With Views Like This

You just know that it says Italy, the Mediterranean and beautiful turquoise waters, blue skies, warm sun and great food.

I have to say that I thought last year's holiday where we travelled to the major cities of Italy by train was special but this was in many ways better as we had plenty of time to take things easy and with views like this wherever you go, the backdrop of the Bay of Naples continually with us and sights like Vesuvius, the Amalfi Coast, Ravello, Sorrento itself and Herculaneum and then the Island of Capri to cap it all with its views and stunning colour of the sea around its coast and the steep ascent we made to Anacapri up what appeared to be a never ending staircase up the side of a mountain and you can see we were enchanted by the area.

This balcony is part of a Sorrento Hotel and you can dine here.  It overlooks the Sorrento and the Bay of Naples and Wisteria grows and blossoms over the loggia.  It's all picture postcard stuff like this.

Here a Cruise ship lies in anchor just outside the Harbour - they were only here for half a day - hardly enough time to see the town.  The backdrop of Vesuvius  dominates the Bay.  To get an idea of how big the mountain was before the eruption draw imaginary lines from the low sides upwards and you can see how high it was before.  You feel that you could just reach out and touch it.

The sea is blue and you can see into its clear waters to see fish swimming throughout.  We went to the smaller or the harbours, called the grand harbour (this is Italy - it makes sense to them) and there had fried sardines (almost larger Whitebait) that had been landed a few minutes earlier.  We saw the fishermen bring in whatever they'd caught in their nets and hand it over to the various restaurateurs.  The food everywhere was stunning and plentiful but overall it was expensive eating out lunchtime and evening - although after I'd shown Mrs. F. the Scrambled Egg, Ham and Cheese breakfast trick (loading up with protein) we found we could last with that breakfast and not need to eat - other than perhaps a Bruschetta with a beer until the evening.

Our Hotel was great, the restaurants were great and the views were stunning.  Interesting point is though that I'd probably not go back there again although I have no reason not to. 

Well That WAS A Nice Week

Well - after all the performances we finally got to the airport on time and have duly had a fabulous week in and around Sorrento in Italy.  I'll post some more details when I get the time this week - it's been a hectic week in some ways and relaxing in others.  We spent a great deal of time actually doing nothing this week which is very unlike us.

Mrs. F. actually found out that she doesn't mind some shellfish where before she'd shied away from it.  This is great news and I enjoy preparing and cooking various shellfish.  

I've just had myself a good time and tried to not think too much about the recurrence.  Of course though, I've given some thought to what might have sparked this recurrence and I'll share some of that a little later this week after I've done a little research.  I made a major change to my diet in January and it suddenly occurred to me that one thing that is now a daily staple of my diet may just be the culprit.  I intend to dump this from my diet as soon as I have finished off the present batch.

I've also had a bit of advice that I'll follow and share as well.  More later

Ohh Packing - Keep Out Of The Way!

Nothin worse I find than Mrs. F. Packing and at 8 in the morning saying that "I'll never be ready! Why did we say we were going to your friend's birthday party?"  and so on.  There's no pleasing her she will go off and do the martyr bit and try and do everything at once.  As usual I am all but ready I just need a few things from the laundry and that's me done.  I've done all the reading, got all the documents ready and to be fair (why is everyone saying that and "to be honest" at the moment?) we were going to my friend's 50th way before we booked the holiday it isn't as if I just sprung it on her :-)

I just want to be there and enjoying the place and relaxing a bit too.  I would like to spend some time just doing next to nothing but we will see if Mrs. F. has anything else planned she did say she was going to relax - it would be a first for sure.  I just need to eat sensibly.

I'm in a strange place today for sure - I know that I've got the cancer back again but I'm not like I was when I was first diagnosed - in fact just before I was diagnosed - I was really in bits.  Now - well I'm more pragmatic about it.  Sure it is a set back and sure I really don't need it but I am lucky in that it is very early on in the process and that it has been caught relatively quickly.   I am also thankful that at present it is in my bladder and let's hope that is where it stays.  

I have to say that I'm really positive about things as I know that they can sort this out but what I don't like is the possibility that I may be getting closer to the point where I may lose the bladder altogether.  That is someway off I believe but we will have to see.  My friend had a number of recurrences and a number of BCG rounds before having to have his bladder removed last year.

Anyway - positive thoughts and working on ways to live with this diagnosis are now high on my list.

Reflections on another recurrence

In some ways it is a bit disappointing to make such progress and then get a recurrence.  It shows the sort of problems bladder cancer throws up.  In many ways it should act as a reminder about how serious this stuff is.  I know I tend to speak lightly of it but that's because I'm pretty positive about tackling the damn thing and I also know that it is controllable and that I should have a pretty good chance of getting over this and whether with treatment or not be able to overcome it.

It's so annoying because I've been doing everything I can not to get a recurrence but I have to say that last year I did neglect my diet towards the end of the year and only really started on it again in mid January.  It just means that I need to double my efforts and keep all sweet things and as many carbs as possible out of my system and make sure I settle in to it and not fall back into old ways.  I also feel better today than I've felt for years and so also find it a little confusing that now, when I'm in much better shape than I have been that I've got a small recurrence.  This time it wasn't a red spot (which turned out to be nothing) he drew a small cauliflower looking thing on the diagram.  I now know that I've got to have a rigid cystoscopy for that and then see what will happen from there.  

I think this is the 3rd recurrence but in reality it is the first since I cleared the BCG treatments.  

I'm going to just cut loose and enjoy my holiday and then figure out what to do after that.  The timing is pants of course especially if I was to get that job I've been involved in for 6 months - typical it would come to a head just as I've got this diagnosis.

Go With Your Gut Feel (Sometimes)

Well those little flecks I thought I saw were indeed from a very small tumour about 1/3rd the way up on my bladder wall - not where they have been before (not sure if that's what he meant).  After waiting for an hour and my MP3 running out of battery :-( I had some sort of suspicion that it wasn't going to be good news.

As far as it goes - there will be an operation (rigid cystoscopy) in 4 to 6 weeks time and then I suppose they'll biopsy it and see what to do next.  

I'm feeling pretty neutral about it.  Disappointed that after 5 years or so I've got a recurrence but pleased that it is small, operable and that I'll get it sorted in relatively quick time.  They told me to drink lots of liquid which of course I do anyway on my diet.

Will just have to regroup after our holiday and reset my expectations.  Other people are always more devastated than me at my news :-) 

Off for a bit of a rest - more later.

Eggs and Diet

Not a newspaper I normally read but the Daily Mail has an interesting article on eggs here.  A large part of my diet is made up of eggs and it seems amazing that they've been so demonised   in the past.  It seems utterly bizarre to me that the advice we get to eat grains and the like is right.  Vegetables and meat and eggs - yes I get those but fruit - although lovely - does spike your body to produce insulin.  This article mentions milk is OK but I can't see that as it also produces an insulin reaction in the body.  I imagine it wasn't generally available to man until after he started farming although, who knows, maybe they kept a few around?

So far I'm feeling pretty good on this diet and getting ever closer to dipping under 16 stone - it's the thickness of the needle at the moment :-) but I can see progress which is also great.  Next week will be a challenge in Italy but I reckon if I stay off the Pasta and the Bread I could get through without too much damage.  I know what I can eat and although I may end up with the odd beer here and there I can stick pretty much to the low carb diet.

A Little Too Keen

Have to laugh - I was just getting ready to go when I realised that it is only 08:30 not 09:40!!!!  Nervous - not me :-)  mind you I think that anyone who would consider rushing out so you can have done what I'm going to have done may be looked at suspiciously.

So far no more signs of anything wrong with me but at least we will find out today.  It seems strange that 6 months ago I was clear in all areas but let's see what happens - I can't second judge this and the tests and scope will determine it.

Other than that - I've just found an hour to kill :-) maybe by then the weather will have settled down and this drizzle will have gone - it looks as if the sun wants to burn a hole in it so fingers crossed on that one.

Here we go again

The final lap before getting into the Hospital and having my scope.  I'm pretty much prepared for it these days, it's not a major problem for me to go on my own now - I'm sort of OK with preparation for that and as long as I make sure I'm hydrated properly and that I take my ibuprofen and paracetamol just before I have the procedure it means that any pain can be controlled.  They are using a new local anesthetic these days which seemed to make a real difference last time.  It certainly stopped the stinging I've encountered a couple of times.

I haven't seen any problems since last Sunday and so I'll just have to see what the answer is tomorrow.  I guess if it is bad news I'll have to live with that and go around the roller coaster again.  It's a bit too early to say of course - tomorrow we will know I'm sure.

I've got some water and my stress balls to take and my MP3 player will be charged up with some tunes so I'll be fine with that.  I intend to do next to nothing when I get back other than a few calls and update the blog I suppose.

No Signs

I don't know what is going on and tomorrow we should find out for sure with the results of my urine test and the scope.  I haven't seen any signs of haematuria (blood in my urine) since I thought I saw a fleck or two last week.  I'm being vigilant but the test tomorrow will sort this out.

Last thing I need at the moment would be a recurrence but I'm surprised as I actually feel very well and the gloom and depression has lifted away and I feel fine not at all like I was when I had Bladder Cancer the first time.  Anyway, I can't second guess the scope and so we will have to find out tomorrow. 

Interesting Graphic Fructose Overload

I know that the Mercola site can be a bit daunting in terms of all the information in there and recently I've only gone for the weekly digest as there was so much information coming out.  This information though I felt was worth putting up on the site as it should be frightening to us all.  Whilst it is US based information I imagine that the same holds true over here although Agave and Jell-O aren't familiar to us.

You can read the whole article here.  

Discover the fructose content of common foods, beverages, sauces, and even sugar substitutes in our infographic "Fructose Overload." Use the embed code to share it on your website.

Discover the fructose content of common foods, beverages, sauces, and even sugar substitutes in our infographic "Fructose Overload."

What's Going On?

At last - hopefully - I will get an answer on this job I've been lined up for.  We are now in month 6 (or is it 7) in the process and they have a meeting late this afternoon.  Let's hope that they arrive at a decision one way or the other and let me know.

Curiously I haven't seen anything abnormal in my urine since reporting it on Sunday, nothing and yet at the back of my mind I did think I saw something and saw it on a few occassions.  It could be nothing or it could be a recurrence.  At the moment I'm just being vigilant but it has been three days and no signs at all.  Could it have been something else - perhaps there's some explanation but of course I'll find out on Friday if there is anything.  I'd sort of be surprised if it were - I had a clean scan and had no recurrence for 5 years or so.  Oh well - let's see I can't second guess these things.

Feeling a little jaded today after my friend's funeral yesterday it wasn't as somber an affair as I thought it might be and so that was good and we had some interesting anecdotes to tell because strangely my friends knew him but through his association with Rugby and I knew him from his Freemasonry and work at the old people's home where the Easter Egg hunt is held each year - he arranged the Spring Fair for many years.

I'm planning our activities in Italy and hope that we can go to Herculaneum and Pompeii and if the weather is good to go to Mount Vesuvius too.  Having printed off all the details and downloaded a few apps it all looks to be readily accessible and nice and easy from our base in Sorrento.

A drunk man's words are a sober man's thoughts

And so I offer you my late night thoughts.....  Having attended a friend's funeral today and having been eating and drinking since then I have perhaps attained that position where what I say might actually reflect what I mean :-)

Having spent a day mourning the loss of a friend who was only 6 years older than I although in family terms much different with married children and grandchildren, I found myself in a strange predicament this evening discussing the ups and downs of having a cancer prognosis.  My friend had a very very very bad prognosis and within weeks died.  That in itself should give you a clue to my issue.  You see, I had a pretty bad prognosis and no one in my immediate family seemed (to me) to be that concerned about it and I, for my part, never ever gave the appearance that it was any worse than I perceived it was. 

Today I want to do everything and anything.  I want to celebrate life and enjoy myself.  Life is, to me, very short indeed.  This Friday, perhaps, I may get some bad news, I know not but life goes on, people argue over trivia, over a seat on a train, over borders drafted by cartographers, over a recipe or some other trivial matter.  People die to protect these ideals and boundaries and for what?

?

That's right - for nothing.  Why can't we just live together without all these niggles and problems?

I hope I may plumb those questions in the next few weeks - I really do.  So far I haven't found any relinquishing features in humankind to pull us back from the abyss.

Slow Monday

Things got better during the day - I was able to eat a little at lunchtime and a fair amount in the evening.  I am back to normal this morning.  I drank plenty of water yesterday and consequently went to the bathroom frequently but there was nothing to see and no repetition of what I'd thought were flecks in my urine.  I'll keep a watching brief but Friday will be the day when we see if it is just me being paranoid or that I didn't imagine it.  Either way I'll just have to live with it and you know things could be worse.  I'm going to a funeral of someone who was only 6 years older than me later today.  Sobering stuff.  I don't suppose I've ever felt "old" even at 55 it doesn't feel much different to being 40, perhaps I'm not as physically fit though as I used to be.

A friend who can only be 3 or 4 years older than me was telling me that he's just been diagnosed with emphysema that on top of his existing colitis and suddenly you start to be thankful that you've only had Bladder Cancer - which isn't to trivialise it!  Add to that my other friend who has just been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and suddenly it looks like we are all in the firing line.  I'm pretty pleased that all I've really had is the Bladder Cancer.

Things are back to "normal" this morning, a nice hearty breakfast, on my 2nd pint of cold water and a black coffee and at the PC.  I'm doing some more research on my holiday which I am looking forward to.

Monday Blues

The day after cheat day is always a bad one for me.  With yesterday's scare with something in my urine I drank quite a bit of beer and water all day and noticed nothing which is a tiny bit reassuring.  Luckily I have my scope on Friday and so that will determine what (if anything) is going on.  I knew I was a bit cranky during the morning but by the afternoon I was performing for the crowd and I felt OK albeit I didn't mention it to anyone not even Mrs. F.  I think if I had seen any more then I would.

This morning I feel like poo, cheat day really does mess with my system and I suffer reflux overnight and that's not nice.  So it starts to reinforce some of what I've been reading about food and I don't suffer from indigestion or gas or heartburn at all during the week.

I daren't even tell you what going to the lavatory is like the day after a cheat day other than - you seriously get an idea of the rubbish you throw down your throat that you think is good :-) 

I have to say that I feel so bad this morning that I don't even want to force myself to eat breakfast.  Now it's one of the golden rules to eat within one hour of waking but I just feel that if I eat I will probably just feel worse than I do at the moment.  My stomach is churning away and all I'm doing is keeping hydrated with cold water.  

My friend Flocky Bicep has just called to say he is ill and cannot go to a meeting this afternoon and as my car is showing an engine warning light it is doubtful that I can go either as it is a fair distance and I need my car checked over before I drive any distance.

The Piano, despite being booked to be taken away on Saturday didn't happen so that needs to be attended to.  At the moment - my thoughts are on Friday's scope followed by our trip to Italy.

I'm wondering whether to just calm down cheat day somewhat to try and minimise the sick feeling I get overnight and the next morning.  I need to do enough to spike the body's insulin but not so much as to make me feel so horrible the next morning that I don't want to eat at all as I do now.

Oh Dear :-(

I know I can be a bit paranoid but that's the third or fourth fleck of something in my urine in a week.  It isn't noticeable in terms of feeling it but I've just caught these tiny flecks out of the corner of my eye and can see them in the pan - only individually too.

OK it isn't conclusive but it does make me feel as if there may be a recurrence.  So I'm not feeling quite as chirpy as I should be on cheat day.  I'm just going to monitor the situation and see how we go from there.  It is a little concerning but I have my scope on Friday and that will determine if there is anything there or not.

At the moment it is infrequent - perhaps 4 or maybe 5 times in the last week or more.  

Can't even begin to tell you quite how this makes me feel.  Fear is high on the list :-(

At least today we have people over and I can let what's left of my hair down :-)

Worst possible meal choice

Was out with good old Flocky Bicep - thank goodness he was able to take me as my car is showing an engine light :-(  The food was a nightmare as it was completely full of stuff I can't eat.    I just didn't eat it - that simple and just had some more when I got home.  It's cheat day later and so I'll make up for it then.  I certainly find the sorts of meals that you get put in front of you aren't as healthy as you'd like to believe.

It's a friend's funeral on Tuesday as well as lad's night out - not sure if I will want to be in the Church as it will be absolutely rammed full.  I may perhaps arrive for the interment and then wander over to the club where his wake will be.  It's one of those deaths that were quite sudden and yet perhaps not unexpected in some ways.  

We have the family around later tomorrow - the piano didn't get moved and when I fired off a text - they were pretty mortified that they hadn't sorted it out.  The trouble is that this has gone on for about a year now and so it needs to happen fast.  Let's hope they sort it out soon.

This time next week we will be almost ready to fly off to Italy which I am looking forward to now.   There's lots to do in and around Sorrento and I just watched a programme on Herculaneum which was very interesting indeed and Pompeii and Vesuvius are of course nearby.

I'm hoping to relax and chill out a bit later - it's cheat day and I can have a beer too as well as get stuck in to some chocolate cake I see they've made.  The opposite side of me though has started to view any food as suspicious these days and so I'm wary of what may be in the food I eat and I'm also noticing that even though I can cheat - I only do so a bit and don't go mad and eat say 6 or 7 roast potatoes - I may have 2 which is far less than I used to eat.  Perhaps you change your attitude to the food that is likely to mess up your system?

The wonders of ghee

Well it arrived whilst we were out - very quick delivery and was left with a neighbour which was great.  I did my first cooking with the ghee tonight and yes indeed it tasted very nice but tomorrow will be the breakfast test - they say that scrambled or fried eggs will taste double yummy using ghee.  My Indian friend also told me how to use my leftover cottage cheese and I made a sort of fried paneer with some onions and tomatoes and it really tasted quite pleasant with added spinach.  

I'm still carefully reading articles and books about this low glycemic index way of eating and I am drawn towards the Tim Ferris diet as that appears to be working quite well but I might take some of the Protein Power, Atikins and Insulin Factor recommendations too, especially the potential use of hard cheeses that have next to no lactose in them.  I'm only thinking about for flavouring meals to make them interesting as they have very low GI and are mainly fat, it's the lactose element that needs to be cautious.

I did remarkably well today as there were chips on my plate and I didn't need them not even "just one" as to me that would defeat the object of the exercise.  Cheat day is going to be Sunday as there are cakes and puddings galore for A's birthday party.  Looking forward to that.

So much to do so little time

Had two calls today that took over 2 1/2 hours of my time.  Then heard that a guy I worked with a few years ago had died of a Cerebral Haemorrhage.  Life's a bit cruel and he was thousands of miles from home too.  I can't say that we had a good working relationship but he was pleasant enough company and bright as a button and as sharp as a razor.

That's the second death I've heard about this week and another funeral is next week of someone else I know.  

On a positive note my Ghee has arrived and I'm looking forward to getting used to using it.  My Indian friend told me where to find that at my local supermarket and also suggested I try the Indian Cottage Cheese which is superior in all ways!  So he says :-)

We went out to lunch today but we all smell of smoke as the fire which was raging away was also blowing back down the chimney and so we all smell like a barbeque :-)  I had a superb mixed grill and gave away my chips (fries) to everyone else.  It was all in all a very reasonable meal and I also managed two nice glasses of Rioja - most civilised.

Now I need to sort out my calendar and arrangements as we are away in just over a week and I have calls on my time all over the place.  I need to seriously DIARISE - ohhh that shows off my days working for a US Corporate.  I learnt some incredible hair raising phrases there.   Shudders!

Anyway - the dining room is finished much to my surprise - Mrs. F. managed to sort it all out so we can have the party here on Sunday.  Great

As it is late Friday afternoon I now fancy wandering downstairs and perhaps popping open a bottle of red (not just for me I hasten to add).  

More on MP3 Music

So having put thousands of tracks on my server and have my Sonos setup I decided that I should experiment with random tracks and so set my Sonos to shuffle.  Now all was well and good if you find Pearl Jam followed by Bach an interesting combo :-)  The problem though was that my music is all recorded at different volumes and I've used a host of different ripping programmes and bought online and so the volumes are all over the place which is a bit distracting.  Luckily a wee open source programme called MP3Gain has come to the rescue - mind you it is doing batches at the moment which is taking a while but hopefully this will be almost the last piece of work I need to do in the library.  All future MP3s will be checked, tagged, associated with album art volume checked and then entered into the system.

This morning my accounts were audited and flew through scrutiny - not too difficult as I had a professional accountant review them in the first place.  I've one more set of accounts to do this year.

It is a bad month already.  Yesterday heard about Jim Tuffin's death.  A friend known affectionately as Yogi died in March and his funeral is next Tuesday and another friend died on Monday - he had been ill for a while but there you go - it was a great shame and his funeral is when I'm away in Italy.  Another friend has been diagnosed with Bowel Cancer and he is undergoing Chemo.  He though isn't in a great frame of mind about it.

It's hard to believe but we've had flurries of snow again today and it's April for goodness sake!   

Calm - Everyone in Bed

Got back from Jazz, a most interesting evening with a lot of old songs I recognised but didn't know the title to.  I won a bottle of Red Wine which is great and kept to drinking red wine even though they had three guest ales in.  The hardest thing about the diet is beer - I really like beer in all its forms and the real ale they serve is second to none.  They have great names and my friend had a half a pint of Ginger Tosser?  

So the house is quiet and everyone is asleep which is great - I've left a note as I have my audit team over in the morning and as the Dining room looks like North Korea has invaded it I have to use the kitchen table to do the accounts on.  With any luck I can get that done, then sort the car out and then whatever else needs to be attended to.

I've researched the various routes between the airport and our hotel and know the prices and times so we can make a decision based on what we find when we arrive.  There is a direct bus, a bus to the main station and a train ride or a bus to the ferry terminal and a hydrofoil ride across the bay.  Whatever way we travel I'm sure we will be bowled over by the area given the photographs I've seen today.

I also watched a documentary on Herculaneum and I am really looking forward to seeing that, Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius.  We might go to Capri and perhaps take the Amalfi Coast road although I'm not sure about driving in Italy after last years sojourn in Bologna :-)  

Mrs. F. suggested that we ought to take a few days rest which is most unlike her - she's the one with the round arse who never keeps still for a moment so it will be interesting to see if she does actually take a day or two to rest.   It would suit me just to take it easy and have leisurely breakfast, lunch and dinner and just do next to nothing all day :-)

Goodbye

Another Cancer Blogger says goodbye.  I've been following Jim Tuffin's fight for a while and heard today that he died on the 24th March 2013.  There are some useful lessons in his blog (I hope it stays up) which should  humble us all.  Dealing with a terminal prognosis and keeping on going and letting us know about it too.  It's sobering stuff for me.  I suggest that those of us who have lived through this and lived to tell the tale relate to and feel every word of this stuff.

I was contacted by Jim perhaps 10 years ago and only ever knew him electronically in business.   His last entry was on 12th March and comments on the 18th March, he was hoping to live until 18th April, his birthday.   Just 12 days later he passed away.

Another cancer victim but what is interesting is his desire and drive to make sure his family were catered for and if nothing else, reading his blog will give you a sense of the way it messes with your emotions around your loved ones and your own mortality. 

Just One Of THOSE Days

Mrs. F. does this occasionally - she has a week off this week, we have a family party on Sunday coming, she decides to decorate the Dining room......

I don't get asked it just happens and the place if a tip.  I had to assist yesterday and then today I am asked with 30 seconds notice to take the radiator off the wall - in doing so I spring the leak from hell and was lucky to recover the situation but trying to get Mrs. F. to understand that I wanted a screwdriver to shut a valve off - was she just being obstreperous returning with one of my jewellers (watch and spectacle repairs) screwdrivers which of course is as much use as a chocolate wrench.  Of course I sort of shouted at her, she's not unintelligent after all said and done.  Anyway, despite her best efforts to test my patience I managed to sort it out pretty quickly and stop the leak which was threatening to call for a lifeboat.  

This project that I had no knowledge of and have washed my hands of is just crazy but there you go if that's what she wants to do in her week off then so be it.  If there ever was something likely to p1ss me right off then this would be it.  Luckily I'm out tonight to the Jazz night and so I can just let her get on with it.  So far we've also had 5 or is it 6 shorts on the electrics requiring me to repair the fuse and taking out the downstairs lighting, this despite the fact that I asked her to tape the damn thing up.  No tape she said but after the event I found the tape about 3 foot from the switch!  Crazy.

Anyway - tomorrow I have people around for my audit so I just hope that I'm not going to be asked to put the radiator back when they are here.

A chat with my friend and he confirms that he has T2 diabetes and is now on drugs for that and further tests including a scan to make sure all is what it seems.  He's lost another Kilo and his BP is coming down so let's hope things are OK for him.  In some ways it isn't surprising given his lifestyle and he does enjoy his food.

I've been busy sorting out the holiday and the car.  So far I've managed to book us in on-line and the seats they've allocated us are fine - we could have paid a little extra to choose our seats but the selection we have is fine as we have window and adjacent there and back again.  I've been looking at transfers from the airport to the resort and that looks straightforward and may even work out nicely with our arrival time too.  Let's hope so but there are a number of alternatives which allow us to choose various routes involving sea, rail and road so that's OK.

Sample - Safely Deposited

I worked on the car this morning as I disturbingly got an engine warning light - the oil was low but all the oil I had only brought the level up to just above minimum :-(  So perhaps we will buy some more tomorrow and see if we can fill it up and then if the light doesn't go off I'll run it up to the garage now our other car is back.  

I normally get more than two weeks notice to have my scope and so I would normally have the urine sample in at least 2 weeks ahead but getting it in today is, I hope, the next best thing.  Hopefully they will have the results ready for when I get scoped.  It was a nice walk to the Hospital and back via Sainsburys.  I did a little basic shopping but couldn't find any Ghee (Indian clarified butter) - I looked in the butters / margarine fridges and the Oils and those sorts of areas but to no avail.  I have purchased some through Amazon and let's see what it is like.  Someone suggested that I should have looked at the indian cooking area - not sure if I actually saw one but perhaps that is where it will be.  It doesn't need to be refrigerated and I may just ask my mate where he gets his from.  For the moment, I've got some on its way and will report on how I find it when it arrives.

I've also got some little waxed containers (like you see at Fast Food Restaurants for ketchup).  I'm going to use them to put the fat in from my George Foreman griddle as I don't like to put it down the waste disposer and I'm running out of jam jar lids to put the fat in before throwing it away - let's see if this sorts the problem out for me :-)

I've got the dates set for auditing my accounts which is great too.  Now just one more set of accounts to sort out...

Back on Track

It takes me a little while to get back to normal following the wobble that is cheat day.  I feel much better this morning and it is interesting to note how lean or slim I actually feel - to me it is more noticeable now especially as my trousers now fit around my waist and not under it!  It's a major improvement but on top of that I feel fit and I feel healthy too.  Which is great.

I read a lot of the book "Protein Power" over the weekend and that together with Gary Taubes, Dr. Atkins, The Insulin Factor and Tim Ferriss; all point out the benefits of a low Insulin diet. Of course I found some detractors from this view too but have a think about it for a while.  The majority of diets limit calories and fat and yet whilst you can point to a number of people who have lost weight from them, unless they continue to diet, as soon as they revert to normal food, they start to put weight on again.  If these diets did what they said there wouldn't be so many cases of obesity and diabetes out there?  These books all make a compelling argument for the balance of our diet to shift away from a carbohydrate based one to a more natural one adopted by our ancestors for well over 2 and a half million years.  Man has been growing his own food for less than 12,000 years and they never featured in the diet until then, we switched to a different lifestyle eating food we weren't genetically designed to eat and much of the problem appears to be that we aren't evolved sufficiently enough to handle such a diet.

In our known existence to date for 0.48% of that time we've been eating diets increasingly high in carbohydrates and rather than eating them when seasonal we've been eating them all years around.  Add to that the increasingly high levels of sugar in our diet and you start to see what is going on.   It isn't just the obvious diabetes and obesity that appear to come from this diet but other chronic diseases too including heart and cancers.  The books make for troubling reading especially when you consider what advice we are given.  I'm very suspect now of anything that is in a package and justifiably so.  I used to consider soup as a healthy option - it makes you satiated quickly and so that has to be good especially in diet situations.  Have a read on any can of soup you care to pick up - I bet that within the first 6 or 8 ingredients you will find sugar.  You'll find some sort of wheat in there too.  Stuff like Fructose in drinks is incredibly common and you find sugars and carbs in just about everything and as soon as you eat or drink these - wallop, up goes your insulin levels to cope with this highly concentrated tsunami of sugar in your blood and the body goes in to overdrive to move it out of the blood into the cells or convert it.  

There are some great analogies in the books.  The one I like is that it like going to an ATM and drawing out money - your wallet acts like a diode - money goes into your wallet but you can't spend it and so you draw out more and your wallet gets fatter but you can't spend it so you draw out even more and so on......  All the time you are easting sugar and carbs you can't release what you have already stored you just add to it.  This is an oversimplification, of course it is, I'm no scientists but the arguments make sense more so in the face that the other stuff we've been told for the last 30 years doesn't seem to have made any difference whatsoever.  You'd have thought that all that healthy eating would have helped many more people?

Of course all this looks too simple, too straightforward and too much like common sense to be true surely we can't have got it that wrong?  They know what Insulin does and the Glycemic Index of foods they've done all the experiments and the maths.  It's just that where 1+1=2 reading this stuff - someone really hasn't added it all together and come up with anything that makes sense.  Surely our grandparents knew all along?  I'm sure they told me that potatoes, rice puddings and bread would put some fat on me.  It's pretty obvious. 

Anyway, to me it is becoming clear how this works and I'm feeling OK and losing weight but not feeling like I'm being starved and neither do I feel hungry at all.  Strangely enough I feel fit, fit enough to do some sprinting and running over the weekend and not find I was out of breath.

I've now got my accounts sorted too so they can be audited this week and with a bit of luck we can move on for another year on those.  I hate accounts....

Day After Cheat Day

I have to admit to being rough again the morning after cheat day - yesterday we did have a nice dinner and some drink but not excessively so.  I rarely have puddings but made an exception yesterday with a cheesecake and some fruit too and I could feel that hit my system.

I had some potatoes and some cheese and biscuits and a few other things too and I didn't have too many but waking up this morning I do feel sluggish and I rarely want to eat first thing but forced myself to.  It is almost midday and I'm almost back to normal - it is just a strange feeling and I guess it is sticking all that junk food in my system and kicking off a major insulin response to shock my body from it's low carb regimen of the week before.

I was pleased to note the I am now very close to the 2 and a half stone I wanted off to start with.  I now need another half a stone off to get me back to where I was a few years ago and a further half a stone would get me back to my pre-cancer weight.  With the trip to Italy on the horizon I may have a difficult week but at least I won't have the major upheavals of last year to contend with.

Bam - Hits You Like A Truck

Good grief - I just had some chocolate on cheat day - goodness me you can feel it impact your body just showing you what you aren't doing to your body for the other 6 (in my case 7 this week) days.  Wham Bam this stuff is good :-)  

I looked at my cupboard with all the tins, pasta, soup and other goodies in it and my mind pictured this:

It's a bit of a disturbing vision but perhaps you can get my thinking especially when you just take a little time to review what's actually in the tin or the packet.   I suppose you could even look at Carbs and Sugar as a type of drug as they present you with cravings and surely cravings for more of the same stuff.......

Anyway, I'm sort of happy that I can have carbs and sugar today and then again I'm not, if you get my drift?  At least for 6 out of 7 days I'm repairing the damage what I'm doing to myself today.  Of course there is also a good reason to have a cheat day and whilst one of them is a sort of reward day for being good 6 days in a week the other is more scientific and it shocks the body and stops it going into a sort of survival mode because you are burning fat off during the other 6 days - if you continued to do that the body has some sort of survival mechanism built into it to prevent this.

British SUMMER Time

And we have a very cold morning but magic blue skies and the sun is shining nicely.  Makes a change from the Siberian winter :-)

It's amazing how it can lift your spirits and today is cheat day too and so I'm just about to embark on a trail of forbidden foods :-).  My Protein Power book arrived yesterday - nicely altered for the UK market which is a good touch as the examples are nicely Europeanised for us.  The amazing thing about this book is the range of food is slightly more than the 4HB or the Insulin Factor but very similar to Dr. Atkins revised book.  It has the chapters neatly summarised in a few pages too so you can go the end of a chapter when or if your eyes glaze over - not that this is an overly technical book it is written for the lay man but it does have some sections in there that are designed for GPs.

So far, the books I've read are all counter-intuitive to what is "accepted" science and yet all of these books rest on accepted science and repeatable experiments.  They've drawn a different conclusion to those by GPs and indeed some Government agencies and some of the stuff you read makes you sit up and think.  A good thing too in my opinion.

When I started on this journey sparked by suddenly getting ill after many years of (seemingly) good health I decided that I'd need to change my lifestyle which in many ways I did.  This included diet and some horrendous mistakes in that diet.  I remember going for a high fruit and vegetable diet, concentrated juices and other similar actions and of course in some ways - maybe as a reaction to being so seriously ill I tended to go fully at a solution and gradual was just a word in a dictionary :-)  I spiked my insulin levels way too high and got a ticking off from the Doctor.

Neither he nor my Specialist had any real tangible advice for me how to keep myself healthy as the last thing I wanted to do was end up back where I started if there was something that I could do to prevent it - it's common sense really but no one really tells you anything they deal with the Symptoms and they very rarely deal with the cause other than, in my case, telling you that it was highly probable that smoking earlier in my life would have brought it on.  

So back to these diet books and what they say.  It's a little bit worrying as they all point to Insulin as being a massive problem.  Of course Diabetes but weight and other problems all point to an imbalance caused mainly through the production of Insulin and that is caused through Carbohydrates (Sugars and Starches .  The problem appears to be that our food (mainly processed) is just loaded with the stuff and where in the good old days we used to have a high protein diet with occasional carbs we now have the opposite and guess what?  Our bodies just aren't designed to take it.  Obesity, weight problems, high blood pressure and heart problems, Diabetes and many other common problems appear to be related and stemming from this one area.

So I read through the book yesterday and it all begins to gel into something that's not great for reading if, like me, you've been told you should have a "balanced" diet.  These books look at that and show another way to lose fat (not weight) and retain muscle whilst doing so making you leaner.  The propose a higher protein approach to eating that is low in carbs and anything else (lactose for example) that would spike your insulin levels.  Why you may ask is that important?  Well there are a number of things that Insulin does extremely well it's a major hormone in the body and responsible for lots of things but when you put sugar into your blood stream it goes to work to take it out of your blood and preserve your body by storing it in cells around the body.  The more carbs you eat the more you store.  The trouble is that you never release the stores all the time insulin is present and storing stuff which if you are stuffing carbs into your body is all the time, it never gets the opportunity to be burnt off.  

It is a big subject but I'm pretty much sold on the basics as I've lost quite a bit of weight and interestingly yesterday on the Easter Egg Hunt I had to do some sprinting around the gardens and lifting stuff around - I didn't feel out of breath at all and also noticed how "fit" I was especially when I consider that 3 or 4 months ago I was out of breath tying my shoelaces!  That shocked me into going on the diet - well that and not fitting any of my clothes.  I'm still losing weight but more slowly at the moment a pound or so a week which is plenty to lose.  I'm in two notched on my belt and my trousers need taking in by a few inches so I'm on the right track.  I don't feel hungry except occasionally and that's often because I don't eat enough sometimes or look for a smaller portion but regret it later.  I'm still learning what is right and after about 10 weeks or so I'm doing rather well I think - I haven't got scurvy or beri beri, I feel great and I feel thinner, I'm beginning to lose the weight around my neck and areas like hips are also improved.  My skin feels good.  

I need to check out my Blood Pressure as that should have fallen down and eventually it should fall to "normal" as well.  I sure hope that this brings all of those areas down too.  It should also have a positive effect on Cholesterol as well.  

I'm sure I'll have more to say about this as I read and compare books further.  The one thing is that they all agree on is that the Insulin coursing around isn't doing humans much good and obesity and a host of other things are caused through stuffing our face with carbs many hidden in the ingredients in processed food.  Want to make yourself shocked - take a look at the amount of sugar in a canned drink or breakfast cereal.   Frightening stuff and some kids can ingest 8 - 10 oz of sugar a day - imagine what that does to your Insulin levels and the work the body has to do to keep that out of your blood stream.......

Enjoy your Easter Eggs :-)

Egg Hunt Done

For another year - the same old faces help year in and year out which is lovely and donate eggs and their time.  It was cold and the sun came out a few times so we were all dressed up to the nines - my thermals worked so well that when I got into the home it was like an instant sauna:-)

We raised over £100 and over £200 for the home in their raffle.  Everyone appeared to have a good time the kids especially.  I've almost forgotten how many years I've run it but the nice thing is that it gets the kids in to the home and it allows children and grand and even great grand children to have a reason to come to the home.  For a nominal amount we run the event and let the kids scoop up loads of chocolate Easter Eggs.  The home donate a number for their raffle and we have members of the Lodge contribute. 

We now have sleet and snow in the air blowing around so at least we got away with it this morning.

Next task for today is to get on with my accounts and try and sort those out somehow.

That Heart Stopping Moment

When you go for a pee and think you see something fire out in the stream.  Only a Bladder Cancer patient can actually tell you how utterly frightening it is to see it.  Warning - gory bit coming up.

The initial presentation is often (but not always) blood in the urine and often bits and clots firing out.  It is gross, it is highly unpleasant and unnatural and I it fills you with horror and foreboding.  A sharp intake of breath and just an almost unexplainable fear bordering on terror.  I wish no one would ever have to experience it - it is just nasty and very very frightening.

So last night, after having got my note to go and get a flexible cystoscope 2 weeks today, I go to the bathroom and saw something fly out and into the toilet bowl.  Now, it could be nothing and is more than likely to be a piece of cotton or something that just happened to be there - I certainly didn't feel anything - and generally (although not always) you can feel if it has come from within you.  I have to say I didn't experience anything like that and so whilst it took my breath away when I saw it, I did a quick think and realised that it wasn't what my instinct told me it was.  

Again, only someone who has had this will know but it brings it all back in a flash, the blood in the urine, the sting of treatment, the fear that having Cancer produces, the black cloud hanging over you and the general negative stuff you had pushed to the far reaches at the back of your mind.

I'm OK about it but of course having spooked myself a bit, sleep was a bit difficult but once I was out I was out and this morning - nothing untoward has happened.  In many ways, I'm going to be checked out in a few weeks and that's fine - if there is anything there - it will be picked up and whether I like it or not - they'll sort it out.  For now, I'm pretty certain that it was just a bit of cotton or fluff or something like that but if it isn't I'll be in good hands and will get sorted out.  Bladder Cancer is (normally) slow growing and so if it is back it will be early stages and they can sort it out.

Of course the thing is not to worry about it and as one Swallow does not a Summer make, I can start to worry if it recurs.  

Anyway - I still feel very well and not at all fatigued (I hadn't realised that had gone away - probably my diet) I also have to say that my general outlook is pretty much OK and now weight is coming under control and as we head out of winter and get some more daylight - and let's hope spring weather - I'm generally optimistic and looking forward to moving on one way or the other after I come back from holiday.

4 Day Weekend

An interesting weekend - probably the first I can remember when we aren't all together for Easter.  A is working, L is at University for a few more days and then coming back.  I have the Easter Egg Hunt on Saturday and not one of the girls will accompany me.  They used to participate either in the hunt itself and later on organising and face painting.  It is bitterly cold but should remain dry for the hunt itself.  Let's hope that we can hold it outside even if it is a little cold as holding it in what is, after all, an old people's home disturbs the residents a bit - but it is doable and we've managed before.

So with that happening on Saturday morning I then have to return and speak to me friend who will help me out with my accounts.  It's not that I don't get balance sheets but sometimes, having worked on mainly contract accounts, the balance sheet principles aren't as firmly fixed in my head as they should be and so I see myself double accounting or taking something off when I should be adding it on :-)  It may prove interesting that I might be working for a large Accounting Corporation (or not) in the future!  Just don't tell them :-)

My couple of days of experimenting with dropping out the legumes from my diet doesn't appear to be detrimental - I certainly haven't felt hungry at all.  I may have some tomorrow though for a change but not have as large a quantity as I have done in the past.  After all, there are carbs in the vegetables and so it isn't as if I'm missing out on them altogether.  

To eat Cheese or not?

It's a funny question I know but you see opinion is split.  If you follow the 4-Hour Body then you can't have any cheese but can have Cottage Cheese and a few parmesan shavings occasionally.  I believe this is because of the lactose content.  If you read other books they say cheese is mainly protein and fat and is fine to eat although in limited amounts.  Mind you 4 oz would be plenty.

So I'm waiting to see what the consensus is on this.  It is a mixed argument depending on who you read and what plan you follow.  

I hope my book arrives soon, I could do with reading that one and then comparing them all.  It would be nice to have a bit of cheese to flavour some of the meals which can be bland on occasion.

I always try and eat some cheese on cheat day anyway - it is my one real food fad - I like a bit of Stilton or some mature farmhouse cheddar, Brie etc... :-)

Cystoscopy 12th April

I have been expecting a letter for my Cystoscopy for a while as it must have been about this time a year ago and around 6 months since my last one.  What a stroke of luck though being just a few days before we go away.  Let's hope for continued good news.  I certainly haven't noticed anything and neither have I felt unwell.  I have to get a sample over to the Hospital sometime in the next week or so - I'll time it towards the end of next week to allow the results to get to my Consultant before the event.

No matter how hard you try - there's always that lingering element of concern about these things.  I'm hopeful that I will have continued to have made progress and that the repairs have been effective and lasting.

The postman didn't bring my book but then again it is meant to be with me on Saturday....

Not too bad actually

Not too bad this morning - someone told me (I have no idea if it is true or just a wives tale) that if you take statins you hardly ever get a hangover.  I have to say I generally don't get hangovers and this morning whilst I was a little slower out of the blocks I was still up and moving around about 8.

The rest of today will be taken up sorting out odds and ends like words for the meeting I have in June - my swansong, sorting out accounts that I just don't understand (I've got to do something with the balance sheet but appear to have missed the point about some subs - when and what year they were paid in).  At least I have a friendly chap to talk to on that on Saturday!

It looks like cheat day needs to be on Sunday this week as we've been invited out to lunch or dinner or both...

So a bit of a pottering around day - I hope that doesn't lead to me feeling down again later like it did earlier in the week.

Great Fun Evening

Good old Flocky Bicep - what a trouper - he picked me up and the also dropped me back home again - which I wasn't expecting.  That allowed Mrs. F. to go to bed early and that in turn means no ear bending for having too much to drink or otherwise!

Had a great evening and good company and that's what it is all about really.  I enjoy the banter and I also enjoy the company too.  It is nice to meet different people who share a common interest and it was also nice to get out early and get a "few beers (in my case wine) in"

I have no doubt that I will end up being a little bit sleepy in the morning but I need to get up and get moving as there is a possibility that some deliveries are due to the house that need a signature and I'm "home alone" tomorrow.

I feel great after a good meal (sticking to my diet) but perhaps a few more red wines that prescribed!  I believe I will pay for that tomorrow.  

Wednesday already

Blimey where did this week go?  Suddenly it will be Easter weekend and I have the Easter Egg Hunt to go to on Saturday - it looks as if, for the first time in its history we may have snow - but then the weather is a little too fickle to be forecast quite as accurately as that :-)  We have never had snow in the 16 years (or so) of running it - it may even be longer.   We've had it very cold and had it indoors and last year it was nice and sunny but this year looks to be "interesting".

I'm looking forward to spending a bit of time out this afternoon and evening at our Officers' Mess where we will have a nice meal and wine which comes heavily subsidised through membership and annual subscriptions and people who don't come along.  So of the thousands who are eligible perhaps 300 of us turn up and so our meals are very reasonable indeed about half the price they'd normally be.

I need a bit of an escape and some (male) company for a few laughs and a bit of socialising which are the main things, it will certainly lighten me up.  I may even be able to fit into my remaining suits, I will check those out later especially as I now fit comfortably into my Morning Suit and my Interview Suit :-)

I'm still hanging on waiting on whether or not I'm going forward to this next interview stage - it has taken close to SIX months now to get this far and it just doesn't get any easier.  It's the new Tax year next week so maybe they are waiting until budgets can be sorted out.  I hope so.  

In some ways the choice to go back and join a Corporate is utterly clinical and mercenary and in many ways it isn't what I'd do as a first choice.  I've some ideas about what I'd prefer to do and one way or the other, this will make up my mind for me.  Big corporate life will bring big bucks back to the family and bring with it status symbols and all that old guff.  It will allow me to ply my trade and work with huge businesses around the globe and that's exciting and great fun. Of course, I'm also not your average project jockey which may be giving them a few sleepless nights.  I tend to be one of the sorts of people you parachute in to get results and not everyone gets on with someone who gets things done as it tends to expose those who don't.  That could be it.  I wouldn't want to work for me!

If it comes about it sticks some serious wonga in to my account but as someone mentioned the other day that the results of my working at these levels last time may have contributed to the cancer diagnosis.  Well I suppose it may have but I'm certain that smoking and diet also contributed towards it as well.  I'm hoping that my new insights into lifestyle, diet and stress will come to bear in my working life - I should understand and be able to manage my stress levels but I still believe you need a bit of stress to work with or it really isn't worth getting up in the morning.

Oh well - I can wish away all I want to, I still haven't heard from them and that's disappointing but not entirely uncommon quite how they manage their projects is going to be interesting if they take this long to hire - the jobs are probably so laid back they are horizontal.

Wobble

I had a bit of a wobble yesterday but not too bad - I just felt a little down but not to a level where I was depressed - I was just a bit quiet and not really feeling great.  I guess having been doing things for a week or more and being out and about I then had a day of catching up and trying to sort things out.  

I spent a bit of time catching up on the adventures of a friend who is in South America reading a month's worth of blog entries and photographs of a trip of a life time.  How wonderful and what a great adventure.  I'm looking forward to getting away myself in a few weeks to Italy for just a week but it could just help me get out of the blues this awful winter and last year's events have left me.

I decided yesterday to reduced my carbs a bit and I have no doubt that in doing so I also added to my feeling a bit blue.  I've maintained that through to today as well by reducing the amount of carbs I'm taking in to those in my vegetables.  I'm out tonight and Flocky Bicep is picking me up on the way through - this time last year I walked as it was about 20 Degrees C warmer but it is bitterly cold out there and a lift will do nicely :-)  I was a little bit lighter last year than I am now but I'm certainly heading back to those heady days when my good clothes fitted me.   When I went to the same event about 6 months ago (twice a year March and October) it was cold and I walked but I was a couple of stone heavier than I am now :-)

I'm waiting now for my book The Protein Factor so I can read that and then compare that to the other books I have including the Insulin Factor, Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution, Tim Ferris 4 Hour Body and Gary Taubes Why We Get Fat And What To Do About It.   Each of these has a slightly different approach to losing weight but more importantly they tend to agree on limiting the production of Insulin or having a Low Glycemic approach.  Whatever you may think about these "fad" diets, this is the only one that I can see that I can easily stick to (4 hour body) that allows me to eat well and many of the things I like, lose weight and importantly not lose muscle in the process and I don't feel hungry.  The results are quite impressive as the weight is coming off all over the place.  Men tend to store their fat above the waist and women below but having said that I can see weight off my hips and thighs and my trousers do up around my waist (not under it) and my watch is almost falling off my wrist too.  

These diets are so counter-intuitive to what perceived wisdom says and to what we are told even by health and Government agencies that you need to ensure that something that sounds a little too good to be true really is.  Some of the things are quite logical and quite obvious and yet seem to have been completely overlooked or discussed when talking about dieting.  These books make great and blindingly obvious cases for why conventional diets don't work as people go back to eating the way they did before dieting and that they are literally starving themselves to lose weight.  The old adage of calories in and calories out also doesn't hold water and that fat in puts fat on to you also doesn't stack up either.

Indeed these books make you question the whole "balanced diet" thing and in a way you need to go back to basics here.  I suppose I'm old enough to remember when vegetables and fruit were actually seasonal.  Our garden never produced apples and pears all year around, neither did our vegetables grow other than seasonally and so how could you possibly have had a balanced diet many years ago?  You ate things when they were available and so you could imagine that at harvest time, man was presented with a complete abundance of fruit and vegetables but what on earth did they eat for the rest of the year?  Cereals and the like are very modern inventions and even more modern are refined sugars used in just about everything these days.  I'd be surprised if I ever touched cereals or fruit juice again after reading the sorts of things that go into them and as for sodas - well I'm horrified by what is in them and what it does to your body.

It can be no coincidence that presently weight problems, almost (but not entirely) a modern phenomenon are to do with a modern diet and the sugar and carb rich mixture they contain.  These switch our bodies into carb craving machines and our bodies store this for the future.   I'm over simplifying it but the Insulin Factor gives an interesting series of reasons that the body craves carbs and why you always feel you want more.

Anyway, more later when I've read and compared the books a bit more.   

Insulin and Diet

It is funny how I've taken a lot more interest in my well-being since having Bladder Cancer.  By that I mean looking at diet and trying things out and realising that I was eating and doing all the wrong things and in many ways I've been on a catch up since about 4 years ago when I nearly overdid the diet stuff and make myself ill.  Since then I've looked at exercise and diet to start to address my body's imbalance (as I see it).  I moaned about having no energy and being dog tired and having no strength.  I whined about my lot on many occasions and took to some "healthy" options and started to go down the route suggested by many of the "balanced" diet and plenty of fruit and vegetables so much so that I also decided to get a juicer to stick some heavy duty goodness from fruit and vegetables into my system.  I also used to use a mixture of Flax Seed Oil and Cottage Cheese every day FOCC from the Budwig Protocol too which had some pretty good effects too.

All of these things though resulted in mixed results and it wasn't until I learnt about the Tim Ferriss diet from Steve Kelly that I started to bring together all the bits of research and started to get a bigger picture about overall health and fitness and some of the dangers out there especially some of the links between Cancer and Sugar and indeed some of the damage that sugar can do to the human body.

The article HERE that I highlighted earlier in the week is a straightforward explanation I guess of where I am now.  I still think there are some other things involved but hell - I'm no scientist - I just read lots of stuff like this and take the common sense approach (now).  I got a book called The Insulin Factor and I'm hoping to get Protein Power in a few days which added to the 4 Hour Body and the Atkins Diet books when read together appear to all be saying the same things.

I suppose simply the main points are:

• Humans haven't evolved to be able to metabolise modern "man made" carbohydrates.  Man has been around about 2 million years and yet has only been making things like bread recently perhaps 12,000 years or so.  We just haven't evolved to eat flour, grains and sugars processed the way they are
• Sugar and Fructose give you body a hard time especially because you need Insulin to take the sugars out of blood and do something with it.  Long term exposure messes up you insulin and/or your resistance to insulin - there's lots of things can complicate this - it is a big subject.  The Insulin Factor and the article above should worry you if you eat a lot of sugary things and if you eat a lot of processed foods 
• Carbohydrates were sparse and not plentiful in man's diet, neither were fruits as we know them today.  Things were seasonal, man didn't dig into Florida oranges all year around, or bananas or indeed anything like that.  Occasionally berries and perhaps some honey or a binge out on harder fruit (in the UK).  Modern fruit (nearly all of it) has been produced through man made manipulation of species to make them sweeter and plumper, less fibrous etc.  
• Man lived mainly on meat, fish etc.  Protein was a large part of the diet.  Vegetables were available - leaves and the like too.  
•  Sugar is addictive and turns on something in the body that makes you crave more of it.  You don't need to eat lots of these foods but they give an immediate hit to the body and the body craves more tempting you to overeat. 
• Carbohydrates are cheap and plentiful today as are products containing sugar.  It is easy to gorge on these cheaply.  Carbs release insulin.  Insulin helps your body store stuff for later.  Trouble is, there isn't a later unless you need to call on these reserves.  If you have carbs reguarly, the body doesn't need to call on the reserve and just continues storing.
• Everyone has been "sold" the story that "Fat" makes you fat and that things should be lean and that low fat is the way to go.  Look on a low fat yoghurt and see how much sugar they contain.  Look at most products you buy and see what is in it - you are pretty likely to find wheat powder or potato starch, sugar, fructose and so on.   Even in a stock cube I was horrified to find stuff like this.  It is everywhere
• Many diets work by limiting what you can eat - or starving you.  You feel hungry and it is difficult to keep the diet going as invariably it allows you to have carbs and fruit and sugary things that your body craves for.  You lose weight through burning fat but also, and more worryingly, by losing mass from your muscles.  Protein based diets don't do that, you may even gain some muscle mass when losing the "fat" 

So just a few of the things that should start you wondering what is going on and why are people so much heavier today than a few decades ago.  There is a lot of work out there about this and the one thing I've noticed about this diet is that I actually feel good, I rarely (if ever) feel hungry after I've eaten or between meals.  After a few days I didn't crave foods I liked any more so I've given up bread, potato, rice, pasta, cereal even my beloved soups were found to have sugar and other grain based products.   I've dropped almost all processed foods apart from cheat day (more about that later).  It took a short while to get over not having sweeteners  sugar, honey and other sweet things that lie around the house.  

The diet is predominantly one of Protein and I have vegetables and some slow release carbohydrates in the form of various beans (Red Kidney, Pinto, Black Eye etc).  It isn't that hard for me, I like meat and in many forms and I like fish and so I have plenty to eat.  I was a bit worried about how I cooked this so got a George Foreman grill and griddle combo which means I can have food without too much fat involved in cooking it.  It is easy to cook and I can generally vary my food throughout the week but there is some repetition.  It is totally counter intuitive to what you are told, it doesn't seem possible that you could, for example, have steak and egg three times a day and lose weight.   

Occasionally our ancestors would have binged out on carbs and fruit and also the body can be tricked into doing the exact opposite of losing weight if somehow it thinks it is starving it will re-start storing food as fat even under diet conditions.   Hence, in the Tim Ferriss 4 hour body he suggests one day where you "go wild" and eat sugar and carbs to your heart content.  This spikes the body and stops it entering into a sort of starved mode.  Additionally it allows you to have one day off when you can eat stuff you might crave or miss - for me that's beer and perhaps something sweet, cheese and bread which I don't have at all during the week.  I notice some diets allow lite beers and some allow cheese and some even allow a little bread too.  This is where reading a number of books and making up your own mind must come into it.

I've just ordered Protein Power which I will then compare with Atkins, Time Ferris and The Insulin Factor and will then hope to draw my own conclusions.  I've continued with the FOCC occasionally - I used to have it every day but it is a little filling and I've found it difficult to adapt as I used to water it down with yoghurt or milk and have it with cereal or dried fruit both of which are now firmly off the list from Sunday to Friday - Saturday is fair game though :-)

Having seen the damage that diabetes can cause I'm very wary of it and after having read the internal damage that carbs and sugar can do (don't get me wrong we need some of these not none) I feel that I'm getting my act together on this and making sure that I'm limiting my carbs to a low but useful amount and that I'm ensuring that the protein and carbs I do get are beneficial to get me back to a "normal" weight and also to help me maintain general good health which I am pleased to say I am currently enjoying.