only girl who’d dropped out at age 15, much to the dismay of the teachers, rolled up in a convertible Porsche looking very glamorous. My boarding school mate and I were sort of the black sheep as everyone else seemed to have gone to Oxford, Cambridge or London. I guess we let the side down a bit. However, my friend had married the Queen’s pigger and we had a wonderful stay in the grounds of Windsor.

There are gadgets that will convert slides to digital images. OH has one but abandoned it as it was a laborious, time-consuming effort. It would handle four slides at a time and put them on a memory card but the quality wasn’t great whereas slide quality was always terrific – back in the day!

GDSA, that’s amazing. Size 8! Wow. Very rewarding. From memory, you joined us around January – is that correct? – and how much have you dropped since then?

Frangi, you’re off to an encouraging start. Well done with your new BMI and weight loss. Why are you fasting 3 days a week if you don’t mind my asking? (sorry if you’ve already explained, I decided not to read all the posts I missed but just skimmed through them).

LJ, DD opened some of my almond milk while I was away (hoping to avoid a trip to the store for milk) but didn’t like it so I’ve been trying to use it on NFDs. I like the taste of kefir as it is but only in small quantities. Mine is going mad with production so I tried mixing the almond milk as you’d suggested and added some blueberries to see if it would make a palatable snack. I can’t say I like it much. I must have come to associate A&C milk with FD coffees so I didn’t really enjoy it as a NFD flavour. Any other suggestions? It’s too late to freeze which I usually do in 80ml portions, I just need to use it now.

CalifD, I only revived half my kefir grains on return and they’re going berserk. I would like to freeze the remainder. I can’t find the informative website I used originally. Do I rinse them in water, dry them and place them in a ziplock bag? How do I dry them, if so?

Minka, Intesha, Merry, hope you’re all OK. Whatcha’ up to? Hi Jody & Joffy and everyone else.

Cinque, hope you had a fruitful meeting and look forward to reading your post when I wake for my FD tomorrow.

Thin – I did have a career constant – one employer that I joined 3 months after finishing my first degree and stayed with until retirement. I was able to completely change career direction several times and do lots more part time study without ever having to change employers. I was pretty lucky that things worked out that way – you can only really do things like that in very large organisations that have a lot of different career streams.
As to the almond milk. Here’s some things I use it for:
– Did you include the banana as well as the blueberries in your smoothie? – it’s a bit sour otherwise.
– I use it on the muesli-oats bowl than I’ve been having at lunch time. I pour the almond milk over and leave it to soak for a couple of hours (sometimes I cover and refrigerate overnight). It all gets absorbed by the time I’m ready to eat and I add some fresh fruit (usually a chopped banana or pear or sliced fresh berries or grated apple).
– Sometimes I soak just plain oats and dried fruits in the almond milk overnight then the next day I add a grated apple and a few seeds or nuts to make a bircher muesli. I usually add some kefir just before I eat it as all of the almond milk has been absorbed by this point.
– Although I rarely use it this way, you could make porridge using the almond milk instead of water to cook the oats, then a little cows milk at the end.
– I also use it for hot drinks – usually cocoa or vanilla & spice. Sometimes I just heat a mug of almond milk and add my flavourings but if I want a richer drink (on a NFD) I’ll add 1tblsp skim milk powder dissolved in a little water and then top up the mug with almond milk – it adds about an extra 100kj but a much richer milkier flavour.
– I make chia pudding using almond milk – I’m aiming for the texture of cooked sago. I soak the chia seeds in almond milk for 2 days in the fridge so that they can fully “inflate”, then I add flavours such as pureed fruit to make it taste nice. I find this is a surprisingly filling snack.
– I often use almond milk when making sauces to keep the calories down, eg bechamel, cheese sauce (for cauliflower or mixed veg gratin), white parsley sauce (for fish) and also custard. If you would find any one of these sauces useful you could make a batch with the almond milk and freeze it is useful size portions. I usually find with sauces like these, that when I need them I don’t actually feel like making them, so having something on hand can be useful.
– I also use it in baking if my normal milk supply is getting a little low eg scones or muffins – although I normally only make these when I have a place to take them immediately.
– Although I rarely use it in soups, any creamy soup that you would normally add milk cream to (especially pureed soups) would work with almond milk.
– In any recipie, you don’t have to use solely almond milk, just replace some of the normal milk in a recipie – that way the flavour is closer to what you expect.
Hope you find something in this list that helps.

I’ve did almost 2 hours of fossicking for kindling on the block next door after lunch. I was really dragging my feet when I came back inside, but I probably have enough kindling now to see me through until the end of the cold weather.

Frangi, glad to hear it – we wouldn’t want you doing more than necessary to achieve the same results! There’s no harm in a motivational kick-start though.

Thanks LJ. You do make me laugh. I remember now that you’d written about the hot almond milk before and that really appeals to me. I’ve copy/pasted your other ideas so I don’t have to ask you again. I have difficulty with food waste as you know.

Merry, FIL must be one strong-minded gent to have had you all running around as he has. It must be so hard to gradually lose control of one’s life whether physically, cognitively or both. Please stop doing all that boring stuff and enjoy yourselves a bit! I loved those semi-colons. La Zuppa always reminds me of CharliesMum, no longer posting. I found them too salty but she loves them.

For the ideas on scanner sources, thank you. There are a number on Google and Amazon. Interesting that both the Apple Store Genius and the staff in John Lewis (up market UK retailer) said it wasn’t possible but both of their websites say it is and J lewis will sell me the kit! I have tried such a device in the past, but when I got it home it wasn’t Mac compatible. This should be interesting – some of those slides are nearly 60 years old.

I have a kefir convert. OH not only has a glass mid evening, but this morning asked if there was enough to go on her breakfast cereal. It had gone very thick, almost like pouring yoghurt on her soggies.

Merryme/LJoyce. My wife, who passed the 11+ and went to Grammar/High (the route to university for a boy) was asked at the age of 14 if she saw her future as a nurse or a secretary. She subsequently , as an adult, qualified as a teacher. We have moved on, over the years I worked for a number of woman bosses.

Hello Cinque, I’ve had my first coffee with a little extra A&C milk than usual. It’s a sunny, not too cool day in Perth. So pleased that you had a productive meeting. You have put so much time and effort into this project, I do hope it goes well.

Ah yes Penguin, the 11+. That one sort of sealed one’s destiny, didn’t it? So much for the Genius and how weird would it be to go to work wearing that T Shirt each day! I wonder if he passed his 11+.

LJ, it must be even harder for you but, with a family of only three, I find shopping challenging because, as you say, fruit and veg. produce often deteriorates very quickly. I’ve always thought it was a problem with the way it’s transported because a lot of it comes across the Nullarbor and I can tell from the texture that some items such as brown onions and apples have been near-frozen. Not sure why we can’t grow our own fruit and veg. here in the west.

LJ, I was spoiled by the high quality of produce in southern California and we were disappointed by how tasteless all the salad veg seemed when we moved here. In Thailand, one of our included breakfasts had to be ordered from a menu and mine came with a giant pile of lettuce. I first thought this a little odd but began picking at it and was surprised how incredibly tasty it was. I ate the whole thing. I’d earlier seen many people taking large salads from various breakfast buffets which wouldn’t have occurred to me. I’d love to grow more of our own produce but we have very sandy soil, little rainfall and harsh temperatures so haven’t enjoyed much success beyond tomatoes, peppers, spring onions and a range of herbs. Something chomped its way through my entire passionfruit vine while we were away.

I’m fascinated by all things to do with WW11. And I love programmes such as, ‘Foyle’s War’ and to a lesser extent, the more recent, ‘Land Girls’. My grandfather worked in the banana import trade and a stalk of bananas was delivered to their house every week. During the war, my nan said that they could always get anything they needed such as petrol by trading bananas, a valuable commodity. After the war, she wasn’t ever able to eat bananas again, so sick of them had she become. Two fun facts about bananas – they are apparently the only natural food that cannot be refrigerated and and it is a ‘hand’ of bananas, not a bunch as my nan always corrected us.

Anyone else fasting today? Do you have set FDs LJ or do they vary each week? I know you have a more active social agenda than I.

Thin have you tried growing veg in pots? Even where I live, just one hot summer week can kill everything. I bought the biggest self watering pots I could find, and planted veg in them. The water wells are large enough that they only require watering approx once a week. I position them in the sun most of the time but if really hot weather is forecast I drag them around the back of the house as it faces south so they are in full shade and check the water more often as the hot wind and air can dry them out more quickly. By April I pull them around to the front of the house and put them under the eaves against the bricks – here they get the northern sun and being against the warmth of the bricks protects them from frosts, so I can keep summer veg cropping until late May (even things like tomatoes & capsicum).
Once I move into a smaller home I suspect all my growing will need to be container based so I’ll be reading up on container gardening.

I absolutely love stories like those Penguin. I should have been born a couple of decades earlier as I like the sound of that simpler life, and one where people pitched in to help one other as with your mother’s wedding dress. I’m not saying people don’t do that now but it’s very much a ‘me’ society by comparison with everyone pushing their little minority agenda and so now we stand for nothing it seems.

I, too, LOVE bananas and usually have a frozen one on a FD – my nan has sadly long since departed so I never understood the whole story about how the bananas were getting past the Germans during the war as it seemed unlikely that the imports could continue – your account clarifies things somewhat, perhaps these were post war rations that she spoke of? My grandparents were fairly well off from what I gather. I know they were the first people to get a telly on Shoreham Beach and, as a toddler, I remember their friends and neighbours coming round to watch it. And I was sometimes allowed to watch, ‘Bill and Ben The Flowerpot Men’ and ‘Noddy and Big Ears’. B&W of course.

LJ, yes OH grows the veg in pots to get better soil quality – despite my having composted religiously for over 20 years here, our soil is still rubbish. Never mind about the crumpets, that’s a bump in the road. Good job overall being down a kilo, yay! 75kgs is a nice round number – go for it!

Thin – what I still can’t figure is how the crumpets got into my freezer in the first place, I can’t remember buying any this winter – it’s quite likely they were a bit older than that. I’m in no hurry to get to 75, but if it happens by osmosis like the last month seems to have, then that’ll be ok with me. I’ll weight myself every now and then and hope for some more nice surprises.

Penguin – my mother was one of 7 kids and 5 of them were teenage/early 20s women during WW2 and every one of them got married during that war (mostly to soldiers). Australia had clothing rations too, so how on earth they managed to rustle up 5 wedding dresses is a mystery to me.
During WW2 there was an “enemy alien internment camp” and a soldier training camp in a tiny Riverland town called Loveday. During WW2 my mother’s family lived across the road from that camp, so contact with soldiers doing their weapons training was inevitable. I remember mum saying that my grandfather did everything possible to keep soldiers away from his daughters. He doesn’t appear to have been very successful – only one of them married a farmer.
What I also find puzzling is that although they mostly married servicemen who were not from the Riverland, every single couple settled in the Riverland after the war. My mum and her sisters must have been very persuasive about where they wanted to live.

Penguin, funny how one decision can change the course of your own life and that of your future family – can you imagine growing up in Kenya?
I know my dad asked mum if she wanted to live in the Adelaide Hills (where he was from), but she said she didn’t want to deal with the cold and rain so they stayed in the Riverland. I don’t think he was too disappointed as they had already settled there (they’d married in ’44 but it wasn’t until ’46 that he was discharged). My Dad came back from New Guinea in 1942 with a shoulder wound and Malaria. He spent a year in hospitals and nursing homes before finally being released to an army desk job for the rest of the war. He was offered a job at either Keswick (army headquarters in South Australia) or Loveday. Needless to say he chose Loveday to be close to my mum. He ended up as secretary/assistant to one of officers managing the internment camp (think Radar O’Rielly in MASH) – although if even half of the stories were true, I think my dad’s larrikin personality was probably more like Hawkeye.
Things have come full circle as I now live in the same town that my Dad grew up in and my house is only one street away from my grandparent’s house – my cousin lives in that house now.

The curiosity got to me so I just checked – BMI in January was 27.6

It has been a pleasant day. A gin clear sky and wall to wall sunshine. A day spent on my hands and knees with a trowel weeding my gooseberry patch, occasionally popping into the house for coffee and to read your posts and add some of my own. Mid afternoon I dug up the first two or three inches of an unhappy snake. We have two kinds – the venomous adder or viper and the harmless grass snake. The adder is more common here , but it wasn’t one of those. They are a pretty little thing with the distinctive wedge shaped viper’s head and a zig-zag line down the back. This had the smooth lines of a young grass snake. We often find them in compost heaps where they lay their eggs, but what it was doing a couple of inches down in dry soil I have no idea.

Then an hour sitting in the sun with a book and a drink. I had given up whiskey but I came across a new version of Highland Park single malt. It was my Father’s favourite so , entirely out of loyalty to the old man, it had to be tried. I am now about to cook Beef Stroganoff, but instead of sour cream I intend to use kefir – it should work.

Hi there everyone my name is Dana and I’m researching intermittent fasting. I’d like to get some personal feedback from anyone willing to tell me how its going for them. I’m doing a research paper for my health coaching certificate. Is anyone willing to tell me what got them into fasting, how it is going, are you new to it or have been doing it for some time now? Any information would be greatly appreciated! My email address is deka520@gmail.com Thank you in advance.

So much fun to see numbers in the 50s on the scales after a FD even if it is a temporary dip below 60. I’m still pinching myself that I’ve kept this weight off for two years.

GDSA, your post was hard to read. I wonder what you might have studied had you been allowed to pursue your education. Anyway you are well and truly in control of your life now. Fit, healthy and raising a lovely daughter.

Penguin, what a great justification for a sundowner. Did you start the day with a gin or was that the description of the sky? I’ve never seen a snake in England. In fact, I’d never seen one in 25 years of living in Oz until this year, when a dugite slithered across my towel right at the water’s edge on Rottnest Island. Although I’m terrified of snakes, I can’t get up quickly due to my knees so had no option but to stay put until it passed just inches from where I sat frozen in fear. DD was in the water and was so excited to follow it up the beach for identification purposes.

LJ it must be nice to have all those close family roots nearby. My American OH followed me down to Oz where I was about to emigrate when we met. He was happy for the adventure but I don’t think he really wanted to stay. It took him many years to settle whereas for me, being English, it was an easy transition. Now I fear it will be a little tricky convincing him to try new pastures.

Frangi, hope your son is OK. I enjoyed your post. I try to keep a couple of mantras in my head that I learned here – “eat mostly plants” and “don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognise”. I didn’t know about the revival of Bill and Ben. I did know that Big Ears offended the PC brigade. How absurd.

Hope everyone’s having a wonderful day, fasting or not.

A quick hi because I am crook again and just spending the day lying down. What a winter it has been, one thing after another. But I am glad I had my fast day yesterday and it has been good to read your posts.
Re kids programs, my favourite show ever is Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom, so glad I have grandchildren or I wouldn’t know it. I adore Nanny Plum!

Thin – it’s possible, but I suspect, like most things with the human body, it’s more complicated than that.
One of the changes I’ve made is a significant reduction in the number of desserts. They had become too frequent on NFDs – it had happened slowly, so I didn’t notice it at first. Basically every time I went somewhere I had come to expect a cake/dessert etc. Even popping into a coffee shop for a quick cup of tea I’d started ordering some form of sweet baked treat to go with it. Instead of these things being occasional they were becoming far too regular. When I looked back over my food diary I realised I was averaging 2-3 a week. (Only weeks where I stayed home, was I safe from this.) In the month since I introduced the “back to basics” for M-F meals I’ve had just one dessert and I’m now able to stop for a cuppa and just have the tea. If I feel like a treat on a NFD I take a simpler approach like a piece of toasted buttered rye fruit loaf (my own high fibre fruit bread that I know has no added sugar and only contains whole grains). I think this change has probably made the biggest impact on my weight.
The other change is that I’ve added homemade wholegrain cereal bowls for some lunches. (I use a combination of rolled grains like oats, spelt and quinoa.) I didn’t decide to reduce the amount of bread, but eating the cereal bowls became a replacement for veg soup & rye-spelt toast. I also find that the cereal bowls do get me through for several hours before I feel hungry again (which the soup & toast wasn’t doing quite as well), so most of the time I’m snacking less in the afternoon – I suspect this has also made a difference. I always have kefir with the cereal bowl and I always sprinkle inulin powder onto it – I have no idea whether these things also have an impact.
I haven’t really reduced the amount of grains I’m eating, in fact it’s probably increased, as the cereal bowl contain a similar quantity of grains to about 3 slices of bread and I wasn’t having more than 2 slices with veg soup.
I’ve gone from about 12 slices of bread per week to about 6. (As you would know from my earlier posts I don’t eat commercial breads, I either buy sprouted rye sourdough from a local organic bakery or I make my own using only wholegrains and legumes.) I find it pretty easy to stop at 1-2 slices of these dense chewy breads, whereas if I eat the normal breads (like those crumpets), it seems to trigger a desire for more. I definitely don’t want to give up the grains that I still consume – I actually want my gut bugs to have that diversity in their food supply as I know that by eating the whole grain some of it is getting through to the gut undigested.

I’m guess I’m also always very suspicious of simple answers when it comes to diet and weight. I think our bodies are more complex than that.