Diet, exercise, Hampton Court

So far the diet is going really well. I skip breakfast which is quite a sacrifice, but I have suspected for a long time that the small amount of muesli or banana I eat in the morning could be tipping the balance towards me gaining weight.

There is a NO SNACKING rule which the doctor is very stern about. If you need to snack, he writes, you should just drink water. You need nothing between meals. Your stomach is designed to go a long time between meals and you won't even feel hungry after the first few days. I think this is true. So far I have lost 3-4 pounds and some of it is off my double chin!! A visible difference. He predicts I will lose much more in the first week than I have but I think he must be predicting for men who burn calories faster. Few people burn calories slower than the post-menopausal woman, even very active ones. Went to another exercise class yesterday - arms and weights apart from the usual squats and abs exercises. Very good. The day before was a Hampton Court day.

Both Ichiho and Hilary were there and the tasks were to load the melon beds - the hotbeds - with compost or to move some semi-rotted compost from one bin to another. Chris and I did the first task which involved lots of loading and wheelbarrowing. Really, we work hard at HCP but of course, it's only for a short time. In winter we go home early so it's only three and a half hours of actual work and in summer it's four and a half hours. It can be a long afternoon in the summer.

We moved nearly all this to the melon beds.

Nasty stuff and not composting at the mo - too cold

Unfortunately, we tried to fill three of the beds instead of two but we hadn't moved too much stuff to the wrong bed. It won't take them long to rectify our mistake! Itchiho and Hilary both seem pretty fed up with the hotbeds which they have spent hours digging out. Hilary is getting some horse manure to boost the compost.

This is a pic of the new mound in the Magic Garden where we put some of the spent soil from the melon bed. The magic gardeners are still working hard on their landscaping.

The River is Up

We have had so much rain that the river was on red boards (Caution strong stream) last weekend and today the river was deemed too dangerous to row on, so my friends went for a walk and I went to the Legs, Bums and Tums class that does me good on a Monday morning.

I felt very FAT so I started a diet today. It was inspired by an article in the Saturday Times about how to lose weight fast because you are heading towards being diabetic. I think I need to do this 800 calories a day diet or I will have to live with all this excess weight and I am beginning to find it a real problem. Can't bend over without gasping! I have always lost weight before if I wanted to. Post-menopause it seems so much harder. One of the problems is my lack of vanity. Before I was terribly aware that I needed to look as good as I could and I was ridiculously vain. Post-menopause I feel I'm too old for anyone to lech over and I can I either be a skinny old lady or a fat old lady and it hardly matters which. EXCEPT for health reasons and exercise reasons - in that I feel too heavy and cumbersome to exercise well.

Last week I went to meet the other skiffers in a cafe after their walk, but they weren't very friendly to me so I didn't bother today.

This weekend we entertained friends whom we had not seem for many years, and the husband was a very old friend of my husband but I didn't really know much about the wife apart from that she was pleasantly chatty and quite unusual in that she's very earnest and has no sense of humour. She is one of those people who finds an oblique way of criticising you to your face, which is quite funny. As we were shopping she made a remark about thick fluffy towels which made me realise that I had lent them towels which were not at all up to the mark! She also said "Isn't it lovely when you've washed your hair in the morning and it feels all lovely and fresh" and she must have known I had not washed my hair, but she implied that I should make a habit of it. She gave me a tip for making salad dressing and I realised she was mildly disappointed that we had not served any raw veg the night before because she is a vegan food nut. She believes that eating the right food can cure every kind of inflammation, and she has some proof of this because her mother came to live with her and the family about ten years ago and was at that time suffering with rheumatoid arthritis amongst other things and the family eating regime was foisted upon her with the result that she lost loads of weight and all her ailments cleared up. But then alas, she got vascular dementia and died anyway! I asked my friend if her mother had expressed dismay at the lack of cake etc, and her enforced weight loss, and she said, no, her mother was very "compliant". Compliant!!! My mother would have shouted the house down, which is why I never seriously suggested having her to live with us (of course I suggested it but I was not upset when my OH vetoed the idea. She was always rude to him.)

But my friend was interesting to be with because she is so different from me, and all her oblique criticism is meant to be kind in a life-coachy, you can do better than this, sort of way.