12 November: Choices

Contrary to popular belief, it's not actually difficult to eat less, especially if you have been aware for some time that you have been eating too much, and simply don't need all that food.

All you have to do is to make the choice (and we all make constant choices) to reduce the amount going into your mouth.

Interest in food can be diverted to choosing what to eat - incidentally it all tastes better when there's less quantity; and obviously, you can also choose to improve the quality when you eat less. Time spent preparing meals can be much less, for example just the time needed to cook some pasta and stir a small jar of pesto through it, and sprinkle a few nuts and seeds on top. Or slide a frozen pizza into the oven while you put a salad together, fill the coffee maker and wash some apples for a pudding. Or you can have that fruit pie, but a smaller piece than you used to have. (Of course, anyone so inclined can spend hours preparing a meal that is eaten in three minutes, but that's a choice I don't make.)

Doing away with snacks between meals is a basic move in this strategy too. Any hunger pangs can be diverted by drinking sugar water instead of coffee - this idea came from a book called The Shangri-La Diet, by Seth Roberts, which suggests drinking sugar water or olive oil as a way to slim. I actually tried the olive oil - once. But the sugar water provides enough to convince your stomach that you are full. Dr Roberts puts forward interesting theories about diet in his book, and I have certainly found the sugar water helpful.

There is a saying that 3 parts of a full stomach feed the person, the fourth feeds their doctor.
Plus the food industry, the advertising industry, and the slimming industry.

Keeping a balance can be tricky when you cut down, but I already take a multi-vitamin tablet and a flax seed oil capsule every day - the oil and the absence of meat has improved the joint pains and stiffness I used to get. We all know by now that processed foods have lots of ingredients that do you no good (and never quite look as good in reality as they do on the packaging!), but fruit and veg don't have those snazzy labels on to tell you how much fat etc. is in them. Mind you, it's alarming how many calories are in some foods that are often thought of as slimming.

Anyway, I have lost another pound since I last posted about this, and now have to keep my jeans up with a belt.