R2BC - Summer Choices

Culture is cool peeps. 

This week's Reasons 2B Cheerful are back with Becky as Michelle is away. You can find the linky at Lakes Single Mum.

1
Hans Christian Anderson
We went to see the musical last night. One of my 5th Grade girls is in it so we've been looking forward to it for a long time. Being Jerusalem, I knew four of the cast and another four of the crew. We only knew three other families in the audience this time - it must have been a slow night.

We danced home afterwards, singing The King is in the Altogther and Wonderful Wonderful Copenhagen. We picked up pizza from the new favourite pizza shop that just opened near us. DD went to bed at 11.30 and neither of us got up for Stupid Friday at school this morning. (Friday school finishes at 11.45. I should say here that I don't teach on Fridays.)

2
English Summer Camp
The summer holiday is long here in Israel - 9 weeks for 1st to 6th Grade and 10.5 weeks for High School. 1st to 3rd Grade get a free summer school for the first 3 weeks of  July so thus far we've only had to deal with 6 weeks at home.

There  are all sorts of camps and programmes for 1, 2, or 3 week periods. There are sports camps, art camps, cooking courses, sewing, science and computer camps, drama, music, and just plain all round fun. Some children are booked solid from July 1st till the end of August.

As we have August pretty much covered with visitors and short trips, I told DD she could choose one Summer Camp in July - I didn't mind how long it was. Some of the camps are very pricey and can cost hundreds, even thousands of shekels. But I only have one child so I was happy for her to pick whatever she wanted. She didn't pick anything. She wanted to do a self-defense course, which I am in favour of, but the courses for her age group are all in August overlapping with dates that we'll be away.

Then she came home from school and said that all her friends are going to the English Day Camp at school. I asked about it last year and I was told that it wasn't suitable for children who already know English. This year they changed their minds and decided that it is suitable for English speakers. It's 3 weeks, Sunday - Thursday, 8am till 1pm, total cost 600 shekels. Woohoo! Sorted. And as it's just down the road from  us at school, DD can go and come home by herself. She can even let herself in if I'm held up at my college where I'll be teaching a Summer Course.

3
Five Weeks Left
Only five weeks to go until the summer holidays start on July 1st. I'm counting the days. OK, I still have loads of work to do, reports to write, my summer course to prepare, and run it during July, ... But you know, always good to have something to look forward to. And I actually like the pressure of finishing everything off in a set amount of time. The Panic Monster and I are old friends.

4
Healthy Choices
With the undeniably summer weather that's upon us, DD and I agreed that instead of the weekly allowance of sweets and chocolate for her on Shabbat, we are buying a whole watermelon instead. To be eaten in place of snacks thoughout the week. The watermelon actually costs more than the sweets and chocolate but it also lasts longer so, "Yeah Us!"

Cooking Up A Storm

I went a bit mad as I had a free delivery on loyalty points. 

As I wrote yesterday, on Wednesday evening I did a supermarket order online and scheduled it to arrive between 09.00 and 12.00 on Friday morning. I woke up at 07.00 to find a list of items they were out of in my phone messages. Each item came with a suggested switch which I could accept or reject. I accepted all but one item and there were two others that they didn't have but had no suggestions for. No problem, I could live without these three items.

I sat smuggly in the warmth of indoors on Friday morning while a thunder and lightning storm raged outside. It was pure luck of course. I only do an online order about once every three months when my loyalty points give me a free delivery, but only for online orders. I take this opportunity to stock up on cleaning stuff (an 8kg bag of laundry powder for example, toilet cleaner, Fairy Palmolive?, etc...). toiletries, paper goods, and non-perishable food, along with my regular weekly shop.

Pickled cucumbers, latkes, vegetable noodle soup,
and a shepherd's pie (uncooked).

I did have to pop into the small and more expensive grocery around the corner on Thursday because there are always things I forget. Right after buying them I remember that you can add to your order online. But still, I'm not going to let the supermarket packer decide which colour hair rinse I'm going to use and the grocery always has a convenient loss-leader of three 500g bags of pasta for 10 shekels instead of the 4.90 each at the supermarket.

And I popped into the health food shop for some ground flaxseed and some nutritional yeast. I came out with rather more than that and this cost a small fortune.

There are pitfalls with online ordering, not least that I'm working in Hebrew which is not my first language, but I've learnt how to avoid most of them. For example, all the pictures are the same size. So you obviously order the packet or jar that costs 7.50 shekels instead of the one costing 11.90 only to find out when it arrives that the 7.50 was for 250g and the 11.90  was for 500g. I've learnt to read the quantities carefully and they also give you the price per 100g on most things which is very helpful.

Yummy pesto

I went a bit mad this week as I've been lazy recently and eating too many meals of crisps and sandwiches. Partly because of the cold weather, partly because I'm tired when I come in from work and in no mood to cook, and partly because DD has such a small range of acceptable food that it takes all the pleasure out of preparing something nice. However, new year, new leaf, and I was determined to have healthy things that I can pull out of the freezer in the morning and heat up for supper.

I thought I was being so careful. I scrutinized the quantities, I read the labels to make sure I was getting real food and not processed imitations, I took into account that extremely cheap/kg produce is often heavy so one or two can cost more than you bargained for. Although most of the order was fine, I did mess up on a number of things.

* I thought I ordered 2kg of potatoes but it turned out to be 2 sacks totaling about 10kg.
* I did order 2kg of cucumbers but who knew cucumbers are so light. And for some reason, I accidently ordered the organic cucumbers that are double the price. Let's hope organic cucs last longer as I've rather a lot to get through.
* Too many bananas. You've heard the expression - the shelf life of a banana? So have I but I forgot. I see frozen bananas for smoothies in my future.
* When I choose one cabbage and one cauliflower, I buy a small one of each. I now have two vegetables in my fridge the size of bowling balls.
* I ordered 1kg of cheese off the block. DD likes grated cheese on her salad and on her pasta. I thought of asking for it to be grated but then I thought I might like to slice some of it for a sandwich, so I left it as a block of cheese - or so I thought. They only sliced the whole lot! DD went mad. I've been trying to slice it into really thin strips for her salad. It works but it's not the same.
* I thought I ordered 2kg of avocado but I got 2 avocadoes. Small ones.

The shepherd's pie ready to eat with a cheese topping. 

The first thing I did when the order came at 11.55, was to make us both salads for lunch, heavy on the cucumber. I then pickled a big jar of cucumbers whilst boiling a big pot of potatoes for mashing. Once you have mashed potatoes the world is your oyster. I didn't even have a plan. In the end they became two shepherd's pies with a vegetable bottom instead of the shepherd, and a cheesy potato pie. One shepherd's pie was for lunch today with more salad and the other two items in the freezer.

Some more potatoes became latkes. Five out of ten made it into the freezer. A pot of vegetable noodle soup for the weekend and a very big pot of pureed vegetable soup for the freezer. Two jars of pesto - one in the freezer one in the fridge. At this point I removed the ice trays from the freezer to make more room.

Thick pureed vegetable soup for the freezer. 

One of the things I rejected was dark soy sauce instead of light soy sauce. As soon as I've picked some up we'll be having stir-fry. I fancy coriander dumplings for the soup, roast cauliflower, and mushroom stuffed cabbage leaves in tomato sauce. However I've done enough cooking for one weekend so this will have to wait.

Meanwhile I've set myself a challenge of not buying anything more until the end of February - except salad ingredients and grated cheese, and the light soy sauce, and DD's Shabbat treat. I've told DD there'll be no more crisps for a couple of weeks to encourage her to help me get through the bananas.

The Perfect Diet?

Today we had a vegan lunch. Tomorrow - who knows.

Back in July I wrote this post about the Ketogenic diet versus a Vegan Diet. At that time I came down decidedly on the side of the keto diet because I was convinced by the carbs turning to glucose argument. I was, and am still, in favour of intermittent  fasting. However, I can't get the vegan factors out of my head. And, to make it all more complicated, I like history, nostalgia and tradition so what are you supposed to do about baking with real butter, chicken soup with kneidlech, shepherd's pie, Cornish pasties, and all other meat and potato pies?

I've spent hours on You Tube watching documentaries and testimonies form every camp. They all claim to solve the world-wide obesity crisis, reverse type 2 diabetes, reverse even stage 4 cancers, eradicate heart disease, eradicate strokes, eradicate dementia, eradicate almost everything including old age! Grown men and women shouting at each other with passionate anger that they have found the secret to universal good health.

Confused? I totally am. This is what I've found out about all the different ways of eating. Maybe if I write it all down we can see some helpful patterns.

1. What Grandma used to make.
It sounds sensible because who could be more sensible about food than Grandma. She cooked the family through the war (if  you're old enough, otherwise think Great-Grandma) and the nation have never been so healthy as they were then.

But if you're going to do it you need to do it like Grandma (or Great-Grandma) did it. They ate a little of everything, there was no (or very little) processed food, they did not eat between meals, they ate much smaller portions than we are used to now, sugar was rationed.

You also have to take into account that the wheat, vegetables, and especially the meat, that we buy nowadays is not as nutritionally sound as it was back then. The wheat has been modified, the vegetables are sprayed, the soil is depleted, the animals are fed antibiotics (and maybe hormones) to keep them alive and growing. And don't let's start on the spiritual notion that their stress and suffering in some way taints the meat, dairy and eggs. Ok, let's include that because we're not dismissing anything here and I sort of do believe it.

2. The Ketogenic Diet.
No carbohydrates except those occurring in salad and crusiferous vegetables. No sugar, flour, root vegetables, fruit (except berries), alcohol, grains, or milk. On the other hand you can have cheese, cream, butter, meat, fish, eggs, avocados and berries. They advise moderate amounts of protein so it's not Atkins. The perfect keto meal is a moderate portion of protein with loads of vegetables.

The science they claim is that carbs are just glucose waiting to happen, and that glucose is what leads to too much insulin, fatty livers, and all the other diseases mentioned above. Once you eliminate the carbs, your body has to use your stored fat for energy and you go into a state of ketosis and lose weight.

I don't dispute any of this. I've seen amazing transformations from obese and nearly dead couch potatoes to healthy, fit, exercising people with abundant energy and sparkles in their eyes. They have indeed reversed many of the dreaded diseases of middle-age and it shows on their blood tests.

3. Whole Food, Plant Based, Vegan.
I'm skipping vegetarian here because vegetarian makes no sense. The dairy cows and the laying hens are kept in the same conditions as the meat animals. Milk and eggs have the same fat, hormones, and antibiotics. Dairy and meat cows eat the same amount of grain (that could be used to feed hungry people) and give of the same the amount of gas. So if you're vegetarian but not vegan you're kidding yourself.

Vegan on its own is also not enough if we're looking for a healthy diet. Crisps, jelly beans, and all sorts of processed sugary snacks are vegan, You could live off them and still be vegan. So I'm only talking about whole food plant based vegan here.

The WFPB camp are about animal suffering, the planet, and our health. I agree with them about the animals. It's not like it was in olden times when you knew the farmer and the animals frolicked in the fields until their eventual demise. Despite the pictures of happy cows and hens on the packaging, all our meat comes from animals living suffering in factory conditions.

I agree with them about the planet. I have to take their word for it on the gas emissions being the biggest cause of greenhouse gas and therefore global warming. I do understand, however, that the enormous amount of grain fed to animals gives way less food than the grain would have given had it by-passed the fat and protein machine (i.e. the animal).

It only gets complicated when we look at the health benefits. Every amazing transformation and healing miracle I've seen from keto people, I've seen the exact same incredible results from the WFPB vegans. They say you can get enough protein from plants, avocados are super-foods, beans are the key to eternal good health, and you can reverse or prevent all the diseases we fear whilst simultaneously saving the planet and stopping animal suffering.

I also kinda have to agree that it doesn't make sense to be afraid of a potato (although you should be afraid of the vegetable oil in crisps and chips) or a piece of fruit. So again you have to be selective - a healthy WFPB vegan diet does not include sugar, vegetable oils, or any processed foods (including highly refined grains). You also need to eat the whole fruit and not just the juice as this leads to drinking the sugar from 10 oranges instead of the whole fruit and fibre of one orange.

The vegan doctors say they see clogged arteries full of animal fat and it's nothing to do with glucose. They advise high carb, low fat. I'm not a doctor.

4. One Ingredient Shopping.
You can have what you like as long as you buy only foods that consist of one ingredient. Meat, dairy, fruit, vegetables, grains and nuts. I like this concept and you would necessarily eat less if you had to make everything from scratch. I just included this because it's a simple solution although it doesn't solve the carbs versus animals dilemma.

5. Intermittent Fasting.
This works with any diet and you can do it without any big dietary changes. The theory is that you leave time for your body to use up all the energy from the previous meal and get a chance to use some of your body fat for energy. It seems to be another way to get into ketosis.

People say that once they are using stored fat they have abundant energy whilst losing weight. Dr Jason Fung explains that your body tries to slow metabolism when it feels it's running out of food but once you go into ketosis there is a load of fat to burn so you don't slow down at all. He advises to eat low carb, high fat, and drink lots of water. (Actually everyone advises lots of water.)

Intermittent fasting can be as little as no eating between meals, skipping one meal a day, only eating one meal a day, fasting for 16 hours and eating only in an 8 hour window each day (or 18:6, or 20:4). It can be fasting for 2 days a week, or 3, or an extended water fast of several days. Or you could do an extended fast a number of times a year (after Xmas and after your summer holiday?). The beauty of it is that anyone can do it: you travel - don't eat, you have erratic schedules - don't eat, you have food allergies - don't eat, you can't afford a special diet - don't eat, you eat kosher/hallal - don't eat, you're vegan - don't eat, you're in keto - don't eat. Cute eh? I didn't make up that speech, Jason Fung says it. (Obviously some specific medical conditions mean that some people are not advised to fast.)

And, yes, all the amazing, incredible results seen on both keto diet and the WFPB vegan diet are also documented and available all over You Tube for intermittent fasting. Same. Same diseases cured, same conditions reversed, same healthy new lives for people who were almost dead. Go figure.

My Conclusions.
*If you want to save the planet and be kind to animals you need to be vegan.
*If you want good health and to save the planet and be kind to animals, you need to be WFPB vegan.
*If you want to lose weight quickly you could go Keto but some doctors swear that they see all that animal fat in the arteries. So you might be way more healthy and active than if you were obese and this might be why you have good blood work and fewer chronic conditions.
*If you work from home or part time, and have a garden, you could try buying (and growing) only one-ingredient food, cooking like Grandma, and eating like they did in the 1940s. I have no doubt that this would be healthy. It would also take up your whole life.
*Intermittent fasting works for most people on whatever level they want to do it. Many people find it easier not to eat at all than to restrict portions and types of food.
* Whatever works for you is better than eating junk, fast, processed, and sugary foods.

**** EVERYBODY AGREES that you should eat loads of vegetables and drink lots of water.
****EVERYBODY AGREES that you should avoid processed foods, sugar, vegetable oils and trans-fats.

Slimming Sunday - IF Only

DD's salmon with rice, mine on sauteed beet leaves.
I admit I mixed the leftover rice with my greens after DD had finished.
(btw, DD had more salmon but she copes best with it in small portions)

Last Slimming Sunday was five weeks ago because we're posting only on the first Sunday of each month. It was my first time joining this linky and it helped to know that I was going to report back in a month. A month ago I wrote about Vegan Vs Keto. Read it if you haven't already - there are strong supporters of both types of diet. Proof of this was the first comment, a lengthy explanation of why I was wrong to favour the keto method.

In fact, athough I favoured keto over vegan, I didn't stick to it religiously. I ate my salads topped with either hard boiled eggs, tuna, sardines mackerel, salmon, herring, or cheese. I made dressings with vinaigrette, low-carb mayo, evoo and lemon juice, or tehina. Each salad was definitely a meal in itself and very filling. We didn't have bread at home as DD doesn't like bread anyway so that was one temptation less for me. However, I did eat a felafel in pitta with chips one day, I finished DD's pasta, rice or wheat based vegetarian sausages on other days, I occasionally had a Danish pastry with my coffee, and yesterday I had dessert after lunch. It was apple pudding and cream, how could I not?

On the other hand. I was religious about the Intermittent Fasting (IF). After a black coffee in the morning, I drink water, lemon water, or hot lemon-cider vinegar water only until well into the afternoon. I have been IFing for at least 16 hours a day and many times longer. I aim for one meal a day but often have to eat something little a couple of hours before just to see me through. The hunger only starts after about 16 hours of no eating. And I can ride it through if I'm busy in which case it goes away after an hour or so.

I lost 10 lbs (4.5 kg). So that's 10 lbs in the first 'month' (always the easiest in which to to lose), playing at keto (meaning I reduced carbs drastically but probably didn't reach a state of ketosis), and absolutely doing IF. It seems that IF on its own is enough to lose weight in the first month. This coming month, until the linky again in four weeks time, I'm going to be stricter about not eating carbs.

I did notice that on a day when I ate even a bowl of plain rice, the scales jumped up significantly the next morning. This corroborates reports that the weight goes back on quickly after a ketogenic diet. I accept that but I also believe that the way to go is low-carb for life.

The Slimming Sunday linky is with Michelle on Mummy from the Heart and co-hosted by Emma on Life According to Mrs Shilts. You can pop over to either of these blogs for other slimming posts for inspiration and encouragement.

Slimming Sunday - Vegans Vs Ketos

Vegetable Shakuka with eggs and cheese

My blogging friend Michelle from Mummy from the Heart, has been running a Linky called Slimming Sunday for about four months. I thought - great! I'll join that as soon as I have something significant to share. Sadly I'm still waiting. And I promised my real life friend Janet that I would stop writing about weight loss and just do it. Sorry Janet.

Added to that, this is not the post I should be writing today. The last few weeks of school were hectic with all the wrapping up activities, parties, reports, etc... I have about 10 posts backed up in my head and if I don't write about them soon they will become too historical for interest.

However and despite all of the above, here I am. Also because every so often I get asked on facebook how it's going. It wasn't going until yesterday. I was still at the stage of doing loads of research and not having the time to clear my mind and get it into the right place for this project. Every time I did make a good start, a party or a festival or a holiday or an invitation to dinner would open the flood gates and wash me back to the beginning. It was very frustrating.

About the research. There seem to be two camps with opposing views. On the one hand there are the vegans who advocate high carb (all whole grain and organic of course) and low fat but absolutely no animal products. I sympathize with this camp as I think veganism is the ethically correct way to go and it's certainly cheaper and more convenient to stock up on pasta, rice, couscous, oats, beans, etc... But the science doesn't add up. Carbs are just pre-glucose with little nutritional value. They keep you burning the glucose instead of burning your own body fat. They feed cancer cells, provoke insulin production until you have insulin overload and end up with a fatty liver, heart disease, and possibly Alzheimers. Go directly to type 2 diabetes, do not pass Go, do not collect a healthy old age (or even a healthy middle age).

On the other hand, you can find many testimonials that swear they have reached health Nirvana through high carb, low fat, veganism. I think some of them are too far in to back out gracefully having based their whole reputation on this theory. You'll have to do the reading/listening yourself and make up your own mind but it doesn't make sense to me. There is also some dodgy research behind it. For example Ancel Keys who showed that a high fat diet in 7 countries lead to heart disease. He conveniently left out the other 15 countries which he studied and that did not show this correlation. As a result a whole generation (us) have been brought up to fear fat and strive for a low fat diet while obesity has become epidemic. Something must be wrong.

The other camp is a combination of a ketogenic diet (to whatever degree you choose to follow it) and intermittent fasting. Just for the record, the keto diet is very low carb, moderate protein (so it's not Atkins) and loads of vegetables. To be fair, the vegans also advise loads of vegetables so that's the one thing we can all agree on.

Intermittent fasting is as little as no eating between meals to water fasts lasting several days. The most popular choices seem to be the 16 hours fasting/8 hours eating window per day or the 5 days eating:2 days very reduced calories. When I first brought this up a facebook friend commented - I bet your doctor didn't recommend fasting. I'd not spoken to my doctor about it specifically but when I did she actually said I should try to extend the fasting to 17 or even 19 hours a day.

Keto eating is not hard. Who doesn't like meat, fish, eggs, cheese, vegetables, and salad? The hard thing for me is giving up potatoes in any way, shape or form; and giving up the convenience of a sandwich as a meal on the go. And we choose not to have meat at home so that makes it even more difficult.

But I've never been a breakfast eater and I've always known that for me it's best not to eat at all than to try to eat moderately. So yesterday on July 1st, with 2 months of summer holidays ahead of us (although I am teaching a summer course but this is way less pressure than a full schedule), no festivals until mid-September, feeling relaxed and motivated, I ate between 2.30 pm (vegetable shakshuka with three eggs and covered in grated cheese and a small salad) and 5.30 pm (having finished a large salad bowl with tahina dressing).

The Slimming Sunday Linky is once a month so I'll report back about my progress on the first Sunday in August.

Three Weeks Of No Sugar

11 items containing sugar that I found in my kitchen two weeks ago

I was going to wait until the month was up before posting any results but so many people have been asking and after three weeks I have a nice tidy result. So here's the update.

First the original blog post titled Poisoned by Sugar in which I recommended three videos about the effects of sugar in our lives and on our bodies. It was the single most successful blog post I've ever published with over 1,000 views in one day. This proves the point, as if we didn't already know, that people know that something is not right with the western diet, they are searching for answers, some of them are desperate, and the information we are getting is often heavily biased according to who's paying the big money.

I chose three videos that I liked and trusted. The first is a woman whose family gave up sugar for a year. It's an honest unpretentious account of what happened. The second is a Doctor and activist who is fighting at the highest levels of Government to get sugar recognised as a drug on a par with tobacco and alcohol. And the third is actually a series of six videos where Dr Jason Fung explains how too much sugar can lead to type 2 diabetes, a collective name for insulin resistance, fatty liver disease, heart disease, kidney failure, and probably eventually dementia.

If you are already pre-diabetic and have a fatty liver, which I probably do, Dr Fung assures us that you can reverse some of these conditions by giving up sugar, cutting down on carbs and intermittent fasting. I have been doing all this and will tell you more about it in a moment. First a few words about the reactions to the blog post.

Some people said, "That looks interesting, I'll take a look over the next week or so."

However, many people were positively incensed that I should recommend watching videos about a healthy diet. Interestingly, all these nay-sayers are intelligent educated people in real life but in this instance, without even watching one of the videos felt very strongly that they were all a load of rubbish, they would no more watch these videos than join the Flat Earth Society, and that it was very dangerous of me to suggest that anyone else watch them. Presumably because no one is intelligent enough to watch and make up their own minds. It was all a bit like trying to argue with a cult who shut out the modern world lest people be tempted by something that makes more sense than the lives they have lived for the past 50 years.

Others saw the word 'fast' in the phrase 'intermittent fasting' and, because they didn't watch the Fung videos, didn't understand that I wasn't promoting some sort of anorexia approach.

And finally, there were those who cannot condone any dietary choices, even giving up sugar and alcohol, without first discussing it with my doctor. They didn't like the fact that I had read all the symptoms of a fatty liver and, because I have every single one of them (from blood test results, how I felt, and visible signs), concluded that I probably do have fatty liver disease. And, because they also had not watched the videos, didn't understand that the best thing to do about is to make the dietary changes, lose weight asap, lower your blood pressure and cholesterol, and then check out the situation again with more blood tests. Because, unless you already have liver cirrhosis or cardiac arrest, every doctor is going to advise just that.

Here is what I did and what happened....

Down to 9 items this week. The ice-cream, Nutella, and cake is for DD
I expect we will throw out the jelly as DD has gone off it - too sweet
DD also gets chocolate for Shabbat but there's none left by Sunday
Astoundingly the gluten-free flour (for my nephew) is cornflour and sugar

No Sugar
I cut out almost all sugar. I did not eat cakes, sweets, biscuits, chocolate, most processed foods including yogurt, fruit juices (even 100% juice), ketchup, soft drinks, alcohol, honey, jam, or maple syrup. I looked at the ingredients of anything that came packaged in any way and rejected those items with sugar in any of its forms.

Exceptions: I chose the mayonnaise with the least sugar but when this jar is finished I am going to try making my own. I also kept the soup powder I use to add flavour to soups as the one teaspoon per litre of liquid is acceptable to me. (That is 1 tsp of soup powder, not 1 tsp of sugar.) I also kept the soy sauce as, even though the main ingredient is molasses, the tiny amount I use is negligible. Finally, I am also using up my mustard and next time will either buy the option in the supermarket with the least sugar or buy mustard powder to make my own.

This is what I eat: vegetables, fruit, cheese, eggs, fish, bread, rice and other grains, pasta, humus, olive oil, non-dairy milks (because I don't like milk), nuts and dried fruit, tea and coffee. (I also choose not to eat meat.) I have to confess that I've also been eating crisps occasionally which is not a good choice but it's my treat instead of anything sweet.

I have been drinking lots of lemon water with apple cider vinegar. I don't know if the apple cider vinegar has the magical qualities that are claimed for it but I've grown to like it and it must be better than too much tea and coffee, which I now drink only occasionally. Mostly I just drink water.

Intermittent fasting
Intermittent fasting can be anything from not eating in between meals, to following the 5:2 regime (where the 2 fasting days allow you to eat between 500 - 800 calories), to the one meal a day diet (OMAD), to not eating anything for 2, 3, 5, 7, 14, 21, 28, 30 or 40 days straight (drinking plenty of course).

Without even consulting my doctor, I decided not to eat in between meals. ;~p And I've never been a breakfast eater even as a child so I am in fact eating only two meals a day, lunch and supper. I'd like to say that my meals are low carb but many of them are not. I wanted to give up bread but sometimes a sandwich or toast is the easiest option. On the other hand, with two small meals a day, the carbs are automatically reduced by default.

Results
So mainly by cutting out sugar, intermittent fasting, drinking plenty of water, and eating lots of vegetables, I have lost 10 lbs (about 4.5kg) in three weeks.

The fasting has been easy for me as my food addiction is similar to that of an alcoholic. It is impossible for me to eat something small to keep me going until the next meal without opening the floodgates and ending up bingeing on anything and everything. This happened a couple of times and my binges were all about bread and potatoes - no sugary foods.

In general I ended up not eating from about 7pm until 2pm the next day (19 hours). In reality this means not eating in the evening, which is the hardest part for me. In the morning I'm rushing off to work and busy without a break until lunchtime so I don't even think about food until then. I do sometimes have a tea of coffee in the morning with milk.

I feel less stiff, the pain I was getting in my knees when I climbed the stairs is gone (I live in a third floor walk-up), and I am less breathless when I reach my front door.

I intend to continue until the weight has gone and then check out the fatty liver situation to see if a more modified diet is needed to reverse it more.

If anyone has any questions please watch the videos before asking as all the answers I have are answered in them.

Poisoned By Sugar

The 11 items in my kitchen that contain sugar. More about this on a later post.

I've been saying that sugar is poison for years. I knew it to be true but I couldn't explain why except that sugar is known to be empty calories. I'd read Pure, White and Deadly and also Fast Food Nation but I didn't retain enough facts to be able to make the argument. And despite knowing that it was true, it's ever so hard to give up on sugar completely.

Then I had some routine blood tests done and some of the results were shocking. I've always been healthy if, at times, overweight. This was a big wake-up call especially as the 'at times overweight' has slipped into obesity over the past couple of years.

As you know from reading this blog, I've tried everything in a quest to eat a healthy diet. For me it was never just about losing weight (except when I was desperate), it was was always about finding the healthiest diet to ward of disease, to keep from becoming an old woman before my time, to be able to get the most out of life, etc... Of course this also includes not being fat.

My 'wake-up' call was actually frightening, all the more so because my father died this year from multiple complications of type two diabetes, which isn't a disease in itself but rather a collection of symptoms including insulin resistance and any number of the following: non-alcoholic fatty liver, fatigue, obesity, pressure on the heart and kidneys, circulation problems leading to leg ulcers and amputation, skin problems, loss of eyesight, and possibly alzheimer's disease.

I started googling about healthy diets for prediabetics. Folks, it's all about the sugar - even the sugar in carbohydrates such as bread and pasta. Ok, we knew this already. But did you know the extent of the sugar in your food? And do you know what it's doing to you?

I love this entertaining talk about Our Year of No Sugar by Eve Schaub. I'm giving you the link rather than embedding the video because it's more reliable in the long term. Please watch it, it will make you think about how you feed your family.

I was then all fired up against the food industry and thought that surely, after all these years of being told about it, someone must be fighting it. I found Dr Robert Lustig on You Tube who is waging a similar war to the anti-tobacco wars. The two are remarkably similar in many ways. Please watch Dr Lustig here, it's shocking.

And finally I found Dr Jason Fung, an expert in obesity and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and type two diabetes. I wanted a real doctor, not a health guru with something to sell. And I wanted information that applies to everyone, not a specific diet. I love it that he tells you how you can reverse type two and that the drugs are not the answer.  This is also for anyone who doesn't want to be fat or unhealthy in the first place. (Warning: this is the first in a series of six videos.)

If you care enough about this issue and you take the time to watch all eight hours of video that I've given you, you will be well informed. What you do after that is up to you.

Vegan And Juicing, Information And Misinformation

Since starting this clean eating I've read a lot and learned a lot. I've also got a lot of questions and reactions from people who at the least know what I know but seem to assume that I've not read all the same popular articles as they have about the subject. Why is that? (Real scientists not included in this observation.) So here is what I've learned.

1. The most annoying question is: are you going vegan for health or ethical reasons? You have to know why you are doing it. However it's not just a case of picking one of the five stock answers: health, weight loss, ethical (grain going to cows instead of starving people in Africa), environmental (CO2 emissions from cows and water resources used), animal welfare. It's never either/or, it's a mixture of all of them and some more important than others according to your individual circumstances. I gave my reasons here.

2. Since then I've switched to juices rather than smoothies because it felt like I was liquidizing my salads for no good reason, juices are far more refreshing and they do also contain fibre (especially with my cheap juicer) just less. Also a 'fast' in this context doesn't mean nothing else, it means substituting some meals for juices.

3. Labels will do you in. In popular agreement vegan seems to mean a holistic approach to not using animal products for anything - no honey, no leather, no wool. Whereas a plant based diet is only eating plants without any judgements on wearing leather or wool. The purists are not interested in pesco vegan or flexi vegan. Apparently this gives them a bad name and makes it harder for them to argue their case. So unless you are 100% committed, don't even go there. Make up your own name. Personally I have no problem with honey or wool and I'm leaning towards eating fresh unprocessed fish rather than relying on foods fortified with artificial vitamin B12 or taking a supplement.

4. Environmental vegans have a problem most of them don't even know about. Crops grown on the scale we need to feed the world population need fertilising. The fertiliser used is either from animal waste or made from fossil fuels. Either way you're screwed. Otoh, show me a regular vegan (not an off-grid-living extreme vegan) who won't go on holiday by plane or even use the petrol it takes to run a car. So we're all making compromises just by living in the 21st Century. Get over it.

5. Plant based diets are all about health. There is very little scientific evidence (if any) that a 100% plant based diet is the key to good health. I firmly believe that a mainly plant based diet and cutting way down on (or even cutting out) processed sugar, dairy, added salt and chemically enhanced processed foods will vastly increase your chances of being healthy. I don't think a moderate amount of unprocessed meat, fish or eggs will harm you. I would also keep wheat down so not too much bread or pasta but ok to enjoy moderately. I'm basing this personal conclusion on a revisit to Forks Over Knives after being alerted to various ploys of mis-information used in the film. You can read a full critique here  but keep an open mind as this writer gets a little over enthusiastic in debunking everything that moves in the movie, some of which is legit.

6. Mis-information in Forks Over Knives. The original documentary is no longer available on You Tube but you can find the extended interviews which is all the 'science' without the cartoons. Here is the bottom line as I see it.

a. A western diet is not only a meat eating diet. The western diet is rightly (imo) blamed for bad health and specifically for conditions such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, allergies, some auto-immune diseases, obesity, joint problems, some cancers, and much more. This is probably true and there is scientific research to back this up. However, they keep confusing meat eating with a western diet. Research that shows how a western diet that is detrimental to good health includes too much wheat (bread, pasta, and pastry), too much sugar, too much salt, and too much vegetable fat - all vegan and plant based. By interchanging the two terms they deliberately confuse and the conclusions make no sense.

b. The China Study. This study looked at the health of the population of China according to province. They found that the rural areas where a traditional rice based diet was eaten, resulted in the healthiest population. Where people had switched to eating a more western diet (although the doctors are being interviewed specifically about animal protein) they started to suffer from all the chronic illnesses and cancers that are prevalent in the west. What they left out was that the people in rural areas also eat some dairy, meat, and eggs in moderate amounts. Doesn't every farmer have a goat and some hens? They probably also eat less as they don't have access to fast food.They also forgot to mention that the western diet includes all the unhealthy stuff mentioned above. And that the industrial areas where the western diet has become more popular is also more polluted and the jobs tend to be more sedentary.

c. The doctor who saw the second and third generations of Filipinos in Hawai slide into ill health and obesity as their traditional Philippines diet was abandoned for a western diet didn't mention that they also ate a lot of fish in The Philippines and some meat. That the new western diet saw a switch from other grains to an enormous amount of bread, and an enormous jump in the amount sugar and salt being eaten. And the access to fast food as opposed to home cooked meals only which means they're eating far more. All crucial to the equation I would think.

d. The Norway Effect. There is a sensational graph showing how when the Nazis invaded Norway in 1939 they confiscated all animal livestock for themselves. Hardly any meat or dairy was available to the Norwegians from this time until the end of the war. The graph shows a drastic drop in death by heart attacks and stroke, and a dramatic rise once the war was over. The graph looks very dramatic but if you look at the actual numbers they have a scale of 20 - 30 on the y-axis and the actual number of deaths from these diseases fell by 6 or 7 deaths per 10,000 people. The article I linked to above made a big thing of only 6 people not dying from the change in diet which was annoying because there were 3,000,000 people in Norway at the time so the actual number was around 2,000 after five or six years of reduced meat and dairy diets. 2,000 people a year is not insignificant and worth further research. My point is - have you seen the amount of coastline in Norway? It is inconceivable that they did not continue to fish and eat animal protein from the sea. And again, the lack of food during those years means people just ate less of everything which has also been linked to better health.

So there you have it. This is what I've learned. I am very happy to discuss all the above in comments here or on fb but I bet (as is always the case) most of my answers will be - please read the blog post this point is covered. Serious discussion, observation, opinion, experience, and even correction, is welcome.

Earth Mother Bakes Bread

These have sliced olives in the dough.

I've suddenly got into making bread. It takes about 5 minutes or less to make the dough and another 5 minutes to shape it before 30 minutes in a hot oven. You do need to allow for waiting time (about 3 hours for the first rising and another 20 minutes after its shaped). So if you have 10 minutes to spare over a 4 hour period it's so worth it.


DD only wants my homemade rolls now. She likes them with olives inside.

There are advantages to making your own bread:

1. It's cheaper. It costs less than 2GBP to buy the flour and instant dried yeast which yield about 24 rolls or three large loaves. I didn't factor in the teaspoon of salt per loaf and any other spices you want to add. I usually add some za'atar to the dough because we like our food savoury. And I didn't work out the cost of having the oven on for 50 minutes or the water used. Nor the cost of the washing up liquid. However, artisan bread in this country is about 3GBP per loaf so I still think it's cheaper.

2. You know exactly what's in your bread. No sugar or preservatives, food colouring or molasses for brown bread, or any other chemicals. Seriously take a look at the ingredients of a shop bought loaf - it's a list of about 15 items.

3. If you make rolls you eat less. Going back for another slice of bread and another seems less greedy than eating a third or fourth roll. Especially as there are only eight in a batch and I need to keep some for DD's lunchbox each day. I'm into making bread but I'm not going to do it every day!

4. It tastes better than shop bought unless you are buying designer bread from a small bakery.

5. You can also use this recipe for pizza bases.

Two rolls became one pizza blanca.

Recipe:

Mix 3 cups of flour, 1tspn of instant dried yeast, 1 tspn of salt and any other herbs or spices, in a mixing bowl.
Add 2 cups of warm water and mix with the handle of a spoon or fork until you have a cohesive dough.
Cover with plastic wrap and leave in a warm(ish) place for about 3 hours.
Divide into rolls or turn the whole batch onto a baking sheet for one loaf. You can use baking paper under the dough or lightly brush the tray with olive oil.
Wait 20 minutes for the dough to rise again while the oven heats up to about 180-200 degrees.
Bake for 30 minutes.
Wait at least five minutes before eating.

These came out the oven tonight. They have 1cup wholewheat flour/2cups white.