2 forward and only one back - better than the other way round!

I would never in a million years claim to be perfect.  Whenever I take it into my mind to try to achieve something, I always go all out, but I do tend to burn out quite quickly, and I'm aware of this.  I don't intend to trifle with my diet though, because the stakes are too high, but that doesn't mean that I'll never slip, only that when I do I'll start over and try harder.

My food diary has died a death this week.  For some bizarre reason I thought I'd remember what I'd eaten, which is a bit of a joke as I can barely remember what year it is without checking these days.  I have odd bits written down and most of my fruit has gone so I know I ate it, but I don't have a complete record to offer of what I ate when and in what combinations.  And tonight I bought and drank most of a bottle of non-organic (but vegan) white wine, which I've not done for ages!  I may finish the bottle tomorrow, but I'll probably not buy another until nearly Christmas, and I can live with that.  I was drinking at least half a bottle a day a few months ago - I'd not want to go back to that and I won't.

In other news, another 2lbs of weight had left me when I got on the scales on Saturday morning.  That's 3lb so far, little short of miraculous.  It's not what this is about, but as being obese is so unhealthy, I am very pleased by this side effect.

Less pleasing is the news that my hand is poorly again.  It's never really recovered from the ailment that took me to the local GP surgery for the first time in years, a few short weeks ago.  A course of antibiotics helped, but my hand never fully recovered from the underlying problem and now I think it's infected again.  When I massage cream into it it feels as though I have a handful of sand in the mix, where hundreds of tiny bumps are itching over the palm.  Something has irritated it badly, and the favourite suspect at present is Mr Sheen.  When I do my cleaning job I wear a cotton glove under a latex glove for the wet work.  But for the dusting I go in naked, and that may be a mistake.  But cleaning with a hand tressed up almost to the point of immobility is uncomfortable and inconvenient and not terribly efficient.  I have another employment option to pursue, but I don't really want to lose the work I do at the moment because I find a satisfaction in it and that's valuable.  We'll see.

Spinach rice with roasted tofu, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes.  Mushrooms and rice organic, the rest not.

Organic brown rice with tinned chickpea dhal (Sainsbury's, not organic but all real food ingredients, no chemicals) and a salad of cucumber (organic), tomatoes and avocado sprayed with balsamic vinegar.

Red pepper stuffed  with rice, spinach, toasted seeds, sauteed onion and mushrooms.  Jacket potato and salad of tomato, cucumber and celery.  All organic except spinach and tomatoes.

My first lunch after my visit to the organic farm shop.  Veg braised in stock: onion, celeriac, golden carrot, yellow beetroot, red pepper and pointy cabbage (all organic) with a jacket potato (also organic) and a dollop of conventional hummus.

When I have time I'll write up the bit of food diary that I recorded, but these photos should at least show that I've not lost the plot entirely.

Water, water everywhere and not much else to drink!

I like water as a cold drink, but not all the time.  I'm avoiding fizzy drinks for the obvious reasons, and squash because it's not a lot better, but that leaves a void.  Hot drinks are fine, I have a selection of teas that do the job.  But when I want a cold drink with flavour, without much/any effort, does the healthy eater have any recourse?

Food diary for today:

Breakfast: Last night's leftover potatoes and veg  and a slice of toast with peanut butter and jam.
AM: Packet of seedy oatcakes
PM: Soup made with green lentils, carrot, parsnip, leek, swede, kale, fresh lemon juice, turmeric, black pepper and reduced-salt marmite.  This was good - proof that you can pretty much hide anything you don't like in a well-flavoured soup!
Dinner:  More of the soup with a large jacket potato.  Loadsa fibre!   5 squares of dark chocolate, the first for ages!   Mug of chamomile tea.

I am not in any way punishing myself by having the same foods at subsequent meals.  I love leftovers of almost anything.  Flavours develop and blend, and I love to eat food that I haven't just had to make!!

To box or not to box

I've had a peek at this week's organic box contents and am thinking of giving it a miss.  Apart from the staples, the ingredients will be kale, leeks and swede, all of which I can live without this week, plus beetroots and  mushrooms, both of which I would like.

The staples are potatoes (nowhere near enough for me), carrots (I like them a lot, but the quantity is too much) and onions (about right).  My own staples would include mushrooms, tomatoes and cucumber, but this company regards them as extras and I feel their absence.  I got a cucumber and some mushrooms at Sainsbury, but I have no tomatoes and a salad's not the same without them.  I must learn to be more flexible!!

I think this may be a week for visiting the shop and picking out my own.  I am replete with carrots, parsnips and leeks, and I still have a bit of swede from the first week in the fridge.  I like it, but only mashed with carrots and as I tend away from meals of "something" with several veg, there aren't that many times when I'll eat it.  They open on Friday's for personal shoppers, so if DH is off work (quite often in on a Friday) then I'll pop over.  Otherwise it's back to Sainsbury and an extension on the mortgage!

Sunday sautee

Still doing ok, I'm feeling fine and in good spirits and I can't ask more than that.

Breakfast:  A banana, 2 slices toast and butterbean & olive pate (you get a lot from just one tin of beans!)  tea and coconut milk (ok, but I'll stick to soya)

Lunch: The rest of last night's salad with the rest of the tin of chick peas. 2 Lidl's own brand weetabix with coconut milk and a chopped banana

PM: A kiwifruit

Dinner:  I couldn't put off the dreaded moment any longer - it had to be kale!  I sauteed in water and tamari a large carrot, onion, leek and 5 big leaves of torn-up kale.  Meanwhile I boiled some potatoes (peeled the scabby ones, scrubbed the rest).  I topped the potatoes with the last of the butterbean pate and served with the veg.  Considering that I'm not a fan of leeks and I can't seem to make myself like kale, it was ok.  Some of the pate mixed into the veg juice and made a thickish garlic gravy, which helped.  If it had been spring greens rather than kale I would have enjoyed it a lot, but sauteed kale is way too chewy for my taste.  For something sweet afterwards I had a slice of bread with peanut butter and mixed fruit jam.

Evening: Drink of coconut and soya milks mixed.

I'm actually feeling pretty good, but I'm not going to assume that a change in diet could make much difference so quickly.  I think it's likely the psychological boost of knowing that I am acting to address my health and ageing issues rather than resigning myself to my fate that's contributed to my current wellbeing.  K says I can expect to see improvements in about 4 months, as my cells renew themselves with good nutrients rather than struggling to find the raw materials they need in cream crackers and oily potatoes.  Poor things.

Oh no, I'm a garlic monster

I fancied something different for breakfast today.  I mean, toast, yes obviously, but not peanut butter or hummus (I don't have any).  So I whizzed up a tin of butter beans, some black olives a couple of cloves of garlic and about a quarter of a lemon's worth of juice with a bit of water to ease the mixture, and had some on 2 slices of crisp toast (left the toast under the grill to cool, it gets crispier that way).  It was really good, but oh my word that garlic was strong.  Tasted great, but I can still taste it now, 8 hours later!

Food diary:
Friday 21st:
Breakfast: 2 slices toast, one with leftover bubble & squeak and a bit of brown sauce, the other with spread and mixed fruit jam.  Tea with soya milk
Lunch:  Wholewheat spaghetti with the last of the mung bean chilli and brussels sprouts.  Not a horrible combination, whatever you may be thinking!

Even quite pretty in its own way.

PM: Lemon & ginger tea from a bag and an apple.
Dinner:  My lunch was big and filling so I didn't feel the need for another cooked dinner, and I still didn't have any chocolate, so I made myself a big bowl of porridge as both nutritious and sweet.  I used porridge oats, water, soya milk, dates, walnuts and omega seed mix.  It was quite nice, but I can't get used to the bag of organic dates.  It has an "off" smell, faint but not nice, and the dates are hard even when simmered in water for the porridge.  It may just be a bad bag, or it may be that the variety of dates that can be successfully grown organically just isn't that nice.  We'll see.
I also had a couple of handfuls of cream crackers during the day when the munchies struck.

Today so far:
Breakfast: See above.
Lunch: The same as breakfast - glutton for punishment!  Glass of Alpro unsweetened coconut milk
PM: a pear, a kiwifruit

I'm currently debating what to have for dinner.  It should include leafy greens.  Maybe a winter salad.

Debate over - salad it was!
Dinner: one-bowl salad of finely-shredded savoy cabbage , grated carrot, red pepper, celery, apple, chick peas, cucumber, white mushrooms, French dressing, toasted walnuts and seed mix with pickled baby beetroots dressed with wholegrain mustard.  It was extremely tasty and I would definitely use savoy this way again; it was very pleasant combined with the dressing and the toasted seeds, in a way I would not have believed of something I normally dislike so much.

I'm not doing any of this to lose weight, but I am a pound lighter than before I started eating more healthily.  I'm not reading anything into that because a pound is easy to lose and gain, but I'm recording it to see if it carries on.

I went shopping to Sainsbury today for the first time for myself, and came back over £50 poorer.  I was both encouraged by what I was able to buy at an acceptable price (peanut butter, brown rice, porridge oats, tomato puree, kiwifruit and savoury biscuits amongst other things) and well cheesed off by the things I couldn't get there at all (organic frozen veg other than peas, organic dried beans other than green lentils, any fresh veg (other than mushrooms) at a price that didn't make me clench everything in shock).  I need to keep records of what I can get where.

Spot the non-deliberate mistake anyone? 
Yes, that is indeed a pack of non-organic Basics avocadoes
in my otherwise proudly-organic Sainsbury haul!

I also bought some non-organics, for reasons of economy and availability.  I bemoaned this to Dear Husband afterwards, and his response made a lot of sense.  He said, "you've been eating crap for so long I should think even eating non-organic fruit and veg would make a massive difference."  He is of course right.

Choices will need to be made

As things stand, I won't ever be able to afford to buy all organic foods.  I intend to buy dried beans and learn to use the pressure cooker, because organic tinned beans are a horrible price compared to what I have been paying.  So I have a solution there.

The best price for organic brown rice I've seen online so far is no less than 6 times as much as I have been paying until now for non-organic white.  I know that white rice is almost devoid of nutrition, but honestly, 6 times as much?  To leave the bran on?  I can't buy in bulk because I am one person short on storage space and probably only eat rice once a week, so I'll just have to suck it up and pay the difference, but trust me on this - there will be not so much as a single precious grain wasted!  Which, of course, is as it should be.

K has told me that non-organic bread is not good.   Very convenient of course, a wholemeal loaf from lidl or Co-op can be had for 75p or less and is still perfectly edible 5 or 6 days later.  Of course there's a reason for that - preservatives.  Not good, so I will be eating organic bread whenever possible, which should be most of the time.  I'd love to think that in future I will have the time, patience and skill to bake my own, not to mention being able to buy organic wholemeal flour locally, but at the moment all I can do is look at that desirable attributes list and laugh.  Maybe flatbreads, in time. :)

There's a dirty dozen and clean fifteen list of (non organic) fruits and veg most and least polluted, but so far I've only found it for the US, and I'm sure it must vary from country to country with different pests and different growing conditions.  For the moment I will stick with the organic box, organic bananas from Lidl and take my chances with a few other conventional fruits.  The only dried fruit I really like is dates, and although they are a horrible price organic, I don't use that many - they are treats and to sweeten porridge, so a pack will last a long time and I can live with that.

I really should buy some organic tea, because I have a tea bag each day (makes 2-3 mugs) and I have a feeling that tea might use a lot of pesticides, although I don't really know.  I also drink herbal/fruit teas and have started to buy organic because they are not a bad price really.  Organic soya milk can be had for about twice the price of supermarkets' own value brands.  With beans comprising such a small part of the overall product, I'm not sure how much benefit is gained from changing.  If soya is a heavily polluted crop then it's worth the swap, but if not then I'll stick with "value" brands and save there.

At the moment all my storecupboard condiments are conventional - salad dressings and the like.  Not sure where I'll go with this at the moment.

I've not yet investigated the costs of things like nuts, but I suspect I'll be horrified.


I eat several 100g bars of non-organic dark chocolate each week and I can't see that changing any time soon.

However I tackle this, there is no doubt that my food bill is going to be more.  I already spent as much this week on fruit & veg as I used to spend in total for a week's groceries just for me, and woman cannot live by kale alone.  Well, this woman certainly can't!

One way of offsetting some of the extra is by eliminating waste.  For example I already saved some bouillon powder by refrigerating the water in which I cooked carrots and swede and using it a couple of days later to make soup.  A small saving, not only in terms of money but also nutrients.  That pleases me.  And no leftovers will be thrown away, no matter how bored I may become of something I've made too much of!  Expensive ingredients will be used carefully and to their best advantage, rather than casually chucked in and binned if I don't like the results (although to be fair I've been one to throw away leftovers).  The waste I have been guilty of is more along the lines of veg bought and forgotten (particularly aubergines which look so wonderful in the shop that you have to buy them, but then don't use them and find them beige and shrivelled 2 weeks later).  That sort of waste I cannot deny, but now that I am so much more aware of the food I have in the house, that is unlikely to happen.

There will I am sure be times when I have no bread and little money, and the 75p loaf it will have to be.  I can only do my best with the resources I have.  I am really the only one who needs to be convinced because I am the only one who will shout at me for being less than perfect.  I need to remember that!

The bit of Thursday that I didn't spend grizzling, I spent eating.

Thursday

Breakfast:  Leftover rice and chilli from last night.  Wasn't really hungry but I never go to work without eating.
Lunch:  Leftover soup from yesterday, slice of bread & spread.
PM: An apple and 4 dates.  A slice of bread and peanut butter. A banana and another (organic box) apple later.
Dinner: Bubble & squeak - onion and red pepper sauteed in water & tamari, boiled potatoes, steamed savoy cabbage, soya milk, salt & pepper.  All mixed together and dry-fried in a non-stick pan.  Leftover chilli from last night, olives and sweet pickle.  No chocolate left, so had some Swedish Glace vegan ice cream.

I have the muchies something shocking, for no apparent reason, although not having access to chocolate might have something to do with it.  Definitely feels like comfort eating.  Anxiety levels not helped by the fact that I have no more comfort foods available!!

Greens, greens, greens greens

Today is organic box day and I am disappointed.  Last weeks was pretty good overall - potatoes, carrots, onions, brussels, chestnut mushrooms, tomatoes, purple sprouting, leeks.  A good variety and I liked almost all of it.

This week I decided to try a mixed fruit & veg box, plus some extra potatoes as we get through quite a lot  and a lemon.  I upped the size from a small to a medium to that I would get just as much veg, just extra fruit.  The trouble with that is that the boxes are deigned for increasing numbers of people, so instead of more variety, I got larger quantities of just a few types of veg.  And it's not their fault, but I really dislike several of the items.  There are spuds, carrots and onions as standard, every week, which is fine.  But the greens this week are savoy cabbage, curly kale and leeks, none of which I like when they are recognisable (leeks are good in soup).  But to me savoy and kale aren't good in anything, so I'm having to think up ways of disguising them.  Tonight is bubble & squeak, with added onion and red pepper and tamari to try to take away the taste of the savoy.

Unfortunately the box I got originally was a medium veg box, and it had all sorts of nice things like purple kohl rabi, celeriac, raw beetroots, red onions and cavalerro nero (sp?).  But it was the wrong box so I had to give it back and have instead a load of things I don't like.  Next week I'm going back to just veg - the bananas are bright green so won't be edible until next week anyway, the apples are woolly which I dislike and the pears are like bullets.  So definitely not worth doing again.

I'm starting to remember why I gave up on organic veg boxes last time. :(

The next bit. Still doing (mostly) ok.

I'm going to drop the preceding "O" for Organic and start showing everything I eat that counts towards the government-recommended 5 a day (fat lot most of them know about nutrition, but still) in bold and everything that's organic underlined.  Anything bold and underlined is, fairly obviously, both.  That way, K and I can see at a glance how much of my intake is organic, and how much fruit and veg/pulses I am managing to eat.


Food diary:
Monday 17th November 2014
Breakfast: 6 Oatcakes, tea with soya milk
Lunch: Tin veg soup, Bread & spread, tea with soya milk  Half a 100g bar (or possibly more) of dark chocolate.  What was I thinking? (Actually I was thinking "Yum, more, gimme more!")

Monday's dinner

PM: Glass soya milk - note to self, I like the taste of Alpro organic soya milk.
Dinner: Steamed Brussels, boiled mashed swede and Carrot with tarragon and less than a tsp olive oil, Smoked tofu roast - Packet stuffing mix with added fried Onion (tiny amount of oil), Mixed seeds, Tomatoes, bouillon powder, nuritional yeast, cubed smoked Tofu, all mixed together, heaped onto a baking tray, sprinkled with mixed seeds and baked at about gas mk 5 until browned.  Not bad, but would have been better without the tomatoes. As usual I made far more than I needed, so loads left over.  Good job I like leftovers!  Believe it or not I had some more chocolate afterwards.  Had a rough night's sleep and felt pretty gross in the morning in consequence - I think that's what did it, anyway.  I had 2 mugs of Sleep Easy tea before bed, and that may have been too much!

Tuesday 18th
Breakfast: Leftover tofu bake in a 2-slice sarnie with wholegrain mustard and tea with soya milk
AM: Apple, banana and a few walnuts
Lunch: :Salad of  wholewheat pasta farfalle, tomatoes, cucumber, celery, balsamic dressing and salt. 1 boiled sweet (my last one).
PM: Slice of bread and peanut butter
Dinner: Leftover tofu bake and leftover pasta salad with a few shakes of tamari.  A couple of squares of chocolate.
I had trouble going to sleep, but slept ok once I was off.  I think there was too much carbohydrate in my dinner (In the whole day, now I look back!), consequently I was still buzzing at well gone midnight, but you can't get up and start hoovering, can you?

Wednesday 19th
Breakfast: Toast & peanut butter, tea & soya milk
Lunch: Homemade soup, made with Mondays' organic carrot and swede water (saved in the fridge), red lentils, leek, potatoes, bouillon powder & black pepper.  Nice.  1 slice Bread (no spread).

I have some mung beans (the only organic beans I could find at the weekend) soaking, but no idea what to do with them.  Something with rice, I think, I'll have to search for a recipe.  Thank goodness for the internet, whatever did we do without it?

In the end I didn't bother with a recipe.  I boiled the beans until soft, meanwhile I sauteed an onion, carrot and parsnip in a little olive oil, and when softened added a good shake of chilli powder and let cook a little longer.  Then I added a tin of plum tomatoes and a very generous squeeze of tomato puree, some water and the beans. I turned the heat right down and let it think about things for a bit while the brown rice boiled (salt added).  About 5 mins before it was all done, I whizzed a handful of pimento-stuffed green olives to a rough paste and stirred them into the chilli, to season.  It was very successful and tasty and of course I have a ton left over!  It will be good on wholewheat spaghetti (it's quite bolognesey in consistency) or on a jacket spud for a quick lunch.  I may freeze some.

I wish I'd had some lovely green parsley to make it a bit more photogenic

Early days - mostly food diary. Fascinating to me, probably not to you.

It makes sense to keep a log of what I'm eating and drinking, and it will help K to help me if she knows where I'm going wrong and right.

I should say up front that I am taking this whole process a step at a time, and don't know where I will ultimately end up, except that it will be with a more healthy diet than I started with.  I also will not be junking any of my existing food stocks, even the really poor ones, because above most things I abhor waste.

With that in mind, this is what I've been eating/drinking (excluding tap water). Anything organic will be preceded with an upper-case O:



Day 1 - Tuesday 11th November 2014
Breakfast - Porridge made with oats, 1 apple (skin on), 3 purple plums, 3 dates, soya milk (just a bit, mostly water), mixed spice, ground cloves, vanilla essence.  Tea with soya milk.
Lunch: 2-slice sarnie of wholmeal bread, blue Sheese and home-made coleslaw (red cabbage, onion, carrots, red pepper, celery vegan salad cream, salt and pepper).  Tinned pineapple.  Tea with soya milk.
Afternoon:  a 2-slice peanut butter sarnie and a few boiled sweets.
Dinner:  Home-made, soup of onion/parsnip/potato/carrot/cauli/red lentils salt & pepper, vecon stock, turmeric.  Made and ate quite a lot of this - it was good!

Day 2 - Wednesday
Breakfast:  2 slices of toast & peanut butter and a smoothie made with water, banana, plums, apple and a bit of tahini that did not improve the flavour - I won't do that again but I was aiming for a calcium boost.  Tea with soya milk.
Lunch: Leftover soup, 2 slices of wholemeal bread and vegan spread.
Dinner: The last of the soup and the rest of yesterday's coleslaw with olives added.  A glass of soya milk.
Evening: 2 or 3 boiled sweets, 3 squares of chocolate and a handful of cream crackers.

Day 3 - Thursday - my recording of this day was patchy, I may have left things out.
Breakfast: 2 slices of toast & peanut butter, tea with soya milk
Lunch: 6 oatcakes, redbush tea and soup made with celery, onion, carrot. potato, tinned chickpeas (in water), cauli, lo-salt, turmeric, pepper.  Not nice.  I think the celery clashed with the chickpeas and it lacked something with just salt rather than Vecon.
Dinner:  Leftover soup spiced up with chilli sauce and onion salt.  Better but still not that nice.  2 slices bread and vegan spread.  7 Rich Tea biscuits.
Evening: Glass of soya milk and handful of cream crackers.

Part of my organic haul from Saturday's shopping. 
I tried not to use Holland and Barratt,
but in the end I had no choice.

Day 4 - Friday (first day after organic veg box arrived)
Breakfast: 2 slices wholemeal toast, vegan spread and mixed fruit jam (ran out of peanut butter!) a handful of walnuts and 2 mugs of tea with soya milk.
Lunch: 2 slice organic peanut butter sarnie (I went shopping) :)
Dinner:  Curry (made by DH, dear husband) from a kit, with added Opotatoes, Ocarrot, chickpeas (tinned) and white basmati rice.
Evening: several squares of dark chocolate, mug of green tea with lemon (from a bag)

Day 5 - Saturday
Breakfast: 2 slices wholemeal toast and low fat shop-bought hummus, 1 apple, 1 banana, tea with soya milk
Lunch: 2 slices wholemeal toast and low fat shop-bought hummus (yes again, I love hummus!) Olemon & ginger tea (from a bag)
Dinner: Roast veg (all organic) - potato, parsnip, swede, carrot and mushroom, barboiled, coated in garlic-infused olive oil, salt, pepper and dried mixed herbs, then roasted on a baking sheet.  Served with OPurple sprouting broccoli, OLeek and frozen peas all braised in stock, (Note the broccoli stems and leaves - I made this!) and half a pack of OSmoked tofu.
Supper: Pack of OOatcakes

Day 6 - Sunday
Breakfast: 2 slices toast and hummus, 1 banana
Lunch: leftover roast and braised veggies with balsamic dressing.
PM: bowl of OPorridge with ODates and walnuts.  Slice of OBread & vegan spread
Dinner: Stuffed OMushrooms (packet stuffing mix, OOnion, celery, Oseed mixture, bouillon powder). OJacket potato with the last of the hummus
. Steamed OBrussels, OPurple sprouting, baby sweetcorn, asparagus, mangetout, and a glass of white wine!

I mentioned that I *hate* waste.  Imagine then my dismay when I saw that on Sunday Dear Husband had reduced this:

A perfectly lovely big head of organic purple sprouting broccoli

 to this:

A few sad little purple sprouts and a big pile of leafy greens
and edible stems in the compost bag.

One man's compost is another woman's calcium supply for the week  I'm taking over veg prep!

Getting older can be a pain, but it beats the alternative.

My parents are in their 80s and 90s respectively, and my work brings me into close contact with people past retirement age.  This is teaching me some valuable lessons about how to get older.  One of these lessons is that it's not your age that matters, it's how much you enjoy life, and to what extent your physical state permits you to enjoy life.  I have "done" for people in their nineties who have dancing as their main hobby.  Equally well I have worked for people in their early seventies who are basically past their sell-by date.

I am in the second half of my fifties, and starting to look at my sixties as they zoom towards me at scary speed.  They don't worry me, so long as they bring optimism, pleasure, enjoyment and above all peace of mind with them.  They can't do that if I am spending my emotional energy worrying about my body and fighting increasingly poor health.

I'm starting to creak a bit, as it happens.  A knee that grumbles for a week or two from time to time.  A bit of eczema here and there.  Nothing major, fingers crossed, but warning signs that perhaps I have not looked after myself quite as much as I might.

I've not done too badly so far by the average British standard; I gave up smoking for the last time 15+ years ago, drink alcohol infrequently, take prescription drugs only when I really have to (every few years so far), and get mostly-regular exercise by walking my dogs almost every day.  I don't eat any animal products at all, but I can't claim to eat healthily apart from that.  I am one of those "mythical" creatures - a fat vegan.  The weight piled on when I stopped smoking and started eating and drinking for England, and although a fair chunk has disappeared over the last year or so, I still have about 4.5 stones to lose to be at my ideal weight.  I don't diet, because dieting is in part how I got so big in the first place, so any loss has to be through sensible eating, good exercise and the occasional (rare) stomach upset.

I've been lucky with my health - no hospitalisations, no regular medications, I didn't even have a blood test until I was 50 and bitten by a tick!  So I have rather taken my good health for granted over the decades, but I think that now is the time to make sure that it continues rather than just hoping that it does.

I am in no doubt whatever that the foundation of good health is good nutrition.  It's a shame that doctors receive so little training in this area, but it is as it is, and anyone who wants to do the best for their health needs to take responsibility for their nutrition and do some serious research.  Or - find a guru!

I have one of these, my friend the lovely lady K.  She has had her own health challenges and has handled them with grace, the help of her wonderful husband, and good nutrition.  She is now going to be my mentor and moral support while I try to regain and underpin my accustomed good health and retain it into my later years. 

This blog will be of no interest to anyone other than K and me, I suspect, but you are welcome here if I'm wrong.  It will report my food diary - for a while at least, and record my efforts and the success or failure thereof to source and enjoy organic products and dump (most of) the crap that I have been living on for the last few years.

From my amateur standpoint, I reckon there are two elements to nutrition - the stuff you consume and the stuff you don't.  You might be able to get away with a degree of bad habit in either one of those areas, but if you ignore both I think you're going to be in trouble with your health quite quickly.

I've done ok in terms of some of the bad stuff that I don't eat - anything from an animal.  We've been conditioned from birth, most of us, to think of animal products such as meat, milk and eggs as being the backbone of sound nutrition.  I now believe them to be not only unnecessary and cruel, but downright damaging to the human body.  I've not knowingly eaten anything from an animal since June 1999, and when I had my last blood tests something less than 5 years ago, everything was in good working order and no deficiencies reported.  Everything ok there then!

The area in which I fall down, badly, is the good stuff that I don't eat.  I'm a vegetarian who doesn't much like veg, or many fruits.  Well I kind of do like some of them, but they are a lot of effort and not terribly filling, and if there's one thing I like, it's feeling full!  Consequently I will bypass brussels that I have to peel and cook, and which are not filling but very healthy, and instead eat mushy peas from a tin which I don't, and which are, and which aren't.  And - important point this - which cost less.

I am not well off, and I help support a destitute dog rescuer in Romania, from whom I adopted my two young dogs.  I live simply in order that I can help her dogs to live at all, and I don't regret or begrudge that one bit.  But eating cheaply does mean far too much reliance on refined starch.  Cream crackers, white rice/pasta/noodles - all very cheap and on the face of it, filling.  Plus cheap and unhealthy tinned foods, with additives to make your hair curl (or possibly break and fall out, although mine hasn't so far).

A typical day's eating might go something like this:
Breakfast, 2 slices wholemeal toast with Lidl's peanut butter (containing salt and sugar).  Tea with soya milk
Lunch: Lidl's noodles with either half a tin of Lidl's mushy peas or Lidl's baked beans mixed in.
Dinner: a pack of Lidl's chilled sauteed potatoes with onion, oven baked, plus 3 Sainsbury's or Linda McC's sausages and Lidl's tomato ketchup.
Supper: a BIG handful of Lidl's cream crackers.

Cheap crap, with hardly a veg and no fruit in sight.  5 a day?  Lucky to get 5 a week sometimes.  And I know better, I really do.  So now, with K's help. I am going to DO better!

Watch this space.