Okay, okay! Quiet down, you lot.
This experiment was a great success as far as I can tell. CJBS lost weight; I lost girth whilst staying almost the same weight (but why??). I used less than every ration and invented or adapted many new recipes. Altogether, it was a success by every measure.
And then I went back to the old ways. We'd both fantasized about chips (fries) and had them on Saturday. We'd both dreamed (literally) of nachos and had them on Monday. We'd both really wanted a full-blooded chilli and had one on Tuesday.
And I paid for it. The fat of the chips came out on my skin immediately, along with a teenager-style crop of zits. The nachos disagreed with me entirely. The chilli... well, just don't ask. A month of wholesome, home cooked, slow cooked, virtually fat-free food had suited my body in every way. The opposite certainly didn't.
CJBS felt the same. We felt far, far worse on the "normal" food than we did on the ration. So we're doing it again. And this time: it's personal.
I still need to poison myself a little bit more - I'm pizza deprived - but we're going to restart the experiment. On Sunday 21 February, rationing will kick in again for a month (first class Eurostar to Brussels in the last week of March will thus be allowed for). And to make things more, er, interesting, we're not doing the 1940 rations this time. Oh no. We're doing February 1945. This isn't the lowest things got - 1942 and 1946-7 were the low points - but it's serious.
We'll each have 8oz (200g) of sugar a week (half of 1940), But the standby of jam, and we had huge amounts on 1940 rations, is down to 4oz (100g) a week - the factories had been bombed out. Fat is 8oz in total - that's butter, marg and dripping, previously 8oz, 12oz and 3oz each. Cheese is 2oz (50g) which is effectively nothing. Bacon is 4oz - half of 1940's ration again. Tea is the same at 2oz a week, and we get just under an egg a week. Our points will be the same, since I did the 1940 points on the only source I had, which was May 1945. Gone is the sweets ration, combined into the points but effectively unavailable.
Red meat dropped from 1s 2d in 1940 to around 1d a week. Allowing for inflation, that takes us from £1.68 to about £1.20. CJBS suggests declaring himself a vegetarian in order to boost cheese and fat. I'm not sure and will need to think on. But whatever I decide, the plan is back on...
4 weeks ago
8 comments:
Hurrah! Enjoy the fat and sugar while it lasts ;-)
Hurrah, indeed! I will be very interested to hear how the next phase goes!
Quite amazing. It will be interesting to whether you can keep this up. Don't you feel hungry?
I'm so glad - I was really missing reading this blog.
You are insane!
@peezedtee: Not really. When every meal comes with either brown bread or copious amounts of potato, you tend to fill quickly and stay filled.
@Bods: Quite possibly.
So do you think we can infer that "copious amounts of potato" are not fattening after all?
There's no actual fat in potato, just water and starch. The starch is turned into carbohydrate - sugar - in the body. Your body stores sugar in the liver notionally, but in practice the brain is greedy for sugar and it gets used quickly. Compare that to fat, which is generally immediately stored under the skin, for conversion to sugar when there's no actual sugar available.
If you eat potatoes and other sugary foods and fat, your body will use the sugar and store the fat almost permanently. With virtually no fat in our diet, plenty of yer actual solanum tuberosum leaves us full but not fat!
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