The Military Diet Experiment

In a couple of months, we're going on a cruise and as you do, I looked in the mirror the other day and thought “Blimey, I need to go on a diet!”  I’m not sure I actually do, but I feel and look heavier than I feel comfortable with.  Probably because of married bliss and eating a lot of chocolate, to be honest.

Anyway, I decided I needed to do something that wasn’t Weight Watchers because quite honestly, I don’t want to pay to diet.  It’s bad enough starving yourself, let alone paying for the privilege.

After doing my research (i.e. scrolling through Facebook) one diet in particular caught my eye – The Three Day Military Diet.  Sounds a bit strict, although the gossip was that you could would lose 10 pounds in three days!  Sign me up….. Okay, I actually didn’t have to sign up because its something you do on your own, although there is a menu you have to stick to religiously, or militarily if you prefer. Three days?  How easy is that, I thought.  No problem, I can do three days….

You don't have to wear the uniform, by the way

DAY ONE

Breakfast

You’re not supposed to substitute anything unless it’s on their list, but I only decided to do this after I'd eaten breakfast and I'd already had a glass of orange juice and some toast, so I skipped the grapefruit and had a cup of tea and a spoonful of hummus instead.  Let me just say right here, hummus on its own is bloody awful.  I had substituted it for peanut butter because, well, eww..  

Lunch

This wasn’t bad.  A nice cuppa and some tuna on toast.  Although, the tuna would have been better with a dollop of dressing because it was as dry as the Serengeti in a heatwave.  Thank goodness for the tea.

Dinner

I could get used to this as it seems like a lot of food.  I had chicken with the green beans and then enjoyed the ice cream with the fruit.  I was a bit stuffed actually.

DAY TWO

Breakfast

Uh oh, the portions are getting smaller.  But when I’m at work I don’t usually eat breakfast so having a boiled egg on toast was a bit of a luxury really.  It kept me full until lunch anyway.

Lunch

Bloody hell, another hard boiled egg.  I’m sure my co-workers loved me that day.  [I never did admit it was my stinky eggs smelling up the kitchen] I substituted Greek yoghurt instead of cottage cheese. [what, even, the hell is that stuff??]  The five tiny saltine crackers went well with the egg though.  I actually couldn’t eat all of the yoghurt, maybe because it was sitting in my stomach like, well I don’t know what it was like, I’ve never eaten that much Greek yoghurt in my life and a cup is a LOT.

Dinner

This one looks small, but it wasn’t actually bad.  I cut everything up into slices and had as much broccoli and carrots as I could fit into a cup (not much, by the way).  The hotdogs gave some flavour. And then there was at least ice cream for pudding.

DAY THREE

Yes, actually, that is a wine stain on my menu

Breakfast
Again, this was a bit of a treat having breakfast.  But then again, maybe I was just starving by then.

Lunch
Yes, another hard boiled egg, but this time only with a dry slice of toast.  Yummy (sarcasm added)

A quick aside here:

I had been weighing myself daily – yes for all of two days – and the weight was falling off.  Okay, I lied, after starving myself for two day I had lost 2 pounds.  Yes, you did read that right, TWO WHOLE BLOODY POUNDS!!  

Dinner

Soooo, I may have cheated a little bit because, well, who can live on half a tin of dry tuna, half a banana and a bit of ice cream.  So I made myself some Thai curry with rice and papadums and a huge glass of wine.  (I know papadums  don’t go with Thai food, don’t judge me I was starving, okay). I may also have had a packet of crisps, a hotdog bun and possibly some chocolate, not necessarily in that order.

I went to bed that night fuller than I had in three days and when I woke up the next morning, I was really surprised not to find 8 pounds of fat in the bed next to me because according to this diet plan you will lose 10 pounds.  I jumped onto the scale and yes I had still only lost 2 pounds.  Actually, I hadn’t lost anything because I put it all back on in that one meal the night before. [*sigh*]

So the moral of this story is that unless you constantly eat and gain weight every day, don’t do the Military Diet, it does not flamin’ work.  I followed it to a “T” and all I got was starving hungry.

I just suffered for three two and a half days and lost about the same amount as if I’d just had a big pooh!!

Why Blog?

I initially started this blog on a slow day at work (did I say that out loud?)… I was bored and had been talking to a friend who blogged and thought “Why not?  I'm sure I can do that.”  Pretty much anyone I moaned to was fed up listening to my reminisces, memories and comparisons of England, so this was the ideal outlet for my “creative juices” or “moody cow whining” however you want to look at it. But some of the best things have happened because of this blog:

Reconnecting

I have been able to reconnect with people I haven’t seen for over 30 years (Good grief, has it been 30 years!) Although this isn’t technically true in all senses of the word as Facebook has played a part too, I was recently chatting with an old friend via Facebook and he mentioned his brother also lives in California and he would be visiting and would I like to meet up.  Well, of course I bloody would.  

The day came and he gave me a ring to arrange to meet.  I was totally taken aback when he said he would come to my house – I’m so used to the American culture of always meeting for dinner, lunch or the like and really never going to someone’s house.  Obviously right then the conversation went typically British.  “Oh” I said, “You’ll have to excuse the state of the house, we’ve just got a new puppy and it’s a bit of a mess.”   To which he replied “Don’t be silly, we’re coming to see you, not the house.”   How refreshingly polite.

Obviously, I rushed home and tidied up, as you do, and put the kettle on.  The visit was brilliant, even more so when he presented me with this little lot

So, thank you Mr. G.  Hope to see you again sometime soon.

New Friends

I saw a quote on Twitter the other day which said:

“Facebook makes you hate people you already know and

   Twitter makes you love people you’ll never meet.”

@SwedishCanary

That is exactly what this blog has done (well, not the Facebook hating thing).  I have met (virtually) so many people through this blog and Twitter [and if you are one of them, a big hello].  I have also realized how many expats out there are having the same issues, experiences and fun as I am.   

Goodies

This has only happened once (so far) [*hint, hint*] and it was bloody brilliant.

As the Hershey’s debacle was in full swing, a couple of start up companies contacted me to review their service.  I was asked by ChocolateMailBox.com to take a look at what they are offering and they sent me a lovely box full of Cadbury’s.  My post about that is HERE.

So if there’s anyone else out there who is just dying to send me stuff – go ahead [*smile*] – Yes, I am being cheeky.

British Telly

I was contacted by the BBC, yes the real Aunty Beeb, to participate in a telly programme pitting expats and their families at home against other expats and home families.  While this sounded like an absolutely fantastic idea that I would jump at, I missed the deadline (mainly due to the time difference of emails, etc) so I am a bit gutted.  

Hopefully, they will have a second season and I will definitely be there, with bells on!

I’m not in any way saying, though, that this blogging malarkey is easy.  Sometimes I just sit here and stare at my computer with vacant eyes and an empty head not knowing  what to say.  But apparently, my brain kicks into gear every now and again and here we are…

Halloween USA Style

Halloween - Its a BIG deal

In October of 1994, we moved into our first house is the USA and our furniture had just arrived from England. We hadn’t brought our worn out three piece suite or our UK television, so we didn’t have any living room furniture at all.  So, by Halloween, the front door still opened into an empty room.  It looked like we were going for the empty, haunted house look - perfect!

Not my house

Having grown up in England where the only notable thing that happened on October 31st was my friend’s birthday, I’m not sure we were entirely ready for Halloween.  We’d seen the films, of course, and hoped that Michael Myers didn’t live in our neighbourhood.   I knew the children (and apparently teenagers after 9:00 p.m.) dressed up and went door to door “Trick or Treating” with a bucket or in some cases a pillowcase (greedy) collecting sweets, or “candy.”

My son was around 8 at that time and wanted to trick or treat with his new friends, so it was just my daughter and I at home that night.  We were ready, we were prepared, we had a couple of bags of sweets to give out, we had the lights on inside and out, I got a dining room chair and put it by the front door and we waited for the first children to arrive.   And did they arrive!!!

One after the other, in droves, with parents, without parents, babies in pushchairs (why would babies need candy?) and the costumes - from Disney characters and superheroes, to vampires and zombies we saw them all.  One notable costume and one which was my daughters favourite was a tiny little baby in a Tweety Pie costume.  That baby’s probably around 22 now and might really want to forget it, bless.  Some parents are very inventive with their costumes and I'm sure some of those babies might grow up to hate their parents for the indignities handed out.  For example - this one ..

Bless!

So anyway, there we were, giving out handfuls of sweets to every child and about an hour in I realized that we weren’t going to have enough. We had been willynilly throwing handfuls into each bucket and I thought the children were really nice when they were saying “Wow, thank you”  Look at me, I thought, I must have the best sweets on the street.  Nope, it was that they couldn’t believe I was so generous and I have since learned that they get ONE each…. Yes only one!!

Only ONE each!

So Plan B went into action – one sweet each and if possible, only pretend to put a sweet in their bucket.  Yes, this sounds like a terrible plan and it actually was…. I still remember the angry look I got from one little boy who knew I hadn’t put anything into his pillowcase and I stood there looking at him, daring him to tell me he knew – bad karma, I know (*cringe*)  I only tried it that once though – I couldn’t handle the guilt.

And throughout all this, every time I opened the front door, the first thing those little kids saw was an empty room.  I did get quite a few questioning looks that night and think I might have scared some of them actually.

And what do you do when you run out of candy?  Well, you close the door, turn out the lights and pretend you’re not home.  But that doesn’t actually work.  It seems those flippin’ kids will knock on every door in their hunt for sugar!  And then, as it got later, the children got bigger.  I was opening the door to teenagers, some of whom even had mustaches – and not the stick on kind.  Surely there should be an age limit to trick or treating?  My daughter and I eventually had to go and sit in a back bedroom because, quite frankly, she was getting scared (she was only 2.5) of all the big monsters knocking on the door.

Nowadays, I end up having way too much candy and I tend to buy what I like and fortunately, I now live in a neighbourhood where there aren’t so many children.  But then, I end up eating ALL of the sweets myself.  Not such a good idea after all!