Continuing thread for week 1 Low Carb Bootcamp

[BIWI]

I know we only have another day or so before the next thread, but the last one was almost full!

Place marking on the new thread.

Thanks Biwi ! In terms of drinking enough, please could you tell me if teas, etc. Count or whether it should be water ?

Tricky take away Saturday sorted without mishap. Easy roast day tomorrow and that's the week done!

Hi shiny new thread :)

I'm struggling a bit with eating so much meat. I'm enjoying salads, halloumi, olives etc but they just aren't filling/fatty enough.

To continue my ranting musing from the previous thread.....a few things I'd forgotten to mention (but others have now mentioned some of them)

• Takeaways were very rare treats

• For some people (older than me - I'm 56), eating outside in the street was the height of rudeness. Just Not. Done. By. Ladies.

• Sweets at home were a treat. We used to have a tin of M&S double Devon toffees and db and I would have one each after supper (and not every night) - and mum and dad, as often as not, wouldn't have one.

• That was why sweets in Christmas stockings and when you went out guising ("Trick or treating" for Southerners ) were such a treat and not eaten all at once.

• While we got an Easter Egg, it was small - and just the one.

• You sat down at a table to eat. Even at lunch time. You didn't stand at the fridge door and muse what to eat next. At work even in the 80s when I started with ICI, there was still a proper works canteen and you ate a proper meal at lunch, with your colleagues.

• Crisps were a treat. And if you did have a bag, it was a small one. Children didn't have them that often.

I agree that pasta only really came in in the 70s. My mum was unusual in that she was quite a cosmopolitan cook - maybe because we were originally South African and Mum and Dad had friends of many nationalities.

I remember when things like Vesta Frozen meals and Pot Noodles were launched. They were revolutionary. Personally never cared for them but there again, my mum was a great cook and even though she was a full time student (once db started school) and then worked full time, always cooked most meals from scratch. (Mince/steak pie with a puff pastry top and blackcurrant pie from M&S were the only exceptions I remember).

NB: my comments re "not grazing" do not apply to teenagers (especially boys ). They have hollow legs so my mum said and I see that too with ds

I'm starting to sound like a Grumpy Old Woman

Checking in.

I'll join you on the Grumpy Old Women bench, @prettybird!

oh yes I was idly wondering that the other day- I tend to count things like fruit tea but not caffeinated drinks as they are slightly dehydrating aren't they?

I agree with a lot of what you say PrettyBird. I am around your age. I remember when I had a packed lunch for primary school.. it was usually a slice of brown bread and butter, an apple and a piece of cheese. Pretty sure I didnt have crisps, cake or biscuit. I would have had a healthy breakfast and then home cooked dinner usually meat and veg. I guess I must have had an after school snack but I have no memory of that at all. We never are out and once I was a teen we had takeaway on saturday but that was only because the whole family worked that day. Even the takeaway wasn't the gargantuan things ordered nowadays, usually fish and chips or KFC. Oddly we seemed to eat suet puddings reasonably often yet none of us were fat.

Like Giraffeski I count fruit/herb teas (including rooibos) as well as plain water towards my water intake, but not hot drinks with caffeine like "ordinary" tea or coffee.

Ah those glorious days when one angel delight fed 6 of us.

We were too damn poor to afford takeaway or constant snacks.

I always hated and still hate Angel Delight Now that was an early example of processed food!

Tonight's dinner plans were derailed by unexpected guests, but as a result I have discovered my new favourite combo - celery stuffed with cream cheese wrapped in thin ham. This is within the rules, right??

Butterscotch angel delight. Urgh. Just the memory makes me heave.

I’m another member of the Grumpy old women club too. I’m probably one of the oldest here too. I remember being introduced at school to a “ new revolutionary way of eating” by a student domestic teacher, it was called “convenience meals” it consisted of boils in the bag cod in parsley sauce and crispy fried pancakes, dehydrated knows soups, etc. Little did we know how revolutionary it was .......

As a child, we had free orange juice from the health service and school milk. We lived under the shadow of tb and polio so had lots of milk puddings like tapioca and rice and sago. All our meals were based around meat or fish and veg and potatoes and hearty soups, the stock made from a chicken carcass or a marrow bone. Most people grew their own vegetable too. I ate a lot of sweets but only from money I got from running errands for people. My favourite snack when I came home from school was white bread and jam or butter and sugar. We didn’t have much fruit except apple and pears or rhubarb and an orange if we were lucky and whatever apples I managed to scrump. My mum worked full time and baked fruit pies and crumbles and scones at weekends and managed to run a house and 4 Kids and cook us hearty meals most nights. Fish and chips was a rare treat and we rarely went out for a meal.

My first encounter with pasta was when I was a student and I was too embarrassed to try even to eat it. I didn’t know what pizzas were and, nor curry except Vesta or Chinese food. As a student we ate one home cooked meal usually mince based once a week that we cooked together, and seemed to survive for the rest of the week on soups and bread and cheese and ham rolls (cobs to a midlander).
I know, I know - I can hear the violins playing

Twiggy was big then and we all wanted to look as skinny as her. This, I think was when my dysfunctional eating started as we’d either starve ourselves or break out and gorge on pastry and carbs. Also, I used to get really bad PMS and for 10-14 days a month I’d crave carbs.

Oops, domestic science teacher

I'd forgotten my mum being incensed when we had Findus crispy pancakes in domestic science. I started uni in 1975, and I do remember even then being one of only a few people who seemed to know how to cook - nothing fancy, but soup, mince, roasting a chicken etc were all things I could produce without angst. I had my first curry (Chinese, not Indian) at uni and also had my first pasta at my 'posh' boyfriend's house. I really wasn't sure about it at all! I'm def a fully paid of member of the grumpy old woman club.

I never really liked Angel Delight either - or Instant Whip. Anyone remember that? I think those things really were the beginning of processed food (including boil in the bag, Vesta and pot noodles).

And yes, I remember a bag of crisps as a Friday evening treat, when I was about 4 (this would be in maybe 1965/6). That would be a regular size bag of Golden Wonder shared amongst three sisters...

I think as well as our portion sizes, our expectations were a lot lower in those days!

I also think there is much more pressure from society to "indulge" these days. In the 60s, most people ate in their own homes, not out so much. Things like taking cakes into work was almost unknown. Nowadays it's normal to bring cakes into work/school etc, and if you don't join in you are seen as being boring or different or weird (unless you can claim a medical reason not to eat the stuff).

I was interested to read StuntNun's post on the previous thread about SOS (Socially Obligated Sugar). That really made me think. Why should we be socially obligated to eat sugar we neither want nor need? There's something wrong with society isn't there?

Sorry, just my musings after coming home from a concert my ds was playing in and realising that no, I'm not even thinking I want a snack, after last eating at around 6 pm.

Funny thing was I didn't really know how to cook that well when I went to Uni (in 78).

Mum hadn't had time to teach me to cook during the week but she did teach me how to bake, which we did together at weekends, and therefore how to follow a recipe.

I went off to Uni with a handwritten collection of family recipes - some copied out of favourite cook books - even though I was going in to fully catered halls. We used to cook at weekends: one of my recipes got passed around so much that by the time I left Uni I was being served it up by unconnected people

I was shocked to find people in the office where I worked - not that much younger than me - who, when Delia did her "How to Cook" series, said that they genuinely didn't know how to boil an egg One of the people I was talking to said she knew how to read the instructions on the back of a ready meal box and that was it!!!!

This all contributes to our (as in society's) dysfunctional relationship with food. It becomes something to gorge on at worst or just to survive on at best rather than appreciate.

Grumpy Old Woman now signing off to go to bed

prettybird, I didn't cook much at uni (catered halls), but did a couple of years after, when I did my nurse training. I had watched my mum cook a fair amount (basic stuff) and also had the original Delia Complete Cookery Course (which I still have and use). I didn't know a lot about cooking, but always wanted to cook real food, rather than convenience stuff. I'm just annoyed that I spent so many years cooking real food but low fat versions, when I could have been eating lovely eggs, butter, fatty meat, cheese, etc, etc...

Another similar era. I did like the butterscotch Angel Delight, which is weird as I don’t have much of a sweet tooth! I also love M&S chunky chicken which we had when camping and it was a real treat to have something not home made! (Poor Mum!)

Totally agree with what lots of others have said - three meals a day, but smaller ones, and no snacks. My mother was actually a good cook and we almost never ate out. I remember a meal out for my 11th birthday as clearly as some a couple of years ago - it made such an impression.

Yesterday was a tex MEX soup with mince and a little tomato purée, then meatballs and courgetti. Too much mince :(

When I stayed with my grandparents as a child my granny used to buy a Mars Bar as a special treat. As in one normal sized Mars Bar cut into three for the three of us. I'm sure it's no coincidence that she was slim all her life.

I was on a training course yesterday with lunch provided. It was sandwiches, crisps and cake! Fortunately I had stashed some olives and pork scratchings in my bag so I managed to swerve the carbage.

Question pls: I hope I’ll explain this properly. Does anyone else’s stomach feel ‘missing’ or just ‘not there’? I don’t have any tummy growling, but neither do I feel full. I kind of a strange feeling of tummy absence.

Wow I feel this @frigglet! It's not full and it's not craving. I hadn't really consciously noticed until you said that.

I was interested to read StuntNun's post on the previous thread about SOS (Socially Obligated Sugar)

I really want to read this and have trawled through the old thread but missed it. Can anyone help?

Morning everyone!

Look what popped up on my Twitter feed this morning