Evening all

Well 2025 has had a bit of a dreary start to it so far. It’s supposed to be summer, but we’ve had grey rainy, windy weather and temperatures in the mid teens. Yesterday we were sick of it so we drove 2 hours into Roxburgh where the forecast was supposed to be sunny and 26 degrees rather the overcast and 16 degrees we were forecast to be getting.

This morning was fine and warm so I went out for a bike ride. I overdid it a bit and ended up riding 4.5 hours and rode 108kms, now I can hardly move my legs. But that doesn’t matter because a couple of hours after I got back the weather closed in and we got heavy rain and gale force winds again, so we’re confined to the house.

Thin, sounds like you had a great break, and congrats on getting your weight where you want to be.

Weigh-in for me tomorrow, hopefully I’ll see a little movement on the scale.

Cinque, it’s a constant struggle to stop from bingeing. It is getting easier at the moment with the increase in cheap fresh summer fruit and veg. When we were in Roxburgh we went to an orchard that did pick-your-own cherries and picked up a couple of kilos.

Well have a good one everyone.

Hello everyone,
Lovely to see your posts Thin, and hear about that extraordinary pet sitting! What a way to celebrate Christmas. And congratulations on being back to 6:1. Well done.

Neil, we have a week of sunny weather in the 30’s so I wonder if it will make it across the Tasman. Hooray that you and the family got to a warmer place and got a good bike ride in before the weather closed. But why is that nasty weather after you?

Sigh yes binge eating. Hooray that now I am back to enjoyable frugal eating. Long may it last.

Evening all

First weigh-in of the year was down half a kilo, so far so good. I was pleased with how well my body recovered from my ride yesterday. I could hardly walk yesterday evening, then this morning my body felt fine.

Cinque, I think the weather is supposed to be improving next week, just in time for me to go back to work….typical 🙄

Thin, that sounds like the way tipping is supposed to work, rather than in the states where you’re just expected to tip 20% at least regardless of the level of service.

Lindsay, that sounds like a good goal. I don’t eat a lot of UPF, but it certainly finds its way into my diet in places. I think it was the show “eat well for less” one episode they displayed the average UK diet comparison from the 1980s and now. I think it was something like 5%-10% ultra processed food in the 80s, and over 65% now.

My goals are to track my food consistently, continue riding as often as possible, and if I do that, hopefully the weight will take care of itself

Have a good one everyone.

Neil that is really weird, because I can’t see it’s been posted. And now the copy seems to have disappeared. Perhaps you could post it for me 🙂

Oh the disappearing messages, Lindsay! I can’t see your post either. That will be weird to see Neil’s name with a message from you but I’m looking forward to it.

Neil, good luck with your eating and biking plan. I really hope you’ll be posting those double digits this year. I was watching a no-nonsense food/nutrition doco last evening. It focussed a lot on glucose spiking. The presenter was emphasising to a 31 year old lady weighing 197 kgs, yes kilos, that if she must include sweet items in her diet, they should never be eaten as a between-meal snack, instead she should save them to consume as a dessert because, after a meal of protein and fat, there will be less insulin spiking. It is staggering how little people know about nutrition and, as GDSA mentioned, we have a whole new generation that has no idea how to cook a meal. What happened to teaching what we called ‘domestic science’ in high school? 25% of Britons are obese and a further 37% are overweight.

Morning all.
Neil, thank you for posting my post. How very odd, that you could see it,but it didn’t make it on to the site under its own steam.

Thin, yes, three years since OH was diagnosed. We are still fighting with the hospital over compensation. It truly isn’t about money. Had that been the goal, we could have sued the anaethetist who prescribed the penicillin. But he immediately owned his mistake, kept in touch, and told us what he was doing to ensure that mistake recurring. The hospital, on the other hand, discharged OH while he was having a heart attack, in their rush to get him out the door, and then wiped their hands of him. No follow up, no offer of care. Just a letter from their lawyers, telling us to negotiate with them if we wanted compensation. And this, after full admissions of their errors. Despite it all, he is so resilient and goes along fortnightly for his immunotherapy without any hesitation. But it will be good when the legal stuff is over – I find it very upsetting.

The island is lovely at the moment – and not too busy with school holidays, fortunately, although there are a lot of families here. We hear so much about recession and cost of living crisis. And I am sure the ‘have nots’ are having less, while the ‘haves’ are having more. But it’s a funny thing – there was a woman on television last night being interviewed about how much groceries cost, and how hard it was to make ends meet. And there she was, with the debris from what appeared to be a nice cafe meal in front of her. Priorities, I guess. I don’t remember when we were kids, or when OH and I were struggling with mortgage/kids etc, ever being able to afford even a coffee out. It seems the norm now. (Oh don’t I sound like an old person – which of course I am, if we’re being technical …but really I’m just reflecting on how a cafe meal now is factored into the cost of living.

Thin, that doco on glucose spiking. Was that a young French (I think) woman who calls herself the Glucose Goddess and blogs about controlling glucose? She’s very interesting and has a number of simple strategies …ie eat a good protein breakfast, don’t eat sugary foods between meals (add them after a meal), drink a tablespoon of vinegar before the highest carb meal of the day, and exercise for 10 minutes aftr the evening meal. All easy to do and designed to keep glucose levels stable.

OK, breakfast time. Boiled egg, I think, and a slice of sourdough. OH has lost his appetite, so it’s a bit of a challenge to get him to eat enough protein. But a boiled egg always does it, and a lovely mango, the last we picked off the tree before we came away.

Cinque are you a tennis fan? Only a few days to go before the AO.

Happy Friday all.

Good morning everyone from a not quite as hot as expected morning in Melbourne, the forecast has dropped the expected high by a couple of degrees, and that nice morning cloud has protected my home again. Lovely

I am drinking coffee and it is my favourite time of year for opshopping. Best find so far: a lovely silk/cotton skirt that fits me perfectly at the moment. Oh dear, the cosmos rewarding me for expanding my belly!

I ended my last post abruptly because my homehelp angel arrived.

Cali, I am thinking of you so much with the fire tragedy continuing so dreadfully in your state. It is like the wildfire season never ends. I am presuming you are okay, south of the fires that were rampaging in the north, and north of the current terrible ones in LA, is that so? Sending lots of good wishes anyway because it must still be so worrying.

Woot Neil! Saving Lindsay’s post! Magnificent work!
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/ffAAAOSwoMVjrOiM/s-l1200.jpg

And woot for a good weigh in, and haha for good weather for back-to-work. At least it will be nice if you are cycling in.

Lindsay, hooray for relaxing on the verandah, on the island. Precious times.
Woot for less ultra processed food, I hope you can do it without cooking getting too onerous.

Fancy having a dog show on New Years Eve… and very eve! It sounds a great way to end a difficult year.

I do hope that legal stuff gets to a good conclusion very soon. I can imagine how exhausting it is, but also how important.

I need to make an effort to get into tennis again, I don’t know who anyone is at the moment so I need to sit and concentrate and then I would enjoy it. (Much better than complaining there is nothing on TV at the moment, which is what I have been doing.)

Haha Thin, maybe you would make a good tiktok influencer yourself. A good bit of no nonsense would be so refreshing.

I got my cooking mojo the other day and stocked my fridge and freezer with some really good (nutritious and delicious) meals. Off now to tidy the kitchen and maybe then I will manage a nice balance of watching tennis and ticking things off my to do list. I have some busy grandma days ahead.

Sending out good wishes to everyone. LJoyce, missing you! And Merry, if you are reading!

Cheers all

Evening all

The weather the last couple of days has been better, I got a good 50k ride in, played some frisbee golf with some friends and some mini golf with the family. I got an appointment for a cortisone injection on my troublesome shoulder, but the information they sent through with it said that I’m not allowed to exercise for a week afterwards. I might have to walk into work that week, because I don’t think I’ll get away with riding my bike.

Anzac, good luck for the job hunting. I understand the stress on getting stuff done to sell the house. There’s plenty that needs to be done on our house. I’m hoping we can get most of it done in the next 2-3 years when our boys finish school. If not, I’m happy just to take a bit of a hit on the sale price and leave it for the next owner to deal with.

Which tennis are you watching Cinque? The ASB classic is on over here at the moment and I’m hoping Monfils wins the final. I’ll be cheering for Alcaraz in the AO, he seems to be one of the few younger players coming through that isn’t an absolute brat. If he doesn’t win, then I would be happy for anyone except Djokovic to win. I despise him with a passion.

On the mortgage talk, I despair for the current generation. With the median house price in my area more than 10 times the median wage, there are many younger couples that will never be able to own a house. What we paid for our house 20 years ago is what’s needed for a 20% deposit on an entry level house now.

Well that’s enough for the night, have a good one everyone.

Has something changed in the formatting of this site, I can find the option to edit a post anymore?

Strange, edit has appeared for my last post but not previous two…..gremlins

Hi all.
Island living is suiting me, clearly. I’ve lost a kilo, although I am not as rigid as I am at home, but I think the extra walking and staying pretty tight to a Mediterranean diet is helping. I loved a big pot of chilli chorizo beans I made just after new year, to help with some dodgy digestion issues, so made another pot over here minus the chorizo, and it’s a great breakfast.
We’ve had a great couple of days with some setter friends – one woman we met about 4 year ago on the beach here, with her two old setter girls (sugar faces, we call the old ones with the beautiful grey faces) and coincidentally when she got her new puppy, her breeder (also ours) put her in contact with us. I’ve traced back their pedigrees and surprise, surprise. Her 20 month old is my Rosy’s aunt (rosy’s grandfather is the young one’s father – how funny is that). Then we met up today with my lovely vet who took one of Rosy’s puppies and the 4 played so beautifully together. They sure were show stoppers on our off-leash beach (and not a dodgy anal gland between them 🙂

Cinque whoo hoo for your op shop find. I don’t do much good with op shopping for clothes, but when in Melbourne last year found a hand-made Vietnamese noodle bowl that was an almost exact match for one I’d been given. You can see from the irregularities they ae handmade but same same in all other respects. Such a find, because I now have two noodle bowls for the two of us.

Thin and Anzac I think our housing stories are pretty much the same. OH and I bought a house before we married (with my savings…his ‘bad’ wife took half of everything, and he spent his share buying a home for his parents who’d sold up to go overseas, but stayed to care for his young childen). We worked up from there – 2 kids, then 3 then 4, few meals out, lots and lots of family picnics, although none of it felt like a sacrifice because we could see where we needed to be and what we had to do to get there. My kids have been the same, bless them. Save, save. Difference is we were able to give them that last bit to get them over the line. But most came from their own hard work and endeavours, and both now have lovely homes (and the bonus is they are close by, after living away for years).
Gday, what a same your Christmas was spoiled by the poor catering, and by your brother’s mean spirited act. But how lovely you shared lunch with your mother, and were able to bring joy to another resident.
Anzac your relocation with your father sounds like a lovely plan. How lucky you are to have him. Here’s to finding a job that pays a motza, but without the stress of your past contracts.
Neil I’m with you on Djokavic. I cannot – cannot – bear him. I think he is a cheat, for a start. Medical time outs, etc. And this rubbish about being poisoned while in hotel quarantine in Australia, and saying it was political. It was border force that deported him, after he lied on his visa application. So, ABD for me (anyone but djokavic).
There are quite a few local players in the AO whose names I recognise, but I think the changing of the guard has brought a whole lot of new names that I’ll have to get used to.
And finally, those fires Calif. Oh how shocking they are. Unbelievable. Someone compared it to having half a dozen Melbourne bayside suburbs on fire. Just impossible to imagine.

Good night everyone – be safe and happy.

Good Afternoon everyone

It’s Monday FD for me today. My first one in a couple of months. It’s 1pm and I have just had my first rumble of the tummy. All good, I know that I can cope with it.

We had a lovely holiday in NZ. Had a few hiccups but nothing that we didn’t just deal with. Looking forward to our second OS holiday in May and thinking about where we can go after that. Definitely have the travel bug! Also would love to go back to NZ anytime we can.

Hope everyone is ok xx

Evening all

Well it was my first day back at work today and the weather was beautifully sunny and warm…f*****g typical!

Thin, although our weather has been a bit cooler than normal, -5 is definitely colder that what we’re experiencing. I was listening to a podcast today and one of the articles was about a woman in the USA got startled when she discovered that a possum had snuck into her house through the cat flap overnight to escape the cold and had made itself at home in her Christmas tree. It wasn’t pleased when she forcefully evicted it.

Quacka, glad you enjoyed it over here. There’s plenty to see down in the south island, but probably best you were in the north this time given our weather this month. The Denarau area of Fiji is beautiful if you want suggestions for other overseas destinations that are reasonably close and inexpensive.

Lindsay, I hope you have a great time in Bali. Our team leader just got back from his honeymoon there and was raving about it.

Well, back to work tomorrow, today was pretty hectic, but I got most of the catch-up work done, so hopefully tomorrow will be a bit more laid-back

Have a good one everyone.

Oh Lindsay, Bali I’m so envious. We’ve been there twice, each time for 2 weeks and absolutely adore the people, food, countryside and the fun things to do. We stayed in Legian both times, first time on the main drag and second time beachfront. Miss GDay and I would love to go back but would like to stay and travel around the northern side of the island, away from the hustle and bustle. In my bedroom i have 2 large paintings I purchased in Bali and had framed when I got home. One is of Tanah Lot and the other I don’t know the location but it is a beautiful picture of a man fishing in a small boat with a temple in the background. So many wonderful memories of our time there.

Neil yes I was surprised about the BMI drop too. The measurements comes from my Fitbit scale reading so while I take the weight readings as being accurate the BF % and BMI are not necessarily so accurate given the limitations of a home scale being able to accurately determine these measures. Even so, it’s showing a downward trend which is good.

Strange weather this morning, overcast and eery, but as usual it’s going to be very hot. The next few days are supposed to be low 30s so I have flagged a list of outdoor chores I want to get done. Have been stuck inside under aircon the last few day so have been making food for the freezer – spring rolls, spinach and ricotta cannelloni and sweet potato and ricotta cannelloni, the latter 2 being easy meals for Miss GDay to easily heat up in the microwave when I’m fasting. I’m slowly restocking the freezers after depleting the contents a few months ago. Today I will make a batch of ice cream bars from Clare Mosley’s book. They are supposed to be chocolate bars but I mis calculated the ingredients and used too much coconut cream when I first made them and they were a bit sloppy so I froze them and they were really great frozen, crunchy chocolate coating and the inside remained semi frozen. The inside is made from coconut cream, coconut, chopped cherries (can’t recall right now what else) and coated in dark chocolate.

Must go, iPad is about to go flat.

Those bars sound delicious G’day. And nice memories from Bali. When we transferred over from Legian last time, we stayed at the Mercure, which is not at all grand, but we got a fabulous room looking right out to sea, on the walking path, and with a terrific big verandah to watch the world go by. There are much posher hotels on the path, but we were very comfortable in our seaview room, so we checked with the manager (we were finally on good terms after the lat visit went a bit belly-up at the beginning) and we booked our trip based on when that particular room is available. Fingers crossed. Service in Bali can be a bit variable – beautifully lovely, but sometimes a bit random.

Where are you Cinque? Either in an op shop, or settling in to watch the tennis?

Neil, it’s hard, the up/down pattern. I’m down today and hoping it’s not just because I’m on the home scales and not the island ones.

OK off to stock up on vegetables and fruit. Have a good one all.

Morning

Day 2 in the books, again I had 2 black coffees, 2 cups of miso soup, and 1.5L water. I did have a few scraps of grated cheese when I was making the pizzas for the rest of the family Last 2 days have been around 80 calories each. I’m kind of concerned that I haven’t really had any signs of hunger for the last 2 days that I haven’t been eating. I’ve had a bit of light headedness and fatigue, but no real hunger pangs. A visit to Dr Google says that a lack of appetite can be caused gastrointestinal issues, depression, or reduced metabolism caused by prolonged calorie restriction. None of those sound appealing to me.

Hello everyone,
I have been doing lots of lovely grandma things, and a sister thing, and also got a bit crook, and apparently I am so decrepit now that I need to be in top form to manage to write. Hopefully I am in top form today. Don’t feel so yet, but the coffee is still kicking in.

Quacka, so lovely to read your post! How was that first fast day of the year? I am so glad you had a wonderful NZ holiday, and woot for the next one.

Anzac, that impressive 1.5kg loss was such a lovely start to your ‘back on the horse’ ing. All good wishes that it is still going easily.
And best wishes with that job hunting too.

It must be so nice planning that next step of getting up to FNQ, and may your dad enjoy some lovely Queensland winters with you.

Hello Neil, All power to you starting the year with a good fast. I thought that not feeling hunger would be a good sign (so long as you remember to nourish yourself a bit). Not ‘waking the dragon’ keeps the dragon asleep. But your fast must be done now, I hope you are feeling good.

I haven’t managed to watch any tennis, and haven’t been hooked in by anything in the sports reports so far. I bet I start to get interested just as it finishes, and then the next championships will be somewhere that means all the matches are played in the middle of our night.

Gday, best wishes. Sympathy for the state of your mum’s home. So often business decisions mean overworked, poorly paid staff and nothing but minimum standards all round.
And more sympathy for badly behaved family members, goodness I thought mine were bad.

Yay for a good weight loss.

And yay for yours too Lindsay!

And wow, what a gorgeous op shop experience. The whole set does sound beautiful. Not to mention the noodle bowl. It is so special to own such beautiful things.

Good luck with the proper fast days.

Hello Thin!

Sending out good wishes to everyone

ciao

Congratulations Neil. Lucky that you didn’t fall off your bike with hunger on the final ride home. I’ve never tried anything like that, I’ve always assumed I couldn’t and left it at that. Or maybe it’s more that I just do the minimum needed to get by. (Says the 6:1 woman).

Anzac, congrats on the 1.5kg off. Welcome back Quakka. Oh yes, Lindsay’s op shop find. (I seem to have missed or forgotten some details above until Cinque pointed it all out.)

Hello back Cinque! I’m sorry that you need to be in top form to post here – but pleased that you managed it. I don’t even know what tennis you’re talking about – the weather here makes it feel like tennis would be far from anyone’s mind.

Lindsay, I saw another episode of the French Glucose Goddess. Here name is Jessie Inchauspé. I really like the way she presents the science. I’m hoping OH will take note of some of her hacks. As someone who hasn’t gained an ounce since high school, it’s sometimes hard to convince him that his diet could be healthier.

CalifD, are you OK?

FD for me tomorrow when it will be 8 days since my last fast due to doing last week’s a day early. The kingfisher pair are cited several times daily which gives me the same sense of elation experienced when I used to see dolphins on my walks in Perth.

Oh, I almost forgot. One of the winter moorers here is a 5:2 graduate. She lost 3.5 stone which I shall now quickly convert to kgs so it means something to all of us here – that’s 22! I knew it was a lot.

I see on the news today the Global Commission on Clinical Obesity has released new guidelines that move away from using BMI as a weight/health measurement to using WHR and other measures of belly fat, although it didn’t state what the other measures were. It has also split the definition of obesity into two categories:
Pre Clinical Obesity – where the patient is healthy but is carrying excess weight so treatment is monitoring and risk reduction measures.
Clinical Obesity- where organ function is reduced due to excess weight so treatments would be surgery, medications etc.
Sounds like a good change to me, certainly a lot clearer in the definition.

Anzac it is the way of job hunting nowadays to not advise unsuccessful candidates, even when one has made their way to the final batch by gaining a second interview. When I was made redundant just at the start of Covid and was applying for so many jobs because I desperately needed an income, I only received a ‘thanks but no thanks’ email for two applications, one was a job within state government (local hospital finance dept) and the other was a local government position (admin at local council office), absolutely no one else bothered. I read an article recently that many advertised jobs are not actually for positions that are currently available, companies are just putting out feelers to see who is about for them to keep on file for future recruitment when needed – fact finding missions I guess. Personally I think if one is unsuccessful then it should be law that all applications are destroyed/ deleted – there is absolutely no valid reason in my opinion for a business to keep your personal information if they are not employing you. Even more scary is that many companies are using AI to review applications instead of real humans, the human eye only reviews once the numbers have been culled by a certain criteria set. Great weight loss, well done.

Neil, Jessie Inchauspé is a biochemist who offers ‘sugar hacks’ to prevent insulin spiking, including such tips as eating food groups in a certain order, confining sugary snacks to eat as a desert never between meals, drinking a tsp of vinegar in a glass of water before a meal. But I’ve gone off her now because, when I searched for a link to include here the other day, I came across her website selling some kind of anti-spiking supplement that was touted as combatting the glucose spiking caused by ‘just about any of your favourite foods’ including hamburgers, pizzas, chips, etc – which seems an unsatisfactory approach to tackling the consumption of unhealthy food.

Gday, and Trump claimed that Americans were the first to split the atom, which is absolute rubbish, we all know it was Yahoo Serious who split a beer atom in his garden shed to make beer fizzy 😉

Just kidding, New Zealanders are particularly incensed by that claim, because the first person to split the atom was a New Zealander, Ernest Rutherford. He’s known as the father of the atomic age, he’s even on our money, his face is on our $100 bill.

Well this one showed up, I haven’t seen any more from you in my notifications after your post on the 14th.

Thanks Neil – I’d posted twice with links since then. But the gremlins seem to be sorted.