Drinking wine from a can is seriously uncool

This is what I have come to. I have to ration myself by buying cans of Tesco French Red Wine. A peculiar vintage... I'm NOT tasting plimsoles in a dusty old staircase joined with sunbeams on old leather car seats infused with strawberry kisses from a baby with final notes of smoky rain drops.

I am tasting sour, metallic pre vinegar grape stew. Yuk.

So why am I drinking it... well, maybe it will put me off, or maybe it will make my mind up totally that its not worth it unless you pay £50 a bottle, or maybe I just think that I know something about wine and actually its just the packaging that makes a wine taste nice *Mind Games of Big Brother* and right now, I don't particularly care what I drink... especially after the shite day we have had.

Today I have been mostly washing. Oh, and drying and ironing too... but mostly washing. 12 loads, with 1 load a piece still in the washer and dryer for tomorrows kicks. What a party animal.
I got up reasonably early today (for me!) and tidied up, although most of the house was still spotless from Tuesday when I gave it a complete delousing as the girls were leaving and we had new prospective tenants coming to view. So I pottered, and then decided to get cracking with the washing mountain. Now, in our house you know its time to do the washing when:
1.) You can't see daylight in the utility room
2.) The cats are walking down from the cat flap rather than having to jump from the window sill
3.) You don't know where the clean pile starts/ends and the dirty pile - the same thing
4.) You have to first dig through clothes to get to the fridge whereas you used to be able to push the clothes out of the way with the door
5.) You have lost your 5 drawer filing cabinet
6.) You have lost the washing machine
7.) Your son wears pants all day long - and not because he can't be arsed to get dressed
8.) Everyone is wearing global hypercolour colour change t-shirts, shell suits, pregnancy trousers and other random clothes that you haven't seen for a decade because they were at the back of the cupboard
9.) Your neighbour brings you a bag of clothes because they think you are doing a jumble sale
10.) Your child is involved in an terrible avalanche accident on the way to get an ice cream

Today I decided that most of the above applied... Ok all of them, and I actually BURNT OUT THE TUMBLE DRYER! Can you believe it. It never rains but it fucking pours - metaphorically and literally of course. The rain pissed down all day long and I had 68 loads of washing to do... you know the kind of thing (probably not because I expect you all to be great housewives whereas I am Rrruuuuuuu-bish). So I get the cycle of 1 load washing, 1 load drying underway when I decided after 6 loads to go have a coffee.

Sniff Sniff... something dodgy. Low and behold I can smell burning. Not an electrical burning, but the kind you get from paper or... clothes!

ARGHHHH - yep, the fluff in the dryer is smoldering and filling my house with its noxious vapours. So I drag everything out of the dryer and its ROASTING hot. It all has to be bloody washed again as it smells like its been on top of old smokey, and try and see what the problem is. DH gets his ever ready screwdriver out and whips the back of the old dryer. Its 9 now bless it, so a bit of an old girl, but still, after so many years of good service, I think it should darn well continue! We notice that the connection is covered with sooty, burnt, smokey fluff and grease and STINKS big styleee.

So we clean, de grease, put back together (less 4 screws... how did that happen...?), and try it on its own for a few minutes. All we can smell to be fair, is smoke. So I open every window and door in the house and we try and air the place. Thing is, it gets up your nose, so you cant tell if it has gone, or getting worse, or what. I went out to the town with DS and we posted a letter, and by the time we got back I couldn't smell anything dodgy, so I guess it cleared itself. I chucked the next wet load in and so far its been working away like a demon. I might not leave it on on its own though, or over night like I used to... scary.

So with all the washing, it took my mind off of the BIG CAHONNES. We have still not been paid. We were due to be paid on 25th. Its the 30th. I am, shall we say, a tad stressed...?

So this afternoon DH went over to the alleged boss, whom I think should have been crawling on his hands and knees begging us to forgive him, and asked for his money. He got the measly amount out of the fucker, but no expenses (tight arse) and they had a 'heated' conversation. So, the upshot... there isn't one. Looks like we will have to buy a car, service it, insure it and tax it and run it by ourselves without any help from the man who said he would supply all and pay all costs. What an arsehole. So not only did we default on our mortgage for the first time in the 13 years we have had one, we bounced all over the place because the arsehole was full of wind. God that guy can talk. He one of these that is like:

"Oh hi, can I have my money"
"Oh hi, yes I was just thinking about that, well I have to go and get my grandmothers pension and I saw her brother the other day and he has got me a deal where I will get £18K from blaa blaa blaa and then that will be sweet and I can make you a director"

W T F ?

It's all BOLLOCKS. He could be a politician the way he talks himself out of anything and everything and manages to sweet talk you at the same time so you come away feeling god, and then have that sinking feeling that you have been rogered by an extra large telegraph pole without Vaseline.

Anyway, enough! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ARGHHHH I am going to go insane HA HA HA

I cant take much more of this crap I seriously cant. Just going over the last few months is about enough to make anyone to query how to tie a noose the best way and work out the drop needed.

I jest... or do I?!?!?!

Anyway, just had to get all that off my chest. Today's food... 1100 cals:

Breakfast: 1 shape lasting satisfaction

Lunch: 2 slices bread, no crusts, beetroot slices and salad creme

Dinner: toad in the hole - 1 grilled beef sausage, a twelfth of the packet of batter mix, carrots and gravy with onions and tbsp mashed potato(about the size of a 2 year olds portion)
Bedtime Snack: 2 danone activia's

I cant seem to eat before about 1pm. Its practically impossible. the sandwich at lunch (2pm) was really hard to eat and it took me a while. I ate the first 2 bites and then had to wait about 30 minutes before taking 1 bite at a time. I took a bite and chewed and chewed all the while I was ironing a shirt... 1 shirt = 1 mouthful. That's the time it took people!

Anyway, I am now tired, so am off to bed. thanks for letting me rant.
Oh and I have noticed a really weird thing... I can type without looking and the keys. How totally cool is that. I never knew that before. I am typing now to see when I have to look down and I haven't had to yet. I just spelled haven't wrong, and had to hit the backspace button and I didn't even look down. That is so excellent. Its really amazing not to have to look at the keys. The more I think about it the worse my typing gets... its really funny... sorry people, this is kind of an experiment. I have drunk 2 glasses of wine too!! That's really coooooool. What else can I say the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog... WOW ALL FINE!!! Ha ha. I am gonna carry on. Stop reading because this is gonna be proper boring everybody. I am a mole and I live in a hole. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plane. Its so cool that I can watch all my words fill the screen and no have to check down for errors. How did this happen. This shows I spend way too much time typing. OMG this is totally awesome! I cant believe it. If I spell a word wrong I instantly hit backspace and can blot it out and get the right letter each time. this is so skill. I am really glad that I can do this. I still haven't looked down..... Ha ha ha ha ha. any second now surely I will have to look down. How long have I been doing this without realising it?? I didn't know I knew the keys so well!! And I only type two fingered. Actually that's wrong., I do use a couple of fingers, but its mainly the index ones. I use the 4th (wow I got that, AND the bracket too!!!) (WOWOWOW again!) finger of the right hand to catch the backspace an the I seem to use the index of the right hand to do the spacebar. I use the little finger of my left hand to fo the shift key to get capitals. I am really impressed with myself. When I start to concentrate on it I get slower, how wierd is that. But when I go fast them I can seem to get everything right. i am shutting my eyes now and I am seeing if this all comes out ok. OH WOW!!! That was actually easier that looking at it on the screen. I am using all the keys now and I had to think about that one because I stopped and scratched my chin. I can feel that I am catching other letters and not hitting the keys straight on, so I hope that I am getting most of this right, I think I am, but only when I open my eyes will I know for sure. This is much much easier, so I am guessing that it will be all a load of crap and all over the place the lazy brown dog jumps over the fat cow, oh no, i cant remember it. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. I think i got this shit licked.

OK, I am looking now and I have opened my eyes... I am impressed with myself. How sad is that. I always look at the keys when i type. Maybe I have invented a new way to type... use 2 fingers, and only look at the keys, not at the screen (opposite of how they get you to do it in school!) and then WHAM! you can touch type. COOL

Negative Calorie Foods - Foods That Speed Up Metabolism

Foods That Speed Up Metabolism - Negative calorie foods speed up metabolism as they burn more calories then they contain.

Negative calorie foods are foods, which use more calories to digest than the calories the foods actually contain. Calories from these foods are much harder for the body to breakdown and process. In other words, the body has to work harder in order to extract calories from these foods. For example, if you eat 200 calories of a food that requires 250 calories to digest, then you've burnt an additional 50 calories simply by eating that food.

List of negative calorie foods

Vegetables			cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, tomato, cucumber, broccoli, lettuce, celery, fennel, aubergine, gourd, leek, lettuce, marrow, peppers, celery, radish, chicory, spinach, cress, turnip, hot chili peppers
Fruits			watermelon, guava, apricot, mandarin orange, blackberry, melon, cantaloupe, blackcurrant, peaches, clementines, plums, damsons, raspberry, grapefruit. rhubarb, strawberry, honeydew melon, tangerine, lemon, apple

Quick Weight Loss

Poultry Recipes: Not just for the 5 Day Pouch Test

We have added six great new quick and easy poultry recipes for Day 5 of the 5 Day Pouch Test. These recipes are low-carb but include healthy vegetables, fruits and fat in the preparation to ease you back into a healthy weight loss surgery way of eating so you can maintain your 5DPT success.Day 5 Poultry RecipesGrilled Turkey SteaksPapaya-Glazed ChickenMustard Baked ChickenPepper-Lime

Mary Mary where are you kitties?

The fattest cat I ever did see. My lovely baby Mary is so ready for these kittens now... but she is still hanging onto them! The photo doesn't really catch her best side, but its like someone inflated a balloon in there!

She has chosen the most random of places to recline. she is pictured here sprawled on the bathroom floor right under the sink. Nothing like convenience for you. She waddles from the bathroom sleeping place to the landing sleeping place. However, today, as I was making the beds, I did catch her in the little box we made for her though... So we are STILL playing the waiting game. I really want to see those 'nit-nits' so bad now! Its so exciting - what will they be, how many, what colours etc...

Diet wise... Nothing exciting to report. Went to fat fighters (aka slimmingworld) yesterday. I weighed in at 15 stone 12. No surprises there then. What was great though, was the fact that practically all the same old people were there. A couple had got drastically slimmer, and another couple fatter. But they ALL commented on how I was looking and were like "Oh! Hello... wow, like the hair... seems to be a lot less of you too!" Which I wasn't expecting, so that was a really lovely boost to my day.

Foodwise today has not been fabulous. I crunched up 5 peanut m&m's and then had to puke them up again. then for lunch I made a jacket potato with curry sauce. Eat a bit then puked it and chucked the rest away. For dinner I made waffles, beans and egg. I eat 3/4 waffle, 1 egg and a few beans... VERY slowly. So far, no spew.

This seems to becoming a habit for me. Every day last week has been dreadful in the mornings and afternoons, but ok come the evening.

On the home front, Maria and Xandra left today. They told us on Friday that they had found a job in a holiday camp on the seaside, so I took them to the station this morning. I really hope they get on ok... I know these places are sometimes a bit hard to pin down on the payment side of things... That said, so is DH's new boss. We should have been paid last Friday 25th. Then he said he got tied up, so he would see us yesterday. Didn't happen. He said he would meet up Wednesday, but I told DH that unfortunately that was NOT OK, and he rang him and he said he would come over today. Still waiting. How can you work for someone for a whole month and then not pay them??? This is seriously doing my head in. The mortgage comes out tomorrow. Thankfully his redundancy covers it, but next month... Hard to trust someone who never does what they say they do.

So I am stressing just a TINY BIT!

Review: The Neighborhood Cookbook

Our LivingAfterWLS Food & Nutrition Editor Barbara Gibbons recently reviewed the Neighborhood Cookbook. Here is what she had to say about this weight loss surgery specific cookbook that was created by patients for patients:There are so many new neighbors here that I thought I would post a topic about our very special publication. Not to be confused with the ‘Community Kitchen’ which is a live

More Liver

It's time to celebrate your liver. It's a hard-working organ and it deserves some credit.

One of the liver's most important overall functions is maintaining nutrient homeostasis. It controls the blood level of a number of macro- and micronutrients, and attempts to keep them all at optimal levels.

Here's a list of some of the liver's functions I'm aware of:

• Buffers blood glucose by taking it up or releasing it when needed
• A major storage site for glycogen (a glucose polymer)
  
• Clears insulin from the blood
• Synthesizes triglycerides
• Secretes and absorbs lipoprotein particles ("cholesterol")
• Stores important vitamins: B12, folate, A, D, E, K (that's why it's so nutritious to eat!)
• Stores minerals: copper and iron
  
• Detoxifies the blood
• Produces ketone bodies when glucose is running low
• Secretes blood proteins
• Secretes bile
• Converts thyroid hormones
• Converts vitamin D (D3 --> 25(OH)D3)
  

The liver is an all-purpose metabolic powerhouse and storage depot. In the next post, I'll give you a recipe for it...

The Liver: Your Metabolic Gatekeeper

As I've been learning more about the different blood markers of metabolic dysfunction, something suddenly occurred to me. Most of them reflect liver function! Elevated fasting glucose, low HDL cholesterol, high LDL cholesterol, high triglycerides and high fasting insulin all reflect (at least in part) liver function. The liver is the "Grand Central Station" of cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism, to quote Philip A. Wood from How Fat Works. It's also critical for insulin and glucose control, as I'll explain shortly. When we look at our blood lipid profile, fasting glucose, or insulin, what we're seeing is largely a snapshot of our liver function. Does no one talk about this or am I just late to the party here?!

I read a paper today from the lab of C. Ronald Kahn that really drove home the point. They created a liver-specific insulin receptor knockout (LIRKO) mouse, which is a model of severe insulin resistance in the liver. The mouse ends up developing severe whole-body insulin resistance, dramatically elevated post-meal insulin levels (20-fold!), impaired glucose tolerance, and elevated post-meal and fasting glucose. Keep in mind that this all resulted from nothing more than an insulin resistant liver.

LIRKO mice had elevated post-meal blood glucose due to the liver's unresponsiveness to insulin's command to take up sugar. Apparently the liver can dispose of one third of the glucose from a meal, turning it into glycogen and triglycerides. The elevated fasting glucose was caused by insulin not suppressing gluconeogenesis (glucose synthesis) by the liver. In other words, the liver has no way to know that there's already enough glucose in the blood so it keeps on pumping it out. This is highly relevant to diabetics because fasting hyperglycemia comes mostly from increased glucose output by the liver. This can be due to liver insulin resistance or insufficient insulin production by the pancreas.

One of the interesting things about LIRKO mice is their dramatically elevated insulin level. Their pancreases are enlarged and swollen with insulin. It's as if the pancreas is screaming at the body to pick up the slack and take up the post-meal glucose the liver isn't disposing of. The elevated insulin isn't just due to increased output by the pancreas, however. It's also due to decreased disposal by the liver. According to the paper, the liver is responsible for 75% of insulin clearance from the blood in mice. The hyperinsulinemia they observed was both due to increased secretion and decreased clearance. Interestingly, they noted no decline in beta cell (the cells that secrete insulin) function even under such a high load.

Something that's interesting to note about these mice is they have very low blood triglyceride. It makes sense since insulin is what tells the liver to produce it. Could this have something to do with their lack of beta cell dysfunction?

The really strange thing about LIRKO mice is that their blood glucose becomes more normal with age. Strange until you see the reason: their livers are degenerating so they can't keep up glucose production!

LIRKO mice reproduce many of the characteristics of type II diabetes, without degenerating completely into beta cell death. So insulin resistance in the liver appears to reproduce some elements of diabetes and the metabolic syndrome, but the full-blown disorders require other tissues as well. As a side note, this group also has a skeletal muscle-specific insulin receptor knockout which is basically normal. Interesting considering muscle tissue seems to be one of the first tissues to become insulin resistant during diabetes onset.

So if you want to end up like your good pal LIRKO, remember to drink high-fructose corn syrup with every meal! You'll have fatty liver and insulin resistance in no time!

I have a lot more to say about the liver, but I'll continue it in another post.