Hi Banshee welcome. There are 2 other S.A.ites on this forum. I live in the Adelaide Hills and GDSA is in the mid-north. There are also quite a few of us in a similar age range – I’m mid 50s. I saw on your profile that you’ve lost 60kg after having a gastric sleeve fitted. That’s a truly amazing weight loss. Have you found the sleeve easy to adapt to? I know several people who had gastric bands put in a few years ago and their negative experiences deterred me for going down that path. I used to be morbidly obese, but I took the slower route to lose weight. The issue that remained was how to maintain the weight loss and I regained 9kg last December. I turned to 5:2 and got that gain off again and 5:2 has also really helped me with ongoing maintenance with a lot less stress than I was feeling before. I hope it helps you to.

Penguin – not sure the local Nepalese restaurants would get away with that sort of behaviour. I also doubt there are any wandering herds of goats for them to cull.
I can imagine really dark chocolate working in a chilli because dark chocolate has a deep, warm and slightly spicy flavour. I have tried chilli flavoured chocolate and it was nice, but wouldn’t be a regular choice for me.

*sorry ‘was’, not ‘was was’. Not enough time to edit.

Thin, the cop on the motorbike didn’t arrest her? 😁 I’m guessing she was fast enough to escape! What a funny story!

Penguin and LJoyce, I put cayenne pepper in brownies (which I haven’t made in a very long time) and they turn out great. Several friends who’ve had them at our house have added it when they’ve made them.

Good morning all,

Oh that poor cop on a motorbike! So funny though!

Penguin, that sounds like the best Nepalese restaurant of them all! In situ!

Welcome Banshee! Hopefully 5:2 will be perfect for you to get to your healthy weight and then stay there. Great to have you here!

Cali, how annoying that you can’t get to see many of those SBS programs! I remember how frustrated I used to get when I followed a link to Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert and was told it wasn’t available in Australia (I don’t have pay TV that had them on).

I quite often watch the Italian news on SBS (because I want(ed?) to learn Italian… Cinque, get it!) and rarely can work out what the story is. LJoyce was it you who watches four different foreign language news programs that don’t have subtitles. What kind of linguistic genius are you?????

Saw all the ads for the food fad program but couldn’t bear to watch it!

Fast Day today. Must buy chicken! I might buy fresh mushrooms for my miso soup too. Yum.

Best wishes to everyone

Best wishes

Thin & Cinque – The only language I speak coherently is English. I know a little French and German, and have at times used their news broadcasts on SBS to practice my comprehension. News is the best option as they rarely use slang and they speak more slowly and clearly than everyday conversation. I doubt I’ll ever be fluent in any foreign language – I have a great memory for nouns but I always struggle with the verbs.
However I don’t watch foreign language news daily – just the english versions made by foreign broadcasters. News broadcasters in China, Japan, Germany, France and Qatar all make an English language version of their daily news – SBS shows these in a block from 5am daily, it’s immediately followed by the BBC 6pm news that we get here at 7am. I record it on my HDD recorder so that I can watch bits of it at leisure over my morning cuppa. It’s all in English – not sure my brain could cope with anything more challenging first thing in the morning. I do FF though a lot of the duplication but sometimes it’s interesting to see the different priorities and views that countries take on the same issue.

GDSA – Are you going away for the school holidays, or just having time at home with your daughter?

FD for me – need to squeeze one in between my two lunches out. I have an appointment in Mount Barker this afternoon, but that’s it for commitments today. Tomorrow I’m spending the day with my best friend. She is currently renovating and extending a house and needs to choose the finishes she wants. So we’ll be driving from place to place looking at taps, tiles floor coverings etc. I think it will be enjoyable as I’m not doing the driving and I don’t have to make the decisions. I might even find some finishes that would work at my house. We’ll take a break for lunch at some point. As we’ll be in the area, we’ve decided to go to Sarahs Sister – a vego restaurant at Semaphore (a beachside suburb in Adelaide). I love their food, but my favourites from their menu involve either crepes and cream or pasty. So a FD today is essential. Depending on how tempting their desserts are a FD Saturday may end up being essential too.

Thin your posts did remind me of Red Dog – fantastic Aussie movie.

I was taught some German at school and can surprisingly remember some. I actually like the language but wont have any further use for it.

Ljoyce not going away for school holidays. As a single mum holidays as such are not in our budget but we will do a few day trips within the Flinders Ranges. Melrose is one of our favourite places to go. I just love the afternoon sun setting behind Mount Remarkable and lets not forget the op shops along the way – MissD’s will do the ‘do we have to go to these op shops again mum’ I’m sure.

JJ – I’ve been disappointed by most of the ready made falafel. I usually make my own and have a recipe that gives a moist falafel that freezes well. The only pre-made one that I like is Syndian brand. In the supermarket it’s in the freezer rather than the fridge, and is only available in Foodland. They make a number of vegetarian patties in addition to the falafel – I like them all except the brown rice ones.
The recipe that I use comes from a book called “Great Vegetarian Food” from the 1980s. It is online as the chef did a tv cooking show.
http://www.kurma.net/blog/page/74
There is one ingredient that I always omit because I don’t care for it – the asafetida powder. I also either panfry or bake them rather than deep frying.
In the recipe he says that the dry chickpeas need to be soaked overnight. I sometimes find they take even longer as the best result is if they soak long enough to double in size – that takes a good 24 hours.

Thin, I’ve never seen the movie, Red Dog and I haven’t found any places here that stream it. There was on site on the internet that had it in French, but speak much too fast for me to follow. I could buy the DVD for $7 and May do that if I don’t find anyone streaming it

I speak some French. I started learning it from some cassette tapes in the car about 20 years ago. I subscribed to Paris Match for several years which is a weekly magazine and read that. I moved on to a few novels. One was the first Harry Potter book. I still read a lot online in French. When we were over there on holidays my comprehension improved some and a year later the couple who owned a B&B where we stayed for a couple nights ended up staying with us for a week. I took off of work and took them around to see the different sites in San Francisco, Monterey and the wine country. The wife knew very little English so I had to speak in my terrible French all week. My speaking and comprehension improved greatly during that week.

Thin, I’ve tried to learn Spanish over the years, but it really takes a lot of time and dedication to learn another language properly. Maybe when I retire I’ll spend more time on learning. It’s so much nicer visiting another country when you can speak the language. It’s weird, sometimes I’ll wake up in the morning with a French phrase in my head. I’ve read that learning another language is very good for the aging brain and memory.

Thin – I did just 1 year of German in high school and then did night classes for 2 years to start learning French in the 1990s. It was actually the french teacher who made the suggestion that we watch the French language news on SBS. It really did help me practice. I try to keep up with the conversation in French movies and I fail dismally because they talk too fast and use slang that I haven’t learned.
I’m incredibly rusty with both German and French these days as I haven’t travelled to Europe since the 1990s so I just haven’t had a strong incentive to keep my skills up.
In SA we have an organisation called the “Workers Education Association” that offers courses in all sorts of topics at really affordable prices: https://www.wea-sa.com.au/
They do everything from a 1 day course learning to make bread, to 1 week IT courses to learn how to use a piece of software to year long language classes. I’ve done crafts, cooking, misic, IT and languages through them. Most providers are specialised and expensive but the WEA is always at a price I can afford.
They offer quite a lot of language classes – some run all year and follow a fairly traditional syllabus and others are short courses designed specifically for overseas travellers.

I had actually though that for my future travels I would probably to a relevant language course before I went . Not only would it be useful, but as you all pointed out, it also keeps the brain cells active.

Languages are like muscles. If you don’t use them you lose them. At various times I have had some Cantonese, Japanese, Malay, French, Spanish and I was fluent in German. Pretty much all of that, except for my German, has gone. The German stayed with me because having lived in the country for 10 years some of my books are in German. Because I now spend several weeks each year in Portugal I decided to learn Portuguese. On line I found a free language training website called Duolingo. I am also using it to keep my German fluency and re-learn French.

Thinatlast. There has been a series of TV programmes here on ageing. To summarise their conclusions: what is good for the body is good for the brain. Keep active physically and learn something new as you get older. Most interesting was the conclusion that to some extent you can reverse the ageing progress.

Are you sure you can’t have dogs on bikes in California? The last time I was in San Francisco a guy on a Harley stopped next to us at the traffic lights. He was wearing a red bandana and purple shades. Sitting on the fuel tank in front of him was a small dog, also wearing a red bandana and purple shades. The taxi driver seemed to accept this as normal for San Francisco.

In some cases it was know a little of. I have worked in some international organisations where the only common language was English. Even so, I found people more helpful if I tried to speak their language. Give me a couple of weeks notice that I am going somewhere and I will have done the survival training – the ability to get a bed for the night, a meal and whatever the locals drink are pretty essential.

Traffic cops vary. About 20 years ago I was driving through Belgium at 3am in a car with German plates. I was pulled by a cop in a Porsche who said to me, in German, “You were driving at 160 km in a 100 limit. That will be 6000 Belgian Francs”. I swore, mildly, in English, to which he replied, in good English, ” Ah, you’re British. In that case you were doing 130km and it will be 3000 Belgian Francs.” Anglo-Belgian good will wouldn’t get him any lower and he escorted me to a cashpoint to get the money.

Hi Everyone
We went to an Adventure Film Festival where there was a biker with a dog that went to many charities raising $$ for sick kids who was licensed to have his dog on his bike. He was a great speaker -Ted and Bundy or something like that

I learned Indonesian at school. Not that helpful except for going to Bali on holiday. When we went on a 6 week holiday to London and stayed with friends recently, we went to France for 8 nights. I so wished I could speak French so I could make my B&B host understand I wanted the Wifi code!! French does seem to me, to be a difficult language tho.

I love the movie Red Dog-make sure you have the tissue box handy when you watch it CalifD.

Today i had a successful FD with only eating dinner. A small curry with Cauli rice. Ive never done a b2b but I will try tomorrow as its my last chance until my weigh-in on Monday.
Have a goodnight all! xx

Oh for more RAM!

I have used Duo Lingo too for learning Italian, but I keep getting sidetracked and starting from the beginning again, and then it started getting boring.
Australia is dreadful for being monolingual, Penguin, even though we are so multicultural.
I always meant to live in another country for a while but even when I taught in an Aboriginal community I only learned some basic words, although I got pretty good at Aboriginal English, including the body language that is part of it. So at least I can learn a dialect!

Well I had a good Fast Day yesterday. Just adored my miso soup. The mushrooms were just small ones of the most ordinary kind, but delicious and juicy.

Ciao!

Thanks for the reassuring post CalifD, I def. need more RAM and a defragging!

Down to 60.4kg and the meal out tomorrow is cancelled as the winery is fully booked for lunch so all is good.

Stay, good luck with that B2B, you’re very brave.

Cinque, I didn’t know that there’s a body language component to Aboriginal dialect.

Lindsay, well done with your loss. Here’s a link to our recipe thread where you’ll find quite a few ideas for konjac (the recipes I posted say ‘Slendier’ noodles but we since learned from JJulie that these are konyaku noodles).
https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/southern-hemispherites-fd-recipes/

Adios amigos!

Good morning all,

Well the relatives started to arrive yesterday and we went to a Japanese restaurant for dinner. A good option for both myself and BIL who is gluten free. I ended up eating chicken which was the first meat I have eaten in 3 weeks. It was teriyaki chicken on boiled rice. Just enough for me and not too high in the calories (I had fasted for the whole day before dinner) Weight had not changed this morning. Tonight we are BBQing fish and I will make salad to go with it.

Thin, I am so glad you had a good and kind vet. Making Vicky’s paperwork a keplie X and allowing her to stay with you guys. A very touching story as I am a big dog lover.
LJoyce, I understand where you are with this memory thing. I too now make shopping lists because even though I might make a list in my head I will get to the shops and then wonder what it was that I was there for, even if it is only a couple of items. I also come home without things that are on the list too probably because i dont read it properly!! I am still very good with numbers and can remember phone numbers no problems. We have 5 cars and I can remember the regos of all of them too, even the ones we no longer have. I can remember my mother and father’s registration of their first car and also the phone number of the house I grew up in. Also my auntie and uncles phone number in Adelaide.

My father died from dementia. His heart was strong, he had done sport in his younger years and had always eaten healthy, did not drink hard spirits only the occasional beer and kept himself busy in his retirement. Dementia started with he was late 70’s but by the time he was 81 it really took it’s toll. He had a stroke in the July and although he recovered the dementia advanced with the stroke. Then on his 82nd birthday he had another stroke which put him into a coma. I sat with him in the hospital for 6 days and nights until he passed on. The doctors told me that dementia weakens the blood vessels in the brain and they so often see dementia patients having strokes. My father in law also had dementia but he was diagnosed in his early 70’s he passed on a couple of months ago at the age of 78. He was having lots of little strokes they called them bleeds) for three weeks before his passing. Dementia is a disease and I hope they find a way to cure it or halt it soon.

Got to get the fish out of the freezer and start preparing tonights big get together so catch up again soon.

Hi Julie
I was typing and didn’t see your post. I love Japanese food and seafood too- all good options for this WOL. Are all your relatives coming over for a special occasion? I might have missed something here 🙂

Thin, you need more RAM and a defragging? That sounds dirty! 😜😮

Julie, I’m sorry to hear about your father and FIL. I didn’t mean to make light of it in my remarks. I think we all worry. It is frightening. It’s becoming so common that you have to wonder if there’s something we’re all eating or doing that’s responsible for it, like cellphones or food additives. It would have to be something very common since the disease seems to know no boundaries. Hopefully the 5:2 is helpful in preventing it in some way.

I’m having a terrible week with overeating. I was at 62 this morning. It’s not that I’m binging and eating everything in sight, it’s just a little of this, too much of that. Going out to dinner and eating the wrong things. Fasting today was harder after that. We had salmon tonight and cauliflower (and jasmine rice for my DH who is thin). I finished the day a little under 500 calories.

I had kind of a frustrating day with tech stuff. I convinced my DH and DS that we should quit our satellite TV provider and switch to a streaming service. We can’t get good reception over the air because of the hills/mountains. The streaming service is about half the price. It has all the channels we like, but the menus look different and it’s not quite as user friendly as the satellite system. I’m the lover of techie stuff in the family and DH and DS don’t like changes. I kept both connected for the last month so we could watch any shows still on the DVR. My DH hasn’t spent much time on the new system so still doesn’t have the whole thing in his head about how it works.

Today was the day we stopped the old service and lots of little problems came up on the new one, mostly cords dislocated when disconnecting the old one. I think it’s resolved now, but frustrating nonetheless.

CalifD,
I agree dementia is frightening and it is something I worry about for both my husband and myself. My mother’s parents both lived into 90’s and my grandfather could tell me family history stories right up to his death. Neither of them had dementia at all. Dont worry as I know you were not making light of it with your comments and no one here on the forum has. It is a subject that needs to be talked about and definitely needs more research.
Cellphones could be something to look at, but my father never owned one, and although my FIL had one he hated using it and only had it for emergencies. It does not mean that they are not responsible in any way as it could be all those phone towers emitting something, you never know. Food additives have often been said to be responsible for cancers, and I can honestly say that I have felt so much better in my body since I started eating vegetarian and making more things myself. I have had so much pleasure lately doing preserves like my mother and her mother used to do. Not to mention having my veggie patch with has now crops that I can harvest.

i hope your week gets better. I am having salmon tonight with salad from the garden.

Happy to report today I broke through the 64 barrier and weighed in at 63.9kg this morning. Still aiming for 60kg but am mindful of my increase in exercise and weight training now the weathers warming and that by building more muscle tone it will be about how I look and feel rather than the reading on the scales. So the next few months will be about working out where I want to be and then maintenance.

Yay its Friday evening and I’m on 2 weeks leave. Go the Mighty Crows tomorrow !

Hi SHs, happy weekend.

I’ve just started my FD with a pot of tea. I have food planned for the day – 1/2 punnet of strawberries and asparagus and baby spinach to go into an omelette for dinner.
Weather is reasonable at the moment, although there is meant to be some rain. I’m hoping to spend some time in the garden.

Good morning,

Congratulations Lindsay! Half a kilo is classic 5:2 loss for a week!
What interesting travel you have done! What were you doing in China?
I looked to learn Cantonese with the idea of being able to talk to my elderly Chinese neighbours but decided it was just too hard and chose Italian (mostly because of Inspector Montalbano, my favourite TV series at the time).

A lot of the body language and sign language in Aboriginal language is like the signs we use: expressions and gestures, but informed by signals used when hunting (when you need to be quiet) and in ceremonies.
The one I loved most was when I had friends visiting from Victoria and was able to take them with us on a camp. I asked one of the elders where they should put up their tent and, from their point of view, there was complete silence before I took them over to a place. The old lady had signalled by pointing her lip, and I was able to pick it up by then.

I’m with your son, Stay, it was the most wonderful time of my life.

JJ congratulations to you too! Nice scales!
What a lovely ceremony for your father in law. I’ll be thinking of you tomorrow.

And Gday! Congratulations for breaking that barrier. Woot!

Cali, hooray for Fast Day being a bit of stop and reset when we get nibbling. I’ve been doing more than nibbling the last couple of days 🙁 , so I am going to concentrate on No Snacks today and look forward to my fast day tomorrow.

LJoyce, aren’t you a handy person to take to a building site! And hooray for fast days, which mean you can enjoy a divine custard tart now and then.

Well I think my brain has defragged itself a few times, and made its own decisions about what should be archived and what should be thrown out, to leave a bit of room for new stuff coming in. And I am in there going ‘where did that go?’

Every one of my relatives who got to be over 80 developed dementia so I have my fingers crossed they make some medical breakthroughs in the next 20 years.

I hope your Crows win Gday!

Best wishes everyone!

Hi everyone
Good on everyone on their weight losses. I’m a Monday weigher so ill let you know Monday. It’s been okay so far but now the weekend starts 🙄
It’s a long weekend here too, but we had Friday off. Today it’s the footy grand final and my sisters birthday. She will have about 50 people at her house, from both sides of the family, with most watching the telly. We are taking 2 of our granddaughters as my daughter is working- she’s a paramedic- and son-in-law would appreciate some time to work on/paint their new extension
I’m looking forward to the first wine I’ve had in about 2 weeks 🙂 and some nibbles!
I”ll do 16:8 both today and tomorrow and hopefully that will help

Go Tigers! – hubby and all our kids go for Richmond and one of our sons is going to the game. The other son played his first season, ever, of footy and won best and fairest ( in the reserves team) last night at their presentation! ( our kids are all tall and the boys are basketballers)

I’ve just finished weeding the backyard, moved a couple of patches of daffodils that were in an awkward place. I’ve also dismantled a damaged garden seat so I can dispose of the rotten planks and metal frame in my wheely bins. Feeling a bit tired but quite pleased with myself.

Thin, enjoy the park.
Stay, enjoy the wine and nibbles.
Everyone else, enjoy your Saturday, however you end up spending it.

Thin – Not too late for fires. In fact I was feeling so chilly that I’ve just lit one. However the planks on the garden seat were made from softwood – which probably means they were treated with poisonous chemicals (like permapine is) – not safe to burn.
Seeing the bandicoot was a good find – I think they are utterly adorable.

I’ve just broken my food fast with a pear.