Breakfast

They say a good breakfast sets you up for the day.  Well, I find that a good breakfast sets me up for lunch.  I don't eat any less for the rest of the day if I've had a good breakfast.  If I'm on a serious kick-start to some weight loss, then skipping breakfast altogether is the quickest way.  I'm not saying that this is a good thing, just that it works.  It isn't something I normally do, though sometimes I do wait an hour or two before having breakfast and then have a very modest lunch as it's not long since I've eaten.

The thing about cereals, and muesli in particular, is that it's easy to eat more than you realise.  Read the side of the muesli packet and it says how many calories are in a helping, but it's only if you weigh it out that you discover what a small helping that is.  And then there are the surprising number of calories in fruit juice, especially if you pour out a full glass.  If you squeeze your own orange you find out what a small amount of juice it actually gives.

At the moment, I'm plugging on with my small amount of plain yoghurt and some fruit.  If I want more, I have an egg instead, poached, on half a slice of toast.  

Z weighs in

To my relief, I've lost two pounds.  I say relief because I've been so very careful, eating so little that if I'd not lost anything at all in the past month I'd have been quite despairing.  All the same, two pounds.  Jesus.  It isn't much, not for all the abstinence.

Today, I ate a small amount of yoghurt for breakfast, a couple of peaches later, some leftover kedgeree for lunch (a small helping) and during the afternoon a slice of bread and Marmite (no butter) and a small square of cheese.  1 cm, perhaps.  Oh, and a couple of glasses of wine; that is, I'm on the second glass.  Tonight, we're having steak and the Sage is cooking.  This won't be a weight loss day.  Oh, I had a couple of cherry tomatoes, do they count?  I might have had some orange juice for breakfast too.

Anyway, size 10 jeans are roomy.  Appreciably roomier than when I bought them a couple of months ago.

It's hard, you know.  I don't want to eat much at a time, my appetite has diminished a lot.  But I seem to be denying myself several times a day.  Still, getting there.  I could be trying this much and not losing anything at all.

Bum.

Eating little, losing nothing

It does take a long time of not eating much for me to lose weight.  Today for example, I had two tablespoons, probably less than 100g (or possibly millilitres) of plain yoghurt plus a peach and a small glass of orange juice for breakfast.  A crab salad, not a whole crabsworth, for lunch and a glass of wine.  For dinner, a small helping of salmon, a spoonful of pasta and some french beans, followed by a couple of greengages.  Oh, and a couple more glasses of wine.  I really don't think that's much, and it's fairly typical of the quantities and types of food I've been eating recently.  Yesterday, for example, we went out for lunch and I had a BLT baguette.  The Sage had a steak and offered me his mushroom, a nice open one.  Once I'd accepted it, he said hopefully that he'd swap it for some bacon.  Since he had an 8 oz steak already, I was surprised that he wanted any more - still, I gave him half my bacon, 1 1/2 rasher's worth.  I ate the salad, the slice and a half of bacon, the mushroom (which was grilled, not fried) and drank a half pint of cider and left all the bread.  I hadn't had anything at all for breakfast.  For dinner, I had most of a fillet of fish, grilled, some baked potato and some sautéed courgettes and tomatoes.  Then I had some ice cream, a small helping.

Really, I'm not eating much.  I'm not losing an ounce though.  Unless I'm saving it all up and will suddenly drop half a stone.  But how is it that some people lose several pounds per week?  I really can't eat less, it wouldn't be healthy.

Resistance is not in the least futile

Thinking about it, I'm eating a lot less bread than I usually do.  It's not that I normally eat so much of it, but it's a convenient thing to eat when one feels peckish and doesn't want to give in to the temptation to eat sweet things, and it's very easy for that to happen, particularly if it's been a long time since the last meal and blood sugar levels are low - not that one needs sugar of course, but that sometimes a quick boost is craved.  But anyway, I'm just resisting temptation.  On the whole, bread is not delicious enough to bother with eating for its own sake.  I love good bread actually, but there's little enough of that about - it's when I go abroad that I'm reminded of what bread should be.

So today's lunch was more protein than I've had recently - a slice of ham and a couple of leftover chipolatas, a few olives, some cucumber and tomato and a nectarine.  A little yoghurt and some fruit for breakfast.  And I could eat more, easily, but I won't.  And now I'm going out, so there will be no temptation.  

Z doesn't eat for the sake of it

I'm working on only eating when really hungry and only eating enough not to be so.  If you think about it, it's likely that you often feel like eating, feel a bit peckish, but we eat too regularly to be genuinely hungry very often.

Yesterday, I put a couple of dessertspoonfuls of plain yoghurt into a bowl and took a nectarine to eat while the kettle boiled.  I ate the nectarine but I'm not sure what happened after that - suffice it to say that I never got around to making the tea and, this morning, the Sage asked me what was in the bowl.  But a nectarine for breakfast and a couple of plums and an apricot seems to have been quite enough.  Dilly and I went out for lunch with Hay and I ordered a salmon and cucumber sandwich.  A while later the waitress came back to say they were out of salmon, would smoked salmon be okay, and would I like it with cream cheese or cucumber.  So I had smoked salmon and cucumber, ditched one slice of bread and made a single sandwich with a nice thick filling, ate the crisps and salad that came with it and drank a can of lemonade.

Much later, getting ready to go out for supper, I realised that lemonade was all I'd drunk that day and had some water.  That's a bit of a downside, once one starts to not eat much it's only too easy not to drink much either.  I had a vegetarian salad and summer pudding with a glass of wine for supper and a chocolate with coffee.  I'm not going to keep up this light food and not much of it forever, but it's easy not to eat too much in the summer and my 'delicious and/or nutritious' rule still applies.

I gave the Sage the yoghurt to offer to the chickens and had today's two dessertspoonfuls and a glass of orange juice.  I'm still a bit hungry actually, but I've had enough to eat for now.  Some fruit later or maybe, since Weeza and Zerlina are heading over here, I might dig out some ice cream.  

Z weighs in

Actually, this is a bit me, me, me, isn't it?  Still, that's its purpose I suppose.  I weighed myself and I haven't lost any more weight even though I've lost an inch from my hips.  That's all right, shows it's getting established.

I'm really not eating all that much, so I have to be particularly careful that what I do eat is very good.  That is, both good for me and delicious - delicious in particular.  My preference has always been mostly for healthy food anyway so that's no problem.  I do need to be sure I eat enough calcium because I don't have milk in tea or coffee, nor do I eat cereal.

At the moment, I'm eating a lot of fruit because fruit is so gorgeous at this time of the year.  I was slightly downed by seeing English plums at Tim's shop yesterday because plums mean autumn, but I bought them anyway, as well as nectarines, apricots, peaches, greengages and a melon.  The melon isn't quite ripe so I haven't started it yet, but I've rather overindulged in the rest.  Today, a couple of dessertspoonsful of plain yoghurt for breakfast with fruit.  For lunch, a slice of ham, some tomato and cucumber, 6 black olives and half a slice of lightly buttered bread, and fruit.  Later the Sage and I shared a slice of chocolate cake, then two chipolatas and some french beans for dinner.  I cooked potatoes but I didn't eat any myself.  I like early potatoes and I like them when cooked interestingly, but plain boiled potatoes are quite dull and just there as a filler as far as I'm concerned, so I left them.  Oh, I had a few more olives, three or four, with a glass of wine before dinner.

Tomorrow I'm out for dinner with friends, a regular monthly thing. We have two courses, so I'll either have a starter and a pudding or eat part of the main course and not all.  Unless it's a fruit-based dessert, I won't eat it all.  

Zzipping up

I've mislaid some clothes.  I wanted to wear a pink jacket the other day - I'd been to a funeral so wore a black jacket with my grey and white dress, and thought I'd brighten up a bit for the afternoon.  It's a bright pink, unmissable ... only it isn't.  I can't find it anywhere.  This morning I was going to do some scything so I wanted to wear my old jeans.  No idea where they are.  Last I saw of them they were in the washing machine.  That is, I haven't worn them since I washed them, but they aren't there now.

Anyway, while I was looking this morning I picked up a pair of jeans that I keep for old times' sake.  Shall I tell you the story?  Oh, okay - well, it dates back to when Al was in his early teens and I had recently lost weight.  It was 23 years ago in fact, and I weighed under 8 1/2 stone when I stopped dieting, and I kept that weight or close to it for several years - my forties were difficult years and that was when I piled on too many pounds.

One day I went to the pile of clothes I'd brought in from the washing line the day before, took a pair of jeans and put them on, did them up and realised something was wrong.  Hard to identify, they fitted but they didn't feel right.  I looked in the mirror and they were narrower than I expected.  I took them off - of course, they were Al's jeans.  Marks and Spencer, age 13, height 63 inches, waist 27 inches.  Al was a skinny lad (he still is, turn sideways and he almost vanishes, just a thin line) and I was quite gratified that I could zip up his jeans *just like that*.

Well, when he grew out of them I kept them and they're my yardstick.  Of course in my fatter days I never tried to put them on at all, and a few months ago I could put them on and not do them up.  The last time I tried, I could do up the waist button but not the zip.

You know what's coming, don't you?  Yes, I drew in the vast tum, pulled on the zip and up it went.  I examined myself critically.  Still something to come off the thighs and if I didn't hold the flab in by sheer willpower it had a tendency to spill over a bit (not outrageously, mind you).  But I bent over and could touch my toes in them and, more importantly, I couldn't do them up a few weeks ago.

Later, I measured my hips.  37 inches.