My friends, I need a clear ... (I did it Orlistat's way)

The times (and body) they are a-changing. Last night, after saving up enough Weightwatchers points to accommodate a veterinary practice and chips, we went went to a local Italian "bistro" for Mother's Day. An odd place, it effectively does (reasonably priced) bland pub food, but with added words like "Barga" and "traditional Italian" to the front of the occasional dish name.

Suffice is to say, I used to love it - or at least not see what D had against. But last night marked an interesting change. For a start, the Mothering Sunday atmos was not condusive to a nice meal (particularly one we had been studiously saving our POINTS for over the last week). We sat in an almost permanent draft, the service was slow and erratic, and for some reason the management saw fit to allow a huge darts player of a man, with a granny's landing strip beard, to serenade the restaurant from a corner with his Casio keyboard. As we nibbled on our starters, he urged the gathered diners to sway from side to side to a bellowed "That's Amore!" and an electronic beat. If this was to aid the peristalsis, then it failed.

Of course, what really matters in a restaurant is their food. I ordered deep fried haggis balls, a fish medley (thankfully not provided by the Rat Pack Bobby George in the corner) and waffles, chocolate sauce and banana. And the funny thing was - I didn't really enjoy it. This IS the type of food I previously would have wolfed down with a wolvish grin. In fact, scratch that. In times of depression, times of stress, times of dull mundanity, this is the type of food that was a highlight of my whole week. Now it just seems (to use the word of the moment) "meh". Has bland pub food always seemed like this to most people? I even started to resent the amount of saturated fat that was clearly swimming around on my plates; the trade-off between that and any kind of melt-in-the-mouth tastiness seemed to be pretty slight. I suppose the fish was nice, but only in the sense that it inspired me to think: "I could make this at home ... "

So, maybe, just maybe, saturated fats, carbs and sugars are no longer my friends - or least, I'm less likely the read their updates on Facebook. I took so much pleasure from a meal I had exactly a week ago (steamed vegetables and noodles in a veggie restaurant) that I can't quite believe how I now look on these pub-type meals as being nothing more than salty fat to chew on ...

... Anyway, WW again tonight! Wish us luck!

Is it safe to eat...?

First - a quick update. We both had a bad result at weigh-in on Monday. I put on two pounds. Current weight 14 stone 2 pounds. J was very down before we even went in and almost decided to drive home and come and get me afterwards. But he stuck with it, stayed for the talk and has thrown himself into cooking and meal planning this week. Which brings me to... the freezer is full of frozen vegetables, some of which J regards with some suspicion. Packages of frozen mushrooms in particular. I've been expecting them to turn up at breakfast or in spag bol, but so far, they've stayed in the bottom drawer. So, I found this gem of a site which will hopefully convince him that they're safe:

http://www.stilltasty.com

So our poor mushrooms might not be as tasty as when they were first picked, but they should be pefectly safe. Except... they were wild mushrooms picked from the park outside our house, which also makes him suspicious. Time to get him to read this:



This was a staple in our house since my grandfather used to take us out looking for mushrooms and brambles back in the seventies. It might be an Italian-influenced thing - see this profile of Elish Angiolini (scroll down to see her list of interests!). I can particularly recommend the Collins Gem edition - it's pocket sized for taking on long walks. And you probably know the score - if you buy it from this link we get about 30p towards my Weight Watchers fees...

Wish us luck for Monday.

The 300 Days War (by J)

Between my birthday and the end of the year is exactly 300 days (or 298 days from now, to be exact). In that 300 days I want to lose six, maybe seven, stones in weight - averaging out at 2 pounds a week (which, by lucky coincidence, is the weight loss rate advocated by Weightwatchers). Of course, the problem is - achieving it.

I've been at Weightwatchers now for three weeks, and have learned the hard way that buying the products (ignoring the fact that some of them look suspiciously like scaled down Double Deckers) and flipping hopefully through the magazine at the post weigh-in meeting is not enough. Planning meals, learning to cook (something I managed to avoid back in the last century), choosing quality ingredients, and slowly turning away from the Old Ways of carry outs and Pringles on the couch, would seem to be a far better path. Although, of course, it has two big drawbacks - (1) some weeks it doesn't work, which can be soul-destroying, and (2) when it does work, it can make you smug. But on the whole, I'd rather be smug than morbidly obese.

I make no apology: if this weightloss works, I'm going to be crowing bigheadedly for years. But at least it'll only be above the neck that is big.

You're not that overweight are you? (by D)

"You're not that overweight!"

I have heard that from some medical professionals lately. They mean, "you don't look that overweight".

And on paper, fourteen stone isn't that bad. A lot of women would be healthy, if a bit chunky at that weight. But I am that overweight. I'm short and slight, so on me, fourteen stone is almost double what I should be. My BMI is 39 and my body fat percentage is 50%. Quite scary to think that 50% of what I see in the mirror is pure fat. And it's all round my middle, as the practice nurse made a point of telling me as she struggled to find my cervix during my last smear. Apparently all the fat kind of shoved it out of the way a bit. Nice.

So I'd like to lose this much weight (look above left for picture of a twenty five pound tub of lard. Now imagine eight of those). My highest recorded weight so far was 14st 4.5lb, my weight this week is 14 stone, and my goal weight is around eight stone. I reckon it'll take at least a year, maybe two, but I'm in no hurry.