• Weetbix Bites (Berry), peach & pecan untoasted muesli and organic soy milk

• 125g apricot organic soy yogurt

• small bit of carob buckwheat left over from yesterday

• 1 pear with cinnamon

• Bengal Spice tea with organic soy milk

• couple of fried crispy Italian biscuits/cookies

• small cup of chocolate soy milk

• mixed baby leaf salad, wholemeal pasta and 1/2 small can lemon pepper tuna

• hot cocoa on water with organic soy milk & stevia

• 1 homemade bitter chocolate biscuit/cookie

• 1 peach, slightly underripe

• 7 seaweed rice crackers

• 1 vegetarian sausage with ketchup

• 1 glass of water. Not because I wanted it but because I realised it was 9pm and I hadn’t had one all day. That can’t be very healthy.

Uncle Toby’s High Fibre Bites, Weetbix Bites (Berry), peach & pecan untoasted muesli with organic soy milk

125 blueberry & mulberry organic soy yogurt

1 free range boiled egg

soy matcha latte with stevia

1 carob buckwheat crispbread – couldn’t finish it. Flavor a bit too strong.

1 frozen juice stick

piece of chocolate cake – gave me a stomach ache

cup of peppermint tea

leftover soba & sesame

1 peach, underripe

small cup chocolate soy milk

1 pear with cinnamon

1 bag microwave popcorn. I’ll probably be 1/2 a kilo heavier tomorrow.

Never thought I’d be excited to be 50kg, but after reaching a high of 50.6 (111.5lbs) recently I am relieved the see the scale going in the other direction. And my stomach is flat again. First I cut out the oat bars but that made no difference; I only started losing again in the past couple of days. The only real difference in my diet was eating a lunch of baby spinach leaves, wholewheat pasta and lemon tuna. I also ate soba at least 3 meals and started eating apples again. BUT I also had a piece of chocolate cake for a few afternoons in a row. How does that work?

1 pear with cinnamon

Weetbix Bites, peach & pecan untoasted muesli, Uncle Toby’s Wheaty Bites with organic soymilk

125g (4.4oz) strawberry organic soy yogurt

matcha soy latte with stevia

mixed baby leaves, wholemeal pasta, 1/2 can lemon pepper tuna

Exercise: a slow walk of about 15–20 mins to the local shops plus a few core exercises. I have lost so much fitness and am so low on energy. Keep forgetting to take Vit B supplement.

glass of filtered water not because I was thirsty but because it was after 3pm and I realised I’d had only one drink all day

couple of weird fried crispy Italian cookies

small pack (200cals) of sweet chilli wholegrain chips

glass of filtered water

cup of cocoa with organic soy milk & stevia.

piece of chocolate cake

1 apple

cup of organic soy milk

Weight: 49.0 kg / 107.8 lbs

Breakfast: mango. I didn’t eat the pieces of peach in the pic because too soft & squishy again. Great mango though. Weetbix Bits, untoasted muesli & soy milk. Soft-boiled free-range egg.

Drink: Bengal Spice tea with soy milk.

Drink: Filtered water with a splash of unfiltered organic apple cider vinegar. Why? Why not?

Snack: muesli bar. I suddenly remembered thatapart from a few seconds of flavor, these are an exercise in pointlessness. Blood sugar goes up, and there’s not even the slightest feeling of  fullness, and the taste isn’t as good or satisfying as say, chocolate. But I’ll eat the rest of the packet. I just have to try not to keep falling for buying them.

Snack: 6 x seaweed rice crackers. About as insubstantial as the muesli bar, but at least I don’t get the instant sugar spike & crash.

I said before that I don’t count calories. That doesn’t mean I don’t watch them. When I buy processed foods I do check out the nutrition info. I not only read the nutrition panels; I find them fascinating. That’s why I’m a slow shopper when I want to try a new product. Lots of reading & comparing. Ironically I’m finding that more confusing in Australia than I did in Japan. Australia uses the kilojoule system, and that means nothing  to me. I’ve just looked it up and 100 calories is about 400 kilojoules. But I’ll always be dividing by 4 in my head because I can only think in calories. Slightly annoying.

Anyhow, if you compare 100g (about 3 bars) of Uncle Toby’s muesli bars and 100g (about1/4  packet; ie loads) of Woolworths seaweed rice crackers , here’s what you get:

muesli bar:  408 cals, 5.7 g protein, 13.4 g fat, 62.7 g carbs (21 g = sugars)

crackers:  399 cals, 7.3 g protein, 2.7 g fat, 85 g carbs (4 g = sugars)

The fat in the muesli bars is probably mostly from the oats and therefore the good kind, but the massive amount of sugars and lower protein obviously make them a much worse bet than the crackers. Which just confirms what my lightheadness already told me.

Late lunch: chilli mango tuna & spinach leaves on baguette. I don’t even like white bread.  I don’t think I’ll buy mango tuna again. There’s something weird about it. Tastes OK but makes me think stomach trouble is coming.

Snack: 2 squares Peppermint Aero bar

Snack:  muesli bar

Snack: 2 squares Peppermint Aero bar

Dinner: 1/2 a hoki fillet marinated in white wine, fried (spray-on rice bran oil), with lemon juice & raw spinach leaves.  Turned out just the way I wanted it to.

Drinks: iced peppermint tea x 3 or 4

I didn’t exercise today because way too hot.

Weight: 48.8 kg  (107.4 lbs)

My stomach is perfectly flat today; amazing what a lack of sugary foods & bread will do. My body looks its normal self again.

Breakfast: peach, prune,  grapes. Despite it appearing in the pic I didn’t eat the pawpaw (papaya). I just can’t bring myself to like the taste. Some of the peach was a bit soft & squishy too so I didn’t eat it all.

Then cereal as usual – Apricot Weetbix & muesli with soy milk

Drink: Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime Vanilla. I had this because I felt like the chamomile would do me good (doesn’t actually make me sleepy) and also because I have a pain in my side. Who knows what that’s about. I wish I’d studied just a bit harder when I was younger and gone to medical school.

Snack: a soft-boiled egg

Snack: a small piece of home-made apple strudel

Lunch:  1/2  a steamed hoki fillet with lemon, steamed green beans, raw spinach leaves, steamed brown rice (reheated from yesterday or whenever it was I cooked it – the night before last?). The fish looks quite big in the pic but the dishes are all tiny. The biggest one has a diameter of 17 cm (6-7 inches).

I decided to go Japanese-style today and serve everything separately. I just wish I had brought a few more Japanese bowls over. I gave most of them to my cats. See, that’s why Japanese people have such a low obesity rate. They eat from tiny cat-sized bowls. And they have several bowls, giving the appearance of a major feast. And because everything is kept separate, they get to have a zen eating experience, focusing on one thing at once.

Drink:  Bengal Spice decaf chai with soy milk

Drink: Chocolate Quik with soy milk. It even looks dirty in the pic. But I had PMS chocolate cravings all afternoon.

Exercise:15-20 min walk down to the shops because I was too hot, lazy and full of PMS to do any better. And I went with the intention of buying either wwhite or mint chocolate. I did buy some but on the plus side I also found vege  burgers & vege schnitzels, hooray.

Snack: Uncle Toby’s Chewy Apricot Muesli Bar. Nutritiously awful and I know it.  But so chewy & oaty (& sugary).

Snack: 2 small squares of Peppermint Aero bar. Yes, I bought the candy bar that says ‘KING SIZE’ on it! Slippery slope! But I never claimed to be on a diet. Or totally dairy-free. These are my real life eating habits, good and bad.

Dinner: Sanitarium Vege Schnitzel with raw mini-tomatoes & raw spinach leaves. The schnitzel was greasy & too salty but strangely gratifying anyway.  Even semi-vegetarians want greasy protein sometimes.  Still, I wish the grease spots weren’t so visible on the plate in the picture. That disgusts me a lot more now than it did at the time.

Weight this morning: 49.2kg

Breakfast: mostly the same as yesterday, i.e. a bit of fruit, then untoasted muesli and apricot Weet-bix with soymilk. But it was too hot for an egg, and I traded the mocha for some Bengal Spice tea with soymilk. That made a difference to my tastebuds for the whole day, I think. If I start the day off with some sort of crap (sugar, caffeine) then my body and mind both feel a bit scungy and then want to scunginess to continue, even if the better part of me doesn’t.

I do eat the same thing a lot of the time. At least I think I do, but part of the reason for doing this blog is to see whether that is true or just a lie I tell myself.  I’ll get obsessed with a certain dish or product for a while then go totally off it. I ate couscous every day for months back in the 90s; now I eat it maybe once a year.

Lunch: steamed brown rice cooled, with fresh raw spinach leaves and about 2/3 can of mango-chilli tuna. Probably should have used the whole can and more spinach. It was good, but not as good as I’d hoped.

I’ve been using a Sunbeam Vitasteam Deluxe foodsteamer the past few days;  I was given it new about 10 years ago but it went unused for years while I was in Japan. It’s great for fish and veges but I cooked brown rice in it today and it took an hour. And I still had to drain the rice. Proper Asian rice-cookers are better, faster and more accurate.

Snack: 1 peach, peeled. I don’t want to eat the pesticides.

Drink: cold peppermint tea x 4 or 5. I read today that drinking peppermint tea discourages snacking because it makes the brain more alert. I thought it was just because it makes me feel like I’ve just cleaned my teeth.

Snack: 2 raw carrots & a strawberry. I forgot to take pictures but it’s probably unnecessary anyway.

Exercise: 45 min walk/run

Dinner:  Nothing. I was too angry to eat.

It was already after lunch when I decided to do this, so I can’t show exactly what I’ve eaten so far. I can however tell.

Breakfast: chopped fruit, muesli with soymilk, a soft-boiled free-range egg, a cup of mocha made with soymilk, half a teaspoon of Nescafe and about 3 (!) teaspoons of Nestle Quik. I am trying to cut down on the sugar, but that is an ongoing, endless battle, and sometimes I really do make an effort and sometimes I don’t.

Lunch: about a cup of wholemeal pasta, with fresh spinach & half a small can of tuna with chili. Yum!

Snack: about 3 Seaweed rice crackers

Snack: a small piece of caramel slice

Snack: a square of Lindt menthe intense chocolate.

OK, I’m not doing so well with sugar right now.

Drink: peppermint tea x 2 (1 hot, 1 cold)

Snack: 1 fresh apricot

Drink: filtered water x 2 (1 with dinner and 1 with exercise)

Exercise: about a 50 min walk/run. Mostly a walk.

Dinner:  smalll piece of steamed fish, steamed green beans. But I made the mistake of having some fried onions with the fish and some home-made coleslaw on the side.

The onions and coleslaw were what the rest of the family were having (with disgusting stuff like meat and sausages). I regret the onionss because they were fried, and I regret the coleslaw because it tasted gross. Made with cabbage & carrots and maybe fat-free salad dressing which was awful. I try to avoid fat-free products. In any case, I now have a stomach-ache, but that could have been from the bad conversation at the dinner table. People who talk non-stop and disagree with everything that everybody else says give me a stomach-ache.

Drink: Chocolate Quik & soymilk again because I was feeling moody, broody, angry, heartbroken & in need of sugar/chocolate.