Tuesday 09 December 2014

Reboot, 2nd week

Well, I’m very happy with myself. Today is the first day of my second week of 5-2 reboot, and it all has seemed quite normal. From the viewpoint of the diet, that is. Otherwise, today has been a hectic suite of random occurrences only suited to get me off my track.

I happily worked through my lunch hour, as I was so busy, it didn’t even register. I only came down to the kitchen to boil the kettle for a roobios (or redbush.) Frankly, I didn’t even feel it.

Dinner was a bit harder, as my wife told me :”I’m going to the chippy, and after that, I’m having a shower…you feed the kids !”

Cécilia has been the queen of the Christmas choir and had treats after treats tonight, and she asked for fish & chips. Étienne, on the other hand, is quite ill, with a runny nose and such. I already knew that feeding him was going to be a challenge, but feeding while fasting was going to be even harder, especially with the smell of fish and chips.

Actually, Cécilia ate mostly normally, but Étienne didn’t touch it. So I cooked him some quick alphabet pasta with a box of my special Bolognese sauce that I dare anyone to resist.

Amazingly, I knew that if anything was passing my lips, as small as it could be, I would devour some pasta and Bolognese.

I think Coco was very surprised to see myself not touching anything, even wiping a tiny speck of sauce that landed on my finger.

So, yes, I’m pretty happy. I managed to stay on course all day with my fast, even though my mouth was salivating like crazy.

Tomorrow, I’m flying to Germany with a customer for one night, and since I can’t imagine the sort of questions I will be getting, so I’ve decided that I would not be fasting tomorrow or Thursday, but will on Friday.

Until then…

Wednesday 10 April 2013

Hangover v. Fasting

When I was an undergraduate, I used to do like any other self-respecting undergraduates do at least once in a while: I would get smashed out of my eyeballs up to the point where I couldn’t remember much of what happened. Am I proud of it? Not really, but it was all good harmless fun at the time, and made the whole undergraduate experience both more enjoyable ( and a bit longer, if I’m honest.)

During these years of seeming invincibility, I would take care of any hangover with one thing: pasta. I would cook myself a huge serving of pasta with copious amounts of full-fat creme fraiche, lardons and onions, and generous sparkling of parmesan, with the conviction that it would help me recover from the hangover faster while watching daytime television and drinking water.

These days, as a middle-aged man, I don’t drink alcohol as often and as much (Thank God.) As a result, I don’t metabolize alcohol the same way. Plus, as Frenchman, it is not in my culture to just ‘go to the pub’ to socialize. Socializing for me is more “come to my house and I’ll cook a roast chicken with a nice bottle of wine.” So, in essence, I’ve lost the habit of drinking heavily and drinking often. Don’t get me wrong: I can still hold my booze, and drank many of my wife’s (Chinese) uncles under the table during our wedding banquet.

So, yesterday, I got through about 3 pints of ale, and when I got up this morning, I did feel quite bloated and rather hangovered. Why did I choose to resume my 5-2 on the day after I had too many beer is still a mystery to me. Oh, well, keep calm and drink roobios.