Jump on the bandwagon? Me? Oh you bet. I’ve tried it all. I’ve eaten low fat, no fat, low carbs, sugar free blah blah blah. And right now I’m over it. Over the lot of it. There are a few reasons:

all that means it’s just more processed and less actually “foodie”

it tends to be more expensive and more heavily packaged

it tastes (as Radio Boy so succinctly puts it) “like arse”

it hasn’t helped me lose weight

So I’m not doing it any more. No counting kilojoules. No looking at fat content.

I’ve always been a label reader, so now I’m looking for other stuff like sodium content, and how many things that I can’t actually pronounce that are in the stuff they’re trying to pass off as food.

I mean, this whole “low fat” thing has become a joke. There’s this chocolate spread that advertises itself as having less fat than peanut butter and less sugar than jam. So let’s look at this: peanut butter is, oh I don’t know, 90% fat or something ridiculous. It doesn’t pretend not to be. Jam, I do know, if it’s made properly, is 50% sugar. So this chocolate spread stuff is…what? 55% fat and 45% sugar? It could well be. The ads would still be honest and the boobs eating it can pretend it’s in some way good for them.

I’ve learned that stuff that promises it’s low in fat tends to be full of sugar. Stuff that promises it’s low in carbs has ramped up the fats. All sorts of fats.

And that brings me to eating stuff with fat in it. Be selective but go for the Omegas. 3 and 6 are called essential fatty acids for a reason. We need them. Skin, hair, choloesterol balance. It’s all good. They also help with inflammatory problems like arthritis and to help overcome depression. Plus they make things taste nicer. Go with oil fish like salmon. Go with nuts. Go with flax seeds (remember to grind them up first). The really bad fat, the one you don’t want, is trans fat. That’s the one associated with cancer and heart disease. Okay, fat is an energy intensive food, so it needs to be limited, but it isn’t the devil itself.

Carbohydrates can be a really important part of your diet. But again you have to be careful. Too much of the simple sugars like alcohol and, well, sugar, seem to backfire, giving you a brief lift before dropping you right in the dirt, but a good balance of carbos will help with your serotonin levels, and that’s going to make you feel good.

Well, that’s all for today. Not a very inspired blog. I hope you all have a great day. I really appreciate the comments you leave on my blog. It really makes me feel like I’m part of a community. I hope you like the picture of my cat Tiger. I made her go a funny colour because she’s a funny cat.

Well, that headline isn’t exactly true. My GP didn’t write a prescription, she just told me I had to exercise and get some endorphins. This is because she’s letting me come off the antidepressants. Yay! I know the meditation is helping but I’m delighted to report that yesterday I got on the treadmill.

It did take me most of the day to “get around” to getting on the tready. I told myself I wasn’t allowed to have lunch until after I’d been on it, so lunch didn’t happen till after 4. Oh well. At least I got there. I tried something different with the interval training, going from my version of a run (which isn’t very fast), staying at the same speed, but adding weights and then adding an incline. Then going back to a fast walk and doing it all again 3 more times. It’s only a 20 minute set but I did feel real good afterwards and I was warmed up in the afternoon which was a good thing, because it was a very cold day. It meant I could put off switching on the heater for another hour and save a bit more money and I hope a bit more global warming.

I have felt so good about listening to Jon’s CD every night. Some nights I feel so tired and I think “can I be bothered?” but I do it anyway because I know how much it’s helping me. I just want to add a bit here from his book. It’s about what he calls “emotional obesity”:

Even the simplest and most effortless approach to weightloss will fail if you have emotional obesity. Someone could say to you, ‘All you need to do is lift your little finger once a day for 30 days straight in order to lose weight’, but if you’re in the grip of emotional obesity you’ll find some ‘reason’ why it wasn’t possible to complete the program. You’ll ‘forget’ or you ‘won’t have time’ or ‘other things just got in the way’. You’ll sabotage your weightloss effort because at some level the need to be fat serves a vitally important survival function in your life.

In the various jobs I’ve had, I’ve met people who are a bit in love with their ignorance. They won’t learn, they don’t want to learn, they aren’t interested in learning. Someone else can do it for them. I recognise this in myself when I have looked for the magic weightloss pill, when every time they’ve talked about weightloss on TV I’ve stopped whatever I was doing and stood there, hoping to learn the secret of thin. Ultimately I had to take a good hard look at what I was doing wrong and realise that I’ll do anything to lose weight except change.

But now I am changing. Okay. Yeah, I’m at that age when the word “change” means a whole lot of hormonal stuff too, but why shouldn’t I make that work for me?

I’m in a state of change, and I’m using it for good, not evil.

Bringing me back to the whole frog and metamorphosis story.

And insects, of course. I’ve always wondered what happens inside a chrysalis. Does the caterpillar just change, same as a taddy metamorphs into a frog, or does it turn into a sort of DNA soup that starts off caterpillar, goes to mush and then becomes butterfly?

You always get the “before” picture and the “after” picture but you never get to see what goes on “during”.

It’s been a big weekend. Friday was ANZAC Day. I don’t know if non-Australians are aware of this holiday, but basically we remind ourselves of what a bunch of tools we were, back in WW I, invading Turkey and basically getting our arses kicked for our trouble, that war sucks, and that the people who have gone to war for us really deserved a whole lot better.

It’s also my mum’s birthday.

It was an odd ANZAC Day for me. Again, very Australian reference, but HMAS Sydney was lost off the West Australian coast during WWII and there were no survivors. Mum had 4 brothers and all of them were in the war, but only Ray, who was on the Sydney, didn’t come back. It was one of those stupid, tragic stories: Ray was actually stationed on HMAS Perth, but went AWL with a friend. He was collected by the Military Police and returned to the RAN, and the next ship along happened to be the Sydney. A couple of weeks ago, the wreck of the Sydney was finally located. Yeah, it’s been that long. My only other relative who didn’t return from the second world war was Dad’s father. He was a prisoner on the Burma Railway, and like so many, died. Starvation? Injuries? Sheer mistreatment? Who knows.

Anyway, on to more cheerful thoughts.

We had a great breakfast with 8 of us sitting round the table. Radio Boy made it down from Bega for the long weekend and was there to wish his grandma a happy birthday, and Poss and BF were there as well. We had bowls and bowls of fresh fruit and I made my special fruit salad dressing. It goes like this: yoghourt (I use Greek style, no low fat for me!) some protein powder, some flax seed oil, honey (I use Manuka), ground up nuts (brazils, macadamias, almonds and walnuts) and finely ground seeds (flax, sunflower and pepitas). The dressing was a big hit, so I didn’t mention to anyone that it was good for them. We also had bacon and eggs and raisin toast (I love our bread machine) and Beloved had the coffee machine earning its keep all morning. I felt so full and good, I didn’t even need to have any lunch. I’m going for low GI food and slow release food so that I can fill up and not have to worry about being hungry for a long time. Lunch is always my worst meal, it’s boring and I can never think of what to have.

My morning meditation sessions are becoming a bit more of a challenge since we actually got some weather this weekend. Yesterday was cool and this morning I was out there in 5º and a breeze and rain. Not that I got very rained on, since the balcony does have a roof, but I was cool. Of course there is no rule that says I have to do this out of doors or naked, it’s just how I like to be. I feel cooled down for the day. As if this is a way of dealing with my menopausal heat. When I came inside, my skin was pleasanty chilled and my hands were still warmer than Beloved’s, even though he was snugged up in a fleecy and wearing his hat. Funny that, isn’t it? He was always the strong, warm male and I was always the shivering female. (I have a thyroid disorder which makes me susceptible to the cold) but now the roles are reversed. A sign of age, I guess.

The pond is going really great. It was losing water at one stage, but Beloved fixed that with a bit of silicone. Unfortunately, I’m very sad to report that the fish are not doing so well. It’s been very dry, you see, and the kookaburras have cleaned up all the skinks they could find, and the ground is too hard for yabbies

who have dug themselves in to wait for rain, so the kookas have picked on my fish. Especially my poor rainbow fish.

sigh. Well, I guess they are called kingfishers for a reason.

Thank you everyone for your kind comments on my blog. I am enjoying writing it so much and I do feel that it’s helping to keep me in focus as I make these changes that I hope will lead to a permanent, healthy weightloss.

And so the small changes continue, but the importance is that they are CHANGES. I even got a new operating system for my computer. I’ve gone from a Tiger to a Leopard.

And my spots have changed. Even if only a little bit.