Thank you Purple Vegie Eater. That was a surprise for me; I never expected my shoes to become too big! And after only 9kg?! But it’s more fun buying new clothes than shopping for groceries 🙂
My goal now is to lose the last two kg, & then KEEP IT OFF. I’m expecting that to be the most difficult part. I’d like to believe I won’t become complacent & let it all creep back on. I live/work on cruise ships most of the time, so the temptation of all that tasty food 24/7 is intense. But 5:2, exercise & staying in touch with this forum are a few of the ways I intend to stay trim.
FSF

Very quick ‘hi’ to all – just discovered I’ve been locked out again for the last week or more – will I never learn to check when things seem to go quiet?! – but it does make for a lovely catch-up session when truth finally dawns. Special shout to anyone I’ve not met before!
I spent a few days two weeks ago doing an exhausting (physically and emotionally) task, and the very next day went down with a bad bout of labyrinthitis – sick, dizzy and unable to walk straight / without falling over. The nausea is very similar to pregnancy sickness, so you can guess what’s coming – 2 weeks with no exercise, eating the sort of things which relieve it, and finding proper fasting impossible. Finally lifting now, and pleased to find myself still mid-wriggle-range – apparently this doesn’t ‘heal’ so much as the brain learns to compensate (which is why it tends to return when over-tired, as it forgets and needs to relearn) so I suspect my brain has used lots of calories struggling to learn. Certainly I feel very stupid – spent this afternoon on the intellectually strenuous job of sorting my scarf collection!!

Fasting today, and again on Monday, to get ahead, as we are expecting guests from the USA on Tuesday – lovely guys, whom I can’t wait to see, but who will sort of expect to eat 3 times a day, probably with desserts. (DH is beside himself with joyful anticipation, planning all the coffee stops for when we take them out…). Bring out the fruit bowl and the ‘family hold back’ sized portions! But this week friendship and comfort will be top priority, in the light of events both here and in the USA – and if sitting around eating together can comfort the loss, and confusion, that’s what will happen.
Have a good weekend, everyone. Keep warm, all you southerners.

Freddie,

I was obsessed with chunky kitkats about 20 years ago! I was naturally fasting 16:8 daily and broke my fast every day with a chunky kitkat…. Oh happy days…😀 Haven’t eaten a chunky kitkat for perhaps 15 years now because I like some cocoa solids…and a little less sugar…in my chocolate these days. Ah, but the memory takes me back to a younger more carefree me!

Fast,

Lovely to hear from you again!! I have no words of wisdom re your recent health issues. But great to hear you’re happily maintaining still.

Socialising over food is I think very important and some of the most enjoyable evenings are spent sitting at the dining table, long after the food has been cleared! The key is to remain mindful though. Easy when guests are slim and don’t overeat. Harder when guests are over eaters and expect everyone to do the same! But hey, intermittent fasting gives us the tools to repair any damage done 😊

Ha ha Happy! Great eating habit 😉😉
The dining table is so integral to family and friends, isn’t it?
I’ve found since I replaced our round table with a very long one, I eat much less with visitors around. I ensure the food I might graze on is up the far end. 😉 P

It was nearly impossible with a round table. No wonder I “bulked up”!!

Pack that bikini Bay, and have a fabulous trip. ☺ P

Hello HappyNow! Your past chunky KitKat obsession made me laugh! I usually eat them when they’ ve been in the freezer for an hour or so, & they’re even nicer. I used to fool myself, buying a couple at a time & telling myself, ‘one for today & one for tomorrow’. Like that’ll happen, duh? I’ve learned my lesson now. I buy just one at a time; & never on a FD.
As for feeling down & grumpy, I know how that feels. Especially on a FD. You feel like throwing in the towel before you’ve even crawled out of bed. I started teaching myself yoga though, a few months ago. I haven’t had a grumpy day since! I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, but it really seems to have mellowed me out. It’s like having a complete massage for the body & mind. I just follow a DVD & I have a couple of books that have been useful. So as well as going to the gym I regularly do a 40 minute routine. I feel amazing afterwards. I now think of it more as a hobby, rather than just another chore to get through. OK, it doesn’t burn hundreds of calories, but it doesn’t need to. There’s a ton of information re yoga on the internet, including literally millions of free lessons on Youtube. Works for me, anyway 🙂 FSF

Just to reassure those who might think because I’m older than God I might be among the old buggers who are alleged to have formed one of the largest cohorts of those who have voted us out of the EU.
Not guilty, Your Honour. Both me and Him Indoors were remainers, and are very sad at the result. I’m European to the core – hardly surprising, with the business I’m tied up in and my previous track record of living and working in mainland Europe.
The damage is done now. All we can do is resort to the typically British solution of the stiff upper lip.
PS No offence to any of my good mates who decided to vote the other way. Let’s just agree to disagree. 🙂

Re-vote??? If only!! I suspect the word you heard, Mama, was ‘revolt’

You do realise the vote isn’t binding? The Govt can just ignore it…or would that be “just not cricket”?
I wish they’d stop blaming the older section of the community as holding “conservative ” views. They clearly haven’t met us! 😉😉
Glad you are enjoying veg patties Dragonmama. They can be shaped and popped in the oven too. I don’t make mine any more, as I can by fresh ones with only vegetables, no additives or egg, so my vegan son eats them. The chickpeas in them act as a binder.
Now back to stirring up the Aussie voters…our Federal election is next weekend. P 😊

Hi P,

Yes, it’s not binding. The commons could vote on it and ignore (or not) the wishes of the small majority who want Brexit. For whatever reason, Caneron isn’t taking that option. And his successor (please God not that lying frightening dangerous mop top buffoon) certainly won’t…

So far, P, no one has come up with the idea that the vote isn’t binding. I don’t know enough about the constitution (or whatever we’ve got instead) to be able to say whether the whole thing could be ignored. Even if it were possible, no doubt it would lead to the same old same old all over again. And White Van Man – semi-educated, xenophobic, extreme right-leaning tosser – would win again.

What saddens me most of all is that in the end xenophobia won the day. So much stress was put on immigration, for which read “we don’t like foreigners – even those who have been here for generations”.
One very small consolation. Our borough, the London Borough of Haringey,and our immediate neighbour, the London Borough of Hackney, had two of the highest percentages in the country of votes to remain, 75.6 and 78.3 respectively.

Herm, the mechanisms for implementing the exit still have to be worked out, and then be passed by both houses of Parliament. A lot can happen before then.
I have daily ‘discussions’ with xenophobic voters, here, who are disparaging about migrants, when every single one of us came to this country from somewhere else in the world (including the Aboriginal people, even if it was 60000 years ago). I love to ask, ‘Tell me about where your family came from and why they came?’ Funny how the reasons for population movement is almost always the same…seeking a better life…even many convicts, especially the starving Irish, who often set fire to barns to get ttansported…. 18/19th Century ‘people smuggling’. P

If only P!

Of course Herm. Nicola Sturgeon should bring it on quickly 😊

Hi Merry
You are most welcome any time!! 😊
I’m with you on 2 fasts a week giving me extra space for eating on non fast days.
It becomes a habit that just seems normal. Keep doing what you are and your body will choose your maintenance level.
Cheers P

Thanks Purple and Bay, 🙂 See you soon,
Merry

Hi Bay 😊
What a skite! You are SO lucky not to be home! Cold, damp and miserable. 😯
I’m busy looking up recipes for mulled wine 😉 🍷🍷
The thread has been quiet…I assume as we are all going along swimmingly with our new way of life.
Mr P and I are spending a lot of time indoors, eating more carbs than normal, but skipping lots of meals too.
I imagine you are sunbathing, sipping cool drinks and eating salads. 😊Make the most of it! P

Superb!
Aren’t turtles wonderful to swim with? Such beautiful creatures.
I think the sunshine missed 😕 P

Hi FUN
You’ll be right. It’s the getting back on the scales that keeps us in maintenance 😆P

The thread has been so quiet I thought I might have been locked out!

Bay, holiday sounds fabulous! Wish we were back there again ☀️

Purple, I’ve been eating plenty of extra carbs too – it’s been so cold here, just can’t seem to get warm. Think it’s due in part to the fact I don’t have any extra padding anymore! 😄

I’ve been keeping my food diary and mapping against weight and found carbs and white wine are what piles the weight on. Not a surprise except that the white wine seems to be more dangerous for me than the carbs. Has been enlightening to discover that.

Welcome to all the new contributors!

You’d need them in the uk, too, at the moment, P. Our Michigan friends really appreciated our ‘summer’ (huh!) as they had left home in temps of 40c.
FSF – we all know that feeling, post feast day / holiday of ‘perhaps I’ll avoid the scales till I’ve done a couple of fasts’. Try to reframe it as ‘the sooner I know the damage, the sonner I can undo it’ – and I bet it won’t be as bad as you think anyway!

Hi all,

I’m still here too, still maintaining, there just aren’t enough hours in the day….

The weather is distinctly disappointing, thanks El Niño….

I’ve just discovered have been unsubscribed from this thread. Based on previous experience and my apparent consummate skill at pissing off the more delicate flowers among us (not on this nice grown-up thread I hasten to add), I wondered what I’d done this time. Now I see that others have had a similar experience so it’s obviously a technical hitch and nothing to do with me, gov. 🙂

So just a quick hello, the first for a while ‘cos the day job’s kept me busy. I’m not complaining because after a hideous project which Fast very aptly labelled “Mein Kampf” – it was in German – I’ve had some lovely art-historical stuff from French and Spanish and in both cases about Spanish art. Not easy, but at least I’m in my preferred territory and if I come across something I don’t know about – like every 10 minutes or so – I know how and where to look.

I can now look forward to a few days’ respite – haircut and highlights, collect new, somewhat more stylish, distance glasses, then some general slobbing around. 5:2-wise I’ve been good lately. Plateaued again, but at 2 kilos less than before I’m not complaining, even though it’s probably my lot for this year.

And I’m in awe of your scientific skills, Happy. And the fact that you can pick up languages makes me suspect that somewhere in there is a Renaissance woman – multi-skilled in humanities and science.

I was politely asked to leave every science class at school, partly because of the attrition rate of test tubes, watch glasses etc, which I managed to drop or knock over every lesson. As an 11-year-old I loved chemistry – I even thought pharmacy might be fun – but I reached my intellectual peak at age 12 and the nearest thing to a science I have to my credit is a skin-of-the-teeth GCE in Maths.

When it comes to translation of the written variety – I’m too shy and slow-witted to do the other sort, i.e. interpreting – there is quite a lot of analysis and rigour required, although creative and elegant use of language is probably what separates the OK translator from the really good one.

I agree about La Leadson – her only advantage is that she is marginally less creepy than that little git called Gove. And the other lot whom I traditionally support are in total disarray.

One small cause for celebration. Him Indoors flatly refused to consider trying to move to Cambridge, but has readily agreed to move within a 5 mile radius, covering quite a few pleasant spots only minutes further out of London, where price-wise you get a bigger bang for your buck, so hopefully before too long we may have more space, for us and for visitors, neighbours who are the other side of the fence next door rather than just across the landing, a garden, and last but not least, a moggy or two. Maybe raise one of you glasses to that. 🙂