Food News 4

Start: 95.4 Last week: 91.7 This week: ??.?

Thursday 20 July: That crashing noise is the sound of a man falling off the wagon. Pan-fried chicken, mashed potatoes with butter, creamy coleslaw and watermelon to finish. All cooked up in 40 degree heat by a fine woman from Kansas City to give her pasta-munching friends something to remember her by. My resolve melted faster than a lump o' lard in a hot skillet. And boy, was it good! I could not possibly stop at just one helping, which would have been reasonable. But here's the funny part. Today, I had lost compared to yesterday. Maybe I'll pay tomorrow.

More generally, I've been thinking about a possible mechanism. It seems that part of the appetite supression is that not only do I feel full faster, I also feel full longer. That is, I'm just not hungry again very quickly. so I wonder whether there is a physiological mechanism that somehow slows digestion. That might make sense, in lean times, if slower digestion helps to extract more energy from whatever food is available. Not that I fancy doing the measurements, but it is a thought.

I'll probably be away from my computer, and my scales, for about three weeks, but the magic of WordPress allows this entry to be posted at the appointed hour. One of the things I'll be contemplating is whether my view of the relationship between food intake and weight loss is not perhaps overly conditioned by my experiences with those "realistic" dolls. No, not that kind. The kind where you feed them liquid from a bottle and they immediately wet themselves.

Sunday 23 July: At last, I understand the gag reflex. Leaving my trusty rice oil at home, I took the opportunity to try flax seed oil. It smells too much like the stuff my cricket bat used to sit in over winter. It has an evil yellow glow. It does not taste all that good (which is odd because flax seeds themselves are almost as yummy as sesame, even more so in bread). And there's a distinct heave as it hits the stomach. Makes taking the oil more like medicine than ever. And I've switched to taking it all in one go in the morning, for reasons of convenience mostly.