Magic porridge pot, only couscous. Awful.

 It's all been a bit tedious so far.  I was unwise to enter into what they call a challenge - so discouraging.  The idea was to start with a breakfast high in carbohydrate and see what that does to your blood glucose, the next morning to have a high fat breakfast, then to have both the next day, then to eat carbohydrate and walk briskly for half an hour, then on the final day to have the fat first, wait for half an hour and then have the carbs.  

I may never eat blinking couscous again.  I've gone right off avocado too.  

Seriously, this is a stupid way to introduce people into a programme that may lead to a new way of eating. If they ask for feedback (haha) then I'll tell them.  They then wanted you to do more sodding challenges - thing is, you need an empty stomach before you start so you're supposed to do it in the morning, but some of the meals are absolutely not breakfast food.  Spag bol?  Really?

I decided, belatedly, that it was counter-productive - this was evaluated on the evidence, it wasn't whimsical - and to eat what I wanted to eat and use the last few days of my glucose tracker for that.  I'm still waiting for my personal analysis, but that will arrive soon.

I'm feeling pretty disenchanted with the whole thing at present, frankly.  I'm very much against faddy eating and this seems to feed (haha) into that.  I'm on a couple of facebook groups and some people get really competitive about it, even if they''re only in competition with themselves.  I think there's good stuff in here, but fad diets aren't sustainable and I have yet to be convinced that - totally against the intentions of the people who devised the programme - it doesn't encourage unhealthily obsessive diet patterns.  

It could just be that I'm argumentative and awkward.  But if you go for this programme and are (I suggest not) determined to do the five day programme, please - on my knees, please - don't do the sodding couscous.  It will break you.

Day 1

 People have said the muffins are the worst part and they are right.  You have three for breakfast and two for lunch and you have to eat them within 15 minutes.  I was slightly over for breakfast and that was with the help of a pint of water and a mug of tea.  They're sweet and fine-textured and just not pleasant.  The first bite or two isn't bad, but the unpleasantness builds up.  It's too much food and yet unsatisfying.  

Having said that, it's over and I don't have to do it again.  I've done the blood sample and I'm regularly testing my blood glucose level - there's an implant I've attached to my arm.  There's also a poo test, which they call poop.  I'd be quite happy with a more biologically accurate word, but no matter. Thing is, my regular habit has vanished now that I'm supposed to collect a sample.  I'm sure I'll get it tomorrow.

I'm supposed to scan the implant at least every 8 hours, but actually more often in practice as that is how you know how you react to food and drink.  Over the next fortnight, I should play with it - eat different foods in different combinations, to see how my blood glucose reacts.  

This evening, I had a fairly uninteresting meal of leftover sprats plus a little hot-smoked salmon, about 110g in total, plus 55g of leftover brown rice and 75g cooked spinach.  And two small (110ml each) glasses of wine.  That isn't a lot, now I see it written down, so I may add some fruit.  I don't do intermittent fasting as such, more IF lite, but I do leave at least 12 hours overnight between meals (this includes drinks, though herb or actual tea and coffee are okay as long as they don't have milk, sugar or artificial sweeteners).

My purpose is to find out how my body reacts to categories of food and combinations of foods and I hope to lose weight, but also to be as healthy as I can be.  I feel emotionally fragile: however well things are going on any day, the least thing raises my anxiety levels a lot.  I don't cry very often, but I'm on the verge of tears frequently.  I'm not clinically depressed and I cope reasonably well and I ask for help and I try to support friends who need it.  I actively look for moments (or more) of pleasure and joy.  I am grieving and I have worries, that's all there is to it.  It's normal and I'm just saying it, because I've hidden my feelings for many years and that doesn't help any more.  

Tomorrow and tomorrow...

 I didn't start the regime today after all, because younger son and his children came over.  I wasn't going to serve them a roast dinner and eat dry and dismal muffins for my own lunch.  So I've postponed to Tuesday.  

Baksun, as Christopher Robin would put it.

It's all about gut diversity and stuff like that

 Starting again didn't happen after all.  I was doing reasonably well in 2019, even though I wasn't writing here about it, but then lockdown happened and cycling didn't.  The local independent shops were doing online orders, so you did your food order and then picked it up when it was ready.  Since it was packed in boxes at the greengrocer and their own bags at the deli and whole food shop, there wasn't really an opportunity to put it in bike panniers.  So I drove in.  And then the next year, when things might have got back to normal, Tim wasn't very well and then he died.  Life is sad and dismal, but that's for another blog if I wanted to write about it.

What I have done is sign up for the Zoe personalised nutrition plan.  This is the brainchild of T1m Sp ec tor, whose Zoe app was used by millions of us in the UK to report on our health during Covid lockdown and beyond.  That is still going, but he's now very interested in the effect of what each of us eats and how it affects us individually.  Even identical twins might have completely different gut biomes and that affects our weight and our health.  

There's a waiting list for the programme, but I finally came to the top of it.  It's expensive, but I've stumped up and hope that it'll be useful.  I've set my starting date as Sunday, so will report back as it progresses.  I have to wear a monitor, eat (for the first day) disgusting sounding muffins, test my blood and gather poo samples.  Seriously, it had jolly well better be worth it.