Ankles and recipes

One of the first things that happened when I started cutting carbs from my diet was that my ankles reappeared. I have had slightly swollen ankles for as long as I can remember - worse on hot days, and terrible after long-haul flights. When I was pregnant my legs swelled so much that I was asked to monitor my urine every day for protein as my obstetrician was worried I was going to develop pre-eclampsia.  I never did get pre-eclampsia, but I did have a very impressive weight loss after both babies were born, due mainly to losing water.

I remember that my mother used to get swollen ankles too, so I assumed that it was just genetic, and that there was nothing I could do about it.  Even when I lost quite a lot of weight after my second child was born I still had very swollen ankles, especially on hot days.  And then I started the low-carb high fat diet.  My ankle reappeared within a week - I couldn't believe it.

Here's a picture of my legs from about 2 weeks before I cut out the carbs.  I barely have an ankle at all, and some horrid creases from how swollen they are.

And here are my legs today - you'll note I am also sporting a lovely pedicure. As you can see, I now have bona fide ankles again, despite today being a very hot day here in the UK.

My weight has been stable for 4 weeks now, which is frustrating, but also understandable.  I've been on holiday for the last 2 weeks and have drunk quite a lot more wine than normal.  I have also eaten the odd poppadom.  Those things combined have clearly pushed my carbohydrate levels over my personal limit.  I'm back at work next week, so I'm confident that I can get back to eating a much lower level of carbohydrates, along with drinking less alcohol. 

It will also be easier to stick to a strict low-carb high-fat diet seeing as my new cookbook arrived this week - The Real Meal Revolution by Tim Noakes, Jonno Proudfoot and Sally-Ann Creed.  It contains an essay from Tim Noakes explaining the science behind the eating plan, and some absolutely fabulous looking recipes.  So far we have already tried the cottage pie and the mackerel and avocado breakfast.  Both were excellent, and I have plans to try several more recipes over the next few weeks. 

Obese to Overweight

After 12 weeks of following a low carb high fat diet I have now lost 10% of my bodyweight.  I have also reduced my BMI from 32.4 to 29.2 - this means I have moved down from the Obese category to the Overweight category.

The numbers don't really matter though.  What matters is that this week I bought a new pair of jeans and two new tops, and I chose the ones that looked good in the mirror, not the only ones in the shop that fitted.  And I feel great in them. I have also received several comments from people this week who have noticed that I have lost weight.  Although I am very definitely doing this for myself, it was still rather lovely to realise that other people have noticed and it is always good to get a compliment or two.

Two of my work colleagues have been so impressed with my weight loss so fart that they have also adopted a low carb high fat diet.  They asked me for a book recommendation, so I've advised them to buy Gary Taube's book, Why We Get Fat, as that is the one I found the most useful.  So far my colleagues have lost more than 6 pounds each, in just 2 weeks, which is brilliant.  My next plan is to move the office over to full fat milk for our tea and coffee.

Hunger

On all the many diets I have tried in my life there was always one constant theme - hunger. No matter how many vegetables I ate, and how much I tried to bulk up meals with "zero-point" food, a couple of hours after eating I would be hungry again.

I was also always hungry when I woke up in the morning. This often meant that I was unable to even have a lie-in at the weekend, as I would be woken before 8am by my protesting stomach, insisting that I go downstairs and put some breakfast in it immediately.

Now that I have been eating low carb high fat for nearly 7 weeks I am delighted to say that my hunger has almost totally disappeared and it is a revelation.  A couple of weeks ago I had to go to the dentist so didn't have breakfast.  I then had a filling and was advised not to eat until the numbness had worn off.  As a result I ate nothing at all until 2pm - and nothing bad happened.  I was a little bit hungry by about midday, but not grumpy and was still able to concentrate at work perfectly well.

I was away at a conference this week and there was no suitable food at lunch time.  Instead of panicking and eating unsuitable food in case I got hungry later, I just didn't eat lunch.  I didn't manage to get to any food I could eat until 6pm, and incredibly, I genuinely wasn't hungry during that time.  I was aware by about 3pm that I would probably appreciate some food, but it didn't feel like hunger and it certainly wasn't uncomfortable.  I also didn't overeat at dinner.

With previous eating plans I just would not have been able to go from breakfast until 6pm without being uncomfortably hungry, and when food did come along I would have eaten much more than I needed.

Also, I have now lost 10 pounds and 12cm from around my waist - without any calorie counting at all.

Long may this continue!

The sun is up

Most mornings now I am woken up by a little person standing by the side of my bed saying "the sun is up mummy".

They are not referring to the actual sun (thankfully, as at this time of year in the UK that would make it 5.15am), but to their Gro-Clock. We bought it 5 years ago when our youngest arrived and her older brother was going through a phase of waking very, very early in the morning.  That, combined with a tiny baby waking often in the night to breastfeed made for an extremely tired household for a while.

In the midst of it all we bought the Gro-Clock to try and persuade our oldest to sleep through the night.   If you've never seen one, it is a back-lit clock with a night setting and a day setting.  You set the time you want the day setting to come on, which is when the 'Sun' comes up, and during the night there is a big star with little stars around the edge.  The stars count down until morning, so that when there is only 1 star left the kids now that it is nearly time to get up.  It's very clever, particularly in a country like the UK where the sun rises at 4.45am in June and 7.50am in December, so that you really do need to know what time it is to know when to get up in the morning.

I'll be honest, it didn't work straightaway, and we ended up paying a sleep consultant to help us (separately, best money I have ever spent) encourage him to sleep through the night.  We persevered with it though, as we liked the simplicity of it, and both kids really liked seeing the Sun come up, even though in the beginning they viewed it more as decoration than instruction.  It also comes with a cute bedtime story book which explains to the kids how it works.

In the last couple of years though, it has really come into its own.  Our oldest is now 7 and wakes up between 6 and 6.30am most days.  However he rarely comes to wake us up before 7am, and sometimes it is as late as 7.30.  He wakes up, sees how many stars are left on the 'Sun Clock' and then either tries to go back to sleep or quietly goes downstairs, feeds the cat and then plays with his toys or reads a book.  He then comes upstairs every so often to check the Clock, and once the Sun is up he comes in to wake us up.

Our youngest does the same - although clearly on the days they both wake up before the Sun is up they don't always manage to stay quiet enough for us to sleep in for a bit.  There was a particularly good weekend a while ago though when the 7yo came into our room at 7.50am and said: "The sun is up, I've fed the cat and given [the 5yo] her breakfast.  Could you come and do my breakfast now?"  The only reason he felt it necessary to wake us was because he didn't want cereal like his sister and thankfully didn't think he should open the baked bean tin himself.

Both kids can now tell the time, but that's hard to do in the dark, so for now we're sticking with the Gro-Clock.  It also got us through jet lag after a recent trip to Australia.  I didn't realise it until a couple of days later when the 7yo said: "I woke up loads of times last night Mummy, once there were still 6 stars left on the clock and once there were 3, but I went back to sleep until there was only 1 star and then I went downstairs'.  How impressive is that?




Note: I have not been sponsored to write this post, but if you click on one of the links and buy a Gro-clock (or something else) from Amazon then I will receive a tiny commission.  

Fairy Tales

A couple of weeks ago I read The Woodcutter by Kate Danley. It is now up there as one of my favourite books.  I really enjoyed reading Fairy Tales as a child, so to read a book that unites many of them with a truly adult theme was a joy for me.  I particularly liked the way fairy tales from many different sources were brought together - to name but a few, it was lovely to see Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk and Baba Yaga all appear in the same story.

The book also made me reflect on the fact that, for me, one of the very best things about having children is to be able to read books to them and see them discovering for the first time some of the stories that I knew and loved when I was their age. At the moment both kids are enjoying the Kingfisher book of Fairy Tales retold by Martin Waddell, and they are currently reading Tales from Russia retold by James Mayhew.

I'm so glad I read The Woodcutter, as it has reawakened my love for Fairy Tales, and inspired me to expand the kids' collections of traditional stories.

Low Carb High Fat

As part of my Book a Week challenge I have just read 2 books about food which set off a genuine lightbulb moment, and I have now been on a low carbohydrate high fat diet for 2 weeks.


Looking back I have been moving towards this way of eating since 2013, when I read David Gillespie's book Sweet Poison. After reading it I gave up all refined sugar and fructose (including dried fruits, honey, maple syrup and the like) and I did find that my appetite reduced somewhat and that  I stopped craving sweets, biscuits and chocolate after a few weeks without sugar.  Although I did lose weight without having to do any calorie counting for the first time in my life it wasn't much (7 lb or so) and I still  found it hard to curb my appetite for carbohydrates. I then decided to have a break from the no-sugar regime at Christmas 2014, as I thought I would have enough self-control to not overeat.  It turns out I didn't - I ate an enormous amount of chocolate and junk food, and put on 6 lb in 2 weeks.


Then in January 2015 I stopped eating sugar again, but in a desperate attempt to lose weight I also went back to Weightwatchers at the same time. This plan really did not work for me - in 3 months I managed to lose the enormous amount of 2 lb, and then put it back on again.  


I have been actively trying to lose weight on and off since the  age of 16,  normally on some variation of a low-fat diet.  Along the way I have followed Rosemary Conley, Weightwatchers, Susan Powter, the Scarsdale Diet and a particularly ineffective book called Eating Less.  However none of these have resulted in me losing weight in any time of sustainable fashion, although to be fair I had the most success on Weightwatchers - but never came close to reaching my goal weight.   


Thanks to my account on the Weightwatchers website I have my weights tracked (albeit sometimes sporadically) from 2007 onwards, and I can see now that the only times I have managed to get my weight below 12 stone (168 lb) was for a short period when I was breastfeeding (11 stone 1 lb, for about 3 weeks) and when I had a viral infection which caused thyrotoxicosis (11 stone 9 lb, for about 4 weeks).  


On the day I started following this current regime I weighed 13 stone 1.4 lb (183.4 lb). Not my highest weight ever, but nevertheless way too much for my height. At 5'3" I should weigh between 8 and 10 stone to have my BMI in the healthy range.  So I have at least 3 stone (42 lb) to lose.  


"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"

Einstein

If following recommended dietary guidelines had failed to work for me for more than 20 years, then surely now was as good a time as any to try something else.  I resolved to try going low carb high fat to see what would happen.  It meant cooking different food for my partner and kids, and coping with a house full of carbohydrates, but I was determined to try for 2 weeks and then evaluate it. 


The results have astonished me.  Over the past 2 weeks I have rarely been hungry, I have eaten what seems to be a lot of food, and I have lost 7 lb in weight and 9cm from my waist.  I know this rate of weight loss will most likely not continue, but I am truly hopeful for the first time in 20 years that I may finally have the answer to my weight problem.


I have enjoyed eating avocado, roast duck (with the skin on!), full fat cheese, bacon, nuts, full fat yoghurt and the odd berry. On the down side I have also really missed bread, rice and pasta, and it was very hard not to swipe some of the kids' pizza when I cooked it for them yesterday.  


On balance this way of eating has been a lot easier than any others I have tried, principally because I have not had all-consuming hunger to deal with, nor anxiety over whether I had enough points left to be able to eat a satisfying dinner. 


As for those 2 books - they were That Sugar Book by Damon Gameau and Why we get fat by Gary Taube. I strongly recommend that you read them both, along with Sweet Poison.

Coffee Machines and Clear Spaces

We have a new coffee machine.  It's been in pride of place on our kitchen surface for a week now, and already I feel that it is worth every penny.  My partner is happy because she loves real coffee, the 5yo and 7yo are happy because they love hot chocolate, and I'm happy because even though I only drink decaf I still love a decaf latte.

I was so excited by the first latte I made that I took a photo:

Flushed with that success I moved on to making the kids a proper hot chocolate each, complete with mini marshmallows:

The other thing that is great about the coffee machine is that in order to fit it on the breakfast bar I was compelled to clear the space. I have now managed to keep that space clear for a week, with just a few second needed to clear it each time. This is a real triumph in our kitchen, as for the last few years the breakfast bar has been a general dumping ground for children's toys, unopened post, assorted pens and pencils and general detritus. Here it is now - a breakfast bar that can actually be used as such, with room for all four of us to sit and eat together.

My plan is to keep this space clear for another week, and then create another space in another room, and continue decluttering in this slow but steady way until we are finally living in a tidy house.