Oh grumble grumble Cinque – I saw it being promoted, then got sucked into watching an old series (Life on Mars) that OH picked up from the library. I really like Gourmet Farmer – I guess I can always watch on demand. Thanks for the heads up.

Did the program say that aggressive bees are best loved by commercial bee keepers, because they are usually more productive? I am torn with my hive – on the one hand, they are really grumpy sting-y girls ….on the other, so would I be if someone lifted off my roof and started poking around in my house. I’ll give them a little more time, I think, while I hone my skills. Betsy she’s not Italian, my Queen, or so my mentor says. She sure has that Italian passion though. Funny yours will only go to one lavender plant.

LJ you’ve given me an idea about steps – I hadn’t ever looked at them over the course of a week – with the result that when I have a full day of consultations, I hardly ever budge except to top up my green tea, or go to the waiting room….hence I look at my FitBit and see it as a failure. Weekly steps would get rid of that particular feeing. Thank you.

Betsy you are so right about backpacks. I have a smallish leather one I bought in Italy years ago….I often just carry it as a handbag, but popped it on to my back in a market in an Asian town we were visiting, so I could pick up things to look at. By the time we got to the end ..maybe 30 minutes ..and I slipped it off, the zip had been opened without my noticing, and it was gaping open. Fortunately I had my wallet and phone in my pocket, and the bag just had tissues, water, lipstick and the like. How disappointed my potential thief must have been.

OK, it’s either vacuuming or gardening …and as it’s 24 degrees and sunny after some very good rain yesterday, guess which it will be.

Enjoy your weekend friends.

A quiet weekend on the 5:2 forum, I do hope everyone is doing partcularly lovely things.
I’ve finished my fast day and handing the baton to Thin (presuming you are fasting) and other Sunday fasters.
I’ve got a lovely cup of tea and I am looking forward to breakfast next.

Lindsay the Gourmet Farmer, Mrs Gourmet Farmer, actually, went down to visit someone with a different type of hive that allows the bees to make honey more like the way they do in tree hollows etc. The theory being that it will make them happier. They said they need to make more wax with this system, so that means they make slightly less honey. I don’t understand bees enough to see why that would settle them down!

I do hope a bit more time settles your precious bees.

LJoyce, I hope you found your linens, what a pleasure. And a holiday! Congratulations on managing so well that you have this reward. I am excited to hear where you will choose to holiday.

I hope your last week is consigned to history and your new days mean you can wear your other jeans again.

It is my daughter’s birthday tomorrow so I am having a birthday lunch for her and the littlies. I specified party dresses! Yes I will wear one too! Lots of preparation to do today.

Hope your day is lovely.

Good evening everyone. I hope you are all relaxing after a lovely weekend – and not dreading the week ahead too much.

Cinque, I ended a FD with a big bowl your mung bean soup – it was very welcome and delicious as usual.
I did find sheets. I bought 2 pairs that I was very happy with – one in a damask pattern that perfectly matches my blue-green linen quilt cover and another in a plain stone colour that goes with several quilt covers. That should see me through the next few years hopefully. I don’t spend money on things like this often and I expect to get at least a decade from every linen purchase (most last a lot longer) https://imgur.com/a/JYy0IHZ
I hope you have a lovely birthday lunch with your daughter tomorrow – I think the party dress idea is wonderful – an op shop find? Can we have a photo of all the party dresses?
I have a bit of a list of places I want to go and the first choice will need to be the one I do most affordably – I do not want be saving for many years to afford the cost that first holiday. It’s been a long time coming as I haven’t had a holiday interstate/overseas since the 1990s.

Cali, I have seen the beyond beef burger patties here too – they are quite pricey so I haven’t tried them yet. Maybe in summer, as a burger/rissole with salad appeals to me more then. I’m about 3 days into limited processing and added sugars too and it’s been surprisingly easy so far. I’m eating plenty of veg and dairy and smaller amounts of fruits and grains so there are plenty of natural sugars still. I think you are right about the fibre, slowing down the digestion of foods that contain sugars helps me too – and I’m making sure I have kefir every day.
Your description of the corn on the cob has me yearning for summer veg. I’ve found that the length of time since the corn was picked, is what determines how sweet and juicy it is. You might be interested to know that corn on the cob doesn’t contain as much sugar as you might imagine – one cob is about 150grams and about 4.8g sugar – that’s about the same as a medium carrot. I remember being surprised by that when I last looked it up.
Is that photo of the new FDA labeling? How did they get away with saying there was only 1g of sugar in the old label when there was actually 12g?

I have a very busy week coming, with appointments, 2 days of bridge, babysitting, a birthday and a lunch out. I’m hoping to stick with my eating reset and my exercise challenge despite all this.

I managed a walk of 45 minutes today which is a big improvement of what I’ve been managing for a while now. What was wonderful is that it allowed me to explore an area that I can get to now that all the bridge/station construction has finished and I discovered a lovely large reserve with walking trails. I will heading back there often.

Hi all, what a disastrous start I’ve had to August, but – this is changing from tomorrow (really!). I had “treats” which are now eaten, and celebrations to attend and over-reaction to stress to recognise and rein in. Hopefully done so now. Today was better than the previous 2 days, and I expect I can get back to normal FDs from tomorrow. With all the carbohydrate (and stress), it’s surprising how much my resting heart rate has gone up in just a few days (from around 68 to 82).

Thanks for all the advice re my front neighbour, and no, the tree is on the other side of my home to her place, so she has no business complaining. And yes, give in to one thing and then she finds something else to complain about. I’m not touching my tree. I did speak with my side neighbour, as the tree partly overhangs her back yard, and she basically loves the tree and the birds, and told me to ignore M. and leave the tree alone. I’m still having the real estate agent come this week, just to be aware of my options, but I think I’ve calmed down enough to stay here for now.

LJoyce, yay for such a good bridge result, and so nice that you may have a permanent partner. That’s been one of my thoughts about possibly returning to bridge – no partner. Good that you found a couple of sets of sheets you’re happy with.

Cinque, I hope the birthday party went well and was enjoyed by all.

CalifDreamer, you’re right about sugar being added to so many foods. I once picked up a can of corn which had reduced salt, only to discover that the salt had been replaced by sugar. Needless to say, I bought the can without the sugar. I only use canned corn as an added vegetable when I make a huge meat/vegetable mix for freezing, so the salt in the corn gets well diluted.

LindsayL, re backpacks, a colleague in China had his camera in a backpack on a bus, and someone unzipped it and stole his camera. He tried to chase after the thief, but the other people on the bus wouldn’t move out of the way to let him through and the thief escaped off the bus. I also had a purse stolen from a bag that wasn’t sealed, so I am much more cautious now when I travel.

thin, well done in remembering the FD and adjusting your day.

Neilithicman, I am backing out of the “August challenge”. It seems whenever I try to apply an external pressure, I just fail miserably. It needs to be an internal motivation, where I just do it for myself. After all my consistent 9000+ steps daily for weeks, as soon as I committed to the challenge – failure, with 3 days of around 6500 steps. Sorry, back to me self-motivating.

Speaking of which, now a couple of my friends are aware of my weight loss, I have one of them often questioning me as to whether I’m keeping to my weight loss, whether I should have this or that, etc. I have said a couple of times that I am doing it for me, and I know what I’m doing. How else do others cope with friends like that? She’s trying to help, but I have been managing nicely on my own. It’s when people keep commenting that I self-sabotage, and I really have to back off in my thinking and focus on why I’m doing this.

Too many stressors from different directions at the moment. Have to shut off the external voices and focus on why this WOL is necessary FOR ME!

Okay, from tomorrow, all will be well. Hope you’re okay Anzac65, and missing GDayfromSA, Intesha, Merryme, and others.

Good morning
Betsy think of today as the first of August – you can do it. Sometimes life just gets in the way. I am glad you’re taken the decision not to chop your tree. Once you give in to that sort of demand, there’ll be another and another.

still on the subject of travel stories….theft is rampant in Saigon…. premeditated, usually not violent, but quite shocking if you’re a victim. A colleague waved back at a pillion passenger on a bike – who then snatched my friend’s mobile phone from her hand at they drove past. One night OH and I were walking home along the lane where DS and DIL lived, and a ladyboy nestled up to my son. As he put up his hand to push her away, she snatched his wallet and jumped on the back of a waiting bike and roared off. DS is 6 feet and a runner, so he took off after them and for once Saigon’s notorious traffic worked in his favour and the thieves couldn’t penetrate the mass of bikes at the lights, and DS snatched his wallet back. I could tell a dozen stories like this – a real issue for unaware tourists.

I am nursing a very swollen neck this morning – I look dreadful and hope it goes down by tomorrow when I am back at work. I had my full Apollo suit on, but a bee got me just under the chin through the gauze face mask – I must have bent my head and so the gauze touched my face. It is hot hot hot and very swollen and while not exactly painful, very uncomfortable.

LJ nice to start thinking about a trip – the planning can be such fun. Any early thoughts about where you are going to go?

I had a good day in the garden yesterday – I have a walled garden outside my en suite and it’s tricky to get to so tends to be neglected. There’s a drain that is exactly one size 39 birkenstock wide (I stepped back and got trapped quite a few times), then a metre tall sleeper wall, and the garden’s about two metres over to the brick wall that’s the back of the carport. Tricky. I hand pruned a miniature crepe myrtle that my Dad gave me 30 years ago so it will be ready to shoot in spring, and generally got rid of weeds and gave the garden a good turnover. Pretty shocked to find gravel and concrete left by the NBN installers. Yikes I can’t abide a lazy tradie. They’d just dumped their debris out of sight. My day ended beautifully when I took the clippings up to the bin – and spotted two king parrots sitting in the guava tree at the top of the drive. So beautiful, so colourful.

LJ how blissful to have new bed linen. I think ten years for sheets is perfectly achievable. I love the crisp feel of new sheets. But I also love the
feel of linen after it’s been well used and laundered….unfortunately there can be a very short window between the well-washed soft feel of ageing linen, and seeing that first little tear that inevitably leads to a favourite sheet turning into a cleaning rag. (Said by a woman who still has sheets that are at least two decades old).

Cinque hope your birthday party goes beautifully – how special, to ask for party dresses. We don’t do it enough and it will be special.

Cali it’s extraordinary how much sugar is in the processed foods we eat. Sugar and salt.

Neil hope you have a better week. 1 degree is chilly. How’s that old song go? ‘Let it snow let it snow let it snow.’

OK my week awaits and housework to do before I settle into getting my working week in order. Have a good one everyone.

Sunday evening here and tomorrow is a FD. Still sticking to the no added sugars and it seems to curb my appetite on NFD’s. FD’s are never a problem.

LJ, your comment re those nutritional labels is something I hadn’t noticed before, but you’re right. One of the other copies has a note below it that it’s only a hypothetical example. The explanation made no sense. Oh well.. Glad you found two sets of sheets. I love shopping for things like that.

Betsy, glad you’re not chopping anything off that tree because of your demanding neighbor. Next she would probably want you to remove part of your house because that’s blocking her view.

Lindsay, I’m sorry to hear about your neck with that bee sting. That sounds really painful. Are you allergic to bee stings? It sounds like it swelled up a lot.

Neil, I hope your week goes better than you expect it to. It sounds like they need more people so when someone is on holidays everyone else doesn’t have to suffer. Maybe you’ll have a real snow day tomorrow!

Thin, hope your move wraps up soon and things calm down a little for you.

Cinque, can’t wait to hear how the party went.

Quacka, the salmon fish cakes sounds delicious, especially with fresh caught salmon. Now we have two members here that have been bitten on the neck. I hope we aren’t setting a new trend!

Hi all

Quacka, don’t worry about the exercise challenge, I basically just wanted to have some accountability for my own goal. I am joining you on the fast today. I always seem to need back to back fasts on Mon an Tue to make up for the weekend, I had some leftover chilli beans and salads for lunch, left from the burritos we had a couple of days ago. Dinner was a fish curry I made with coconut cream, onion, garlic, spices, and some beetroot leaves that we have after my boys harvested all the beetroot from our garden in the weekend.

Good evening all,

Another FD complete; finished with an evening meal of home-made ratatouille with red salmon – on a bed of steamed, coarsely-grated celeriac – with fresh fruit to finish. Boiled egg and soldiers for breakfast tomorrow. Hopefully, the rain will let up enough for us to go for a good long walk.

LJ, re backpack, when I’m in a risky area, mine becomes a front-pack with my hands resting on it. The only time I’ve been robbed, when travelling, was some years back on a crowded bus en route to St Peter’s in Rome. My front-worn ‘bum bag’/’fanny pack’ was deftly zipped open and my wallet removed. I wish’d the thief well with my qantas frequent flyer card which was the only thing in the decoy wallet! Everthing of value was in a hidden wallet under all my clothes. And, LJ, so glad that you can start planning a holiday – the planning is half the pleasure (and apparently a good activity for mental well-being).

There has been some discussion, started by Cali and LJ re food labels and (lightly) processed foods. I was thinking about how I would describe the lightly processed foods that I buy regularly. One way is to look at the GST on my grocery bill which is a good reflection of processed foods in my shopping, typically it is less that 25c for a grocery shop. Thinking about actual processing, I only buy foods that, with simple basic equipment, I could process myself. Some examples (a) with access to good quality fresh legumes, it would be possible to dehydrate them myself with nothing more that a (rather large) dehydrator. (b) With access to good quality tomatoes, a little salt and some citric acid and a 15psi pressure canner I could ‘can’ my own tomatoes. Similarly, with all the frozen vegetables, good veges and flash-freezing equipment are all that’s needed. So, for my definition of lightly processed, a good rule of thumb is how easy would it be to make it with simple equipment and a very short list of ingredients? If I start thinking about cakes, biscuits, chips/crisps the whole preparation process gets a lot more complicated, ingredient lists get longer and more processing equipment is required. Very simplistic, but a definition I am happy with.

Re the USA food labels and the 1g sugar (old) versus the 12g sugar (new) my understanding is that lots of sweetening chemical compounds have been flying under the radar.

Cinque, party dresses! I am so jealous! Several years ago I made three party dresses in a vintage, ‘mad-men’ TV series style. Alas, even the cruise ships have moved away from formal evenings, so they languish in wardrobe, awaiting that special occasion. We also had Cinque’s ming bean soup for dinner last night, with some marinated tofu.

Betsylee, according to the pack a serve of those honey-soy crackers is 18g!!!! out of a 150g pack!!! I defy anyone to be able to dish-up an 18g serving without a set of scales. A single 150g pack is just under one third of my daily TDEE:-( Arnott’s must really have the fat/sugar balance right in the middle of the ‘moreish’ range. It reminds me of picking up a milk-shake on Guam a few years ago, that single milk shake contained 2150 kcalories – or 9202 kJ. Sigh … it was so much easier 50 years ago, when food was mainly food and you didn’t need to look for the hidden nasties on labels. Today’s food manufacturers/chemists rely on us not having time in our busy lives to check each and every label.

Thin, how much longer to move-out day? To forget a FD, you must be feeling very comfortable with where you are weight-wise, and well-adapted to your 6:1 WOL 🙂

OK, I’ll stop ranting. Have a wonderful, calm week everybody.

PG

“If your grandmother wouldn’t recognise the ingredients listed on a food label, think about why, before you buy.”

PG, that serving size of 18g for honey/soy crackers is a joke. Who would eat such a small amount? We had a lot of unrealistic serving sizes on our processed foods too, like a serving of ice cream at 1/2 cup. The new standard serving size is 2/3 cup, still a bit unrealistic IMO, but at least closer. Our new labeling laws which take effect 1 Jan 2020 have started appearing already. They’re more realistic on serving sizes:

“By law, serving sizes must be based on amounts of foods and beverages that people are actually eating, not what they should be eating. How much people eat and drink has changed since the previous serving size requirements were published in 1993. For example, the reference amount used to set a serving of ice cream was previously 1/2 cup but is changing to 2/3 cup. The reference amount used to set a serving of soda is changing from 8 ounces to 12 ounces.
Package size affects what people eat. So for packages that are between one and two servings, such as a 20 ounce soda or a 15-ounce can of soup, the calories and other nutrients will be required to be labeled as one serving because people typically consume it in one sitting.
For certain products that are larger than a single serving but that could be consumed in one sitting or multiple sittings, manufacturers will have to provide “dual column” labels to indicate the amount of calories and nutrients on both a “per serving” and “per package”/“per unit” basis. Examples would be a 24-ounce bottle of soda or a pint of ice cream. With dual-column labels available, people will be able to easily understand how many calories and nutrients they are getting if they eat or drink the entire package/unit at one time.”

I think those are at least headed in the right direction. Regarding processed foods, I agree with you, PG, on your definition of lightly processed. I consider anything with chemical emulsifiers or thickeners, artificial flavors or colors to be highly processed. Also anything with ingredients that I’m not familiar with or can’t pronounce. It’s interesting that you mention processed tomato sauce. I consider that minimally processed too, but that doesn’t mean they don’t often add a lot of salt and sugar. One example given in that Zero Sugar book I’m reading shows that 3/4 cup of Prego Traditional Sauce has the same amount of sugar as 3/4 of a Dunkin Donuts glazed donut. It’s hard to find tomato sauce here that doesn’t include added sugars.

LJ, I hope if you decide on a Canada/US trip that Northern California is on your list. It would be great to meet you in person!

Hi all, last day of my 25 sit-ups per day before moving onto 50 per day, also last day before my next weigh in so I’ll be putting in my lunchtime gym session and some laps tonight when my boys are in their swimming lessons to have a last-chance workout. Work was pretty good yesterday, only a handful of LIM requests and no planning requests. I actually managed to get some of my “business as usual” work which normally gets put aside and forgotten.

I did pretty well on my fast day, I managed to avoid the normal after-work snacking that normally plagues me. Today I’ve got some leftover curried chicken livers for lunch and then some slow cooked brisket casserole for dinner.

Have a great day everyone

Hi Quacka, I posted a reply but it seems to have gone missing. I’m on 4:3 at the moment

My normal weekly routine is:

NFD on Wednesday after my weekly weigh-in
Fast on Thursday
NFD on Friday, Saturday, Sunday where I cut loose
B2B Fasts on Monday and Tuesday to make up for cutting loose on the weekend 😉

The weight is coming off slower but it’s still coming off, I guess you have to expect the weight to come off slower when you get closer to goal weight. The exercise is definitely helping, my TDEE is almost 3,000 calories so I can get away with slipping up a little in the weekend without damaging my weight loss too much, unless I’ve had too much salt/sugar and it’s caused me to retain water.

Good morning all,

Quacka, I read a lot of recipes and I’ve noticed they are sometimes unrealistic. The one that always gets me riled is where a recipe contains 6 of something that is left whole (eg chicken breasts or fish fillets) and they say it feeds 8!

Cali, I promise when plan the Canada trip I will be coming down to visit.
I like that change in your law, that the serving size has to reflect public behaviour, I wish we did that here. Manufacturers here call it their “recommended” serving size which allows them to be quite idiotic about the quantity to make their product look healthier than it is. To make it worse we have a healthy star rating system that’s based on serving size.

Anzac, I completely understand, I’m the spreadsheet queen too. My life would fall apart without excel!
Have a good FD.

Neil, glad to hear your exercise challenge is going well. It sounds like your work is settling down a bit too, I hope that continues to be less stressful.

I’m doing another 800cal day today.
I have bridge classes this afternoon. For this month they are offering Tuesday afternoon classes on a topic we didn’t cover during our basic training. As I find it easier to learn in a setting where I can ask questions I’m taking every opportunity to attend the extra classes they run. I need to get out for a walk this morning – I’m going back to explore that reserve area further. It’s so nice to be completely surrounded by grass and trees in the suburbs. I noticed there was even an area of very old grape vines, which I assume they kept as a reminder of the heritage of the area. These suburbs were vineyards and nut and fruit tree orchards 70-150 years ago. (The winery is still here but they source most of their grapes from elsewhere these days.) It wasn’t until the 1950-60s that they started removing the horticulture and building houses on mass. I guess that’s why developers love the area as the architecture from that era is not very interesting so it’s affordable to demolish and redevelop. Anything built here from the 1940s or earlier is rarely knocked down as it’s a style of architecture that carries a big premium in the price. There’s little of that near me, but just 1km closer to the beach there are lots of houses built from the late 1800s – mid 1900s.

I must get going. Have a lovely day all.

Hi LJoyce 🙂

PS to my post
They have been chatting about this on News Breakfast this morning: fake meat
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-06/impossible-burger-patties-worrying-farmers-over-definition-meat/11378282?sf217027366=1

Cinque, we tried the Impossible Burgers at another restaurant a few weeks ago. It was hard for me to tell the difference between those and beef from a cow. That brand is only in restaurants so far and won’t be in grocery stores until later this year. The Beyond Burgers are in grocery stores. They are about double the price of minced beef.
I’m glad the party turned out well. It’s fun to dress up. I bet the Littles loved it.

LJ, I’m not going totally vegetarian, just trying to include more veggie meals. That reserve or park is beautiful! How nice to have such a place nearby. It will certainly make walking more interesting. And that homemaker center sounds very nice and so convenient. Your new home sounds like it’s turned out to be even more convenient to things than expected.

Anzac, glad you are having a chance to catch up at home for a few days, even if it hasn’t exactly been relaxing. Just getting away from the tensions of the job must be nice.

Neil, you’re right about it being a little harder to lose as you get close to your goal weight. You’ll still lose, but it just takes a little longer. But this is the time I think most people see the most changes in their bodies as they adjust to a lower weight and often lose centimeters when they aren’t losing kg. As you get close you can start to buy new skinny clothes that aren’t “in-between clothes” that you’re going to grow out of in a month or two. These will be clothes you’ll have for years because maintenance is easy with this WOL.

This morning my weight was 800 grams less than last Monday. And today was a FD, so I’m expecting good news on the scales tomorrow morning. I’m still reading the Zero Sugar book. Although it was a bestseller, I think it could use better editing and certainly more studies footnoted to support many of his statements. But overall, the idea is good and seems to be working for my NFD’s. It’s not complicated and the idea of eating more grams of fiber than grams of added sugar isn’t a new idea, but sometimes just having a book that’s enthusiastic to get me motivated is helpful.

Have a nice day, everyone!

I’ve seen the impossible burgers and I’m unconvinced by them. Sure it might be better for the environment to eat them over meat, but you have to ask what kind of additives and chemicals they have to add to get them to taste like meat. We have cut our meat consumption over the last couple of years, but we’ve done it by reducing portion size (I usually allow around 100 grams per person rather than 150 grams) and having a vegetarian meal every other day. That means that each member of our family is eating about 65% less meat (350 grams per week on average compared to 1050 grams). Personally I’d prefer some nice tasting unprocessed vegetarian food over something designed in a lab to try to make it look and taste like meat.

I put in an hour at the gym and swam 2 kilometers in the pool today along with my sit-ups so I’m all ready for my weigh-in tomorrow morning (and ready to enjoy a nice non fast day) 😉

PerthGirl, the reason I’m willing to save for indulgent luxuries (like a couple of days on the orient express) is that I’m time limited when it comes to being out of Australia. I can only go for a maximum of 4 weeks at a time, due to my infusion cycle. (If I miss an infusion my body won’t really function so still being on holiday longer would be pointless.) The shorter period means I can either plan several short trips done on the cheap or one with a few luxuries. At the moment my vote is for the latter, although I may mix it up a bit when I work out what I can get away with. Depending on how frugal I can be living at home I figure I can do one 4-week trip every 1-2 years depending on how expensive the destination is. I’m expecting it will easily take 2 years to save for Antarctica.

I have to confess to breaking my no added sugar goal today. On the way to bridge I went to Haighs to buy chocolates for an upcoming family birthday. I was quite pleased that I avoided picking up something for myself, which I would normally not be able to resist. I forgot that they offer samples at the counter – I was offered and ate a salted caramel chocolate. It was lovely, but I’m glad it was only one. Luckily with 800cal to play with today I had a lot of scope to accommodate a small misdemeanour like that. Back on track with dinner – an omelette (mostly eggwhites and one yolk) with sorrel, tomato, mushrooms and parmesan).

I realised today why the 800cal feels so generous. With 400cal I can cover milk in cups of tea all day, a small banana for the afternoon and a filling but mostly veg dinner – my usual FD plan. Having an extra 400cal means that I can not only have lunch, I can have a more interesting dinner if I want. It certainly feels generous to still be called a FD.

I got to the bridge classes early, so I managed to fit in another 25 minute walk so I’m just over 10000 steps today. My back is good too, no pain and just a bit of stiffness, which is really good. I have remedial massage tomorrow which should also help.

The nurse arrives at 7pm to do my infusion tonight. I haven’t done FDs in the usual order this week, so hopefully it won’t mean more side effects.

The lunch I was meant to go to tomorrow has been postponed, so I don’t need to try and fit in an Asian meal. As every lunchtime offering at the cafe we go to has a base of rice or noodles with most dishes heavy on the oil, it’s a challenge. I had planned to order the squid with veg & thai basil and not eat the rice. I’ll save that choice for the end of the month when the lunch is now planned for.

Have a good evening all.

Hi all, great to read all the posts.

I actually had a “real” FD today (well, maybe 650 cals) rather than a FD800. Very pleased with myself after a CD yesterday, so the reset button is firmly in place. Planning another FD tomorrow, but I think it will be a FD800. That’s okay; so much better than the eating late last week. My weight this morning had already moved in the right direction, back from the disaster of the weekend, so after today and tomorrow, I’m hoping for a real shift. I need to move down off this plateau! (Indulgences haven’t helped).

CalifDreamer (and others), one thing I do like now about Aussie food labelling is that all foods have to list ingredients per 100 gms, whatever they say about serving size, so that allows a basis for comparison.

LindsayL, I agree with you re lazy tradies. When I moved into my place, I decided to removed 3 large diosmas from the front garden, dig it over and plant roses and other preferred plants. Well, I dug up more than a burlap bag full of half and part bricks, as well as various hunks of concrete. Not impressed! Obviously not cleared away form when the place was built.

Hope your bee sting has now settled. One thing I was taught to do about stings when visiting family in the country (not readily available in the city) was to use the sap from bracken fern on stings. Seemed to work well, especially for ant bites.

LJoyce, hope the infusion went well. What great fun you can have planning so many trips. And Anzac65, with your long European trip later this year. Sometimes the trip planning can be almost as much fun as the going.

LJoyce, I admired your strength re the Haigh’s chocolate. That was one of the disasters recently. The endodontist’s location was at the top of Collins St Melbourne, right next to a Haigh’s shop – and I bought some chocolate intending to space it out over several weeks. Should have known better. All gone in two weeks, but the good thing is – ALL GONE! Can’t over-indulge in what you don’t have.

Cinque, thanks for the advice re friends’ comments.

PerthGirl, will have to try out some of the herbs you mention. My cooking is usually very boring – don’t even add salt or pepper.

Quacka, glad the tick bite has come down a lot.

Anzac65, the problem for me is that I LOVE so many foods that I shouldn’t eat. I’m actually more of a sweet tooth than a savory lover, but honey soy-flavoured just seems to have that balance between salt and sweet that makes them so hard to resist. I can resist chips more easily than the crackers I mentioned last time.

Neilithicman, great that you’re about at maintenance, and can now work out what to eat/ not eat so you can stay there.

Final comments about bags for travelling – having a hidden bag around the waist is okay for opportunistic thieves that just grab what’s obvious and run, but may not always work. I remember on the news a few years ago – a couple of our Olympic athletes were held up by a thief with a knife while on a walk near the Olympic village in Brazil – they had to pull up their tops to show they didn’t have any hidden bags under their clothing. Having said that, I usually have a hidden waist bag when I travel for passports, tickets, most of my money. Annoyingly, the way the passports are now, it’s harder to use one, as the newer passports don’t bend the way the older ones used to.

Whew, enough for now. Bed is calling. Goodnight all.

I’m not impressed, I had a good week both eating-wise and exercise-wise, I’m down a notch on my belt, my watch and wedding ring are loose, and I’m noticing other areas look visibly thinner….and yet the scales refuse to reflect this. I’m UP 200 grams from last week!

It must be water retention or something because I certainly deserved a drop last week. Oh well, continue the program and hope that it will level out next week. If not then I might try a week back on the fast 800 to see if that can help me shift it.

EDIT:

Forget I said anything. For some reason I thought my last weigh-in was 97 kilos but it was actually 97.5 kilos so my current weight of 97.2 kilos is a 300 gram DROP! Duh, I must need more sleep 😆

Hello all,

LJoyce, I loved what you wrote about learning to have binge foods at home.

I’m minding Miss 2 this morning and she will be here soon, but hello to everyone. I am going to fast tomorrow. Loved reading the posts. I’ll chat more next post.

Good Morning everyone

Its FD for me today so I have my food planned out for the day. I have some curried veggies with me to eat for ‘lunch’ (usually I get hungry about 3pm) and I have my cauliflower/broccoli soup ready for dinner. Last night I reminded OH that it’s my FD today and that he would need to get something out of the freezer if he didn’t want soup so he took out a T-Bone. I got up early this morning and made him his favourite egg and potato salad and I had to keep reminding myself that I did not want to taste it. I did not want to lick the spoon after mixing in the mayo and as enticing as those boiled eggs looked, I have two ready and peeled to add to my lunch tomorrow. I am really bad at snacking on the things I am making for dinner and taste testing here and there. I probably add about 100 calories before I even eat dinner. It’s something I am working on.

Regarding the veggie products made to look/taste like meat. I think they are aiming them at the usual meat eaters as I’m pretty sure the vegans/vegos wouldn’t want their food looking like meat anyway. I would try the plant based products but there is no way I am ever going to eat the “meat’ that is cultured in a laboratory. That is disgusting. If it comes down to that, I will definitely be turning vego. I do eat that Tuno product that I mentioned a few weeks ago but not because it tastes or looks like real Tuna. It’s actually quite filling, high in protein and low in calories. Good for FDs as I can eat a larger amount of it compared to Tuna for about the same calories.

I liked your post LJ about the binge foods. That self control is something I am really trying to work on at the moment. There are NFD’s when I wake up really hungry and to try and keep the calories lower for the day, I don’t eat breakfast. This would usually result in me eating so much more for the day as I would eat lunch about 10:30-11 when I couldn’t handle the hunger anymore and then I would just want to snack all day.

Ok work is starting to rev up now. I hope you are all going well and I will check back in again later. It’s a FD so I will be checking in lots!
x

Anzac, your food for the day sounds organised too!
I’m actually struggling a bit at the moment as one of the girls is having a toasted sandwich and it smells so darn good! I think tomorrow will be the day I am going to have some of MIL’s bread, toasted of course!
My boss bought me an almond milk coffee this morning so I am down about 75 calories already. Oh well, not to worry. I’m keen to see if my weight goes under the 65.5kg tomorrow. It crept back to 66.4 after the weekend then back to 66.2 after my first FD for the week. This morning after NFD it was 65.9. Hoping for 65.2 (maybe??) tomorrow.

After yesterday’s FD my weight was only down 100 grams this morning, but I have to remember that it was pretty stable all week without the big ups and downs I see when I’m eating a lot and then have a FD. So I’ll stick with the low added sugar WOE, along with my 2 FD’s. I have about 2 kg to lose, so I can be patient.

LJ, your way of dealing with binge foods sounds like a good one. My binge foods are potato crisps and ice cream. Actually, I can have potato crisps in the house and not eat all of them, but ice cream is a major challenge, particularly late at night. I love chocolate and are usually have a few bars of dark chocolate in the pantry, but that’s something I can have a small piece of nightly and be satisfied. Usually. LJ, I think I’ve become conditioned to that, much like your method.

Anzac, Cooper had a shower on Sunday. He feels so much softer and smells so good now.

Hi all, lots of interesting posts.

LJoyce, I enjoyed reading of your way of reducing the attraction of treat foods. I actually have slabs of Cadbury chocolate (with nuts) and a couple of packets of Timtams in the fridge, and they’ve been there several weeks without being touched because they’re foods I enjoy but can decide to not eat. By having them there, I know I’m not deprived and could choose to eat them if I wanted to – so I mainly don’t. Unfortunately Haigh’s chocolates are a lush treat, and the self control has not been educated. I thought it was, but….. several weeks+ worth of chocolate got downed in 2 weeks. Fortunately they’re very expensive, with no shops near where I live, so avoidance is the best policy, reminding myself that I’m not really deprived as there is chocolate in the fridge if I really want it.

The Arnott’s cracker chips are something very different. They were something I tried as I’d been looking for crisps that were baked instead of fried (a nutritionist recommended that I look for crisps that were baked, not fried, and after weeks these were the only ones I found), and oh my. As I wrote before – addictive! I think avoidance there is best, too. I cannot imagine managing to only eat a few and then stop. I do occasionally buy some crisps and stop when I’ve had enough (often about half the packet) and I crush and bin the rest, so they’re not such a large problem. So like the chocolates, a less-liked substitution is working better for me because I eat less of it, if I choose to eat it at all. Of course, looking back 8 months, before I started this WOL, my self-control was much less then.

CalifDreamer, your method seems to work well for you, but dark chocolate and me don’t go together well. Milk chocolate with nuts seems to work as the nuts provide some filling so I don’t want to eat as much.

Anzac65, wonderful the Maxx was bathed before the cold weather swept in, but the question is – how long did it take him before he found something to roll in and undo all OH’s work? 🙂 I’ll think about adding herbs to some of my cooking and see how I go.

Quacka, I was interested in reading that if you don’t eat breakfast, you tend to snack all day, where I’m the opposite. What I do do, every morning, though, is drink 2 mugs of cold water, so about 500 mls of fluid in the first hour or so after I get up. Then I don’t feel hungry.

Cinque, hope the fast worked while you were looking after miss 2.

Re going to Antarctica, it would be an awesome place to visit, but someone I know went as part of a medical team, I think – arrived and immediately developed an major medical problem and had to be urgently evacuated out. Also, I read somewhere, not sure if they still do it, but anyone who stayed down on one of the Stations for any length of time had to have their appendix out beforehand. It might not apply now, but it was certainly done in the earlier days. All of which is to say – state of health is something to take into account when intending to go to remote parts of the world.

Neilithicman, I was looking on another forum, and someone was writing of the need to really up water intake on fast days. Otherwise, the fat cells lose fat but grab onto water and “feel squishy”. Give the body lots of water, the fat cells will release the extra water they’re holding, and down goes the weight. I haven’t really tried it (yet), but it might be something to look at.

Late again. Grr! Goodnight all.

Enjoyed the travel theft stories especially yours, Lindsay, of your son running after the thieves on motorbikes. I can relate and have numerous similar stories. My brother and I were robbed in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico in the eighties and, after a week of tracking him, we were able to rob the robber who was a time share salesman. Not only did we get our camera, money and passports back, we ended up with some of his pesos and his incentive vouchers offered to tourists – free night club entries, meals at restaurants, boat excursions, fishing trips, etc. I later wrote about our experience getting published in a British travel magazine netting me an additional £100. A profitable theft all round.

We have vacated our home of 25 years. Those of you who’ve been around for a couple of years will remember me speaking of my elderly friend and neighbour across the road (now 95) who moved to a nursing home. Her house has been vacant for some time and we are now glamping in it while we finalise the next stage of our lives. It will be slightly weird to be able to watch the new owners of our long-term home moving in today from our living room! DD left for her new overseas adventure this week so lots of changes for us. She starts her new vet job on Monday. I’m so sad that she’s flown the nest but very happy for her and can’t wait to hear all her tales. Or should that be tails?

I’m sorry that I am so out of the loop on this thread. I hope everyone is sticking to the programme!

Good afternoon all.

Another wet, cold and windy day here. I didn’t manage any outdoor exercise yesterday – although I did do a couple a loops of the shopping centre when I went over to post a birthday parcel and buy berries. Today’s weather will also mean that all my steps will come from laps of the hallway. It’s a good thing I did extra earlier in the week when the weather was nice.

I spent the morning baking as it’s my nephew’s birthday today. I’ve made him a pavlova gateau (that’s just a fancy way of describing two small pavlovas stacked on top of each other). I have finished all the components and will take them with me to babysitting tonight as I figured the kids would like to help me put their dad’s birthday cake together. Normally the cream would just be flavoured with vanilla, but as I had some lovely plump fresh passionfruit sitting in the fruit bowl I decided to try flavouring it with them instead. I strained the juice and ended up adding 3 so I could really taste the flavour. Yes that does mean I’ve had whipped cream on a FD! Although only about a teaspoonful.

Quacka, I understand how having that spare 100 cals can make you want to keep eating. One of the reasons I no longer count calories on FDs is that if I know I have some left over I suddenly decide I want more food. I tend to be more conservative when I don’t count and end up in the 350-400 range. I think it’s the idea that I’m entitled to 500 and I don’t want to be shortchanged.
That was nice of you to give the colleague your lunch, especially as she was one of those complaining about the aroma of one of your FD lunches.

Thin, wow, so glad to hear you are finally though the initial selling-packing-moving process. Are you planning to buy something or just be nomads for a while? I’m sure your daughter will love the new job. Now that you aren’t tied down you can go visit when you miss her.
I’m looking forward to you having the time to tell us about your future plans. I suspect that will need to wait until you’ve left the street! When you said you were selling up and moving I didn’t imagine you’d be going across the road.

Cali, I’m not good with icecream either and I tend not to buy it in tubs. If I really want one I’ll buy a single serve icecream on a stick or in a cone when I’m out. I have an icecream maker attachment for my kitchenaid mixer that I haven’t used. It might be worth doing the desensitization exercise with icecream so that I can safely use that and try making some recipes this summer. I’m also quite fond of homemade frozen yoghurt.
Sounds like you had an easier job of getting Cooper clean than Anzac & her hubby had with Maxx. My memory of family dogs growing up was the big shake they always did afterward with water droplets being spread far and wide.

Anzac, it sounds like Maxx might be a bathe only in hot weather dog – when you can do it outdoors.

Hello to everyone else. Have a nice afternoon.

Betsy, I remember being shocked when I first found out that crackers were not a healthier choice than chips. Most crackers, crisps, chips have a similar amount of calories regardless of cooking method – not to mention a bucket load of salt and sugar. The only exception is a cripsbread (cruskits, ryvita etc) – these are baked and also tend to have much less added fat – they are also fairly flavourless and require toppings to make them interesting.
Staying on an Antarctic base is not an option – you have to have an occupation they want. I’ll just be on a boat doing a few excursions to the ice by zodiac.

Neil, are you noticing any changes in muscle tone from those sit ups yet? I hope it gives you the result you are looking for.