Real food and the diet of the future.

This weeks blog reading music is Capable of Anything by Ben Folds where Ben has taking his joyful pop sensibilities and has recorded an album with a classical chamber ensemble. I'm listening to loads of death metal at the moment but I loved this track, very appropriate now the sun's shining too.

The future's idea of a fry-up.  What do they know?!

So I started a new diet this week, it's a diet system imported from the 31st century where you can eat whatever you like and the company supplies you with all your food in easy to consume capsules taking away all the fuss of you needing to cook, clean or even digest.  Let me make this clear, the future is going to be rubbish, look at the photo for God's sake! Does that look like double bacon, eggs, mushrooms and a fried slice to you  Bah!  What a load of balderdash.

I'm talking bollocks of course, I just take a handful of supplements every day, but I get wound up at the concept of a 'diet'.  These short term unsustainable plans that promise an amazing transformation but only succeed in emptying people's wallets. As someone who's been overweight and unfit their whole life and is finally making real changes it's clear to me that the only way to really get rid of the fat and get healthy it to eat real food, healthy food, consistently and permanently.  There's no 6 week plan or magic pill to take after which your life will be different, you need to actually change the way you approach your life.

On my colleagues desk at work, don't fall for marketing. 

I've been thinking about real food a lot this week.  I've taken to using Instagram a lot as there's a big community of people on there who use it for health/fitness/weightloss inspiration and it's always good to surround yourself with people with common goals but I see a few people on calorie controlled diets feeling very proud of their limited Hula-Hoop intake or only eating 2 slices of white bread and this really isn't real food.  Obviously if they were previously eating 5 bags of Hula Hoops or a large pizza instead of the bread it's an improvement but it's still not ideal.  One of the biggest lessons on this whole journey for me had been the cutting out of precessed foods, anything with more that a couple of ingredients on the label is generally a no-no and even things that market themselves as healthy quite often are not all they're cracked up to be.  Look at Shreddies for example which Nestle (who are utterly evil anyway) market as a healthy breakfast and proudly proclaim"Whole Grain!  High Fibre! Fortified with vitamins!", what they don't point out is that 6% of a Shreddie is made out of 2 different types of sugar and sugar is the worst thing for anyone trying to lose bodyfat.  If you're watching your diet and you must buy processed foods always look at the ingredients as sugar gets packed into everything, especially 'low fat' versions of food.

I've been cooking new things this week.  These egg muffins are great, protein helps keep me feeling full and I got bored of eating boiled eggs.  Just whisk up a load of eggs and whites with veggies and seasoning and bake in a muffin tray, they'll stay good in the fridge for snacks all week.  Real food!

After slipping on the diet a few weeks back I'm currently feeling really motivated and I realised today that I've flipped my approach.  I used to be unhealthy all the time and occasionally make an effort to go 'on a diet' which would generally last a couple of weeks before I'd quit and was back to old habits, but these days it's more a case of healthy living is the daily norm and every now and then I'll go off the deep end for a couple of weeks, eat crap and get drunk.  I can embrace the unhealthy times and enjoy them because at this point I know it's the exception to the rule.  I'm back, I've already lost the extra pounds I put on at the festival I went to and more besides, I've also finally been able to do a proper, full pull up (sometimes several) without jumping for the momentum so have achieved a goal I set for myself last year and that feels good too.  Next goal a set of ten.

Slow cooked a beef short rib this week for the first time.
That's some real fuckin' food.

Thanks for reading.  Here's a dog who sure is pleased to you meet you.

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