The World According To Me

So one part of my post yesterday that was omitted - I weighed myself on the weekend. Gahhh! I don't tend to like to do that very often, as usually it makes me slightly sad. But when I did so on the weekend I was horrified to discover that since Pom and I have been together I have stacked on six kilo's. SIX KILO'S! That's 6kg, 6000g, 211.638oz, 13 pounds, whatevs. Now, I'm around the six foot mark, pretty tall for a chick (so I'm constantly frigging told by people in the pub, on the street, at the hairdressers...Do you know how hard it is not to say "Yeah, that's true. Hey - you're pretty ugly for a bloke"?), so to be honest a rise in weight of that amount doesn't make a really discernible difference to my figure. Trousers get a bit tighter, etc, but you could possibly mistake it for a bit of bad bloating (Ha ha). In any event, I have decided that I am going to get back on the wagon and go back to the wheat-free diet that served me so well up until I lost all motivation/had to start cooking for someone else.

I visited a naturopath almost two years ago now, complaining of extreme lethargy amongst other things. I explained how my belly swells up after almost every meal, and how I would get inexplicably tired after eating, had no energy, etc. He did a whole lot of surprisingly scientific tests and announced that my cells were around 40% toxic, that I was barely functioning. Duh. He then declared that I needed to cut all grains and potato out of my diet, at which point I nearly fell off my chair. I'm pretty sure I said "Are you fucking serious? What am I supposed to eat?". He replied "Fish and vegetables. Use some lemon for flavour". Get le fucked. I drove home from Melbourne feeling pretty dejected and sad, but the naturopath had described to me how my body just can't handle grains, wheat especially, and his explanations did make a lot of sense. So I embarked on a very strict regimen of eating which excluded all pasta, bread, cereals, rice and potato. It's really quite difficult. I customised a sweet potato and pumpkin soup recipe (sweet potato and potato are from different families, so it was okay) and ate that a lot, I made salads, I found a wheat free muesli to eat for breakfast, I steamed vegetables, I found meals on restaurant menu's that would be okay for me to eat. I lost weight very quickly, I think it was 4kg in the first week. I had no belly pains, less tiredness, much more energy, a clear head and my stomach was flatter than I think it had ever been. The great thing was, I was eating more than ever before but still dropping weight. I ate HUGE salads with smoked chicken and shaved parmesan, dressed with balsamic vinegar. I could eat as much meat as I liked, so I would cook a massive steak or whatever animal product I so desired. It was great. Initially I got headaches from the carb withdrawal, but these soon dissipated and within about 2 months I had dropped about 12kg. Then I had Operation Boob-Reduction™ and was not particularly concerned as to whether or not morphine included any wheat-products.

Once I was better, however, I got back into the swing of things, the kilo's kept dropping, albeit more slowly. I think I reached around 18kg and then I hit the plateau. In a bad way. I kept on with my wheat-free rigmarole, but then the festive season was upon us. I don't know about everyone else, but that time of year is an absolute madhouse. Functions for work, parties with friends, seeing family. Champagne and canapes are abundant, and I love it. Then there's Christmas Day, where my family prepare enough food to keep a small African nation's appetites' sated for several days. Then there's New Year's Eve, etc etc etc. After that it was all downhill and I was barely half hearted about the whole thing. The weight stayed off though, so that was some comfort.

Then, some moons later, I met Pom. The early heady days of meals out, lots of drinking etc ensued. Again, it was Christmas, then we moved in together. I didn't think that as chief Kitchen Bitch that it would be fair to serve up poncy salads to a growing boy and so it has been pasta's, risotto's and general crap to keep our tummy's full. Thus, I've porked on that ridiculous amount described above. Also the fatigue, bloated belly etc has returned and quite honestly I feel like crap.

So the plan was to change our diets a bit, to try and get me back to feeling good again, which started yesterday. The whole (extremely bloody long-winded) point of this post is that I made a lentil soup last night for dinner. No recipe, just lentils, onions, garlic, ginger, some crushed tomatoes, a fresh chilli, some stock and whatever other spices were lurking in my cupboard. I sauteed, simmered and blended, and the end result was really quite nice. Pom was very pleased, as for some reason he is quite partial to a soup. So all was well.

Until this morning.

Lentils = Lots and lots of Fibre

Fibre = Strange happenings in the stomach

Strange happenings = noise.

Oh Lordy.