AN OLD BIDDY'S BOOK REVIEW

The Holford GL Diet By Patrick Holford

Today is useful information day. At least I think it useful, you may not. Patrick Holford was recommended to me by my sister, so I promptly went to the library and picked up his books. His platform is excellent – use food instead of medicine and his Low GL diet appealed because it involved eating lots of fruit and vegetables which I love. The ‘GL’ is the abbreviation for Glycemic Load and there is no need for a detailed explanation, until you read the book.

Some of you may have read my feelings on various diets in ‘The Day The Scales Crashed’ in a previous post. But, I decided a couple of weeks ago that an attempt on another diet was in order, hence my decision to invest in the above book.

I started out in fine fettle, spending an enormous amount of money on the foods the author recommended. Basically, I had to eat mainly fruit, vegetables and protein in the form of chicken or fish to begin with; carbohydrates were supplied in the form of oats, oat cakes and pumpernickel bread. Forget it!

With the size of the servings I was supposed to consume, I became aware that Mr. Holford was catering to the foodaholics who consumed copious amounts of food before switching diets. For them, the quantity of servings in the diet would perhaps be more in keeping with the amount they previously ate and consequently less of a shock to their systems.

Oats as a cereal are not a problem; as oatcakes they are ghastly in my book and pumpernickel bread is like eating sawdust. That really is the only real criticism of the diet I have.

Unfortunately, cooking for me is a complete waste of time and after labouring over what seemed to be ‘cordon bleu’ recipes for main dishes, common sense told me that, upon analysis, they were just plain protein and vegetable tarted up.

The GL diet is basically a good nutritious diet, set out in detail with all the benefits, menus, recipes, exercise recommendations, balancing blood sugar, etc., in good comprehensive form.

My own problems are simply, as I have emphatically stated, quite personal. I don’t like wasting time cooking, the portions are far too large for me and I am not amenable in any way to oatcakes and pumpernickel bread.

There is another problem that has nothing to do with any of the above. I have discovered that I have a food allergy to sugar and that includes sugar in overly sweet fruits. The amount of sugar I consume directly affects my asthma and I cannot afford to mess around with anything containing an excessive amount of sugar, much as I love fruits.

Incidentally, the expense incurred for the initial shopping expedition was hefty because I needed to stock up. This is not an ongoing high expense diet.

I would certainly recommend that you read this book. It is available at the library, so have a look see and then if you are interested, buy the book. The diet is good, nutritious and sensible and I am continuing with it with some modifications as per the problems outlined above.

Good reading, good cooking and good eating.

Group Aims to Enjoy Life

The Red Hat Society began in 1998 when Sue Ellen Cooper started giving her friends a red hat and a copy of "Warning", a poem about a woman in purple clothing and a red hat. The significance of this was to remind them that life is short and every day is a gift that needs to be celebrated.

In no time, a group formed to simply enjoy life and each other, and the Society has taken off. There are hundreds of thousands of members all over the U.S. and Canada who enjoy getting together, and one of the results of getting together is the book Eat Dessert First!

Once I opened this book, I found lots of recipes that called to me, sang to me, and lured me down calorie lane. I had to photocopy some of them, only for personal study though so I did not infringe copyright law. One I will have to try is Auntie Joyce's Wine Biscuits, as we always seem to have one or two half-finished bottles of wine that we just can't pour out even though we don't like it.

Many of the recipes reflect the American penchant for making dishes using mixes and other packaged items. The Cake Mix Cinnamon Rolls look pretty good in the photograph. I tried them out and, yes indeed, they were yummy. I don't know how they are after a day out of the oven as there were no crumbs left to test.

Gloria Novak
For The Oceanside Star

This quick review of East Dessert First – oh, those decadent calories, reminds us of two very important facts. First, as we grow older, we need to socialize and enjoy life. Some of us, myself included, tend to cocoon ourselves in the house. The other reminder is that there is a book out there with recipes for unmentionable dessert calories which we need to look at, buy, or borrow from the library – to heck with the calories. Why should we bother about such nonsense at our age. After all, once in a while……………….

The Day The Scales Crashed

“You lie”, I screamed as I stood on the scales after two weeks of near starvation, only to find the indicator still at the same figure as last time. In blind fury I jumped with all my might on the scales and that, I'm afraid, was the end of my weighing apparatus.

I was desperate and the problem - what to do about it? After all, the medical profession, weight loss companies and diet pundits trumpet their success mainly with young, nubile women who achieve fantastic weight losses in a record period of time. Not once do you hear about a plodding, older, slower biddy who has achieved any kind of success following the same regimen in any period of time, as in my case.

However, make no mistake about it, the weight loss organizations will assert that if you stick to a diet, preferably their particular diet, you will lose weight.

There is no one, I am certain, absolutely no one living who has had more experience dieting over the past 40 years than myself. Furthermore, I know my body inside out and back to front. Success was always mine when I was younger, even when I thought I was overweight at size 14! Now, nothing moves. Not even exercise in a gym for three months four times per week and a diet of approximately 1400 calories can assist.

I sit and chat with doctors who admit ‘they don’t know’. I see a specialist in obesity who is over the moon with the prospect of having yet another guinea pig for drug controlled diet tests. When he finds out that due to a particular medication I am taking I don’t fit the specifications of the test drug manufacturer, I am dropped immediately.

What can be done? It seems to be a well known fact that as you grow older, so it becomes much more difficult to lose weight. To a person like myself who is in possession of a stubborn body, the weight control organizations, while never admitting defeat, tend to give up on you. The medical profession cannot help so they placate you with the admission that they simply don’t have any answers apart from the old maxim that the less calories you consume the more weight you will lose.

This may be generally true, but we all know that different bodies respond to different diets. An 800 calorie diet for me yielded no success because my body thought it was being attacked and went into shut down mode. The only time I lost weight on few calories, was in a hospital bed for 10 days, drinking three meal replacement drinks a day.

As for your nearest and dearest friends and relatives, they utter silly platitudes like, get comfortable with your overweight image and accept it and stop worrying. Not on your life!The above arguments are not acceptable for me - not when you are clinically obese and biologically time is running out. It is not a healthy situation viewed in any light.

I want to continue life as a fit and healthy woman, enjoying a good quality of life, so shedding weight is a must. Growing old with an obesity problem is not an option.
Many other people must have this problem, and I would love to have your thoughts on the subject – please share them with me.