Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Fast and Furious

Our doctor has put Mister Fixit on the Fast 5:2 Diet, in an effort to break the weightloss deadlock with him.  He is not great with self-control, that Fixit. If you haven't heard of this program, basically you eat a tiny amount of food (500 [girls] or 600 [boys] calories) for 2 out of every 7 days, and eat normally for the remainder of the week. It claims to work because you don't live in constant denial, and you also train yourself to forgo instant gratification of the hunger reflex, so your stomach can shrink. It is supposed to have amazing benefits for your cholesterol, immunity and anti-aging. Anyway, I think it sounds perfect for him and I have started on it too, to encourage him, and to deal with 4 pesky kilos of my own.  Gotta say, my first fast day felt like the slowest, longest day of my life! Also, the day after my first fast was a disaster, owing to a bad reaction (too much acid on an empty tum?) to starting the break-of-my-fast with freshly-squeezed orange juice, the upshot of which was me vomiting my breakfast just before I was due to start teaching 4 hours of tap. You can't really say to the watching parents I'm sorry I won't be teaching your children very well today because I've put myself on a crazy fad diet, so I just plugged away, and nibbled at some muffins and recovered after a while. So we'll see if I stay on it for long. I kind of hate the way way fasting makes me think about food ALL THE TIME, whereas normally I really don't.  Meanwhile, I am encouraging and helping Fixit to enter his food intake into a calorie-monitoring app, and I really hope this will encourage a degree of mindfulness with his eating habits, something he sorely lacks.

7 Mar 2014 10:38 am

Climber had his swimming carnival a couple of weeks ago, and came second in the breaststroke!  Just like his brother!  He competed well in several events, but not against just people his age, I'm not sure why.  In excellent timing on our part, Fixit and I were there to see him win his ribbon.

19 Mar 2014 8:21 am

Cherub has gone of on school camp today. As always, I think the house will be much quieter without our singing, dancing chatterbox.  He was so excited, and pretty much sat ready, with his packed suitcase by his side, for an hour this morning, waiting for me to be ready to leave.

19 Mar 2014 8:43 am

Climber has bought, with his own money, a Soda Stream machine. It is making me feel cranky, because I never buy softdrink for household drinking, it is purely a party or going-out treat. I have banned use of it to once-a-week. I feel mean about it, because I know half the attraction is the actual making of their own fizzy drink, but the other half is Climber's unhealthy need to feed his sweet tooth.  Anyway. It's a weird situation now. I feel guilty for denying him the fun of purchasing his exciting new fizzydrink maker and like the biggest spoilsport on the planet, he feels guilty for letting me down but also just really, really wants to make it. And drink it.  He is such a lovely boy.  I suspect many kids his age would just abuse their mean mothers for ruining all the fun all the time.

4 Feb 2014 4:56 pm

The house across the road has been slowly knocked down this week. It was the rental house of the street, the one with young people throwing parties, and it was in a terrible state: only good for party-throwing young people, basically.  Despite that, it sold last year for  three quarters of a million, as a knockdown.  We don't even live in a highly desirable suburb. I find that incredible. And rather depressing. I wish the real estate market would settle down. It never does though.

7 Mar 2014 11:20 am

9 comments:

  1. We use our Soda Stream just to make soda water... with tap water and none of the syrups. Would he get the same enjoyment from that? Or is the sweetness of the product the attraction?
    (And thanks. I now have the chicken dance song stuck in my head)

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  2. I tried that 5:2 diet and whilst I think it is probably one of the better ones (and I know people who have done well on it) I just couldn't bear the hunger. It is possible I will go better on it once I get a few kilos off my gargantuan girth. For now I am avoiding chocolate and will introduce other small changes as the weeks go on. Oh it is all such a pain.

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    1. Mary, beating the Hunger is SO HARD. But it did get easier this week, and I was rewarded by bouncing energy on a post-fast day on Saturday, so I am sticking to it. Just don't ask me to do anything complicated or think-y on a fast-day. Fixit is not struggling as much as I, but he has always had more stamina.
      Cx

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  3. Climber's face and t shirt crack me up! Teen angst!

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  4. We got a soda stream for Christmas and just use cordial with it - not the syrups. Also helped me cut down on my Pepsi intake, and makes water more palatable for us non water drinking people! Siobhan.

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  5. I suppose fizzy drinks are very enticing for the young. I have only sparkling mineral water, which is much nicer than natural un-fizzy variety - and why pay extra instead using the tap water. The diet sounds rather daunting. Good luck with it.

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  6. I mostly use my sodastream to make the soda and then I drink it with Bickfords lime cordial, which is my drink of choice. It's still not sugar-free but it's got much less crap in it. Even a cordial I think is generally better than the extra sugary sodastream syrups, which I can't say I really like at all. It is very fun to make the soda, though! Would a similar less-sugary cordial, or even a fruit juice, be an ok substitute?

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  7. oh the stress of being a parent to soda stream or not...motherhood and guilt...seems like you have it all sorted and sound like a wonderful mum..have a wonderful day margie

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  8. The soda stream flavours are actually lower in sugar than cordial (or at least the ones we buy are). We've had one for several years and started checking the sugar content on everything when dh was diagnosed as diabetic. We were really surprised at how low the sugar content was on soda stream - 3.5g/100ml compared to the 7.6g/100ml of the cordial. So he can have it without feeling too guilty...and prefers it without additives anyway. And I can tell you that it you use fizzed water in your pancake mix, they turn out really, really fluffy.

    And I'm about to start the 5:2 diet. I think I can handle the fasting days as there are times where I eat very little during the day, and many times when I eat from boredom or habit. Not sure if it will have the effect of making me constantly think of food, but I do think it is a "sensible eating plan" I can adopt on an ongoing basis. (Even the very word "diet" sets me up for failure....) And I wouldn't mind knowing which app you are using to count the calories. :)

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