A quick post before I go over to collect my 3yo gd to mind her while my daughter heads to Bendigo for this! https://www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/story/4717964/how-many-crocheters-does-it-take-to-break-a-world-record/
It is going to be even colder in Bendigo than here, but hopefully less rain on the other side Mt Macedon.

I hope your uncle had a good birthday today LJoyce, mine was lowkey but nice. The patties worked out, my DD and DGD made a cake (which I watched everyone eat).
I finished enough of the jumper to see it won’t fit til next year.

Fastday today, must run and put things to soak for my soup tonight.

See you later.

Thanks Thin 🙂
Yes, I was happy to be sung to (although that made the one year old cry!) and blow out the candle with the help of Miss 3, and hand it out for the others to enjoy, which they did.
A big day babysitting yesterday. My daughter IS Rose, and not the person in the article (but it does look a bit like her) and they had a great day, and might have broken the record, but we have to wait to find out.

A bit of a wonky Fast Day for me, I will have to make Thursday a really fasty fast day. But we got through and had fun, including watering the (soaked) garden in the ten minutes of sunshine we had, and walking around the block in near blizzard (comparatively) conditions. My granddaughter is a girl that has to get outside.

Dr Mosley is in Australia again, I just saw him interviewed on the ABC TV morning news program. He has just reissued the Clever Guts book and included the Deakin Uni study that showed the link between diet and depression (the Mediterranean Diet is go).

Another wintery day here, but there should be sun tomorrow. I’m off to make it a good day. Hope yours is too, everyone!

yes, I watched MM interviewed on ABC as well, and now I am sure it does not need to be reheated to “piping hot” as mentioned by the lovely Dr Xand in “all about carbs”.

@ljoyce. the process of converting starch into resistant starch is called retrogradation. Freezing the starch to zero degrees initiates the process. What they don’t tend to tell you is that the process is very inefficient and only about 3-5% of the starch is converted into resistant starch. So that 100g serving of potatoes, if you freeze it, you can go crazy and serve yourself 105 grams instead. Better to try and find vegetables that have a higher fibre content in the first place.

Thanks LJoyce,

Re resistant starches, with pasta, potatoes, rice and bread, the chilling makes a difference but the reheating makes even more of a difference. This is the clip about it from Dr Mosley’s show: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0287yzj The graph is pretty impressive for the reheated things having a lower GI.
I’m not sure if Dr Mosley didn’t add that this morning because he forgot, or time restraint, or because further research is underway, but it was certainly the message on the recent show ‘The Truth about Carbs’
“it’s even better if you re-heat things like pasta, rice and potatoes – and make sure everything, especially the rice, is piping hot – this further increases the resistant starch content”

Sybs, it sounds like the ‘piping hot’ is most useful for the rice, but maybe otherwise it was about food safety?

Thin, I’ll have you know that my family sung beautifully! However the impressive effect of everyone bursting into song was a little bit overwhelming for the toddler 😉

I’ve heard news of West Australians bemoaning your unseasonal weather, but I must say I’d appreciate a 23C day. Glad you weren’t cold yesterday, whatever the reason.

A belated Happy Birthday, Cinque.

https://images.prod.meredith.com/product/0ea0d2a868112403b593bfb2a49b3c10/484bb0ccb0e389686c8468cc4e0795eb8711fe1f8de6643cd02ebd16be989f2d/l/birthday-flower-cake-pastel-with-happy-birthday-balloon-by-1-800-flowers

Glad to hear that you had a nice celebration, even if it made the little one cry. By next year she should be toughened up to spontaneous birthday singing. 😁

It seems that we’re having the opposite weather here in California, but we let thin join us since she used to live here. We were around 23 today too, thin. 🌞

Hi everyone

Happy Belated Birthday Cinque xx

I am on a FD today (one of my usual Monday and Wednesday). I have reminded my OH of the days which are my FDs and have asked him to please not have any beer on those days. LOL
We have none in the house so I am sure it won’t be an issue this week. It’s good for him too to have a FD from the beer 🙂

I also feel the cold much more on FDs. I try and drink herbal teas and also my usual amount of water. I don’t mind the cold as it helps to keep my Rosacea in check. My face likes the cold whereas my body and brain love the heat. Its almost the winter solstice and I always look forward to this as it means we are heading to summer again.

Over the weekend we visited my parents who live up near Lithgow. We woke up yesterday morning to snow. It kept snowing for a couple of hours in the morning and it was really cool (pun intended) to see. That was until we were about to leave and I went outside and woah! It was freezing. There was an icy cold wind blowing as well and I was frozen by the time I got to the car which was only a short distance away. I had been inside near the fire all weekend (my mum keeps the fire going 24/7)
Lovely to see the snow but even more lovely to get back to the coast where we live.

Hope you all enjoy your day x

Welcome zhouxinxin! Are you trying to lose weight or doing the fast for other health reasons? Hope your first day goes well. It gets easier after you’ve been doing it for a while.

Quacka, I didn’t realize NSW got any snow. What elevation are your parents at? It looks like Lithgow is in the mountains.

@sybscairns. Youre correct. About 18-20% of the weight of a potato is starch. The bulk of the weight is actually water, with a little bit of fibre and trace minerals and vitamin. Ive had another quick look at the literature and the amount that gets converted is highly dependent on where the starch is derived from. So 5% is at the low end and about 40% conversion is the high end. So using round figures a 100g potato is 20g of starch. Freezing it will convert anything from 1g to 8g of that starch into resistant starch.

The point I was trying to make is that people seem to be latching onto this concept as a panacea that allows then to eat starchy foods at will and that all they need to do is freeze the starch and all will be good. To think along those lines is fraught with dangers.

hi,CalifDreamer!i am trying to lose weight … just do it!

Zhouxinxin. Welcome. There are lots of us on this site who have lost weight. Some have reached our targets and are concentrating on staying there, others are a work in progress. They are a friendly lot – they may be Southern Hemispheristes but they let me in and I’m in the south west of England!

In my youth I lived in Hong Kong. Which part of China are you in?

Welcome zhouxinxin,
How did your first Fast Day go?

Thankyou Arelkade, Cali, and Penguin.
What a gorgeous floral birthday cake Cali! Perfect for me!
And there are a couple of other birthdays coming up before the littlie turns two in September, so hopefully she will be ready for the singing then.

Arelkade, I envy you your open fire, if that is what you have. I am glad to have a gas heater as the work involved in a real fire is too much for me, but how I miss them. There is nothing so cosy.

Quakka, I hope you and Mr Quakka manged your beer fast day well 🙂
And that your whole fast day was a good one.
That Rosacea (word check wanted to change that to ‘aerospace’) is so annoying. I have it slightly, although I have been inside most of the time the last years so it has been quiet, but I remember.
Wow, fancy that snow!

Cali, Australia has more snow than Switzerland! Pretty much all in the Australian Alps, or Snowy Mountains as we call them. https://www.australia.com/en/things-to-do/australian-adventure/best-places-to-enjoy-snow-in-australia.html (and I think it is snow cover we have more of, it is not as deep as Switzerland’s snow)

Your grain salad sounds delicious. What lovely legume recipe do you think you will cook this week?

Penguin, your sketching weekend sounds wonderful. Oh dear, your water fast does sound doomed. Nevermind, it will wait patiently until you get all those anniversaries out of the way. Happy Anniversary to you and Mrs Penguin!
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/57/6d/fd/576dfd252565ecace6e41b865489f123.jpg

Well, I am about to start organising the budget part of my business plan. Eep! Wish me luck!
I am sitting here with my black showercap (with white spots) over my hair that is pasted with henna. I didn’t get a chance to do it on the weekend. Very fetching! I’ll leave you with that image and wish you all an excellent day!

Hi everyone

Big happy smile on my face today. My FD yesterday is what I would call perfect. I ate under the 500 calories and no beer yay!!! I was a little hungry in the afternoon and ate some rice cakes (not the most healthy but all I had available at work at the time). Then I had a huge plate of veggies for dinner with chilli sauce on them (frank’s hot sauce mmmm). I had roasted potato and pumpkin and steamed carrot broccoli and cauliflower. I am lucky I love veggies 🙂

thin, the OH doesnt need to lose any weight. He comes from a family of skinny minis and also has a physical job and then surfs every opportunity he gets. It is good for him though to have BFD’s for his health. By the way BFD’s means Beer Fast Days or Beer Free Days, whichever you fancy LOL
And yes I am 40 and he is 42. He starts a new position in the company he works with today. So I am hoping it all goes well for him.

Cinque I hate my Rosacea. I have had my whole face lasered which helped a lot but it probably needs to get done again as it has been about five years since.

I hope you are all having a good day, FD or not. If you are ever struggling just get on here and post or read some of the other threads. We are all here to support each other. I love it 🙂
x

Thank you all.

Cinque, Mrs P had a chuckle at the penguins. Her stone was a little smaller than a pebble.

Good morning everyone

It’s been a little quiet on here so I hope you are all doing well.

Its my second FD for the week today. I am positive about it and am hoping it goes just like Monday’s one. I bought a new tea today – peppermint & ginger. I think it will be yummy and might help me through that 3pm time when the hunger hits.

Have a great day x

Cinque, it’s 25% for me today. About 350 cals. I’m looking forward to it. Plenty of water. I’m sorry that task is challenging for you. Can it be delegated?

I started watching, ‘The Magic Pill’ last night. The notion of Australian aboriginals being healthier and living longer as hunter-gatherers was a good start. After that, presentation was all over the place. I’m afraid I couldn’t finish it as I just couldn’t work out what it was getting at. I lost patience with the obese people tearily lamenting their numerous prescriptions and then swilling their stories down with a large gulp of who-knows-what from a 64oz takeaway cup. (OK sure, it might have been water). OH was loving it, latching on to the suggestion of smearing fat all over the broccolini. When it got to legumes are to be avoided, I had to turn it off. I feel I must have missed the point as several of you have lauded it.

Quakka, I use a herbal tea bag (several times) to get me from my two almond & coconut milk coffees through to my 2pm feeding. I like peppermint too. I hope your OH likes his new role. And feels good with the BFDs. How much weight are you hoping to lose?

It feels quite chilly here, although the temps are around 20C. Yesterday, we had the pleasure of seeing both a dolphin and a full rainbow on our walk. Two uplifting sights. Then I had a massage and OH and I drove down the coast in the rain stopping at a cafe to watch the brave surfers.

Quacka, you can’t control the hereditary nature of illness but that makes it all the more important to make the changes that you can control. My BP was all over the place before I reached this weight but, at 60kgs, it’s been perfect for 3 years. I’m also no longer at risk for diabetes (for which I have a family history) and my GP says I no longer need annual testing for it.

There have been a host of other benefits from being a healthy weight. No knee pain, greater mobility, increased self-confidence. The fantastic feeling of being in control of food instead of it controlling me. Since starting IF, I’ve felt great and have not had any of the usual colds, coughs, etc. even when in close proximity to those who do. I can get out of the bath unaided! I look a whole lot better as a size 10 than an 18. It’s worth it on so many levels. You have done a great job losing 10kgs, the other 10kgs will be a piece of cake. Or not, hopefully.

You might still have inherent high BP at the lower weight but at least you will have given yourself the best possible chance. I have found my annoyingly skinny OH to be quite supportive throughout, even fasting with me for the first 11 months when he definitely didn’t need to, and I assume he appreciates the changes too. My FD nears an end too. I am pretty tired of miso soup I do admit and will make some changes next week.

Hurray for fasting!

Good Morning SH – it’s pretty nippy here in Cairns as well – yesterday morning was around 10C which for us in the tropics is “freezing” . I even had to buy a “flanny” shirt to wear when going for my walk :-))
Thin – how about pumpkin soup for a change? I fry some garlic, ginger and fresh chilli, then add the pumpkin, skin on, and cook it in Massell salt reduced chicken style stock. When softish, I mash it just a little bit, as I like soup with some texture and not too smooth – it’s also a matter of getting a good amount of fibre into my daily food intake. I have also started using beetroot again, but not the canned stuff, as it has too much added sugar.

since I am doing 4:3 I am making a different soup for every FD, just to keep things interesting! For fibre I often add some pre-cooked barley or McKenzies soup mix (both I keep in the fridge, ready to be used).

Hi Thin – maybe the winter chill has set in and it’s too cumbersome to type with gloves/mitts on :-))

I keep track of the calories in my soups, but only roughly. However, for the “additions” like barley and/or soup mix I am more precise as these are quite high in (mainly useful) carbs.

I think we all work out our own system, and I am not obsessed with 5:2 (4:3). As long as I loose some weight each week and my BP and cholesterol are down (meaning I don’t take any medication) I am happy and consider the whole process a success

Sybs, I agree, whatever’s working for you is perfect. I was thinking that, if you had any precise cal counts on your soups, I’d ask if you’d consider posting them on our recipe page. I’m a rigid adherent because I can’t trust myself otherwise. There’s a link to report irritating posts just above them. They’re promptly removed by JJ before they’re given much oxygen.

Good morning,
Hi Zhouxinxin, congratulations on your first week.
I haven’t heard anything about irregular eating leading to stomach problems.
Do you mean that eating at the same times every day is seen as the healthy way in China?

Sybs, I love your idea of a different soup every fast day. There are just SO MANY wonderful soups to eat.
While I love having my miso soup every fast day, I also mean to cook a different soup every week! I’d better start doing that again, it is the right weather for it!

Yes dcy1309, you can always tell spam by a first post with a link at the bottom of it!

I’m okay Thin, I had a good fast day yesterday, but I think I will have fast days on Wednesday (with you, yay!) every second Wednesday when I have homehelp.
I’ll think about whether to keep on my toes by having it Thursday the other week, or to completely change my routine. Trial period starting.

I couldn’t come at kefir, but I am reading up about beetroot kvass and thinking I might have a go at making some. Does anyone have any experience of this drink?

Shut your ears everyone who doesn’t want to hear about high calorie food, but one sister was down from Benalla over night and, with local sister with us, we had breakfast at Babka’s in Fitzroy, and it was very delicious to break my fast with a cappuccino and a beautiful croissant.

Best wishes to everyone,

‘Endeavour’ tonight Thin!

Cheers 🙂

World health organization (WHO) report 2014.

“The study also showed startling information regarding China, India, the United States, Brazil, and Indonesia. In those five countries, approximately half of all the adult population had diabetes in 2014.”

China is put forward as being health conscience. That may have been the case once upon a time. Not any more. So it may be more relevant to ask how did Chinese people eat 50 to 100 years ago. How do they eat now? I suspect it is very different and much like the rest of the world. They eat a very poor diet.

Hi everyone, just checking in!

It’s been a while – so sorry. No real time to catch up with posts!

The last few days have been rugged, the next couple of weeks will be worse (my Brother has now been given limited time – so sad). I may not be too fussy with my FD’s for a while, so apologies in advance!

Currently in Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains, for this weekend with my Sister – looking forward to a contemplative, relaxing time???

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Enjoy whatever you are getting up to and bye for now!

Hi Zhou. No, I have never been there. When I lived in Hong Kong it was still a colony and the border was closed to almost all traffic. Although not impossible, it was difficult to travel widely in China. So we read a lot and talked to our Chinese friends about where their families originally came from. Is Zhou right? In HK the convention was that the first word was the family name, so it would have been Xinxin if we were being friendly. Or is it the equivalent of “penguin”? The Chinese I learned 55 years ago, and have mostly forgotten, was almost certainly different to yours but I remember a habit of giving people nicknames.

There are many people in UK who believe that eating at regular intervals throughout the day is the best way and that breakfast is essential and probably the most important meal. The “full English” breakfast would probably include cereal, bacon, egg, sausage, beans, tomato, fried bread, possibly black pudding, toast, tea. Anything less is dismissed as a Continental (ie French) breakfast. In HK I remember a thin porridge made from rice. Once upon a time I would do the English, now I eat no breakfast and do not miss it. I also fast totally, that is fluids only, for several days and feel better for it. My body readings- blood pressure, cholesterol etc are all better for it.

Those attempts to sell us things are irritating and JJ does a good job of getting rid of them when you point them out. I didn’t read it, but we have used red bush tea. It isn’t really a tea but you treat it as such. OH is a fan. People make health claims for it but we haven’t used it enough to confirm them.