Awesome 350 calorie lunch for your low cal Friday:

A friend has recommended this 5-2 thing. I think the hopes of me actually getting thinner are extremely... errr, thin. Most of the process of weight loss/gain has to do with hormones, and after All That, and particularly (h-word) my endocrine system is completely buggered up, even with the HRT drugs. But even without thinking about weight-loss, lowering caloric intake is a good idea, or so all the latest research shows.

Even if we're not eating badly, even if we're buying fresh from Whole Foods or the local farmers, eating too much is still pretty bad for us. That and sitting around. (My sedentary habits are really making me worry.) The idea that everyone needs 2000 cal/day is outdated, and is even possibly dangerous.

So, lately when I'm at home, I'm more or less just eating fish, poultry, fresh fruit and veg, nuts, cheese and yogurt, with lots of tea. Mostly one main meal a day and a little grazing for the rest. On Wed's and Fri's I drop down a bunch of calories. Doesn't seem to be hurting at all...

Prep time about 20 mins:

1 swordfish steak
1 cup oyster mushrooms
1 clove garlic
20g butter
pinch of salt

1 cup broccoletti, chopped
tsp chicken stock powder

Wash the broccoletti, pull off any yucky bits, chop off the tough ends of the stems, then chop into little bits, about an inch long. Into the pan with a cup or so water, tsp chicken stock powder. Cover with a tight fitting lid and let it simmer/steam over a lowish heat. (I did this the other day, but failed to wash the greens first, and got lovely crunchy grit in my teeth. So do the washing.)

Melt the butter in another pan and break up the mushrooms into bite size bits, toss on the warm butter and saute with the minced garlic over a low heat. When the mushrooms are starting to release their juice, throw in the fish, sprinkle with a wee bit of salt and cover the pan. Let it all cook for 10 mins.

Remove the mushrooms from the pan (don't over cook) and flip the fish and let it brown a bit for a minute or two. When the fish is done, take some of the chicken/broccoletti stock from the other pan and deglaze the fish and mushroom stuff.

Load it all onto a plate.

Eat.

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People from the developed world really just eat too damn much food and sit too much and judging from the ever-increasing girth of most of the people you see around you, the 2000/day notion really does seem overly simplistic. Each person is different. With my buggered up system, even with the HRT, I've been getting along just dandy on about 1500/day, and I haven't lost any weight at all.

And I never buy bread or pasta or anything with sugar in it. I eat a little bread about once a week when I join the gang for our post-Mass lunch in the City, but that's only because the waiter brings it to you without you asking.

Having been largely off sugar for a few years now, I think we have seen that sensitivity rises. Judging from the awful reaction I had this week, I can't imagine what the heck was going on with me before I gave it up entirely. I cringe now to think how much sugar I consumed!

"But I get so hungry!" Cut out the carbs. The feeling of hunger is not your stomach being empty or your body craving nutrition. It's a hormonal signal your organs produce based on other hormonal signals. If you're eating too many complex carbs or sugar, it's getting turned into glucose in your blood and your liver and pancreas are working too hard and getting overloaded. Your body produces the "You're hungry!" signal in response to chemical changes in your bloodstream. If you eat too much of the stuff that triggers the system, you're going to get the signal when your body doesn't need food for fuel. So you're eating sugar or carbs that get turned rapidly into glucose, which triggers the hungry-hormone, which makes you eat more, and what you're probably eating more of is the same carbs and sugar stuff that started it, ad infinitum... oh wait, no. Ad obesitum, and diabetes, heart disease and cancer (yes, cancer).

All of which is the nutshell version of why the 1st worlders are fat. We eat nothing but processed food, all of which has sugar added. All. Sugar = hormone imbalance = obesity. And I'll say it again: there's sugar in damn near every single thing we eat that's processed or packaged. That means everything except for fresh food. Don't. Eat. Sugar.

And watch out for boredom eating. This is a big one for me. I work on the computer, so sitting and looking at the screen for long hours prompts me to want to stand up and walk around pretty often to clear my brain. Where do my feet have to go in the flat? Usually to the kitchen. I eat to take my mind off work and my eyes off the screen.

Working on it. Those nice nuns gave me a copy of the Farnborough Monastic Diurnal, so I'm thinking maybe I have somewhere else for my brain to go when it can't stand the screen any more. We'll see how it goes.



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