Hi Bay,

I think the reason we Brits use French names for certain veggies, like courgettes and aubergines, is that until the mid to late 60s, we had never seen such things in the UK and didn’t have a name of our own for them, we adopted the French one.
I found out about them when I was au pairing in the South of France and got to like them very quickly. But could they be found in London? No chance.

It’s not a problem any more. Pretty well every supermarket stocks them. We’re lucky in that we live in a very cosmopolitan area and there are many ethnic shops that sell them for less, even though the quality is better. You do see them spelt in some rather idiosyncratic ways, e.g. corjets.

The courgettes I first saw in France were round, shaped more or less like an onion, with very pretty markings. While the long ones have been here for ever, the round ones have only recently started to appear.

@lichtle, it’s Ladies Of A Certain Age (see this thread https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/help-all-ladies-of-a-certain-age-please-respond/)

Lol, says theperson who hasn’t been in either of these threads. Now I feel a bit silly for answering to this question. Sorry to impose, lovely ladies (of all ages).

Oh, that makes sense – I feel a bit stupid now but hey ho we all occasionally have to reveal our total ignorance. ;-)) Thank you for prompt response Flemish.

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Lichtle, you should not feel stupid. There is no such thing as a stupid question if you do not know the answer. The only stupid thing is not to ask a question when you don’t already know the answer!

Thanks Hermaj,

I’ve been wanting to clear the air for a while, but there didn’t seem to be an opportunity before now.

This is the only thread I follow, but I do look at recent posts. The LOACA thread is I think the most popular so I have read quite a lot of (or in the case of very long posts, skimmed!) what has been said there. You entertained me there and I’m pleased you arrived here!

Hi everyone greetings from country Oz. We had much needed rain during the week over a 48 hour period I had just over 240 ml or 11+inches.The first rain in over 3 months. Our dams where dry and now household tanks and the dams are full.Being on the coast I am lucky as vast areas of the inland are drought declared and some farmers have not seen rain in 3 years.

Hermaj, you ask of snakes, generally its a case of live and let live. A lot of country people have Carpet or Diamond python snakes living in their roof, me included, this is quite normal. They keep the vermin/rats down and are not poisonous. With my companions I don’t like to have bait around so the Joe Blakes (snakes) earn their keep. A few dogs are lost each year to snake bites. Around me the Redbelly black is often seen but is very shy and trys to hide but if corned will give a couple of false strikes warning you to back off.
The most sensuous ballet I have ever seen is Redbellys mating slowly moving across the ground intertwined with half their bodies upright and twisting around supported by each other as they travelled. Quite beautiful. Eastern browns and Death adders are the nasty ones around here but in 26 years I have never seen either but have been told that they are here. I can’t recall the last time I read or heard of a person having been bitten. All snakes are a endangered and protected species so we are not supposed to kill them however………..

Tim.

Morning All,

Tim, you mention rain. I knew that the interior suffered with drought, but didn’t realise it was 3 years with no rain for some. How do farmers (and others) cope? You need water for crops and livestock.

Nicky. Interesting point about the demographic. My perception of the prevalence of obesity definitely changes depending on where I am! In seaside towns such as Blackpool and Morecambe, I feel positively underweight (although obviously not every one else is large). In the rural area where I live, very large people are very much the exception and I feel ‘normal’.

I’m meeting up with some friends and family this weekend, all of whom are very outdoorsy and lean. I’m looking forward to being part of the group this time without feeling selfconscious about my weight.

Sorry – I’ve come into this a bit late, but what’s a LOACA? Sounds like there was a bit of a spat back there, Happy Now, I hope that’s the end of it and you are feeling supported. This is after all a Support Page isn’t it? Hope everyone is feeling positive and happy today, whether or not it’s a fast day. I have only managed one fast day this week due to visitors but I am not going to beat myself up about it. It was nice to see them and life is for living! Have a good day, All.

First, thanks, Nicky, for your two bob’s worth. As you may have noticed, I can be naughty but the Spawn of Satan I ain’t.

Also many thanks to friends Down Under, including you and Tim, for trying to reassure me about snakes. I have to confess that it’s not the thought of getting bitten that scares me, it’s just the look of the creatures. It’s the shape of their heads, the slithery movement, the thought of touching, or being touched by one. And the idea of one of them in the roof…. Let’s change the subject.

Nicky, I’m a huge David Suchet fan – it sounds as though a lot more “huge” fans were enjoying the show, too :). Way back when the movie Ghandi had just won a raft of Academy Awards and Ben Kingsley was flavour of the month, I went to see the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Othello. BK’s Othello was fine and dandy, but who was the actor playing Iago who was so brilliantly acting him off the stage? OK, Iago’s a much better role than Othello, as bad-guy roles usually are, but his performance was extraordinary. The name was David Suchet who at that point was not yet famous. Not only is he a fine actor, he also does the occasional TV documentary, and always comes across as a charming presenter and interviewer and an all-round lovely guy.

As for the seriously obese. Even at my fattest I never overflowed an aircraft seat but on my very first Transatlantic flight from London to Boston, I had the misfortune to sit next to a woman, a pleasant enough person, whose huge bum took up a third of my seat. She also had terminal halitosis. As a result, I flew across the Pond at an angle of 45 degrees.

The bunch that Nicky and her other half shared the theatre with were of the older generation. What I find even more disturbing – and, in a nasty sort of way, comforting as I never, ever got to be that humungous – is the number of very fat, very young people in their teens and twenties who I see every day on our London streets.

No doubt, some of them may have medical problems, which is sad, but I suspect a large percentage (whoops, sorry about the unintentional pun) are sufferers from can’t-keep-the-hands-out-of-the-cookie-jar syndrome. There, but for the grace of the whoever arranges these things, go I. If, even pre-5:2, I had not been pretty careful about what I ate, although clearly not careful enough, I would have weighed 300 lbs and needed someone to push me around on wheels.

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the link. Interesting, but scary, stuff.

And even where there is water, transportation costs are prohibitive. That’s not something I’d considered.

In the UK, a lot of land owners are looking at turbines and solar PV for cheaper power. Is it the same in Australia?

Re size and demographics…we have older folk called grey nomads who travel around Australia for many months, avoiding winter, in their huge 4 wheel drives and massive caravans. Sweeping generalisation, but boy are many of them obese. We have been studying them at every rest stop on our trip. Would love to do some proselytizing!!!P

Hi Happy, sorry to see it’s all kicked off again. Isn’t funny that certain characters re-emerge when the s**t hits the fan? I, as Spawn of Satan, am definitely on your “sinister” side. Sod ’em, I say. 🙂

Just entering into the obesity prevalence debate – I have noticed there are many more overweight, obese and morbidly obese here when I am in Canada. Maybe it’s just this city but I think it’s worse than in Adelaide where I live. The top four countries for overweight/obese people are Aus, UK, USA, Canada. Also noticed a high prevalence of smoking here and smoking in Aus is just about non existent now.

Cheers everyone.

Hi Bay,

We’ve got solar pv on our roof. It’s really satisfying on any reasonably bright day to think we’re powering our own appliances, and are net exporters of electricity. And as we are on a private water supply, we know all about having to watch usage and water saving, so can sympathize!

Morning MCs and I second Bay’s hello to our lost mates (A and E 🙁 and to dear iwb too)
Lovely day here, the rain has stopped so we will get in lots of sightseeing.
Some things I have learnt while “on the wallaby” (track is understood but not spoken…an Aust expression meaning travelling), I have a real need to run these days, Happy. I can be seen sprinting through car parks when we stop anywhere. The old, obese, grey nomads look at me in amazement from their aluminium folding chairs! I feel really good after a sprint and am finding OH is starting to do it too …now that is EARTH SHATTERING!! He refers to his fitbit regularly and is very disappointed if he hasn’t made 10 000 steps in a day.
I can still rustle up gourmet (pronounced “gor-met” as a joke) food anywhere. I already knew that, but I still love the challenge. Yesterday we set off early and stopped at a roadside picnic area in the middle of nowhere about 11am. I shook eggs up in a plastic container with some capsicum/chilli sauce. Make it into scrambled eggs on our little single gas burner, topped with smoked salmon, tinned champignons and parmesan. Delicious considering we had had to give up all our fresh veg and there had been no shop for a day and a half. Even the flies were enthusiastic!
As Bay says, despite the govt attitude, Australians are covering their roofs in PV panels and wind farms are springing up along the length of the southern end of this huge island. We have solar pool heating on our house but have yet to manage PV as we live in an area of huge trees which provide fabulous cooling, but shadow the roof at varying times. We are trying to get the latest panels that operate independently so that when one is shadowed, the others will still operate. We have found the gear, but not a contractor with the brains to install it. It is SUCH an uphill battle to do the right thing here. OH is threatening to do it himself…we have a VERY high, VERY steep roof:(
Lastly, hermaj, OH says it is vital he checks out another culturally significant practice here in the western goldfields….the old pubs have a tradition of scantily clad barmaids called “skimpies”. I will pass on his opinion! P 🙂

No PVE. Raw mix is very bad! It is only very good if you have a Mum who empties the bowl leaving only very mean scraping. If however you have control of the whole bowl…. Yes, it’s meant to be a small flat cake!

Hi Carolannfud – pleased to note you’re in Adelaide too.

Thought I was alone on the forums from SA.

Well done on reaching maintenance – long way for me yet but I’m patient and determined because 5:2 is definitely the way of life for me.

Just wished I’d discovered it before I’d slipped so far down the slippery slope. 8 months and 8.2kg gone and far easier than any other eating plan I’ve tried.

Cheers, Nicky.

Hi ,every one this months GI News from Sydney Uni has an interesting note on ” Keeping it off ”

http://ginews.blogspot.com.au/ and may be of interest to some.

Tim.

@tarkeeth, this is a very interesting article and confirmed my thoughts of last week when I decided that I should really focus on “maintaining” for a while. I did wonder if my body needed a bit of “getting used to” the current weight for a bit before it did more shifting.

The article says: “It’s a real achievement to lose 5% of your initial weight in whatever time it takes. If you do want to lose a bit more, take the pressure off for 3 months before you restrict calories again. This will give your body time to adjust to its new engine size. And it will give you practice in learning to listen to your body’s natural signals for feeling hungry and feeling full. An alternating weight loss/weight maintenance pattern like this will help you become a full-time weight maintainer.”

Whilst I did manage to reach my target weight last year with fasting (lost 15lbs), I could not sustain my new weight during the winter months when I felt very cold and had to give up fasting. By the end of May, after a naughty WEEK OF EXTENDED FAMILY HOLIDAY and a seven month fasting break I had put on around 7lbs and started fasting again. I managed to lose 5 pounds in a couple of months but now I am stuck with 2-3lbs off target weight. There could be a possibility that this is my healthy weight now and any more is “just not me” anymore and a pipe dream of younger years. This is why I am backing off a bit, however this time I don’t want to give up fasting altogether (easy at the moment as it is not too cold yet) but keep everything a bit more relaxed. This maintaining is all a matter accepting 5:2 as part of my future eating pattern.

Hi Lichtle

Agree that I felt much colder in Winter when fasting. I put on extra layers, plus had soup on standby.

One of the ways I fasted through Winter was to have ready a large pot of thin vegetable soup. I regard the soup as almost free calories and treat it like a drink. No potatoes or kumara (sweet potatoes), turnips, swedes or thickeners. My soups are usually green vegetables, celery, carrot, tomatoes, spring onions, leek, and lots of flavours such as ginger, chili or pepper, and salt. Parsley, herbs of your choice.

Cheers, B 🙂

Yes bayleafoz, I too make lots of vegetable soups in the winter, They are my life saver!! My favourite is ginger and carrot soup with coconut milk (not always reduced fat). It is sometimes the only thing that can warm me up at work where we are lucky enough to have a microwave. On Sunday nights I empty the vegetable boxes in my fridge and use up all the vegetables (bar potatoes) to make soups for the week ahead which I freeze until needed. I think I have to start again – I am feeling a bit chilly right now.

Thanks, Happy Now, for the definition of LOACA! Sounds quite exotic really, when you say it as ‘Loaca’. As in, “We wandered around Loaca for a few days and found the most darling little beach side cafe” Or “I can now wear my loaca again since being on the 5:2”. OK, enough silliness. Only a couple of days without checking and the posts are far too many to reply to! This is a great site to renew our confidence, ask questions and get advice. Or just applaud each other from time to time! I do like the idea of a break, in order to get the body used to its new size and shape, but I think a gradual tapering off is better for me, say doing once a week for a few weeks, then being REALLY sensible for a week or so – bread once a day (if at all), pastries once a week (if at all) more alcohol-free days, that sort of thing. Then returning to the 5:2 won’t be such a shock!!! I haven’t been a big ‘snacker’ except when I was teaching and as any teacher will tell you, if you can grab a spare moment then it’s usually to grab a cookie or a slice of cake! I am so impressed with the amount of weight loss that people have been reporting. I can understand how difficult it must be for parents with young children, working mums and dads, people with partners who are either unsympathetic or just not doing the diet – I take my hat off to you all. I am retired and living on my own, no-one to boss me around or criticise my life style, I am very fortunate (although it hasn’t always been that way) so I say again, well done to all of you who have made such progress despite the difficulties of 2 days of fasting! You’re amazing.

hermaj….are you using us as task avoidance again?
Happy was discussing the joys of eating raw cake mix. I don’t think it’s evil,Happy does. She could be right, though, I guess;)
We didn’t end up checking out the skimpies yesterday. But did find a great “all you can eat” pub in an old mining town. (Hence a very good fast today). We are doing a fairly fast sightseeing trip across the country as a totally unplanned last minute idea. It is an Aussie right of passage to cross the Nullarbor, so, why not? Today we were 2500km as the crow flies from home.
The towns of the goldfields in the 1890s in WA had a mindboggling number of pubs. Many are virtual ghost towns now. Coolgardie, for example, held a world exhibition in 1899, had a large population and great wealth, when the gold failed they pulled down many of the buildings, leaving the main street that is wide enough to turn a camel train in and a few grand buildings.
As to childhood eating. I was lucky. Had to eat everything, but was a naturally skinny kid and young woman. Only put on weight in more recent years. Thank goodness for 5:2 to rectify the excess. P

Hi Purple Vegie Eater ALMOST 36%? Unbelievable…and to keep it off…congratulations!!! Great also to hear that your husband is on board. What a gift. My husband doesn’t want to know, even though he has the unhealthiest lifestyle 🙁

@Honje, you are right tapering off or a modified milder version is probably the way to go, because once you stop it is a bit more effort to motivate yourself to start again. And I agree with you it is much easier when you don’t have to cook for other people. My children have left home and OH does most of the cooking – he is used to my down days and knows to just to cook for himself twice a week.

@Hermaj I had a mixed experience in my childhood. When staying with Granny (often) food equalled love – there were mostly three courses (including soup which I hated) all had to be eaten (plates finished). We were not even allowed to drink prior or during meal times because our appetite would be reduced. In the afternoon there was lots of hot chocolates with cakes to get through (not such a chore). At home with mum it was different, we had to empty our plates but she didn’t quite fill it to the brim and there was only one course. And mum did not bake. I have this nightmare vision of my childhood of me sitting on my own before a half eaten plate long after everybody has left and not allowed to get up until I had finished the by now cold food. I remember the gagging effect this produced. I never liked being overly full and was a thin child.

I have started to play little mind games to reduce my appetite in recent years. I play my parents and grand parents voices in my head urging me to “EAT UP OR YOU WON’T AMOUNT TO ANYTHING” and in an instant I don’t want to eat anymore 😉 As soon as someone wants/forces me to eat anything I am done with it.