Journal of a Photodieter

Re-inventing myself

I’ve started doing the flickr 365 Days where you take a self portrait every day for a year (those of you with calendars will realise that I will being doing 366).

You can see my set here - I will post more later.

I’ve been a bit quiet

If you’ve been here before you’ll notice I’ve been quiet of late.  It’s too easy to get out of the habit and even when I have things I want to write about I end up leaving it till later and forgetting.  I’m not going to beat myself up about it. One of the girls in my flickr Photo-diet Project group said that she has a blog but that

“I consider that since it’s _my_ blog, I get to decide how often the updates should be. Whether daily, monthly, or just when I fee like it. It fluctuates wildly.”

Well done her, it’s a philosphy I shall adopt myself.

The phone call you never want to get …

Well I see that my last post was at the beginning of September and I said it was going to be a busy month. Well it didn’t quite work out as predicted.

On the morning of Friday 6th September I was on my way to the bus stop to go to work when I got a call on my mobile. The caller was a Senior Staff Nurse at the A&E department of my local hospital. He told me that my partner had had a motorcycle accident on his way to work and that he was ’stable at the moment’ but that I should get there as quickly as I could.

Fortunately, although they did not know at the time of the call, he had no life-threatening injuries. He had broken his right wrist, his left collarbone, left shoulder blade and five left ribs. He was very badly bruised - bits of him are still green more than seven weeks later.

Until they did the x-rays and the CT scan they didn’t know how bad the damage was. A policeman who had been at the scene later told me ‘we were very worried about him’. His head was immobilised when I got to the hospital becasue he had been complaining of neck pain and they didn’t know if he had damaged his neck or back.

He had been riding to work in full daylight, driving at or below the speed limit and doing everything right (the policeman told me) when a deer ran into the bike. The policeman told me that it looked to him as though the bike was not a write-off. Unfortunately the insurance company, when they finally got round to dealing with the claim, did not agree. He loved that bike (a blue Yamaha Thunderace)  

Despite one of the nurses telling us that he would be in hospital for several weeks, he spent only three nights in hospital then spent some time with his retired parents in their bungalow. I was worried about him on the stairs in our house and I had to work full time.

Seven weeks on the cast is off the right wrist, the sling is off the left arm, the numbness is gradually diminishing and he is much more mobile.

What’s for dinner?

Because I eat stuff ‘because it was there and needed to be used up’ I’ve tried to get organised about what we are going to eat for the coming week and buy accordingly. My goodness, it’s a time consuming exercise.

When I was a child I always knew what was going to be for dinner by what day of the week it was. We had steak and chips, with mushrooms and tomatoes from the market, on Saturdays. We always had a roast on Sundays. On Wednesdays mum would make a pie. You get the picture.

Dad hated this. He told me he’d like to come home and wonder what he was going to have for tea. I thought that maybe mum would like to wonder that as well, and not have to cook it herself, but I didn’t say so. To be fair, some years later dad did start to do our weekend lunches. Nothing spectacular, but he did like to experiment. His bacon puddings were wonderful and the first sweet and sour I ever had was made by dad.

When my children were very small we used to go to a social group at the local church hall on Tuesday afternoons. I would prepare a casserole and put it in the oven before we went. When we arrived home dinner would be ready and the flat would smell wonderful and welcoming - it was especially great in the winter. On Sundays I would make the traditional Sunday roast.

But for the rest of the week I liked to mix it up a bit. I’d buy whatever was on special offer, or whatever I could afford (I was very short of money when my children were small) but always made sure that I cooked ‘proper’ food with fresh vegetables and protein.

In the 1980s I started to buy a partwork called Nice ‘n’ Easy Cookbook and I would aim to try a new recipe each week. Each part had sections called Midweek Specials, Suppers & Snacks, Vegetable Variety, Sweet Delights, Home Baking, World of Cooking (food from different parts of the world), Entertaining Ideas (themed menus) and Kitchen Basics on the back page which gave information about ingredients or a skill or technique.

(a quick Google shows that the entire set now sells for £124 or individual parts for between £1.20 and £2.70. The index is £3.60)

For the past year I have had both Good Food Magazine and Olive (both BBC publications) delivered each month. I bought a subscription to each at the Good Food Show last year, getting both a discount and a free gift. There are some good recipes (and good articles) in both and I think, for 2008 I shall aim to cook one recipe from the relevant month from the 2007 issues.

I also need to work through my recipe book collection. This is just a few:

Because we go to water aerobics straight from work on Fridays I try to ensure there is something ready to eat - a stew or casserole - when we get home. It stops us getting a take-away.

So Friday night is crock pot night and I can try lots of recipes for that. beef and apricot tagine is a current favourite.

I have a lot of minced beef (it’s delicious Dexter beef) in the freezer as I recently bought another quarter of a Dexter from Steve Rawlings. Obvious choices are cottage pie and spaghetti bolognaise but I want to try some different mince recipes too.

I try to do a stir fry at least once a fortnight as it uses a good mix of veggies. So many possibilities there.

If dinner can produce extras for lunch boxes that’s great too. You’ll see the results of all this cooking over in my other blog, Journal of a Photo-dieter.

It’s going to be a busy September

I’m coming to the end of the Open University course A215 Creative writing. I say I’m coming to the end because I am coming to the end of the time left for doing it. It doesn’t feel like I’m coming to the end of the writing.

I have to get the final TMA (tutor marked assignment) in by midnight next Friday and the end of course assignment (ECA) has to be posted (snail mail) on 27th September. The final date for the ECA is 5th October but I’m going on holiday on the 28th. I don’t know if someone other than my tutor marks this final bit but it has to be two pieces of work.

For the TMA I have to write a piece (2000 words) that has been ‘polished to a standard ready to submit for publication’. I then have to write 500 words on why my piece is suitable for the chosen publication. The trouble with that is we’ve been ambiguously advised not to use publications such as My Weekly or Woman’s Realm and the tutor gave us a list of publications that might be suitable. The list included those two titles and others like it. When I queried this she said she’d take them off the list. Much of the rest of the list is sci-fi or horror - not my genre.

When I was in London a week or so ago I went into Borders in Oxford Street to see how many of the listed mags I could find. Just Aesthetica (far to up itself to be of any use to me) and Mslexia were all they had. So the other evening I tried following the links for the online publications on the list. Many have ceased to exist. Others didn’t fit the length dictated by the TMA. Worryingly, one just gave half a dozen links to porn sites. A colleague at work who is doing the same course but with a different tutor had a similar list. She also had the ‘porn site listings’ one. It’s not terribly helpful.

One called Delivered looked promising. I ordered a copy, not expecting it to arrive in time to be helpful, and was pleased to find it on my doormat when I got home yesterday.

Vicky (the colleague doing the same course) must have had a slightly different list as she mentioned one called Libbon which looked promising. I took a look and it seems ideal. Writing can be on any subject and the three stories they have on there are a bit under or a bit over 2000 words.

Now all I have to do is get the writing done. It took me a while to decide which bits of scribbling and which ideas to work up into finished pieces and then, more urgently, which one should be for Friday’s deadline TMA.

…. later have discovered that deadline for TMA05 is 14th September, not 7th - but I must get it done this weekend to have a chance of getting the rest done.

Setting little goals to make big changes

I note with some surprise that it is just seven weeks (and one day) till I go on holiday to Italy. With that in mind I have decided to set a goal of getting below a certain weight before I go.

I’ve lost about eight pounds over the last seven weeks that I have been photo-dieting. That’s been two or more pounds some weeks and nothing on other weeks when I’ve been ‘naughty’ with the cakes and biscuits. This has taken me from just on a stone marker to half way down to the next.

So, can I get get below the next stone marker in seven weeks. I certainly should be able to. It’s just seven pounds and therefore a pound a week. If I get lower than that it will mean that I don’t have to worry too much about the weight I might put on during the holiday. Two weeks of hotel food in Italy may not be good for the figure but it will be good for me. As it will also be two weeks of sightseeing and guided tours I hope to walk off any excess I eat.

Weight Loss Resources tells me that I can have 1183 calories per day and still lose 1.5 pounds per week so that is what I will aim for.

When I’m back from Italy, I shall calculate a goal to reach before my Christmas Markets trip to France and Belgium with my friend Linda.

Journal of a Photo-dieter - new blog

This blog was in danger of becoming bogged down in diet stuff. Now, while that is an important part of my ‘Countdown to Ffty’ it’s not the only part and I felt that the photo-diet project (which now has 18 members in teh flickr grou) needed a blog of its own. So I will still post non diet stuff here but the Journal of a Photo-dieter is now open for viewing and comments. Recipes are going on there as well as photos.

‘Maybe you should see a doctor’ and other reactions

Yesterday I had a day school for the writing course I’m studying with the Open University. I had breakfast before I left home and took a calorie-counted packed lunch in my square lock & lock. I’d photographed both (for the photo-diet project) that morning.

Helen, our tutor, had made delicious chocolate covered macaroons for us all to have during coffee break. I took one and remembered, before I took the first bite, to get out my camera and photograph it. Not surprisingly, I got a few strange looks from the others in the room. So I explained a little about the photo-diet project.

One of the guys was really interested in this and asked all sorts of questions about how it affected my eating patterns, did I make different food choices, etc. He’d been a fat child and a fat teenager and had dieted and exercised. Like me, he had already given up sugar, deep fried foods, etc many years ago.

One of the women said ‘that is really interesting’.

‘You think so?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘very interesting in a “perhaps you should see a doctor” sense.’

Perhaps she meant to funny (as in ha-ha) but I actually thought this very rude. However, I didn’t waste my breath pursuing the remark with her.

An older lady there asked, when I mentioned the weekly mosaic, ‘do you spread them all out on a table, or don’t you bother to print them?’ It’s easy to forget that many people, even those who use email and the Internet, just don’t think about not having to print everything.

I’m thinking of printing this badge

and maybe adding some kind of ‘promise’ on the back.

The other reactions I’ve had so far - outside of flickr where people have commented positively or not at all - have been mostly good. At work I mentioned it to one person who has lost a couple of stone and sent her the link to the flickr group and to the weightlossresources website. She said she’d take a good look at them.

My friend, Sue, thought the photo-dieting an interesting idea.

The only other place I’ve mentioned it so far is on the message boards on weightlossresources. Where some of the responses have been ‘sounds really good but I would feel silly/don’t have the time‘ and two people were openly hostile. One said

Well, I’d have to say I’m glad I’m not going to be asked to join you for a meal. Sorry but photographing your food is just not a way to learn a healthy lifestyle.

Someone else asked her ‘why so judgemental?‘
My reply (to the rude message) was

What a strange response.

You said
“Well, I’d have to say I’m glad I’m not going to be asked to join you for a meal.“

Why? I don’t tell other people what to eat or insist that they photograph their food.

You said
“photographing your food is just not a way to learn a healthy lifestyle.”
I disagree.

Through doing this I have learned that although on paper (or WLR log) my meal appeared healthy - lots of veggies, lean meat - I was putting far too much of it on my plate. Getting out of the habit of eating too much, even if it is healthy food, is a very important thing to learn and this has helped me.

I don’t say it would work for everyone, but it does for some.

I wonder what the reaction will be when I can show that I have lost a stone, two stone, etc?

Theatre Ettiquete

‘Come along and listen to

the lullaby of Broadway the hip-hooray and bally-hoo

the lullaby of Broadway

The rumble of the subway train

the rattle of the taxi’

‘Ladies and Gentlemen, this show is set in 1933, more than fifty years before the invention of the mobile phone. So please, switch yours off before the performance begins.’

I went to see 42nd Street on Wednesday and I’ve been singing the songs ever since. It was a fabulous show - the costumes, the dancing, the sets.  Sitting in the car going home I could still see the shimmering gold sequins and the bright lights behind my closed eyes, still hear the tap of the feet.

Just one thing spoiled the evening: the selfish behaviour of some of the audience. Why do people think it is acceptable to talk during a performance? Do they really think people around them can’t hear them? Most will stop talking for a while after being given a ‘hard stare’ or told to ’shush’. However, so many seem to think that the show doesn’t start till someone on stage speaks and that it’s okay to talk through the overture. I’ve even known this to happen at the ballet and the opera.  It’s not just younger people doing this.  Looking about at the selfish <insert expletive of your choice here> I could tell that mostly it is people in their fifties, sixties or older.

Have I become a grumpy? Has it always been acceptable to chatter away at the start of a performance? I’m sure I didn’t encounter this as much when I went to the theatre in the 80s and 90s.  The only difference was that I went to London theatres then. Now that I have moved out of London I usually see shows at Milton Keynes Theatre. Many of the people in the audience had dressed up to go to the theatre so it can’t be that they didn’t see it as an event.

 At the beginning of the show we were asked to turn our phones off. Do theatres really have to start reminding the audience that they should stop talking the moment the lights go down or the orchestra starts to play? It seems they do.

Then all that will be left is to stop the rattle of sweet wrappers.