Tag Archives: diets

Remembering.

Leave a reply

Family dynamics were always a tad strange for me as I was a late adopted child for late born parents. I guess this gave me access into a generation I wouldn’t otherwise have encountered. 

My aunt married a man thirty years older than her and he was the baby of the family. When he was taken, his remaining older sister was becoming frail. As maiden lady, she lived in a house that had belonged to her parents and it wasn’t that suitable for a person of advancing years as it had a staircase with very narrow treads, which were very steep and the hall was badly lit. The venerable person had already had two bad falls down the aforesaid, so my widowed aunt moved in. It was not a match made in heaven. 

The older lady, in retrospect, had health problems I was not aware of as a child. She was forbidden to eat rich food as it would reoccur. This was a rotund and very short person who adored her food. I guess she had been a young woman at the time of the great war and never got a chance to have a husband, so she went to food for pleasure. Not morbidly obese, but what could be described in the then vernacular as portly. Christmas was a particularly cruel season for a foodie with restrictions. I recall visiting to find her being scolded by my Aunt for cooking up a batch of sausage rolls and mince pies and then eating some. Of course she was sick afterwards and this is why she was being scolded. Her brilliant come back? “At least I had the pleasure of eating them!”

This came back to haunt me as a result of my own lapse this weekend. I know full well that cane sugar and wheat flour upset me, but we went out for brunch with the kids and I see all these desserts. I really don’t have desserts. I don’t have a sweet tooth, but this time they were so pretty I couldn’t resist. Today I paid the price for my lapse. I paid for my fun, but I enjoyed it while it was happening. High five for the ancestor with the attitude!

Diets and prehistory.

Leave a reply

It was with enormous amusement that I read two opposing statements on the subject of what a caveman did and didn’t eat. There were the meat eaters on one hand, who stated that man ate few vegetables and mostly meat. The vegetarians had a contrary view. Both arguments were well substantiated and too fixated in independent philosophies to hold any merit. So, to get down to icky basics, and this is icky.

In the beginning there was a primate, who was more primate than man. Think chimpanzee, here. Given that it was going bald, it did need some sort of coverings, but the coverings came at a later date to dietary needs when the baldness and the cooling climate made this more imperative. Go look up the diet of a modern, wild chimp. This species isn’t the cute little fluffy who eats bananas and any other fruit going. This species will eat more or less anything, including maggots, ants, beetles, larva, rodents, reptiles, fish and  amphibians . If they could catch it and kill it, or at least eat it alive without a struggle, then they do and did. Chimps have developed tools for braining lesser creatures and breaking into nuts. They are omnivores, as are we.

Man didn’t suddenly emerge as the bison/antelope hunter, nor did he suddenly start digging for underground for root vegetables.  There are humans born now without canine teeth. This doesn’t automatically mean they are vegetarians. There are humans born now with larger canine teeth, but this doesn’t mean they prefer a liquid diet. It is just nature, doing her thing and trying to buck the odds. Bad luck for the dinosaurs there, as even nature can’t predict a honking great meteor hitting the planet.

Diet is working!

Leave a reply

My pants don’t fit anymore, as in falling down. O-O. Still, this is a good thing. The diet is working really well for me and cutting out the starchy foods has made me feel a lot better. I am not hungry, or irritable and I am also not terrible active, yet the weight is falling by the day. Getting on the scales in the morning is now a joyful experience.

Yes, I am supplementing with vitamins. I take selenium, zinc and probiotic capsules. I am also drinking watered down grapefruit juice for vitamin C and eating fruit. I find I really like the coconut Silk as a milk substitute in my coffee, but it is becoming more difficult to get. Still, there is one store in the nearest city stocking it. Yay. Cheese is a protein, so fine in moderation and full of calcium. Oh, and I am allowed one square of dark chocholate a day if I feel the need. I am not a chocholate fan, so this doesn’t really bother me, but some might find this important. On a roll, here.

No calorie counting, or portion control. No special little frozen dinners, shakes or ‘health’ bars. It is a modified Atkins diet/thyroid diet, basically cutting out all processed food. I am also cooking with virgin olive oil, so I suppose there is a tad of the Mediterranean diet in there, too. I honestly expected to gain a few pounds this morning, after a supper of steamed asparagus and a baseball steak, especially after I cheated and put gravy on the steak, but no, I was down two pounds this morning. I admit I couldn’t eat it all. It was too much and I always stop when I start to feel full.

I have hated clothes shopping for a while and now I find I am beginning to look forward to getting something that doesn’t make me look like a zeppelin. Not that I was ever huge, but it is all about body image and I hated mine. My heaviest was 185lbs. Yuk, yuk, yukkity yuk, yuk.  I had gotten to the state where I was eating so little that my capacity was possibly less than a child’s needs. Obviously, something wasn’t right, as the weight was totally undeserved. Here speaks a person who doesn’t much care for chocolate and candy, cookies or desserts. Nor did I browse on unsuitable things like potato chips. I don’t and never have snacked. I think it is all about finding the right diet that is also healthy.

My goal is to look darn good by the time my new book, Shadow Over Avalon, goes live on Halloween. I hope to have dropped thirty pounds by then. This is looking doable.

Very happy camper!