Hi Fast

I’ve been eating fresh parsley from the garden and raw carrots.

Bay 🙂

Short of (self) hypnosis, I don’t know of any other programme, have you got anything in mind, Happy?

FFS, I once asked someone about the Allen Carr “Quit Smoking” books and she said that the way they worked was by sheer repetition throughout the book (a bit like hypnosis) repeating how dreadful the stuff was and how we are manipulated etc (I presume always slightly differently formulated) So slowly our mind starts accepting. This is why I hoped if we keep reading our Lustig book (or Bay’s posts) ;-)) whilst refraining from sugar (body and mind) that we eventually internalise how dreadful and evil this stuff is for us. Reading it just before drifting off to sleep should have the same effect as the Allen Carr books – I hope.

I’ve had good breakfast and lunch + two apples and I think I have almost reached my TDEE ;-(( but it is almost five and I am not hungry – so lets see how I feel when I get home tonight. I hope I won’t reward this “no sugar girl” with more savoury food.

Hi
I have a similar, but opposite problem re the vegie garden. By Feb the heat has knocked the tomatoes and lettuce for 6, so I have only herbs, the occasional chilli and a sweet potato that has completely taken over!
I have a new phone and this is the first message I’ve typed on it. A bit slow, but my young agile brain will pick it up quickly.
TGIF 😉 P

First time I typed on my phone, I got a return text from my daughter: ‘ mother, have you been drinking?’ You’re obviously stone cold sober, P. Pity we can’t share gardens ( and climates). But at least my garlic is coming on fast.

Hi F & L

I haven’t eaten any added sugar since the challenge began. However, I fell off my fast day yesterday with a bang! I lasted until 2 pm then had beans, tuna, salad, cheese, hummus. All healthy foods, but discouraging nonetheless. I can’t remember ever falling off a fast day, once I’ve gone past lunchtime. Even so, I lost 400 grams yesterday. Go figure, as they say. 😮

Feeling low, but reminding self that am only human. Maybe there is something in the theory that we only have so much will power to go around. 😉

I will be reading all that anti sugar stuff again and again during the six weeks of Lent. Even thought I realise intellectually that sugar is hideously bad for me, I still find room for a little treat. 🙄

Cheers, Bay 🙂

Hi Happy – curly kale and chard – wow, lucky you. Afraid we lost ours to the pigeons – round here they are not deterred by netting etc. – so we’ve decided to focus on the things we most like to eat / can protect / which cost most / which we can freeze / don’t need much space to grow, and buy the rest. Settled on salad stuff – lettuce, cucumber, radish etc – runner beans, peppers, aubergines, courgettes, tomatoes, apples, plums, strawberries, raspberries, black currants, garlic – and we forage like mad for blackberries! The game – having always had enough space to be more or less self-supporting – is ‘how close can we get to that in a suburban garden measuring no more than 6m x 6m, and including sitting /socialising space?’ Flowers and veg share beds, tomatoes grow in hanging baskets; but sadly the chickens (who don’t know about sharing the strawberries and whom we can’t bear to pen) have had to go. Penalty of retirement and downsizing, I’m afraid. – sad and frustrating, but surprisingly fun trying to beat the challenge.

What lovely produce gardens. Maybe next year I’ll do better with more vegetables. 😉 This year we had/have herbs, zucchinis, tomatoes, rocket and chili.. And of course the magnificent apricot crop. 🙄

Cheers, Bay 🙂

I can see what the next challenge is going to be 😉 You have made me seriously think about growing a bit more than the token tomatoes and herbs.

There are quite a number of you dedicated “The good life people” here. My parents were virtually selfsuffient with anything that grew in the garden and with grand parents that still had a couple of cows and lots of chickens we never bought meat, milk or eggs either. I so regret not appreciating it at the time. I loved anything that was “bought”. As a child, I hated weeks of runner beans, peas and potatoes, potatoes, potatoes etc…always boiled with just a bit of butter on top… how I love that now.
I did love the fruit though. We had masses of strawberries, rasperries, plums, apples cherries and anything that grew in our climate.

I do love the image of a “garden path party in a row”.

Seeing how many maintainers here grow their own vegetables tells me that you lot were already pretty health conscious before fasting. Is this basic attitude the reason why you are able to successfully keep off the weight?

Possibly, L. I wasn’t brought up that way: my Mum stopped proper cooking when convenience foods were invented, and never allowed me in the kitchen (although I also had a paternal grandad who was a master baker and went on at length about the wonders of wholemeal bread, long before it was fashionable ) I had 3 pieces of luck as an adult: one, to marry a man who was deeply into gardening; two, to have a low income, most of which went on the mortgage, which pushed us further into self sufficiency (John Seymour’s book was a bible in our house – still have our dog-eared copy somewhere); and three, getting passionately interested in nutrition when my children were born, at a time when you had to fight the medical carers in order to feed a baby naturally! But be warned: I found out the hard way that it’s possible to eat far too much of all the right things – that’s why I’m here, doing 5:2!

Happy,thatS our garden to a T . I’m notionally I/c flowers (and garlic!); DH’s motto is ‘if you can’t eat it, what’s the point of growing it?’

Serendipity! You in Oz, me in UK – welcome to the digital revolution! Wonder if the next edition will find a way to include it? X

Snap! I tried to be semi self sufficient in the 70s when I had little kids and was also passionately interested in nutrition. We grew raspberries, wonderful cherry trees, tomatoes, lettuce, silver beet, carrots, potatoes, beetroot, shallots, herbs. It did feel a bit like The Good Life. We used to trade with other growers, and buy from the food co-op.

After having a savoury binge today, I’m hoping to be back on the wagon tomorrow. 😉

Cheers, Bay 🙂

Ah, nostalgia! Our peak / nadir may have been trading rabbit carcasses for Morris 1000 parts at the local scrapyard. All our kids went off it a bit as teenagers – stuffing junk food, and DD once flouncing out declaring she intended to ‘marry a rich man, NOT step out of my back door into duck poo, and never eat another b****y lentil’! Interestingly, she did just that, hated it, divorced and remarried and is now working her socks off for very little, and thoroughly content. No 1 son said ‘you won’t catch me doing work caring for people and earning peanuts’ – now trains leaders for Raleigh International. Baby Boy (a approaching 40!) combines running a bar with language teaching in southern Spain – one foot in Spain, one in Morocco – loves the lifestyle and is permanently broke. All are educated,( and question everything!) none could stomach the thought of a 9-5 job. If you devise to bring up children this way be very afraid: there will be a few years when it will bite you on the bum! But it does seem to come right eventually…

Hi P, I don’t quite understand when you say: “I don’t have enough sunny spots in the garden to grow much other than herbs…”
Isn’t the point of Australia that you have sun all the time?

Lichtle,

Our soil isn’t as fertile as yours, and we need to work it with compost and minerals. Where the vegetables are in shade, either by fences or mature trees, then they don’t grow very well. Herbs will grow in pots that can be moved into the sun or on the deck.

Cheers, Bay 🙂

Well I’ve been driving today and missed an interesting conversation!

We aren’t living the good life, as we both work full time, but I am enjoying growing a variety of vegetable and salad crops. We also restocked the orchard last year with apples, damsons, plums and a medlar.

I think it’s partly an excuse to be outside, as that’s my favourite place to be. The house doesn’t get cleaned as much as it ought!

But I do take great pleasure from preparing food from scratch with fresh picked organic ingredients that I grew myself.

Thanks Bay and Purple. I guess I thought in hot climates things grew in the shade too since the intensity of sun and therefore its effect on plants must be much stronger. Maybe I should swat up on some Biology again. 🙂 But that has to wait until I have read the “no sugar” book. 🙂

A quick cautious report on the lent challenge: So far so good – not going up the wall just yet.. I am with Bay, though. Concentrating on the lent challenge has made me more lenient with the 5:2 fast. I hope it is just an initial thing and that next week proper fasting can continue. I did quite well in today’s fast until I succumbed to some mixed nuts this evening, which blew the fast by about 300cals. This proofs me wrong, thinking without sugar I would not need to fast.

Hi Lichtle, do you think the nut outburst is linked to a feeling of ‘deprivation’ due to cutting out sugar? Ie your brain is saying have the nuts rather than your tummy.

Hi all

I ate extra dry roasted almonds and raw Brazil nuts over the last 3 days. I think we needed something extra to tide over the sugar withdrawal. After 3 full days sugar free, I finally feel ok again. I don’t believe that it’s all been in the mind. 😉

Up until this morning, sugar free day 4, I have felt this urge to eat until I could find the missing ingredient. Nothing satisfies and I felt vaguely nauseous, and quite tired. I recognise those symptoms as withdrawal from sugar or processed carbs. Done this before 😮 you end up feeling very low, and I’ve been very grateful for all the support coming from this thread.

This morning my energy is back, and my desire to eat is fasting normal. If it took a small binge on raw nuts to achieve this outcome, then I’m very happy. 🙄

Thank you all, cheers, your bounced back Bay 🙂

Understand that completely Bay – looking for the missing ingredient. In my case I may as well say ‘looking for sugar!

I think, Bay and Carol you are right, the nuts definitely filled an emotional as well as a nutritional void. As I feel rubbish from a stinking cold which started on Thursday I did not make a connection that I might suffer from withdrawel symptoms.
The nuts I eat are uncoated wal, cashew and hazel nuts + almonds so no salt or other coating substituting the sugar.. As my TDEE is low and I waste a lot of calories on sweet food void of nutrition, I tend to compensate with nutrition dense food – hence nuts in the house but they never ruined a fast and I don’t think I would have allowed sugar to ruin the good work of a fast.

I take your point, Happy that you found that the calories in nuts do not have the same effect on the body as sugar. Let day 4 of the challenge begin.

Do you sometimes wake up after a fast day and you feel totally neutral – neither hungry nor full – a bit non-descript, empty in the stomach and you think you could easily do another fast? But then you get up and you remember that you don’t fast for fasting’s sake but for your health and you want to give your body the best nutrition today. Well this what I feel right now.

We are off to see FIL for the weekend who has recently lost his wife and help him clear things out. He is such a lovely gent and I am looking forward to seeing him. Shame he doesn’t live closer.

Water with lime or lemon is my drink. I only have 1-2 coffees a day. Any more and I’m awake all night. 😉

Hi Fast

I agree my moments of regret are fleeting. They came around the time the apricot pudding came out of the oven, and when I broke squares of dark chocolate to put on the table. The dinner party was a happy time for all. 😆

It’s proving hard to overeat without bread or sugars of any kind. The small piece of kumara (sweet potato) was incredibly sweet to taste.

Well done, Lichtle for having a go with reducing that much caffeine at the same time as the sugar. 🙄

Cheers, Bay

Hi MCs, Thanks for your favourite drinks to subsitute sugar/coffee. Really my coffee reduction is not that drastic since I only drink stong brewed coffee at work – at home I usually drink instant decaf. As I said the stinking cold is masking any withdrawal symptoms.

Carol, I have fruit too at least for the time being although I do feel a bit like cheating since I love fruit so much. Maybe in the last week(s) I will try to leave out fruit. it’s hard to predict if by then, the weeks of denial will make this will be more or less difficult. I am not making any promises until I see as it goes.

Well done Bayleaf for making desert and serving it without eating. That is almost heroic. I would have had to make one that I am not keen on.

Hi Lichtle

I weighed in this morning and lost 600 grams yesterday. Plus I’ve lost the blah feeling. 🙄 I know weight fluctuates, but it feels as if the regime of no sugars, no alcohol, and no breads except sourdough, is having an effect. It doesn’t seem to matter that I over indulged the nuts.

Hey, Purple
I may even become inspired to make my own sourdough in the future. Not just yet. 😉

Cheers, Bay 😆