Author: Wattle

I and my nose passed right on by some food shops on today’s walk. To resist those delicious aromas takes practise doesn’t it. I wished I had some rosemary to crush on my fingers and waft under my nose. Could that help? It is hard to say. Definitely worth trying.

One shop had a sign outside displaying meat pies. As well as making a mental note to myself that I am allowing myself all the pies I care to eat in July’s eating theme, I also knew that my lunch of toast and tomatoes would be filling and that it wasn’t too long to wait for it.

It is a real feeling of satisfaction to overcome all the sensory advertising of foods in the high street at eleven oclock in the morning and not walk into a food shop.

The Easter holidays are approaching for many of us. I have had a few disciplined months of eating and so fully intend to enjoy the special foods of the season. I do hope that I will not want quite as many of them this year as I did last year because I am a smaller size now. That is the power and the beauty of the slow steady approach to weight loss and management of that loss.

None the less, there is one thing that I intend to do to assist me to remember that I do need less special Easter foods. I will collect some of the pretty coloured tinsel papers that cover the chocolate eggs and incorporate them into next weeks collendars.

The featured herb for Aprilcot is Rosemary. A pot growing some may be kept inside on the kitchen bench which makes it look good as a decoration as well as a wonderful general in the war of weight management.

I finely chop large amounts of rosemary to place on large amounts of tomatoe, on one or two rounds of toast for lunch. I allow plenty of time to enjoy the smell of the rosemary as it is chopped. I also finely chop large amounts of rosemary to place on the fat-trimmed lamb for the evening meal. The only measurement for the lamb is to eat a similar amount, or less than was wanted the previous year. If no fresh rosemary is available I would think that large amounts of the bottled dried herb would also be great.

A lean chicken month could still employ plenty of rosemary. No, absolutely not, I don’t think it would enhance fish, let us not bend reality that far.

A possible task could be to try and grow some rosemary. It is one of the most friendly plants to grow in a pot, even if one has zero gardening experience.

Have an outing (all outings are beneficial as they keep one away from the refrigerator for a few hours!) to a nursery to obtain some potting mix and an appealing pot. Obtain a piece of the plant, from a friend’s garden, or already growing in a pot from a nursery, or even from a bag of fresh live herbs bought from the supermarket.

Simply poke the stalk of the piece of rosemary into the pot of potting mix, a few inches deep. Water it each few days giving it about one third of a cup of water. They are quite forgiving if it gets tempting to water them more often. Let the water drain out of the pot into the sink so that the plant doesn’t sit in a pool of water. Stainless steel plugs with holes in them can be purchased to catch any potting mix that drains out. When the plant grows some branches those can also be planted. Keep repeating this planting of branches as it will eventually lead to a generous amount of rosemary to use for future Aprilcots.

I have found out that eating an apple assists the book reading experience. I am allowing as many apples as I want to or that I can find room for, whichever arrives first, whilst reading the book. Munching one apple after another, if necessary, until the book is finished.

This is a compromise situation. Any compromise is acceptable to break the mental triumvirate of books, cigarettes and indulgent foods.

Even if a mental pairing of books and indulgent foods occurs, that is still a win. Without cigarettes some chocolate ripes and barbecue crisps would enhance the reading experience, I suspect it, I just intuitively know it. However, so far I have managed to resist this sort of partial and less acceptable compromise which would certainly contribute to weight gain.

Learning to read a book all by itself would be some task set at some stage in the future. Imaginable? Just. For now, for this month I am aiming for a book and apple-eating duarchy.

So…back to reading my book: and to eating apples!

Slow, steady, successful, sustainable. These are all words which have become firmly established in my vocabulary. They well describe my weight loss. Compared to the 90 kilograms about four years ago, this year’s new weight is fluctuating around 77 kilograms. I am delighted to become used to my new size.

Do you ever look at your reflection in shop windows? Sometimes I do. The current shape remains “Pear”. Unfortunately there is no other more flattering word that will do the job of describing it. But let me rather concentrate on “Compear”. This year I notice that my shape has become a smaller pear. That is an excellent result.

Slow, steady, successful, sustainable: all these words are worthy of repeating.