The weight reading for Mangober was 71.8 kg. That was a loss of 1.7 kg which would be wonderful if losing weight for the month was the goal. It seems that there is a need to eat a great many more mangoes than I thought, or at least some more of other higher caloric foods, as well as the lean meat and vegetable meals to maintain weight. At this stage it is also becoming easier to do more walking compared to the effort that it required a few years ago. This too is making a contribution to the downwards spiral of weight. Learning how to maintain a lesser weight is going to take quite a while.
The very first Nolember we called “Noplumber”. For some reason quite unknown to me, that name was, and still remains amusing. It might be that the idea of eating no plums for a month when we would not have eaten any anyway, so beautifully captures the absurdity of the whole concept of naming each month and then basing our diet around those names. However, what became quickly evident to us is that no matter how silly it might sound, and I am the first to agree it surely does sound pretty silly, when it is combined with some other complementing activities, the eating themes approach really does help to remove weight and then keep it off. They are easy to remember, cause a few hesitations if and when too much straying away from the theme happens and there isn’t too long to wait until the next theme starts, giving dietary balance and variety across the year.
Another Nolember we called “Nutber”. Losing weight and eating nuts generally do not go well together, so we tried to incorporate some nuts into one eating theme and chose November as the month to do it. Whatever else the theme might have, we consistently like to include our own recipe for cashew nuts, basil and pasta salad which I will do a blog about later this month.
Another Nolember we called “Nolamba”. This also caused some amusement for us because as you might guess, that year we ate rather a lot of Lamba. Lean lamb is very expensive so some years we tried alternating between lamb and fish. Prior to this fish did not get onto the plate very often. Not very often at all. Perhaps some boneless fish specimen, covered in batter, deep fried and accompanied by fatty potatoe chips, also deep fried, all wrapped up in paper (easy plate and no dishes to wash up) from the takeway shop.
Eventually we found a different month to base an eating theme around lamb and for the last few years have been calling Nolember “Nolember”. Fish is on the plate for most meals. Fresh lemons feature. In some previous years we have made efforts to learn how to bake fish, without batter, at home. A lot depends on whether the goal is to lose some weight, or maintain the lesser amount of weight. We found a reasonable compromise. Cook commercially prepared, packaged frozen fish, being very well aware that about one half of what is in the pack is not actually fish, but some combination of oil, crumb, batter and or sauces as covering and must be compensated for by having a lesser amount of similar foods like pasta or oven fries potatoes. Our attitude has become that eating any fish has to be better than the previous eating of zero fish.
Desserts are usually pancake with sugar and lemon juice. Lemon meringue pies from the bakery might make an appearance on the plate. In fact it sounds like a few appearances of them might be called for, to assist with maintaining weight rather than losing it.