Don’t judge yourself for not being able to completely change the habits of a lifetime in one fell swoop. You’d have to be a very strange kind of person to completely change all your eating habits overnight. Some things will be easy, and others will take time, but if you can avoid fretting over it the changes will happen gradually.
It probably took a year before I reached a point where I could look at a packet of Mr Kipling’s French Fancies and read the list of ingredients to counteract their seductive qualities. These days I find reading the ingredients on lots of delicious looking desserts and cakes works as an instant turn off.
I dunno about you, but when I bake a cake and ice it I have never reached for any of the following ingredients : Glucose Syrup, Vegetable Oils (Palm, Shea), Vegetable Margarine (Vegetable Oils (Palm, Rapeseed), Humectant (Vegetable Glycerine), Dried Egg, Milk Proteins, Vegetable Fat (Palm), Whey Powder Raising Agents (Disodium Diphosphate), Emulsifiers (Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids, Soya Lecithin), Maize Starch (much less innocent than it sounds), Preservative (Potassium Sorbate), Colours (Carmine, Lutein).
I can’t tell which of those ingredients (or combination thereof) that are so addictive (though the glucose syrup, emulsifiers and maize starch are strong contenders), but once I start on the first French Fancy I still find it very hard not to eat the entire packet, it usually takes all my willpower to break the trance and manage stop after inhaling the first three. I’m feeling increasingly disgruntled about all the food processing companies that spend loads of money on advertising to make us believe their products are wholesome and delicious, while at the same time constantly tweaking their recipes to make the ingredients cheaper and more addictive, with no consideration for the effect they have on consumer health!
It’s the same as the tobacco companies and cigarettes. I was smoking 60 a day back in 1991. My lungs were crap, and then one day it finally dawned on me that tobacco companies (and their share holders) were tricking me into parting with money that I could have been spending on nice things. They were happily raking in the cash while at the same time jeering at suckers like myself, who were so easily influenced that we were destroying our health, allowing ourselves to be led down a path that would end with us dying in agony from cancer, or drowning in our own festering lung fluids from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, while at the same time insisting that it was all our own choice. The following day, after the penny finally dropped, I waited till after breakfast to fire up my first fag, the next week I put it off until my mid morning cuppa, then after lunch, until after a couple of months I wasn’t lighting that first-cig-of-the-day until 8pm. Then, one day when I only had 3 ciggies left I decided not to buy any more. So I put that packet in a drawer (for emergencies) and never smoked again. It wasn't will power that helped me, I'd stopped before and always gone back again after 6 months or a year. It was the anger when I realised that there were so many bastards whose fortunes were made from the tobacco industry, who didn't smoke and would never allow their own children to be foolish enough to start smoking, but were happy make loads of money from luring other people's children into taking up the habit. Haven’t lit up since November 3rd 1991. I threw those last three cigarettes away in 1992 and have never looked back except with gratitude and relief that I’d managed to shake off the pernicious tobacco addiction goblin. It took 30 years before I was confident enough in my non-smokeryness that I don’t worry about accepting a few tokes if anyone offers a joint. Purely for medicinal purposes of course (honest), although, given the choice, I’d make medicinal truffles or black bean and “herb” triple chocolate brownies rather than setting fire to a joint.
It’s became easier to resist the temptation of shop bought cakes and biscuits after I discovered 75g packets of Sunita honey halva: Ingredients Ground sesame seeds (52% ) honey (48% ). Decadently sweet and fatty, with no hidden nasties. Most modern halva has got glucose syrup in the ingredients, but Sunita still makes this traditional, organic, two ingredient recipe. You have to hunt for it and check the ingredients before ordering because they make the cheapo stuff too but if you put Sunita honey halva into Amazon you can order a stash of 12 packets for 24 quid, and they can be stored in room temperature for months. I think my last lot arrived with a 12 month use by date.
Don't know about you, but my natural inclination is open a packet - eat a packet. When I’d buy 250g bricks of halva from the Turkish store at the market they wouldn’t last a week, so having the temptation arrive already cut and sealed inside individual packs of 75g was a bonus.
Now that I am trying to eat fewer than 2000kcals/day I can rarely justify blowing 414kcals of those calories in the form of a single snack of 75g packet of halva, so I (mostly) cut the bar in half and save half in the fridge for another day. I have a suspicion that the suggested serving size on the packet is 25g, and I aspire to that future day when my self restraint has improved to the point that I can cut a packet into three pieces, without going back to the fridge ten minutes later to scoff the rest.
Adding the fermented foods wasn’t all that difficult, but the change that I have found the most satisfying and that continues to entertain me almost every day is the “see how many different plants you can eat in a week” challenge. I’m constantly playing around with that one, and each time I find a new plant to add to the repertoire it amuses me far too much.
I can’t walk to the shops, so have to make a single grocery delivery last for 7 days. Keeping fresh fruit and vegetables for the full 7 days till the next delivery can be tricky. On the days after delivery I have fresh berries and fruits, greens (usually watercress or samphire because I like those best), and salad vegetables, but later in the week the root veg and frozen, dried and tinned stuff dominates.
Since it was weigh in day today I didn’t have my standard seed, nut and berry porridge, and had celebratory eggs on toast instead. Two eggs, whipped with 125g ASDA quark, a couple of tablespoons of dried leek flakes, a teaspoon of freeze dried chives, onion granules and garlic granules, and 25g of crumbled vintage cheddar. I mixed chopped chestnut mushrooms with half a red pepper and the other 75g packet of La Vie vegan lardons which are not too bad compared to other fake bacon (ingredients: Rehydrated Soya Proteins 82%, Sunflower Oil, Salt, Natural Flavourings, Colourants: Anthocyane, Lycopene, Acidity Corrector: Potassium Acetates) and four lumps/100g of frozen chopped spinach. Then I stirred the egg goop into the fried stuff and put a lid on top of the pan while I made some toast. Turned the scrambled egg/omelette thing over to cook the other side and slid it on top of the toast, sprinkled a few drops of tabasco on top, a squirt of ketchup and leaned out the kitchen door to nip some leaves off the parsley plant on the windowsill outside, then forked a bit of Loving foods turmeric and black pepper kimchi onto the side of the plate. Served with a cup of coffee with a tablespoon of inulin and milk.
That made a total of 22 different plants for breakfast, a good start on my 70 plants a week target.
Wholemeal wheat in the bread, leek, chives, parsley, onion, garlic, pepper, mushroom, spinach, tabasco pepper, tomato in the eggs, Cabbage, Carrots, Ginger, Radish, Chilli, Cayenne Pepper, Onion, Turmeric and Black Pepper in the kimchi, coffee beans in the coffee and chicory root in the inulin.
I’ve had 4 more plants for lunch, a pear, 10g of Brazil nuts and 10g of Lindt 90% chocolate washed down with ordinary PG tips tea and milk.
For the last meal of the day I’m planning on having Goodlife falafels (Chickpea (69%), Onion (18%), Rapeseed Oil, Parsley (3%), Salt, Cumin Powder, Coriander Powder, Concentrated Lemon Juice (0.3%), Black Pepper, Chilli Powder) in home made lentil wraps (red lentils and ground flaxseed fried in olive oil), with a salad made from chopped up pickled cucumber, chopped walnuts and sauerkraut, and the last of the cherry tomatoes. With a glass of kefir and 15g of dried black mulberries for afters. Plus a mug of oolong tea. I can’t count the onion, parsey, black pepper and chilli that are in the falafels again this week, so the total of different plants in this meal comes to 12.
Which means that today I will have eaten 37 different plants. Unless I decide to squeeze in 25g of honey halva, in which case it goes up to 38, or maybe even 39 if I am allowed to count the pollen in honey…. Either way, I’ve already cleared the “30 different plant foods in a week” hurdle, which is why I changed the rules of the game and now try to hit at least 70. It gets increasingly difficult every day as the week goes on, since you aren’t allowed to count the same plant more than once in the same week.
Which is why now, whenever I see a new dried or frozen plant for sale that I can afford to buy I snaffle it with inordinate glee. The dried leeks, garlic and onion granules and other dried vegetables and fruit save lots of washing and chopping. It’s easy to mix powdered acerola cherry, schisandra berry, acaia berry, boabab powder and other freeze dried fruit powders into kefir, dried vegetables to sauces, curries and stews, and sprinkle dried seaweed flakes onto things.
I have to admit that some of the more exotic mushroom powders (not porcini powder, which is lovely), and all of the green powders (spirulina, chorella, and other pond scum tasting things) are still a bit too grown-up for my taste buds, they each got used once, though I haven’t composted them because I keep thinking it might be possible to hide the occasional spoonful in a hot curry.
After writing this down it has just dawned on me that the reason I have managed to keep doing this since February last year and still feel happy to continue with it indefinitely, is that unlike all the other dieting plans which seemed to consist of denying myself treats and having long lists of desirable but forbidden foods that must be avoided, I am now keeping myself amused by playing a game of seeing how many different weird and wonderful plants I can get through every week. Finding room for kombucha, kraut, kimchi and kefir, (as well as all the other fermented goodies which include things like black tea, chocolate, coffee, oozy cheeses and live miso) and has led to me constantly weighing up the benefit of falling for the lures of cunningly-crafted-to-be-tempting-and-addictive pseudo foods, against the havoc they’ll wreak on the cherished wee beasties that live in my guts and if looked after will happily spend their entire lives quietly helping my metabolism to work better.
Anyhow at the end of another four weeks I’ve lost another 3.2kg. Actually it was four weeks and four days this time, because my old scales had died when I tried to use them on Thursday, so I had to wait for the new ones to arrive yesterday and then wait for this morning to try them out. As always the myfitnesspro algorithm has been telling me when I click to complete the days entries, that I will weigh between a couple of kilos more, to a couple of tenths of a kilo less if I keep eating the same way for the next 5 weeks. It has been telling me the same thing every day for 567 days now, and so far it has never been right. If I’d listened to their recommendations I would have started out trying to survive on 1600kcals/day, which would have reset my metabolism to “famine mode” and made it impossible to keep going for more than a few weeks. As it is I’ve been trying not to eat more than 2000kcals, but failing 2 days out of three, yet somehow I’ve dropped another 3.2kgs without any effort.
I assume it’s my improved gut microbiome helping to rebalance my totally fecked metabolism. Not just the fermented foods, the wide array of plant foods, the inulin and aiming for 110g/protein and 70g fibre each day. Those things all combine together to help, but I have a strong suspicion that a lot of the healing happens during the fasting period, after the food has moved through the intestines and the repair crew bacteria wake up and get to work mending the bowel lining and producing all kinds of chemicals that mop up inflammation chemicals and improve mood and sleep.
I’m still a morbidly obese old curmudgeon who can’t stand up, lower myself to a seat, or walk a step without hissing through my teeth and swearing, but my blood pressure and glucose control are normal for the first time in decades, and I don’t feel any temptation to go back to eating at all hours of the day and night, or having orgies with bags of crisps, salted nuts, biscuits and the kind of “cakes” that last for months on the supermarket shelves.
I ordered the Withings Body+ Smart Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Bathroom Scale from Amazon for £60 because it said that the batteries lasted for over a year and 60% of their scales were still in use after 4 years. The one I had before ran through batteries in a couple of weeks, and then needed to be reconnected to the phone app via a complicated process that involved standing on the scales and bending down to press an invisible spot on the surface to start the pairing process. Except there’s no way I can bend down and touch the ground next to my feet, even for a second never mind hold my hand there while the device connects to my phone. So I had to lift the scales onto a table and lean enough body weight onto them that they were tricked into thinking a tiny person was standing on them. It was a massive pain in the arse, and after installing the third set of batteries I in 6 mWithings Body+ - Smart Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Bathroom Scaleonths I had to take the batteries out after each weigh in, and then go through the palaver of reconnecting the scales to the phone app before each use. So I wasn’t too sad when it finally died completely. Reading the reviews on Amazon I realised that a lot of the cheaper digital bathroom scales had the same problem with battery use, so I was willing to pay a bit more to get scales that might turn out to last a bit longer and be less infuriating. The Withings Body+ was on special offer last week, I paid 60 quid for it, which I consider a lot of money, but today when I went back to look for a link it has gone back up to £90. So if you are considering replacing your bathroom scales it might be worth keeping an eye on them, especially around Black Friday to see if the price goes back down again.
Does anyone ever manage to read these ramblings all the way to the end? Should I try to chop them into smaller segments? Or just stop clogging up the thread with them?