Day 22 - Starch Solution

Today’s stats:

Back to work today so a reasonably early start (followed by chasing a gecko around the flat). Weight has again dropped quite a bit, but this seems to have just been a lucky time to step on the scales. I’m really not sure how accurate these scales are as it seems to vary in weight quite a lot in only a short period. If I weight myself one after the other, chances are that it could show a decent weight difference. Hmm, turns out that they go to some lengths to make them accurate, including even taking the local gravitational field into account (see their blog post). Of course they wrote that post, but still, it seems a bit odd to go to all that trouble and then make obvious mistakes.

I do move the scales before my measurements, and even though the floor is the same floor and there is no difference in the height anywhere in the room, it’s possible that I should leave the scales for five seconds to calibrate first. I’ll make sure I do that going forward…

Breakfast was another tin of beans. It’s 11:13 now and I’m still feeling full and feisty which is nice. I would normally be hungry by now if I were only eating the oatmeal. I need to actually pick up some more of that today before I forget (although I’m sure there was something else I was supposed to do today at lunch but it’s slipped my mind). I think I’ll skip the 7 types of grains and go back to some good old chunky oats.

Lunch was good but like the dinner that proceeded it, there was no potato to be found. I’m beginning to pine for my lost potato. Still, I do have bags of instant mashed potato available on standby but that requires some coordination, and really I have to make the bag all at once (might bring in an airtight box to solve that problem actually) as they come in single packets for 3 servings. Now three servings as the core of a meal (say baked beans and mash) would be fine - but it won’t go with a large quantity of rice at the same time. So some delicate balancing is needed.

I did get peckish around 4:30, which seems to suggest that white rice just doesn’t fill me up. I think the same is true of white noodles. I guess these are some of the more refined starches and so are absorbed or processed a lot quicker. I seem to be more satiated when I’m consuming potato with the rice. I doubt I’ll be able to convince anyone else in the house to switch to brown rice, but it would be an interesting experiment to do one day. In any case to handle the hunger request I decided to give the mashed potato a go.

It actually went really well. It was pretty bland by itself which suggests there’s really not much in there apart from potato flakes. I couldn’t detect any hint of milk or other flavourings. I just added some salt and pepper (on the surface where it does the most good) and scoffed it down. It wasn’t half bad and I think this is going to make a great alternative to snacks and fruit and just a small bowl of mash kept me going until I got home around 7:45, so that is pretty impressive (although to be fair I did start getting hungry again around 7pm).

Dinner was the usual but praise the heavens, the potatoes had returned. I very much enjoyed this particular meal. The addition of spuds was very welcome indeed and very filling. I’m writing this around 11:30 at night and I’m still nicely satisfied from dinner. Potatoes really do seem to make the difference. The upshot of potatoes for dinner means that tomorrow, I have potatoes for lunch too! :D