Wafer Thin Mint?

 On Tuesday night we took a friend to an appointment, where they had good news, and so a pub visit was in order. I only had 2 drinks, which isn't much, and it was post dinner of sweet potato wedges and a Bolognese style topping with rocket on the side, with about a spoonful of minced lamb.  Here comes a dichotomy: Yesterday, boy was I thirsty all day. Was it the 2 pints, or was it the 2 pints PLUS 4 tiny pieces of fried chicken I ate on the way home like some out of control quitter? My eczema elbow barometer was ugh too.  And horribly the zipper tap at work was kaput, as was the drinks machine. This meant no water to drink, and queues for the kettle. So I resorted to a coke. Which meant I might as well have some of the free pizza that was kicking about. Here is a wagon. Here is the edge of the wagon. Here is sudden movement and gravity. Okay, so pretty bad..  Then, last night, during a writers online zoom, I had a breakthrough moment.  Staring at my own face on ...

 It's nearly the end of week 1 of avoiding UPFs, and a useful place to sum up my wins and fails. Because I feel there may have been fails, and failure thy name is Thatcher's Gold Cider. I finished reading Food For Life by Tim Spector and I feel I have a really good overview of what nutritional science is and why the advice you read in the media keeps changing, and why the general NHS advice which may not be quite right for everyone hasn't been updated in years. Quite a lot of bunkum and vagueness out there, sponsored by Danone or basically any food brand that wants to add health claims on the label. Many clinical trials are not sufficiently robust or repeatable, and humans are terrible people for under-reporting data in trials they're taking part in. On the other hand, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants" seems like pretty good advice and probably the best thing to do is just eat loads of veggies and not worry too much.  Yeah, because I can totally walk awa...

2 days in.  Actually it's gone rather well. Possible ciabatta of doubt... We went to the cinema to watch Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and I took water and homemade popcorn like some kind of beatified Stepford Wife. Just a bit of salted butter on the popcorn. I normally do sweet and salty. Actually, scratch that. I normally do three scoops of Ben and Jerry's. The three I can actually have because most of the flavours have soya in them which isn't great for thyroxine absorption.  Bloody soya, infecting my sugary, fatty ice cream with its weight gain side effects! The film was flipping great!  In anticipation of our upcoming holiday in Naples we decided to go to Bella Italia. Yes please bring over the pepper mill that's taller than you, waitress. And I'll happily play the "say when" challenge with the parmesan cheese. The cheese is not a problem. Some of the menu well may be though... Decided to go starter/mains because there's no way any of the desserts in ...

This is a blog about being an Ultra Processed Person with obesity, and, hopefully, how I sort that out.  Inspired by a recent read:  Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn't Food ... and Why Can't We Stop?  Dr Chris Van Tulleken. One of the twin doctors. I'm a bit of a fan... My name is Donna and I have many parts of the body that human women shouldn't have as well as missing a couple of bits we should. Let's go with the missing bits first: 1. Womb 2. Ovaries 3. Cervix 4. Most of the thyroid. Well it's there but it's shit. I did used to have these things but my body is very typically my own body. You know the saying "your own worst enemy"?  You can go round being an über perfectionist, making things really bad for yourself and then you stress yourself out, give yourself more problems? Well, my body literally gave me more problems.  Four years ago I grew a one stone 'fake baby' uterine tumour (extremely rare, extremely weir...