Monday's Fast

Followed the same routine as for the previous Fasts - breakfast of porridge and blueberries but not till as late in the day as possible.  Because of teaching from 12.30 till 1.15, that meant I first ate at 1.20.  I was hungry but certainly not ravenous.  And then when I got in from work I had beans on toast before going to my tap lesson.  Apart from black tea throughout the day, that was all I ate.

I now have an extra incentive to lose weight as I was given an MOT at the doctors which included a cholesterol level test - and I got a letter yesterday to tell me I needed to go on a low fat diet as it was 6.6!  They then want me to get tested again in 6 months.  What I plan to do is to stick to this IF for 3 months and see how the weight loss is and then go and ask if I can be tested again.  If there is no change then I will have to do low fat all the while but if it has gone down then IF will be the way forward ...

Second Fast Day

It's now Saturday, and yesterday was another fast day.  To be honest, this one was easier than Monday's and I didn't find that particularly hard.

I don't go into work on Fridays so got up a little later than I do on a work day and set about marking the mock exam papers that I had brought home with me.  I drank plenty of green and black tea during the day, and had my porridge and blueberries for lunch at 1.30pm.  That was the first meal since Thursday night and it was quite easy to go that long without eating.  In the evening Frank and I had a two egg omelette, with mushrooms and a huge salad.  I had enough calories left over for a skinny latte.  I wasn't at all hungry when I went to bed and even this morning wasn't overly hungry.

I weighed myself his morning and seem to have lost about 2lb which is excellent - specially considering that the rest of the week was a perfectly normal diet, including a meal out on Wednesday - starter of melted brie with breads; steak, chips and onion rings for main; carrot cake and ginger ice cream for pudding.  So - as you can see, not a diet meal in site during the week.

First Fast Day

I changed my mind and decided Monday was a better day to start the Fast Diet.

I started the day with a cup of tea - a lemon tea, which was very nice and refreshing.  My breakfast was porridge and blueberries and I took them to work to have after my first 2 lessons of teaching.  I made sure I had more herb tea when I first got to work and had a bottle of water with me during the lesson.  I managed to get to 12.30 before I got really hungry and felt I needed the porridge.

More herb tea and then a spell of invigilation from 3.30 to 5.30.  Amazingly, I wasn't feeling too hungry at all.  My evening meal was a chicken stir fry, which basically was a small portion of chicken with carrots, cabbage, mange tout and mushrooms.  And according to a calorie tracker, I have had just under 500 calories today.

Tonight is my tap dancing and I think I may feel a bit peckish after that, but by the time I get home it's about 9.45pm so almost bed time!

And tomorrow is a normal food day.

Snowdrops in Chelveston

Frank and I went out to the church at Chelveston to look at all the snowdrops.  They were at their best this weekend, I think and there was a small sale in the church.  We decided against buying any more snowdrops!

Intermittent Fasting Diet

Watch this space!

I bought Michael Mosley's book about the Fast Diet as a Kindle Daily Deal as I was interested in giving it a go.  It certainly makes interesting reading and when I have finished reading the book I will definitely make a start.

Now I know that sounds like I'm putting it off, but only for good reasons.  You need to choose 2 days a week for fasting and you fit them in around your lifestyle.  As Frank and I are off to Bristol today (just for one night) and then it's weekend with Lizzie coming home, it makes sense to start it after that.  And Monday is my Tap Dancing evening so I don't want to fast for the first time on a day when I will need more energy.  So - Tuesday is going to be my first fasting day and I think Tuesdays and Fridays will be fasting days that fit nicely into my week.

I've taken all the measurements I need so that I can track my progress, and I'll post what they are on Tuesday.  I will aim to write about how I feel and how hard or easy it is to do and take it from there.  If the health benefits mentioned in the book are right, then not only will my BMI and weight reduce, but my likelihood of developing diabetes (which in my case is quite likely as both my father and grandfather were sufferers) will also decrease which will be fantastic.

Until Tuesday!

Half Term

Wednesday Frank and I went to London for the day. We caught the train from Northampton as it is cheaper than from Wellingborough, but there had been a broken down train a little earlier and all those passengers were on the train we caught. We were like sardines and couldn't fall over when the train swayed as there wasn't room! We got to London around 11 am and went to Leicester Square tube station to buy some tickets for a show that evening. We decided on The Jersey Boys. Frank and I went for a coffee and then headed over towards London Bridge as we had decided to visit a museum about the second world war. Next trip to London will find us visiting the Cabinet War Rooms I think.

We lunched before visiting the museum and then spent a couple of hours looking around the exhibits. This included an Anderson Shelter that you could sit in, lots of war time memorabilia and a mock up of a town caught in the blitz.

We then wandered over towards Trafalgar Square and stopped off in Ed's for a drink. I had one of their delicious malts and Frank had a Root Beer. We met up with Katie, who had been to an interview at UCL and then went to Pizza Express before the show started. The show was excellent and we all enjoyed it. We caught the 11 pm train and arrived home about 12.45am. Poor Katie's train didn't get into Bath until gone 1am so she was very late home.

Thursday was a trip to Manchester. Frank had a meeting there and while he was in his meeting, I wandered around the Trafford Centre. We then headed to Liverpool and met up with Lizzie. We took her to Wagamamas for dinner and then drove home. We got in about 11pm. It was good seeing both girls again.

New scrapbook pages

It is ages since I blogged but I have managed to complete some more scrapbook pages of our US vacation. In fact I have finished one album. The trouble is by the end of this first album I have managed to scrap 30 pages and only 3 days of our 3 week holiday. I think I may need several albums if I carry on at this rate.

Days 19 and 20

All I managed to do today was these two pages. I don't know why it takes me so long.

The Santa page took a while as I had to find photos of when Katie and Lizzie were little and visiting Santa in Milton Keynes. They were so cute and I wish they were little like that again.

'In the Post' should have been quick as it doesn't have very much on the page, but it wasn't!

Tomorrow I have to go back to work so it will take me ages to finish this album I think!

JYC pages 15, 16, 17 and 18

I managed to complete pages 15, 16 and 17 before Christmas and had page 18 ready for the photo of our Christmas dinner. I didn't get much access to the computer over the holiday period and had even less access to my scrapbooking things so this is my first real chance to update things.




Here are the next four completed pages for my journal. Tomorrow I plan to complete a few more! Watch this space.


Page 15 is 'Visitors' in which I talk about the family Christmases that we have had and the slightly smaller one we were going to have this year.


Page 16 is basically just a list of things that I am grateful for. Now Frank may face redundancy I think I should have put that I was grateful for us both being employed!


Page 17 is a short entry about presents and Page 18 is a discussion about Christmas food. I have included a photograph of the 2008 Christmas lunch which was indeed duck! And delicious it was too.

JYC Day 14

This is my page about opening presents. We always open them on Christmas Day but don't really have any traditions about the way this is done!

The journalling reads:

'I don't remember a tradition about handing out presents when I was young. The presents were given ou and opened as you got them, so sometimes that meant several people were opening them at the same time. It was something that never occurred to me at the time, but we didn't see what each other had received or from whom. We then showed the presents around after we had opened them.

When Katie and Lizzie were little, they took forever to open presents - sometimes the whole of Christmas Day. This meant that we got to watch them actually opening them and playing with them.

Now they are older we distribute presents to one or two people at a time and wait for those to be opened before passing out some more.'

JYC Days 10, 11, 12 and 13

I have got quite a long way behind but have finally managed to finish 4 pages and photograph them.

'Wrapping gifts' uses some of the paper that we use each year to wrap our presents in. We bought a huge pack of paper from Costco a few years ago and will be using it for the foreseeable future I think. It is nice paper though!

'Our Tree' was almost finished a few days ago, but I wanted to wait for a photograph of our decorated tree to add to the page. The tree is a real one but it is a bit unstable I think! Hopefully it will stay vertical until we take it down again in January!


In the Day 12 entry I compare various Christmases. My childhood Christmases, those of 25 years ago, when I first met Frank, 20 years ago when we had Katie and Lizzie and then again with how we spend Christmas today.

The final page here lists some of my favourite Christmas songs. Not carols, but more popular songs. I love hearing these on the radio as you get nearer and nearer to Christmas!

The girls are home

Early yesterday morning, Frank and I set off in opposite directions to get our daugthers. The weather was AWFUL! It rained all the way to Liverpool and the spray on the motorway made the visibility very difficult. However, I arrivedjust after 11 am, we got Lizzie's things packed up and left her flat at about 12.15. We stopped for lunch at Sandbach services and made it home at around 3.30 pm - not long after Frank got home with Katie. It is good to have them both home again!

Today I think it is time to buy the tree and get the house decorated. And then we have to write the Christmas cards and get them mailed!

Staff party

Friday night was the staff party at college. I left work at 11.30 as I had finished teaching for the day and came home to cook. I made the puff pastry first so that it could rest and then set about cooking the onions and preparing the rest of the stuff. I made puff pastry triangles, which were topped with red onions, stilton and pear and also filo pastry triangles that were stuffed with bacon, pate and chives. They all turned out pretty well considering it was the first time I had cooked them. I had intended to make twice as many but ran out of time, so the rest of the puff pastry is in the freezer waiting for me to make sausage rolls with it!

My Secret Santa was Malcolm - the head of maintenance. I had absolutely no idea who had been buying gifts for me but the gifts were all fantastic! A cookery book - all chocolate recipes; some bath salts; a countdown holiday clock; some chocolate biscuits and a Place in the Sun magazine and the final gift which he gave me on Friday was the book Chocolat, by Joanne Harris and a bar of chocolate.

We were supposed to be having a Beetle Drive after we had eaten but it was decided at the last minute that it wasn't a good idea as people don't want to sit with people they don't know very well! Personally I think that was the wrong choice as we all ended up sitting with those we work most closely with and what is the fun in that! You never get to know anyone else unless someone makes an effort and a beetle drive would have been the ideal way to do this! Hopefully the beetle drive will take place as a stand alone event next term! But I won't hold my breath.

JYC page 9

Traditions! This was a hard one for me as we don't really have many traditions at Christmas! Each year we do most things differently! No traditional Christmas dinner, no routine to where we go etc.

There are just a few things we do the same each year! We decorate the house with streamers and a Christmas tree, we open our presents on Christmas morning and we play board games throughout the holiday period.

Anyhow - here is my page!

JYC Day 8

I caught up and now I am a little behind again.

Yesterday Frank was staying away for the night and I had planned on doing some scrapping, other than my JYC page. But I developed a headache and after completing my page for JYC decided to go to bed before midnight for a change.

This page is based on how things are changing around us. I decided to go for some simple shots of decorations and wrapping rather than think about things like the credit crunch.

After my early night I woke up at 5.00 and then couldn't get back to sleep until it was time to get up again. Consequently I have still got a headache and I have not given much thought to Day 9. So - that means I will be playing catch up again tomorrow or Thursday.

JYC Day 7

This is my to do list! I am sure I have missed things off and I might tick when they are done - I haven't yet decided. In actual fact I have already completed the bottom 3 things on the list but felt they were part of the regular Christmas list of things to do. The birthday presents are for Frank (December 23rd) and for Katie (January 1st).

Student's Christmas party

I picked Gill up at 7 o'clock and we headed out to Northampton. We were really lucky and found a parking space near the Derngate. The Guildhall is a fantastic venue and we were greated by a man dressed like he was from a Dicken's novel. It turned out that he doubled up as the magician that wandered around the tables. There was also artificial snow around the building!

When we arrived there were more staff than students but by 9 o'clock it had filled up nicely. There was a rolling buffet of rolls and snacks and staff were allowed 2 free drinks. The decorations inside the building were stunning. Drapes from the ceiling, lots of lighted trees and beautifully decorated tables.

Here's a photo of me ready to go out. I am wearing one of Katie's dresses and I'm wearing Lizzie's shoes too. Having grown up daughters is so nice! And on the right is a photo of me with Rosa Nguyen - one of my Vietnamese students.

A couple of ex students came back for the party but not as many as in previous years. Gill and I left at 10 o'clock as it was getting very cold outside! It was a pleasant evening though.

JYC Day 6

I managed to get up to date before I went out last night and finished Saturday's page.

I found this one quite hard as there haven't been any really bad Christmases. There have been a couple where we have had arguments with the family over trivial things! One in Birmingham when my parents dog stole some of the pieces of the new jigsaw and left his teethmarks in them. And then the following year I fell out with Frank's mother. On both occasions it was a case of staying too long after Christmas and just getting on each others' nerves. From then on we make visits shorter or go away for Christmas.

My childhood Christmases were not great fun as we ALWAYS had to go to one or other set of grandparent's houses or they would come to us. And that always meant getting up early and rushing to open presents before driving to Worcester or Bournemouth, or opening them before they arrived at our house. I can't ever remember a Christmas when it was just my parents and me - but I can't write all this in the journal as they would be devastated to read it!

Good Christmases have been most of them, so again choosing just one was not easy! Anyway - here is my page for Day 6!

JYC Days 4 and 5

I have spent much of today playing catch up with my Christmas journal. I must say it has been so nice not to have to spend time on college work which is the first weekend in about 6 weeks.

I have talked about my perfect Christmas and about Advent and the tradition we now have in our family. I think the journalling is clear enough to read so I won't repeat it here.

And this evening is the college student Christmas Party. It is being held at the Guildhall in Northampton and I am hoping that it will be a good evening. I hope lots of students attend and I know full well that most of the evening will be spent having photos taken with them all. They like to take photos of their teachers home to show their families!

JYC Day 2 and 3

Today I managed to get the pages finished for the 2nd and 3rd day of the journal. Weather and Cards! It was parents evening at college last night so there was no time to complete my journal page yesterday. The first parents evening that I have been a teacher at for 22 years!

I really enjoy the journalling part of it which is quiet a surprise to me as I am not used to writing much on scrapbook pages! My pages usually tell the date and the place and not much else. I know I need to expand on this so that future generations can read about life in the early 21st Century and maybe this journal will give me the confidence to carry it over onto scrapbook pages.

Here are the two pages for Days 2 and 3.