Carbohydrates and weight loss

I don't make new year's resolutions, haven't done for years. If I want to change my lifestyle I will do it whatever time of year it is. I have made a lot of changes in the last couple of years. Recently I left work to allow me to spend more time doing other things which has been quite a big change for me.

However, the change that has made the most difference to me was made just under 2 years ago. I had a routine visit to the doctor for blood tests and discovered that my blood sugars were way too high, despite medication. The answer to this was to start injecting insulin. I guess it took this threat to make me actually change my eating habits so when I was given a few months to get this under control along with one last medication that might help I decided to stop eating sugar as far as possible. I stopped eating cakes, biscuits and anything else with added sugar. I changed to wholemeal bread. And it worked. I reduced my clothes size from a 22/24 to a 16. It is great being able to go into an ordinary shop and try on clothes that fit (although I'm finding there isn't as much choice in the sales as there are more people trying to buy a 16!). 

For the last year I have been doing more research on healthy eating with diabetes and discovered the  low carb Mediterranean way of eating (https://thebloodsugardiet.com/the-low-carb-plan/). I have stopped eating bread, pasta, rice, potatoes and other carbohydrates that rapidly increase my blood sugars. I find that eating pulses, beans and proteins makes me feel full for longer. So much so that sometimes I'm not hungry for lunch until after 2pm after a good breakfast. I have discovered that I love greek yogurt, blueberries, cauliflower rice and beans. And I can adapt most of my old recipes to suit this way of eating.

The difficulty I now have is when eating out in restaurants. There are some that are great. Handmade burger company are fab. I can ask for a bunless burger and they will give me extra salad. I actually feel sorry for Gordon when the plates come because mine looks so much bigger than his. I recently tried Nandos for the first time and they are great because they have a choice of side dishes rather than just offering chips. But they are the exception rather than the rule. I am getting a bit fed up of apologising for asking for something different from the menu. I want more restaurants to offer alternatives to chips, rice, pasta or potatoes on the menu. After all it isn't more expensive to give me a side salad or more vegetables. I don't always want to order a salad, especially in the winter.

I have lost weight lots of times in my life, but this time I have not been on a diet, I have changed the way I eat and I am not going to put all the weight back on. 

I am going to stop apologising for being fussy because I am doing this to improve my health and to control my sugar levels, not as a fad.

New Year, New Beginnings?

It wouldn't be a proper new year if I didn't write a blog post to make sure that don't go more than a year without writing a new one!

I often write a reflection on what has happened in the past year and what I am looking forward to in the next year. However this new year I have been a bit bemused by some of what I have seen on Facebook and in the media. People saying things like '2016 was a rubbish year but now it is 2017 and that is all behind us and we can start afresh'. I get the need for people to have new beginnings. I understand that we need milestones in life. I enjoy the whole idea of having a new book to write your story of the new year and the opportunity to do things differently.

But the start of a new year does not mean that the things that we didn't like about 2016 have all suddenly gone away. We haven't closed a door and left everything nasty behind it so it can't get to us any longer. Those of us who were ill yesterday are still ill, those who have been bereaved in 2016 will still miss those they have lost, people who hate going to work every day will have to go back to work and face their problems this week. We are still going to leave the EU, Trump is still going to be the US President. And people still want to hurt and kill others.

So by all means let us enjoy the opportunity to start a new chapter of our lives today and to write on a fresh new page. But let's be realistic about what the new year brings us after the holiday finishes. I like this poem by Minnie Louise Haskins which she called 'God Knows' but which is more commonly know as 'The Gate of the Year'. It begins with these words:

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.
And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.

Things I learnt on my cruise Part 3

It has been a while since I did a 'things I learnt on my cruise' blog, since the cruses we have done since 2013 have all been quite similar, but having been on a Baltic cruise this year, I have learnt some new things.

I hope you enjoy learning a bit about our travels this year:

1 It rains quite a lot in Stockholm - I realise I was only there for 1 day, but it rained a lot...all day. I'm sure it was a very pretty place but I didn't really get to appreciate it through the rain.
2 Cruise ship captains don't know much about illness - we were told one day that there was norovirus on the ship and a day later that it was gastroenteritis. On searching google I found that gastroenteritis in adults is usually caused by norovirus or food poisoning. Personally if I was in charge of a cruise ship I would prefer it to be the former!
3 St Petersburg has a lot of gold leaf. On buildings all over the city.
4 Russian tour guides are called things like Olga and Tatiana.
5 The port at St Petersburg closes if the winds are faster than 24 knots. I did worry at one stage that they would never let us leave, but they just kept us long enough to make sure that we missed visiting Tallinn.
6 Blankenberge is like Blackpool
7 Bruges (or Brugge) and Copenhagen are very pretty
8 The trains from Bruges to Blankenberge run once an hour and are much cheaper than getting a ship's tour - even if the train back makes you think you are on the wrong train and are going to get stranded miles from the ship and be late back.
9 You can buy Christmas decorations all year round in Russia and Scandinavia.
10 If you send postcards home from Oslo they get there in 2 days.
11 There is a MacDonald's, a Subway and a Hard Rock Cafe in every place that I go. Even in Russia!
12 Russians talk about 'the soviet era' as though they were invaded by another country
13 There are nasty insects in Russia that bite me and leave big itchy lumps (although to be fair it happens to me in most countries I visit)
14 Some people have far too much money (judging by the number of cruises they have been on and have already booked for the future)
15 You can get rubbish coffee in Norway as well as the UK. But it costs a lot more.
16 I can use my credit card abroad.
17 Three at home is great. Using my allowances abroad was a real treat. And so much easier than having to search for free wifi.

Long Journeys

We went on a journey to Skegness this week. Skegness is not a place I would normally visit (although I was there when I was 6 months old apparently) but it is worth the drive to get to Spring Harvest (check out www.springharvest.org if you haven't heard of it). On the way down we usually stop overnight at a hotel to break the journey, but coming home we drive all the way home. As long journeys go, it isn't that far at 318 miles, but there are some very slow roads en route. I'm used to driving long distances, after all how would we get to Southampton for all our cruises! And I have regularly driven up and down to Derbyshire for the past 30 years to visit my parents.
The trip home yesterday was so long that it gave me time to compose part of this blog in my head! Here are my reflections on driving home from Skegness:

• 70 miles in Lincolnshire takes twice as long as it does anywhere else in the country, except perhaps on the Isle of Mull (an experience you should have at least once in your life!)
• Costa coffee in service stations is more expensive than on the high street, unless it is so long since I bought one that I have forgotten. Must check that out next week
• I need to keep reminding myself that the road is so much better than it was before they extended the A1M
• There are always roadworks somewhere on the A1
• When I say that the A66 isn't too bad nowadays I am talking rubbish
• There will always be one more lorry to overtake (and I will catch up with it when it is just too late to overtake before the dual carriageway disappears)
• However fast I go there will always be someone who wants to go faster
• Overtaking lorries in driving rain is scary
• Next outlet stores don't have changing rooms. What is that about?
• Not strictly to do with the journey, but my bed is more comfortable than any other bed I have slept in and no shower anywhere is as good as the one at home

Thank goodness when I go down to Derbyshire next week I am getting the train. I have had enough long distance driving for a while.

Blogging

I don't do new year's resolutions. I think there is no point in saying I will do something just to set myself up to fail! But that doesn't mean that I don't reflect at the end of a year and the start of an new one. I think it is human nature to need time to reflect and the opportunity to think about your life and what you would like to change.
A couple of years ago when I bought a new camera I decided to try and take a photo every day of the year to make myself work out how to use it properly. I did manage to complete the year. I'm not sure, however whether it made me a better photographer. Some of the photos were amazing and I was really pleased with them. Others, however were total rubbish and I only took them because I had committed myself to taking one every day. My colleagues at work thought I was totally crazy, especially when it was horrible weather and I was off out at lunchtime to take my photo. Some days I was taking photos of houseplants at 10pm to get it done before I went to bed. I did enjoy the experience and felt pleased that I had managed to set this target and actually achieved it.
So I was wondering what would be a good thing to do this year. A daily challenge is something that I'm not sure I can do again, at least not so soon after the last one. Having thought about it I have decided that I'm rubbish at blogging and don't do it nearly often enough. So my challenge this year is to blog at least once a month. And as I usually do, I have left it until the last minute to get this one done. January 31st and I am writing the first blog of 2016. Hopefully the next one will happen a bit sooner than the last day of February. Part of my problem is finding things that I know enough about and that I think are interesting enough to actually write about. And I am not a writer. I passed Higher English, but that is the highest qualification I have in English. Who am I to write? But perhaps the point of this is to improve. If so, you may have to put up with 12 blogs that are utter rubbish this year! Let's see how I get on. Maybe my December offering will be a reflection on what I have managed to produce over the last 12 months.

Diabetes

I have type 2 diabetes and have had for a number of years. I don’t hide this fact, but I also haven’t advertised it to anyone who doesn’t need to know until this moment.

Recently there has been quite a lot on the news about the dangers of diabetes and the fact it is a route to a shorter life and the dangers of losing limbs and other complications. It has made me think about why I don’t really tell people and how I feel about the way the story has been covered. I got quite angry with some of the coverage. I think part of the reason for this is that those of us with type 2 diabetes are the ‘bad’ diabetics. We can all feel sorry for those with type 1 because they are the unfortunate people whose pancreas just stopped working for some unknown reason, whereas we are the ones who brought it all on ourselves by being lazy, greedy and eating all the wrong things. So we should be ashamed of ourselves. Maybe this is why I haven’t said much. Yes, I am overweight and I know I can blame nobody but myself for this, however there are much fatter people than me around who haven’t yet succumbed.

I have been fighting a battle with my weight from the age of about 13 when my mum first took me to a slimming club with her. And yet looking back at photos of myself I don’t look particularly overweight. So a habit of yoyo dieting was started, and a way of looking at my body as the enemy which never looked the way I wanted it to.

What was thought of then as healthy eating was all low fat. A low fat diet, however, can be quite unhealthy. Because what I didn’t realise all those years ago is that to make food low fat, manufacturers substitute sugar to give the flavour that is lost. We now know is that eating too much sugar puts stress on the pancreas that can cause insulin resistance and eventually lead to type 2 diabetes. So ironically my healthy eating as a teenager may have contributed to the eventual development of my diabetes.

I am not looking for sympathy here, just a little more understanding from people that I am not necessarily someone who just sits in the house and eats all day, and perhaps give a warning to some to not only watch the fat in their diet, but also the sugar.

Reflections on London

As I sit in my hotel room at the end of a long weekend in London, here are some reflections on what we have seen.

1               London can be a very tiring place:

We were looking round the bookshops on Charing Cross Road and visited Leicester Square as part of our Saturday afternoon. We discovered a new Nickelodeon shop as well as M&M world (which we planned to visit because I wanted a new T shirt!) and found them to be very (very, very) busy which was quite exhausting. It is also possible, however, to find a seat and watch the world go by. We watched the dancing fountains in Leicester Square and the tourists in Trafalgar Square.

2               London is a lot friendlier than it was 20 years ago:

When we visited London a long time ago we were struck by how unfriendly people in shops and restaurants were. This trip has shown us how things have changed. In every shop and restaurant (except one) we have been to the staff have been very friendly. The exception surprisingly was in a café/restaurant close to Harrods where the staff didn’t even look at us, the food was the most expensive we experienced in our whole visit and it wasn’t very nice. Everywhere else we found the food to be delicious and everyone very helpful and chatty.

3               The toilets that you pay for are not very nice:

We found free toilets in most parts of London, notably Trafalgar Square, that were very well cared for and pleasant to visit. In Covent Garden and beside Westminster Bridge we had to pay 50p to visit, which I wouldn’t mind if the money was spent looking after them, but they were the most disgusting toilets we visited! To pay for them and then be faced with dirty toilets and overflowing sanitary bins was not pleasant.

4               Contactless payment on public transport is the way to go:

I researched ways to pay on London Transport before we visited and discovered that you can now use contactless payment on TFL services in the way that you used to use an Oyster Card. You still get the benefit of daily and weekly capping, but don’t need to go to the hassle of ordering and topping up an Oyster Card. My debit card was due to be renewed in September and Gordon had conveniently lost his in July so I phoned the bank and asked for new cards and we were ready to go. I registered my cards with the TFL website because that meant that I could check what we had been charged (and that suits my control freak tendencies) and we were ready to go. A quick beep as we held our cards to the scanner as we got on a bus (or on and off the tube) and it was that easy. A London bus journey cost £1.50 so if you do 3 trips in a day you are winning, as the cap on bus journeys in the day is £4.40. There is a certain satisfaction to looking at the website to check you haven’t been overcharged and finding out that you have had 3 free bus journeys! I have still to check yesterday when we ventured onto the tube and DLR to see how much we spent.

5               There are places that you don’t find unless you have inside information:

We met my brother and sister-in-law who live in London for an afternoon. The plan was to meet on the Southbank for lunch and go for a wander. Following the directions we were given, we went past the normal southbank haunt of Giraffe (which is still very nice as we proved this afternoon when we ate there) and met them at the Southbank food market. There are a large number of stalls with too much food to choose from! I decided to have a chicken satay burger with rice, salad and peanut sauce. It was yummy. Others in our group had curry, a duck burger and pasta with pesto sauce. Lovely food and a very good price. Next we walked up the south bank of the river and visited Borough market. The variety of food on offer was amazing and my only disappointment was that we couldn’t buy any of the cheese or other varieties of food on offer because we had no way to store them or get them home before they spoiled! There are also free toilets in the Southbank Centre, which are very nice.

6               You can’t keep going at this pace for long:

We have had an amazing weekend, but I am now exhausted and need to go home for a rest. Gordon and Catherine went for a walk after dinner and ended up walking up The Strand, Fleet Street and Gray’s Inn Road on their way back to the hotel. I was shattered and got the bus back to King’s Cross and a much shorter walk home where I could write this blog post

Now to get the train home tomorrow and start researching Google to work out what we are going to do on our trip to Nice in September. Any suggestions would be welcome.