Friday 30 May 2014

Rob's birthday and getting started.

I didn't post yesterday because it was Rob's 60th birthday. I live next door to Rob, but really we live in both houses. It works well. Anyway, it was a day of considerable chill and the threat of rain. We had birthday cake with Robs daughter Sarah and her two boys, Benjamin (2) and Lewis (9months) then spent the rest of the day in Scarborough. Determined families played on a shrinking strip of beach and a white mist hung a few feet away at the waters edge. Moisture clung to eyelashes. My Achilles' tendons started to hurt after a bit of walking so we had a coffee at the Pomodoro (marvellous Italian) before eating at Cafe Fish. (Good but expensive and not much of it).

 Before bed, Dr Verburgh told me that medicines mostly suppress symptoms and don't cure illness. He doesn't want me to go on a diet -he wants me to adopt a whole new lifestyle. One where I eat lots of green vegetables in particular and give up on introducing sugar into my system too quickly. Too much sugar is apparently not just a bad thing but A REALLY BAD THING.

Why should I choose the Food Hourglass diet rather than say the Atkins or the Blood group diet? Because the others tend not to be firmly rooted in reputable research. These diets have grasped a germ of truth but ignored other significant facts. For example, the Atkins diet gets you to eat a lot of protein. However, a high protein diet puts your liver and kidneys under pressure and causes you to produce a super sticky type of sugar which contributes to organ damage. In fact, having too much sugar running around in your blood vessels raises your blood pressure,  helps you get cardio vascular disease, damages your eyes and makes you more at risk of getting cancer.  That's an impressive amount of nasties.

So what one thing can I change today because of Dr Verburgh's message? I decide that today I will cut out my teaspoon of sugar in my coffee and I will have broccoli with my left over chicken. We all have to start somewhere don't we?

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