Comfort eating

I will have to admit to comfort eating recently, I'm not sure when I started to associate food with comfort, but I dare say it was a while ago. It didn't help that my family are not exactly small eaters, but having said that my sister is a big eater & yet she is a UK size 10 even after having a child, she does in fairness eat healthier than me as she has a dairy intolerance & has also recently been finding yeast, wheat & sugar an issue. I'm not the most unhealthiest of eaters either, I have very little processed food in my diet, possibly because I can be a bit of a fussy eater as I don't like my food too salty or too bland which most convenience foods fall into. My biggest issues food wise has always been sweets, biscuits cakes etc. I do have a sweet tooth, but have also got a thing for cheese, well some cheeses anyway, the ones that aren't too salty tasting or smell heavily of feet. On the upside I do get cravings for vegetables if my diet has been lacking them & the morning doesn't seem right if it doesn't have not from concentrate fruit juice. I have been finding that anything more than 2 glasses of wine have also been giving me indigestion of late so I'm overhauling my diet & hoping I can stick to it such a stressful time. I have swapped my sweets for fruit I am going to make sure i am properly hydrated by drinking water, as sometimes your body tricks you into thinking it is hungry rather than thirsty.



I did delay my start date twice but now it is here, This morning I had cut down on portion size of my breakfast as I feel that cutting down on it as it was a larger portion than was needed & I did find myself feeling a little sluggish. I am waiting 20 minutes at least after eating before bringing out the sweet (which is now fruit rather than biscuits) from the main meal so I actually feel full having eaten less as I have given my body a chance to digest & realise it has had food. So perhaps it is not so much a diet but a change to the way I'm eating.



So the latest batch of comfort eating has come about from my dad's deteriorating condition from his brain tumour. I thought I was being emotionally quite strong but then I noticed the amount of chocolate I was consuming was going up & not just by a little. I think I was becoming addicted to the warm fuzzy feeling of serotonin as well as the sugar rush. Added to this was an increase of meat, cheese, takeaways and fried food & then I realised something was going wrong. I have started to meditate, do more craft work, I'm visiting my parents more to lend a hand so I am finding more pragmatic & helpful ways of dealing with my situation. As the weather improves I also hope to spend more time on the vegetable plot too.

Reflections of the Festive Period

With Twelfth Night being yesterday I can now reflect on the festive period as a whole, this years festive period has been. So the festive period 2013-14 was a bit of a strange one, I had been busier in the run up to it between normal work & chaplaincy, though this year Yule did not feel anywhere near as rushed or squeezed in around work as it has done in the past, I had plenty of time to decorate, feast & meditate, I also managed to make time to make a Witch Bottle for the house. What did infuriate me was the amount of people who asked before the Winter Solstice why I hadn't put up my Christmas decorations yet? Well my response was as follows, I'm not Christian & don't decorate the house until Yule which according to the tradition of decorating your house up for the festive period is actually early as you are not supposed to decorate your house until Christmas Eve & you take your decorations down on the 6th oft January, the day after the 12 days of Christmas have finished. Many people I know looked at me weirdly when I said I took my decorations down so late, saying that they took their decorations down the day after Boxing Day or New Years Day saying that they were fed up of them by then, to which I point out if they are fed up of Christmas before Christmas is out why are you in such a rush to put up your decorations in the first place. OK that is my festive peeve out of the way. I may not be Christian but do like to keep up with folk tradition at this time of year.

 This Christmas was more how I prefer Christmas, relaxed, there was a minor family altercation, but there always seem to be some niggle over Christmas but it lead to a more relaxed Christmas on the whole as far as timings & food went. It was also a relatively frugal Christmas with me making more presents this year than I have done before & it has been appreciated, although I do think I will have to make more chocolate fudge next year as it went down a storm as did my green tomato chutney, so it appears Christmas hampers are the way forward for me. New Years eve also cemented a friendship by having having Sean around for lunch & we swapped gifts I got a hand made dream catcher, he got some apple jam. The festive period although rushed seemed quite pleasing in the long run where people have appreciated skills & friendships & general sense of homeliness. So although I got accused of being a Scrooge for being sick of Christmas music before the day it arrived, it appears that I wasn't the Grinch either (that accolade was taken by someone else)

Definitely feeling autumnal

I seem to be geeting in to the swing of autumn this year, perhaps it is the growing of crops that has done it, but so far the autumn has brought the brewing of the first batch of beer for me, stewing of apples, baking of bread & thoughts of jam & chuntney making. it also means that the likelihood of walking home in the dark or in the rain has increased & I shall look forward to kick about fallen leaves. This year I have felt more connected than I have previous years, possibly because I have felt more connected to the land having more opportunity to work the land. It has made me feel as sense of accomplishment as I get the I grew this feeling which makes your food all that more sweeter. Am I being all nostalgic as to what the wheel of the year means to people? Maybe, but I do like the feeling. Autumn is very much my favourite season, rich in colour & food from the land & to that I am greatful. But also it means it is yet another year when my PTSD related depression has not got the better of me through the summer months.

Lammas tide reflections

This Lammas tide has felt like it has had more significance to me this year as my vegetable plot started to take shape this year. Yesterday was the first harvest of broad beans & although it wasn't the traditional wheat which I turn into a corn dolly which hasn't happened this year it was no less a significant harvest & the fact I grew them myself gave me a sense of achievement. I was starting to feel a little less connected with the seasons & although I still don't fully gel with some of the festivals, ones centred around growing & harvesting do have more of a significance especially now I have more of a chance of growing my own. I am far from finished on my plot so hopefully the work on a spiritual level yesterday will help as a bit of a boon to my physical travails on the plot. I have also been thankful to see more of our native insect life recently which has taken a battering, but hopefully with the largely good whether we've had, that it will help to perk up their numbers. I also baked a loaf which I haven't done in a while which certainly brings the taste of Lammas back to me, especially as I have gotten better at baking it, so I did do something a little traditional for it.

Losing Weight

I have registered at my local doctors but in the consultation I got put into the obese catergory & because I have 2 diabetic parents have been told to lose weight which is fine with the execption that I'm supposed to lose 5 stone to fit into the height to weight ratio according to health guidelines. The problem comes with the fact for me to lose that amount of weight I would also need to lose muscle as well as the fat that I have to become 13 stone, so diet, exercise & muscle wastage. I know I can do the first 2 but how am I supposed to do the latter I'm not entirely sure. I am back on a healthier diet than what I was as since Christmas I have been eating junk. My main weakness is for snacking & ale I need to stop doing both but need to have the will power. I will allow ale on mootnights but think the drinking at home must be cut down dramatically, plus I'm not sure I'm drinking enough water anyway so may be able to kill two birds with one stone. I'm also putting down the rule of if the sweet treats are not home made they don't get eaten & one more thing I need to do as far food is concerned is to cut down on portion size my family are large eaters, as to whether I can do it is another question, but what I do eat is a lot healthier some people I know as I don't eat processed food as a rule as I love cooking from scratch & I love fruit & veg & generally crave it if I haven't had enough of them. I also need to connect the the Kinect back up on my Xbox too so I can increase my exercise from walking 8.5 miles on work days to adding more cardiovascular exercise to it too, though when the weather perks up I have a fair few heavy jobs on my new veggie plot & in my back garden so that will be a boost too. But where the weight loss scale does fall down is on muscle as last time I lost the inches around the trunk of my body my weight went up, so I could have the perfect six pack & still be called obese, what happens if/when that happens? I guess I won't know but I would question it seeing as though most rugby players have a bmi that suggests they should have difficulties walking. Wish me luck & I shall be hitting the spell books for an extra boost when the moon has changed to waning.

The advantages of cooking from scratch

With all the headlines of horse meat in ready meals, it is now making people take note of what they are eating. Hopefully it will mean people will take more of an interest in making there own food. Having just eaten last night's left over vegetable lasagne, where even the pasta was mas made fresh, it made me think how much better it tasted from the the convenience food reheat in the oven/microwave versions, it has a far better flavour to it & in the long run works out cheaper than buying one of similar ingredients. OK making lasagne from scratch is a bit of a long winded process, but then you make what you have time to make. There are plenty of meal options that take less than 30 minutes to make if time is short or if you have a slow cooker just bung everything you need in it for a stew & it is ready with little effort when you get back home to eat. If you just adjust your eating habits to the time you have to cook, it will become less effort & less of a chore. I tend to go for easy options as I hate faff & therefore enjoy my food when it is ready. If you cook more you will start to think more about the wider ethics & economics of your food. Cooking from scratch rather than buying ready meals & convenience foods has cut down our food bill considerably. Hopefully next year our food will have a bit more seasonality as I will be taking on a vegetable plot which I find puts more in sync with the turning of the year & makes me feel even more smug of I did this. Seriously, ditch the crap that is not what it appears with its dubious meat, excess salt & sugar, artificial flavourings & whatever else they decide to put in there & taste food how it is meant to.

Be Kind to All Life, Become Vegan?

This is not an attack on veganism or vegetarianism just a question which I have wanted to ask for a while & would like to know an answer to. A friend on facebook recently put a post up about the blatant disregard for life within the poultry rearing industry, isn't it time you went vegan? Which also lead me to remember a sign on a vegan march in Birmingham which had a sign saying 'Be Kind To All Life Become Vegan'. Now I'm not arguing that farming practises in this day & age are all fine & dandy & the animals don't suffer at all, in fact the opposite rings true, I think all people should rely a little less on eating animals & then perhaps then with a change in that habit we would be more able to keep animals in a more humane way. My argument falls like this, a blatant disregard to all life surely should encompass that of plants, just because they can't talk does not mean they can't communicate, they have pheromones for that & they do respond to each other, acacia trees let other trees know that there are giraffes nearby so they can produce a chemical that will make their leaves unpalatable for the giraffe if it decides that the acacia that it is feeding on has gone too bitter so will try to wonder to another to continue feasting on. Plants suffer, if you pick a bean, courgette, chilli or tomato off a plant, it will grow another, not because it wants to, but needs to to survive, essentially harvesting fruit is committing abortion in the plant world. Blanching vegetables, is starving them of light, which helps provide some of its food therefore malnourishing the plant, just so chicory, rhubarb, dandelions etc don't taste quite so bitter. Then there is the cut & come again salad crops which suffer from a regular disembowelling by removing their leaves. So is this being kind to all life? Or is this if it doesn't make a sound, it doesn't count as it must be a lesser being?

Home baked goodness

One of the joys of autumn is home baking, the warm welcoming smell of a freshly baked pie or cake, mmm heaven. Not one of my healthiest of hobbies but there is no doubt about it when you have the satisfaction of saying I did that & devouring it quicker than you should, but for some reason because it is home baked it doesn't count, even if it was a chicken & mushroom pie yesterday & a German friendship cake today, which is in the oven as I type. It makes the house feel more homely & is most definitely comforting. I also find that baking also de-stresses me as it slows you down to a comfortable pace & gets your mind concentrating on one thing. If you bake with love it always tastes better. Better sign off as cake will be ready in a sec.