Tum Tum Time.

Health and fitness blog, or maybe I should say ‘what health and what fitness‘ blog !

Creating a BFZ – a Biscuit Free Zone and dilly-dallying with a largely Keto diet once again.

Several times in the last few weeks a few readers have been dropping very kind and well meaning comments on some of my old blog posts : in particular those where I wrote about nutrition alongside fitness. So far iv’e only replied to a couple – my apologies if you’ve commented and I haven’t replied so maybe take this as a block response. Iv’e named the post Tum Tum Time because i’m working on an alternative history story set at the end of the Victorian age and Tum Tum was the nickname given to king Edward 7th by one of his many mistresses – it seems to fit even if i’m not quite the porker that he was but then he had something like five meals a day – some of those comprising seven courses !

Since the series of minor strokes that I had in 2024 my health has taken a distinct down turn and my life as a former sailor and outdoorsman has completely disappeared. For the last few months I haven’t even done the basic daily exercise that I used to and as a consequence of that iv’e gone from being a bit of a porker to being a total fatty. I largely worked on the basis of what my clothes size was doing and that has gone up twice so far this year alone. I feel the need to at least make the attempt to do something about that although my options seem very limited : what used to keep me in control was spending time in the weights gym heaving loaded barbells around but i’m now globally weak and have poor balance such that I normally have to walk with a stick.

You knowing that I know, ever so slightly. my way around the world of medicines, you might think that i’m about to try one of the new wonder drugs such as Tirzepatide (Mounjaro) or Semaglutide ( Wegovy) and my answer is an emphatic no – with bells on !. If you’re serious about medicines, as I am, and can weigh up the risks of the known side effects you can, maybe, come to an informed decision and I won’t argue against your choice.

Tinfoil hat time.

It would be disingenuous of me to leave my original posts about health and nutrition in place and not to explain what has happened since : in a similar way I would be dishonest if I didn’t say now that one of the main reasons I distrust these medicines is because of the NHS promoting them as strongly as they are doing. Unless you have a very short memory then what you will remember is that the same organization did and still does promote the Covid 19 vaccine despite it now being shown that : it doesn’t prevent infection (but neither do most masks), it doesn’t protect the patient in any way (except for a very few cases in the elderly) but it does come with some serious, even lethal, side effects.

If you read the fine print in the NHS’s own recommendations for the use of these medicines then one of the first things you’ll come across is that these medicines are recommended for those people in which the usual methods of weight control have failed. I happen to not fall into that category as, in the past, the usual methods have worked : it’s just that I keep falling off the wagon when it comes to what I choose to eat and I have, in the past, succeeded with overcoming that.

Mr Cynical rears his ugly head (as usual eh)

It’s cynical time again but i’ll be brief and get it over with as quickly as I can so…..My partner still works in the NHS and what she is seeing is many of her Nurse colleagues all starting on one or other of these drugs, the reason they would give is something like ‘because nothing has worked before’ – be that a bit of dieting and a half hearted effort to take up exercise. And yes, I agree that none of it has worked and some of the reasons are mostly out of their direct control or at least also subject to very powerful outside forces : one being the so called food industry and its powerful marketing and taste capture tools.

Diet, in terms of quantity (amount of calories taken in), quality (what our food choices are) and timing (when we eat or fast) has worked for me but only as long as I keep my eye on the ball and that means all the time and not taking treat days or easy days because i’m feeling a bit lax that day. It was the same with exercise when that was my main method of weight control : go into a gym and heave a barbell around for an hour or do a long outdoors hike carrying load over rough terrain both count as weight reducing exercise.

Most of the women now on the aforementioned drugs do exercise in that they also go to the gym and spend most of their time either listening to music or texting during a light session on the exercise bike. Nothing has worked for them because they’ve never done it properly. Now of course they are taking up drug regimes actively supported by their very own NHS – why is that I wonder – is it perhaps because the drug companies have encouraged a compliant NHS to help with their profits : these are expensive drugs.

Diet, at least for me, takes a lot of discipline as did exercise in the past. What i’m at least trying to do this time around is use every trick I know in terms of quantity, quality and timing : that and trying to mix my day with short bursts of physical work as and when I can.

Das Nieue Arbeit (the new deal)

Please excuse my Germanics if I got it wrong but I thought it best to explain what my great new idea actually is : firstly it’s not new and secondly it’s not great. I’m basically drawing on everything that doctor Peter Attia wrote in his book about longevity although it also draws on a lot of the nutritional knowledge of professor Tim Noakes and the everyday kind of teaching that Dr Ken Berry has been talking about for years.

The first main point is that it is carbohydrates that are my main problem and specifically everything that the fake food industry sells as standard English comfort food all of which is based on largely two components : flour and sugar are one and seed oils are the second. I intend to take those ingredients out of my diet almost entirely except for the occasional biscuit or cake : bread goes entirely as I have absolutely no need for it and luckily no taste for industrial steamed white pap.

Most of my diet will be somewhat ‘Keto’ and angling towards being Low Carb although, having had a series of strokes i’m not going to risk going fully Carnivore. As I said above, I know that to achieve weight loss I have to pull on two out of three of Peter Attia’s food ‘levers’ – in my case that will play out as a slight reduction in caloric intake and a significant change in quality. The quality will largely be based on some meat, quite a lot of ‘neutral’ fat and very little Carbohydrate except that which comes as plant fiber. Iv’e already cut out most of the biscuits most of the time and at the same time started having a meal replacement protein shake. My main meal of the day is now a single meal approach and for the first few weeks that will feature protein and fat ; in my case a piece of cooked chicken, a slice of Somerset brie and then whatever olives and Mozzarella tapas I can find in the fridge.

Nubbins (Factoids)

I have a whole load of mental Nubbins : small snippets of previous knowledge and current observation that I keep in mind during this whole attempt. One such Nubbin is that i’m more than a bit likely to snack during the day – especially when i’m sat here in front of the computer trying to write. The Nubbin answer or solution to snacking is to have a fridge that is stocked with enough Keto snacks to meet my needs in between shopping trips. A second is to start my day with a protein/fat based breakfast rather than toast (toast and biscuits in my case). The strangest Nubbin in my current mental library of them is to always get up and go outside to do even a few minutes of physical work once per hour.