One’s Better – One’s Worse

July 28, 2013 by sewruth 37 Comments

Gosh, you wake up one morning and all of a sudden nearly four weeks have gone by!

Thank you all so much for the honest comments about the dress. There are so many that I haven’t replied individually but I read every one at least twice and took on board your advice and criticisms. Most of you were absolutely right about the bodice and that was the one thing that threw the whole balance of the dress off, apart from Sally, who is a little weird (I know her in real life) who loved the dress just as it was – there’s always one huh?

I went with the majority:  the scissors were brought out and the bodice has gone. I removed the zip altogether and just folded down 2″ to make a casing for 1″ wide elastic.

So now I have a pull-on full and swingy skirt.

Much better.

On the other hand, DH (who knows everything) washed my fancy pants (left) with the the red cotton top. Well, guess what happened there! My vibrant and colourful pants came out with an all over pink hue. So clever…….

I bought a thing to remove dye that was created for occasions such as this and soaked the pants overnight.

All the colours except the pink dye faded! Reds went to faded orange, oranges went to pale yellow, greys went to khaki, blacks went to grey and the white stayed pink!

Much worse.

I was moved and inspired by Shams and her posting about weight loss and health. Then Sarah wrote a little about it too and I followed it up. I’ve put on weight since the middle of May most of my clothes were no longer tight they just didn’t fit anymore. I realised that when you make clothes for yourself they are made to fit perfectly and any deviation in weight has a most dramatic effect on this tailored fit.  I purchased the e-book Eat to Live and started on Dr. Fuhrman’s  plant based diet a week before we went to Salisbury on choir tour. I started at a whopping 75kg (at least 10kg over my recommended ideal weight) – Within one week I’d lost 2.5 kg (5 1/2 lb) – the red line on the graph below.

[2.2lbs = 1kg]  Then we went away……

I’d no intention of sticking to the diet when we were in England – eating out every night, hotel breakfasts and so on, but I was a wee bit good and returned home with just a little weight back on. But I expected this and didn’t beat myself up about it. So this week I started again (purple line). Starting point on Tuesday was 74kg and by Friday I was down to 72kg and today it’s 71.5kg!

The diet is hard going, I’m not going to say it’s easy. I live with a carnivore and an omnivore and the Eat to Live diet is predominantly vegan. I did ask if anyone in the house wanted to join me but there were no takers, so I’ve been making a meal for them and a meal for me. The shopping trolley has a split personality – vegetables and fruit, beans and pulses at one side; meat, potatoes, bread and biscuits on the other.

I believe it’s also easier to follow the diet in summer, especially in a heat wave. I really can’t imagine eating salad with raw vegetables and a dash of balsamic in the middle of January when it’s dark at 4.30pm and 3 degrees celcius outside – just a hearty beef stew with lots of potatoes is the right thing for then. I also try to buy locally produced and in-season fruits etc. It’s not always possible but I don’t know where I’d get raspberries in February in Belfast.

I’m a girl who puts a shot of double cream in her three cups of coffee every morning: who always grates a bit more Cheddar cheese than is necessary so I can nibble it prior to dinner; who eats her sirloins blue and who cooks with salt and then salts her food: oh, I can also drink olive oil from the bottle. The frying pan is the most used pot in the kitchen arsenal in our house. To completely remove salt, sugar, meat, diary and oils from my diet was a BIG challenge. I have no underlying health issues (thankfully) so this was purely for weight loss but I can easily see how anyone’s general health would be improved on this plant based diet – there’s just no bad things in it! Every night I think – tomorrow I’ll go back to normal this is such hard work – and then I weight myself every morning and another 0.5kg has gone and I decide – just one more day. When I get to the 70kg mark I’ll have to make a new graph.

Much, much better.

I trust you and yours are all in good health, enjoying (but taking care in) the sunshine (northern hemisphere) and wrapping yourselves in wool and cashmere (southern hemisphere).