Will your eggs be chocolate today?

16th April 2017

Start telling yourself that your will to live a healthy life is stronger than your cravings!

Happy Easter to anyone who celebrates it, we don't to be honest, there's no chocolate eggs in the house apart from 2 Cadbury crème eggs given to me yesterday.  I don't work Sunday/Monday anyway so it's just another weekend in the Longsden household. 

Mom and I did just have this brief conversation;

Me "happy Easter"
Mom "Fk Easter, where's my egg?"
Me "You said you wanted the money!"
Mom "Have I had it?"
Me "If I said yes would you know"

That's Alzheimer humour for you right there, it made us both laugh anyways, we're doing our best to laugh through the pain of getting old, it's really not much fun for some.

Taking me back to the first line of this blog, I'm thinking if I start telling myself that living a healthier life is stronger than any craving, it could become a reality, I like this thought because no one wants to be in pain do they?  My fingers and thumbs hurt at the moment, I'm guessing its arthritis of some sort, I suppose I should go to the doctors to get it looked at but I'm assuming painkillers are all they can prescribe.  I'm going to see if changing my diet will help at all first, Sour Cherry juice is supposed to be really good apparently,  I heard that on Radio 2 last Saturday, I was listening to Graham Norton interview a very interesting man named James Wong, he's releasted a book 'How to eat better', it sounded good, he's telling you how to get the best out of all the foods you buy.  I've just looked on Amazon, it's £6.99 and give you a sample which I'm just having a quick read of, it does look worth a read.  For potatoes he's reminding us that they are rich in fibre, vitamin C and potassium, he informs us that a range of studies have not only failed to find a consistent link between potato consumption and weight gain, but actually show they can reduce blood pressure, decrease cholesterol and help calm inflammation.  Mash for dinner here then!  Then he goes on to give tips and tricks you can use to reap all these benefits without impacting the waistline.

Spud fact - they contain far fewer calories gram for gram than almost all other starch sources, making them a low energy-density food roughly on a par with super-healthy beans.  50% fewer calories than pasta and a whopping 70% fewer than white bread.  Evidence shows they are also better at keeping you full for longer by inducing satiety.  Yep boiled potatoes stave off hunger for more than 2 1/2 times longer., the study showed adding up to a hefty 16 small spuds to your diet each day resulted in zero weight gain, the extra potatoes appeared to keep the subjects so full, they just ate less of the other things and that can't be a bad thing! 

Yeah it's a good book for sure, of course it's even better to cook those spuds with the skin on, best way to cook them microwaving or boiling believe it or not!   Microwaving whole potatoes in the skin consistently proved the best at retaining pretty much every nutrient, closely followed by boiling them whole in their skins.  You just know frying is the worst - you didn't need to be told that did you!

Yeah definitely worth reading, now do I have the kindle version or the hard copy! 

Today, we're going to have lamb, I'm thinking small boiled potatoes with it now and whatever veg I've got, can't recall.  Mom mentioned poached eggs yesterday so if she still fancies them, she can have them for breakfast, either on toast or crumpets - they can be our Easter eggs.  

Then I'll be painting all day, that's my Easter plans, the bedroom will be started and who knows, hopefully finished today, only have to do 3 walls because the 4th is having fitted wardrobes in and a gloss panel in the middle - yay!

Sooner I start, the sooner I'll finish, so I guess I'm off, enjoy your day BeYOUtiful.