Day 21 - Starch Solution

Today’s stats:

Another late start today, and lunch was a foot long subway sandwich. I really need to check whether or not they use oil in their bread as that would suck if they did. Actually it wouldn’t hurt to find out what the ingredients actually are - note to self, email subway and ask for that information.

I also went to the super market today and whilst checking out the tins of McDougall safe food (I even food tins of new potatoes ready to eat - snacks!), I came across packets of Smash instant mash potato! Now, these don’t list anything too untoward in the ingredients although I would much rather have ingredients that said “dried potato, none” but alas that’s too much to hope for. They do so that it may contain milk or gluten which seems to be due to the fact that it’s made in a factory that uses those ingredients. Now, I really hope it’s all good because I just acquired a fair stash of it. It would be a big shame to waste it, especially as it’s quite tasty. I’m thinking of using it for when I’m hungry and just want a quick fix. Throw some beans or tomatoes in the microwave, put the kettle on and there you go, instant lunch. Simple, hot and tasty! Perhaps I should email them too…

Other than that today has been a fairly lazy day. Nothing new to report really. My weight is now dropping very slowly, which is not necessarily a bad thing, as I hope the effort to make it drop slowly will mean it will similarly be difficult to regain it (assuming I fall off the wagon which is really not something I want to contemplate too much). Still, it’s moving in the right direction, although now my target date has shifted from December out to March next year.

This target date comes from the libra software that I introduced previously. It will calculate your ideal weight, which seems to basically be a BMI in the middle of the healthy range (although in fairness I haven’t checked so I could be wrong on that). Based on the progression of the trend, the software predicts what date you will hit that weight, assuming that the trend as it stands today continues to hold. When I dropped down to 91.6KG in just a couple of weeks, it looked like I was set for a lot of fast weight loss. At that point in time, the trend suggested I would reach 68.1kg (it’s nothing if not precise) at some point in December. Now however it says March which matches the drastically decreased weight loss that I’m seeing now.

Now, December to March is three months or 90 days or around 13 weeks. When you think about it, it’s not a huge amount longer than December, which is itself now less than two months away. In fact if you look at it, 5 months to drop nearly 30kg is also pretty impressive if it holds true (which I suspect it won’t). Then again, that’s 1.5KG a week of weight loss, which is on the high side of what is generally considered healthy, but it’s not far out there in the realms of requiring divine intervention.

So it remains to be seen what this all really means…

As yesterday dinner didn’t have any potato - which I’m beginning to miss. I don’t have any for my lunch box tomorrow but it might be a good time to try out the Smash. I really really hope that it’s vegan. Actually, between writing that last sentence and this one, I started teasing the Hong Kong nutrition label off of the packet. You see, in the UK at least, there are very strict rules about what must be declared and how it should be declared. Okay, even then there is some room for dodging, but by and large the big ones are taken care of. Generally speaking you can tell if your food is infected with animal products.

The Hong Kong label simply states “Contains suplhites. May contain milk.”. Well, what he hell does that mean? Does it contain it or not? Does it contain it if made on Tuesdays but not on Wednesdays? By peeling off the label I was able to read the original. In fact rather than saying simple things like “stabilizer” it instead lists all the different chemicals used. It also had the phrase “Contains Sulphites. Produced in a factory that also handles milk.”. See, isn’t that much clearer? Although no milk is added as an actual ingredient, it is possible, though probably unlikely that milk could accidentally cross contaminate the product. Now okay, this is not as great as “This product is vegan and is made in a vegan vertified factory”, but at least it means I don’t need to worry too much about eating it. And like my McDougall pots, I’m not planning to make this a huge part of my lifestyle, but to have it there when I just need a little something - and I’m willing to bet this packet of smash is far less dangerous than an emergency stop at McDondald’s.

Oh that reminds me, I’ve also just ordered a selection of pots from iherb (that is a referer link, but I think you get discounts with it too). Now, they mainly sell supplements and I’m not big into that (in fact I avoid supplements). However they also have a great selection of alternative health stuff, a decent range of McDougall products (it’s where I normally get my oats but dammit they’ve been out of stock for months) and their shipping (at least to HK) is super fast and really cheap (goes via DHL). So when I get those pots, they’re all pretty new to me so I’ll write up little taste tests, and see how it goes. Again, these pots aren’t meant to be daily food, they’re meant to be “pick me ups” for when you just need a boost.