Category: Blog

I have found out that if I am not in the right mood to make a collendar page I can still look forward to a time when I might be. Sometimes just cutting out images of the fruit of the month, images of some other fruit or vegetable, or even images of some food I would like to eat less of will be enough to do. It creates some time out, the temptation to over eat, or have a cigarette is lessened. I put them in a box for a rainy day, a less busy day, a right mood day.

And they are off and racing!

The green beans jump out of the cullinary BFF ( Best Friend Forever) gate first. They are in peak condition so its no wonder they are the favourites to win the Served Plate. They are strongly handicapped though, carrying up to almost one quarter of the plate area, so they could just as easily be has beens. Its a strong field, any vegetable’s race.

They are all approaching tongs straight now and here come the carrots just look at them go, orange, sleek and sweet, rapidly catching up to the beans. The peas are lagging behind, some are even straying off the course, I don’t think they can recover, escapees.

The green beans and the carrots are neck and neck now. Its too close to call as they go over the finish line. Its going to be a photo finish.

Its the carrots! The winner of this years Served Plate is the carrots.

People live in living rooms. That is where the heater is located. Laundries are the coldest room in (or outside of) the house. Apply just goes on and on. And still it goes on, today its only the 24th day. And worse still, there is another whole week of it to get through yet.

We aren’t really in a hotel where the towels are magically replaced, someone has to launder them. I am the someone. It can get quite depressing. The Apply task is hard, there is no doubt about it, it is the hardest of all the tasks. What is the point of it?

To keep from putting weight on, needless weight that might be a response to the cold, wet weather and happen because of over eating endulgent foods. Even when feeling freezing in the laundry whilst washing the extra towels, it does keep the body far away from the food source. There is so much muttering going on about all the extra washing the task has made that the mind could not possibly be thinking about chocolate ripes and barbecue crisps.

Yes, I can finish this task. I will continue to colour up the coldest month: for one more week!

Does it ever sound like I am repeating myself? Yes. I think it is good to be constantly reminded of the central ideas which lead to slow steady sustainable weight loss over time.

Some things really can’t be said often enough, for example “drink water with every evening meal”.

The wind is howling like in one of those horror movies, phwoo-oo, whee, whoosh! Yes it really is worth the effort to steam the apples so they are hot to serve with the pancake.

Each winter seems to be colder than the last. This is not my imagination either because as weight is lost there is less fat to function as insulation.

Some elegant mathematics could express it as: “Less fat = feels colder easier.”

So am I going to complain about being so cold? Naturally, yes! However I am delighted that the amount of weight lost means that compared to some years ago, this year I need to wear more warm clothes.

I am approaching three quarters of a whole set of Apply collendar pages. That sure is motivating to complete the set. Having a whole set doesn’t have to mean the end my endeavour. Next Apply if want to I can always try to make more appealing collendar pages. There will be a year to inspect and cut out new images, including some of towels.

It seems strange to be concerned with losing too much weight, but some care is needed because sometimes that can happen without hardly any effort at all.

My goal is not to lose weight this Apply but to prevent too much weight from being added.

Some might be lost by accident because the combination of steamed cabbage, Brussels Sprout and pumpkin is such a very powerful method to control weight, even with including the commercial brand finishing sauce which I find invaluable to assist them to go down the tunnel. Even including eating the indulgent breakfasts. A few additional walks could also contribute to accidental weight loss.

Sometimes our bodies really do need some extra calories and we have to learn to take notice of this and judge how many. Perhaps an extra round of toast might be needed? Some more creamy soup? (No, not the extra chocolate ripes, nor the extra barbecue crisps, no!)

I think a few meals with carrots, corn and peas might be a tasty good idea for next week.

Winter is made warmer with hot steamed Brussels Sprout, cabbage and pumpkin. I heap up the plate with them, a very large portion. The secret ingredients of commercial brand finishing sauces are great value, just add a tiny bit onto the meat.

We allow oven fries potatoes with most meals. The ones we get have a small amount of vegetable oil in them. Since almost every source of nutritional information suggests that we need to eat some oil, this is a really good way to include it. If you suspect you are having a too generous amount of oil, try to reduce it by a small amount.

Winter is also made warmer with extra luxury showers or baths. The long evenings are perfect for pampering. Try a new soap or shampoo. If you receive catalogues that advertise towels those images are good to include on Collendar pages in Apply.

Some people believe that throwing away the knife and fork is sufficient to lose weight. That sounds to me like a good definition of a “Diet”. Whilst such an extreme approach does work temporarily, I don’t think that it is needed.

Paying more attention to what is being placed on the knife and fork will achieve exactly the same goal but in a far more successful and long lasting manner.

The same holds true for exercise. I think that aggressive running, cycling, swimming, or power walking is best left to athletes who have their regular routines. Going to the gym might be an enjoyable activity and it needs to be considered just that, no more than an enjoyable activity. It is not a long term weight management tool if it can’t be done long term.

Doing some gentle walking most days is plenty enough to lose some weight and keep it off. The key is to actually do it. It is more likely to be done if a decision is made about what is realistic and achievable on most days, in most weathers. The length of a walk is different for everyone. There will be some optimal distance, ranging from from a kilometer or so right down to some small number of painful, slow steps across the house on a walking frame.

Hot steamed apples with a generous amount of cinnamon give the taste buds something different to consider. This is good news because they sure do need something, following on from steamed cabbage, butternut pumpkin and cauliflower.

The Apply eating theme incorporates the deliciousness of pastry. If it is your first Apply decide on a generous amount of it, you will know how much feels right. As the years go by and the body shape becomes smaller, just like other food types, you will want to eat less pastry, but that is then, not now.

Now I know that not everyone delights in eating hot meat pies with tomato sauce for their breakfast. Choose some other sort of breakfast, how about croissants with a favourite filling? What is important to remember is that this month encourages and celebrates a decadent breakfast, different to the usual more disciplined fare.

Perhaps a family meat pie or an egg, bacon and cheese pie could be purchased, or even cooked, for the evening meal. It is good practice to serve them with vegetables, but if you feel like a vegetable rest, now is an excellent time of the year to have one. Apple pie for dessert sounds good too doesn’t it. The proportion of that, or other dessert pastries is best such that there is room afterwards for a fresh apple too.

Buying whole cabbages and whole pumpkins is more economical. The trouble with that is that they have to be eaten, night after night, even when having large serves of them. They just aren’t the most appealing vegetables and no amount of collendar work could convince me otherwise.

I have a strategy which helps a bit. Include a generous amount of corn or peas on the plate with them. Some sort of gravy or finishing sauce with the meal is a must because it makes eating the cabbage and pumpkin more likely.

A third very good aspect of having a pie for breakfast is that if it is bought from the bakery, as well as acting as a hand warmer on the way home and giving a different way to practice waiting to eat, is that there are no frozen pies in the freezer for me to be tempted to have a pie for lunch after a pie for breakfast…

A very good aspect of having a pie for breakfast is that if it is bought from the bakery, and it rains on the way home, the amble tends to turn into a walk, turns into a power walk – sneakycize.

The peak of winter is arriving now and it is being loudly announced with blustery winds, rainy showers and colder temperatures. Today even had a hail storm, thankfully not at the time I was outside walking. I did need an umbrella though, so I am claiming a “Win” on today’s collendar page.

I am really enjoying the towel task, it is so good to have an alternative way to warm up instead of using food. I like to write down which colours I choose so that in years to come I am able to look back and compare the patterns I made. Red appears very frequently in all the lists, mainly because those towels are so difficult to wear out and there are so many more of them, so that will not be the colour I pick for my new luxury towels. Perhaps some sort of salmon colour?

An inexpensive fern has been obtained and looks really pretty on the bathroom bench. It is a quiet way to be reminded that Apply is going quite well so far and to continue to eat plenty of apples and at least some amount less of Junkly. I hope the fern survives a few more weeks. If I am able to resist giving it too much water it might and it would make a beautiful, permanent living ornament.

Today my collendar page represents some proportional mathematics: one pie equals an awesome amount of apples. (Or it could equal an awesome amount of pears, or mandarins or tangelos or …)

Each breakfast, like most of my breakfasts all year round do, consists of some oranges. I try to get lovely big ones or when they are not available at least have a few small ones. I want my breakfast to set me up well for whatever the day’s activities are.

On the non-pie breakfast days this month there is a perfect opportunity for me to eat a variety of spreads on toast or cereals, particularly the ones that are approaching the use by date of yesteryear.

I don’t want to turn into a skeleton either. I am quite happy to maintain my current weight for quite a while so it is useful to eat up all these essentially “leftover” foods, which do have a relatively high sugar content in them, now rather than during some other month.

Each year as Apply approaches I think, “I must try and cook my own pie.” Each year I never do. Will this Apply be any different? It seems unlikely.

I don’t mind trying out a baking recipe sometimes. I am happy to say that mostly it all goes smoothly but honestly, we have eaten our fair share of flat cakes or dry cakes or even flat, dry cakes and some of the biscuits did taste of sodium bicarbonate, it has to be owned up to. So, it seems to me that baking pastry would be a difficult skill to master, and I don’t want to waste my precious allocation of deliciousness this month on epic cooking failures.

Tempting although the packaging makes them look, I try to avoid the mass produced things which purport to be pies from the freezer compartment at the supermarket. Perhaps you know the ones I mean? They have some slushy type of filling and a thick casing of pastry-like substance. They have an ingredient list as long as my arm, when all I really want to read is butter and flour, with a bit of salt and a bit of sugar plus the filling type.

The small bakery where the food is baked on the premises seems to be a better alternative. I can be reasonably sure that real pastry will encase real filling and certainly the allocation of deliciousness will be well spent. Even so, I proceed with caution. Simply stated, the amount of filling does not include enough protein for an evening meal, or enough fruit for an evening desert. Yes there will be some beef mince, or some egg and bacon, or some chicken, or some apple, just not the amount that I am used to having. I need to supplement it.

How will I supplement it? Wisely with some more lean protein? Or unwisely with extra oven potato fries? Extra desert? Some Chocolate ripes? Today I am choosing wisely. Sadly that is not always the case.

It is no wonder that as each Apply dwindles to its conclusion I think, “Next Apply I will try to cook my own pie.” One year I might.

There is no shortage of literature about how healthy we are going to be after giving up cigarettes. We will be able to run up mountains using our incredibly improved lung capacity, we will be able to taste food so much better, and on and on it goes, the benefits are many, and wondrous.

What is rarely, if ever mentioned is how irritable we are going to be. If my brain is screaming at me to give the tiny cells the balance they want and crave for and I refuse to give it to them, the result isn’t going to be a secret and it isn’t going to be pretty.

Irritable hardly even describes it. Perhaps it will be worse still if the person is giving up cigarettes because they feel they are being forced to do so. They are giving in to pressures from family members, and to the less than subtle pressures from governments, who have now forced the price of one packet of twenty cigarettes to cost more than a weeks worth of vegetables.

The smallest annoying things grow into impossible demands that only a saint could achieve, certainly not our mere mortal family members down here on earth trying to be supportive, trying to live with us. Eating up as much sugar as the body will accept as a substitute seems to be a very good idea, if only for the sake of our families. Worry about controlling the inevitable weight gain later, much later.

Then, at some much later stage, well after the initial withdrawal has taken place it might be possible to at least try to lose some of the weight gained. Exactly what you would predict to happen does happen. Added to the residual irritability of giving up cigarettes is the non-trivial irritability of not giving the body quite enough of what it also wants, a satisfactory amount of sugars and fats.

One tiny helper to absorb some of the irritability, as well as some weight, is to walk. Try walking with a bit more pace sometimes to help manage some irritability if it is detectable. Walking a self-defined amount of distance most days, even a slow ambling stroll will help to cope with periods of blatantly obvious, or even cleverly masked irritation which can go on for years. Many years, even decades.