Occasional Scribbles

Posted by: Scribble | 12/03/2008

Diet Diaries

Today I want to introduce you to my Whippet, Skinny. Obviously not her real name, Skinnyher non de plume de chien and I are to embark on a restrictive eating plan today; otherwise known as a DIET. I am plain fat and she is what you might term well coverd so action must be taken to remedy this depressing fact. Skinny is ten months old and similar in colour to a Palomino horse with a darkish streak running the length of her back right to the end of her tail. She has gorgeous blue/gray eyes set in a dark gray face. Unfortunately at present, the phrase ‘Whippet thin’ does not spring to mind and she is rightly cross that I have not paid enough attention to her diet and exercise and consequently she now has to join me in the unenviable task of ridding herself of this excess poundage.

Skinny will from time to time be posting on this blog, if I let her get a word in edgeways.

I am making a promise today to her and myself which is that this shall be our final ‘diet’ EVER! (Her first and last of course). Yes, I have embarked on quite a few in recent years and it has to stop. I will never DIET again after this one. I hasten to add, I am not one those people who yo yo diet and try every new faddy one that comes into the general public awareness. I don’t do those celeb diets in fact I almost always do the same one and it is quite simple – I eat less, a lot less.

Much is written and discussed about diets and indeed there are a whole load of experts and ‘lifestyle’ people at the ready to impart words of wisdom on the subject. With child obesity on the increase and many of us leading more sedantry lives it is an ongoing topical subject and let’s face it, a real money maker. If you can convince people that you have the answer to their weight problems, either by selling miracle pills that purport to stop fat accumulating (fat blockers) or just selling people a way of eating which they could quite easily have worked out for themselves, you really are on to a good thing.

To me it is simple – eat less, exercise more, burn fat off, weigh less. And that’s it in a nutshell. I know there are people who say they don;t know about eating healthily but I don’t beleive it. There is so much information out there and virtually everything you buy has nutritional information on the packet, even if it is sometimes hard to understand. Who can really still say that they don’t know that you need to eat fruit, veg, protein (meat/cheese/dairy) and carbs (bread/pasta/rice/grains) in reasonable quantities? Who can say they don’t realise that chocolate, sweets, biscuits, unrefined carbs etc are best kept very limited? Who doesn’t know that if they don’t exercise they won’t keep up a reasonable level of fitness and burn calories?

I think exercise is more important than what you eat in some ways. A couple of years ago I was looking forward to going on a trip of a lifetime. To celebrate 50 years of marriage, my parents were taking the whole family on a cruise through the Norwegian fjiords and coastline. Being fat then too, I wasted no time in planning for the event and started a very strict diet. I had recently read that a well known man who was a larger than life character had decided to lose weight and went on a diet of 200 calories a day. In case you don’t know, the usual amount for an average man is around 2500 – 3000 calories a day. He decided he wasn’t going to pussy foot around losing a couple of pounds a week and didn’t want to spend ages losing it and so he put himself on this highly restricted diet to see if it was possible to do it. And it was. He didn’t fall down and die or suffer any real health problems. On the contrary, he lost a whacking three or so stone in about the same amount of months.

I recognised him as my sort of fellow and decided to do something similar. I didn’t go for 200 calories as I didn’t have as much to lose as him but I did limit myself to about 400/day and it was fantastic! In the first week I lost 7lbs, about a quarter of what I wanted to lose. I was so thrilled at this dramatic success that I went on to lose a total of 24lbs well within the time limit I needed before we left for Norway.

On a cruise there is not a lot to do other than admire the ever changing scenery and on this cruise it was superb – and eat. There are copious amounts of mouth watering foods on these ships. It is part of the reason for going really. Eating, sleeping, eating some more and then the same the next day. We had a buffet breakfast and lunch meaning you could go and have any number and quantity of different things and then there was a set meal in the evenings. Having lost a good amount of weight before we went away I was a bit anxious not to put it on again but the thing is I didn;t! Inspite of eating three meals a day and plenty of it, I actually lost a further 3lbs! The rest of the family pretty much put on a few pounds each as would be expected but not me. And the reason was that I almost never sat down the whole time we were aboard ship.

Each day I walked round and round the deck, I walked up and down the many stairs cases between decks and was constantly on my feet. The only times I really sat down were at meal times. I didn’t do this on purpose, I just found it hard to settle down. I thought I would get into a good book and had brought a few for the purpose, imagining the luxury of being almost forced to sit and read. But whether it was the constantly changing view or movement of the ship that kept me on my feet, I don’t know but I was nevertheless pleased to come home lighter than I went!

So exercise is the key without doubt!! And talking of which Skinny is badgering me to take her out for a walk!

Times they are a changing

I heard a saying a while back which said, you know you are getting old when you find the Antiques roadshow interesting!! I must be getting a bit old as I find it mildly entertaining! I know i’m not THAT old as I have a child of school age but in other ways I feel old. I find the news distressing and I actually care about what’s going on, especially in this country. Of course there is plenty of change in this country at the moment – and not for the better.

The smoking ban in public places has not only annoyed me but has genuinely affected the pub trade, especially pubs in rural places who can’t easily manage a drop in numbers or the expense of putting up an outside structure for smoking. This pub, like many in the country is in the middle of nowhere. It makes no sense or difference whatsoever, if people carry on smoking as they always have. It affects absolutely no one.

This govenment has been all too quick to implement bans on anything it wants when that is not the correct way to deal with things. These issues should be properly debated and due process should be observed. Democracy? Rarely does this government behave in a proper way and it is clear they have utter contempt for the people of this country.

I feel like a stranger in my own country. I find myself having to warn my 13 year old son to mind what he says and sometimes he asks me if he is allowed to say something. How did we get to this point? Slowly is the answer, it has crept up on us. We are now a nation who is spied upon more than any other. And this government wants to electronically tag us all via bio metric passports and identity cards. Despite a recent evaluation carried out to assess whether ID cards would make us safer from terrorism and finding that they would not, the government still want to force them onto us all. They are suggesting that the cards could be introduced gradually starting with with people who work in ‘sensitive’ areas such as airport and border staff but clearly this is just a way to get us to accept them. They will then make it impossible to obtain ordinary things such as bank accounts, getting driving licences etc until we all have to have them. How long will it be before we are tattooed with a number? These are frightening times. Peter Hitchens, writer and columnist for the Mail on Sunday has had an ongoing campaign urging people to renew their passports now in the hope that long before they expire, this governement will have been booted out and the next will scrap this vile scheme.

It seems to me that apart from the fact that this government cannot be trusted with personal data as it keeps allowing it to be lost and stolen; there is also the fact that no data can truly be protected from hackers and criminals or terrorists and therefore until it can be proved to be safe we should not be asked for it whether by means of bio passports, ID cards or anything else. And that is just the safety aspect. The moral rights and wrongs are another matter. Whether a government should interfere to such an extent in peoples lives is a question to consider. People in this country are used to thinking that the state is a benign affair and mostly it has been. However, we cannot depend on it being so in the future.

George Orwells 1984 is upon us now in some ways. Traditionally the labour party has always tried to nanny the people while the Conservatives tend to leave people to get on with their lives without interference. We have had a Labour government now for such a long time and we have been ‘nannied’ by it for too long. Everywhere you look, especially on TV they are telling us what we should be doing in every aspect of our lives. We are bombarded by state advertising telling us not to smoke, what to eat, how much exercise we should take, how to raise our children and worse, the state now feels that we are incapable of raising our children. They interfere now more than ever and have a band of teachers, social workers and police ready to report us if they disagree with our ways of child rearing. I would be really worried if I was having a baby now. Thankfully my children are nearly grown up, the youngest has only a few years left at school.

You might feel you can shut yourelf away in your own home and bury your head but under this government your home is no longer sacrosanct. The Englishman’s home is not his castle anymore. Other people can now enter it should they wish. The tax office is now able to come in without invitation and put bugs in your home and spy on you. If you wish to sell your home, you are now subjected to a nasty little inspector who will come and see if your windows and doors fit properly and your roof is insulated. This is ostensibly for the benefit of the purchaser but is really another way to collect data on us all and see if we are doing our duty by the ‘Green brigade’. Are we allowing our precious heat to escape our of creaky old houses and therefore burning more fuel than we should. Clearly this scheme is designed to punish us at some point along the line once the data is in, much the same as the monitoring of our rubbish tells how much we recycle and how much we can be fined, our houses will be a source of similar revenue. And how long before we have inspectors for our cars when we wish to sell them. What business is it of the government what shape our houses are in when we wish to sell them. By introducing this scheme the government is saying that we are not capable of deciding whether we wish to buy a house warts and all and are not able to negotiate the purchase without their help. They must tell us if the house is in good order for we cannot be trusted to find out for ourselves or prevent us from being ripped off by the vendors. Of course this is patent nonsense and it is not about protecting our buyers rights but about protecting the prospect of a ‘green’ tax on properties not kept up to the satisfaction of this ever demanding government. And so the last bastion of the Englishman, his castle, is no more. Depressing isn’t it. The times they are a-changing.

To the ‘Offended’.

And what to say…? Well I think I shall talk about ‘offense’ and comment on the recent news story about soldiers being asked not to wear their uniform in Peterborough lest it cause offense. The strange thing is, that when a random selection of people in the street were asked, not one could be found that was offended. We hear so often these days about ‘offended‘ people and much importance is put on how offended they feel or might feel if such and such happens. The offended are usually either a very tiny minority or are non existent and come in various shapes and sizes. Lots of things are being changed on the strength of a small number of offended people these days. They are in truth really quite hard to find. Much is made of the selfish behaviour of us all in this country towards the offended.

For a while now it has been the turn of the Muslims and other Ethnic people to be the ‘offended’. We have seen many examples of our disgraceful behaviour towards these people. For example: why must we have ham sandwiches in canteens across the country? And we really should be content to have Halal meat and go against all our soppy ideals about being a nation of animal lovers.

We are becoming quite small minded about our historic towns and traditions too. How dare we send each other Christmas cards as if we were a Christian nation. We must follow the lead of our charities in adopting the non Christian ‘Seasons Greetings’ and absolutely must not put up any Christmas decorations which may induce a feeling of being left out by other religious minorities, or offended. Up in Oxford amongst the church spires with their quiet, gentle inspiration, we must be allowed to hear Muslims call their people to prayer over a loud tannoy system as if in the Middle East itself.

And we really must stop banging on about our ancient system of law. That dusty, cobwebby institution that we have spent 1000 years refining simply must make way for another. Its dogged straight forward, measured ways must now accomodate Sharia law. It’s high time we allowed a foreign law to run along side even if it is the very opposite of our own. Where ours is most precise, Sharia is open to much interpretation and may mean different things to different people depending on how you feel on the day. Surely this is far easier to enforce. The old sins such as adultery that in biblical times wrought the fury of a sometimes seemingly mean God and for which we barely register shame today, should for our Muslim sisters, carry a punishment of those same biblical proportions, such as beatings and stoning. And how much better for our rapists if he finds that unlike our system of punishment that would mean a spell in prison for the offense, find that under Sharia law, he would almost never be convicted since the woman must find four men to say they witnessed the rape for it to be considered a rape. Fantastic.

Much has been made of our insistence on keeping the right to free speech. And this is at the crux of the problem between the ordinary fellow and the ‘offended’. God knows it is easy to offend anyone these days but for my part, I would rather be eternally offensive than have anyone’s right to be offended by me taken away.

O to be in England!

P.S. To anyone who may read this, should you feel offended I should like to point out that it is written with tongue in cheek and good humour demonstrating the wholly English trait that allows us to laugh at ourselves and of course other people.

Occasional Scribbles

Diet Diaries

Times they are a changing

To the ‘Offended’.

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