Jambo

With the exception of Tuna I eat all the above fish plus smoked haddock as the fish half of my carnivore diet. I also add chopped smoked salmon off/cuts in scrambled egg. Completed 14 weeks on Sunday and total weight loss now 16.5 kilos (2.5 stone) I think that before I started this diet I must have been well into the pre-diabetic range. A blood test a month ago had me right on the line and my GP is no longer concerned particularly as my kidney function was normal. They do not like one taking diclofenac for too long. I monitor my blood pressure on a daily basis as I have for years. I was very concerned that it went up as soon as I began taking the pain meds for my hip/knee whilst at the same time I allowed my weight to climb. I am still taking the meds, even more so now, but as my weight reduced so did my BP readings. Just took this mornings reading which was 117/73 which for somebody my age who can do little meaningful exercise is fine. As far as I am concerned, all fish is healthy and works for me.

The only side effects I get from any of the meds I take is co-codomol makes one constipated. I take Lactulose every 2 or 3 days and don't go far from the bathroom. Guaranteed at least a three flush dump! 🤣

I don't like spiders. I could not pick one up so I suppose that counts as a phobia. I watched a U-tube video of some guy running along the "Knife Edge" leading up to the top of Snowdon mountain in Wales. Sheer drop on either side and the guy was insane. I could not watch it and had to change the station. It actually gave me vertigo just watching him and took me 5 minutes or so to feel normal again. Is "touching wood" for luck a reverse phobia? 😄

I can sit here on my laptop and I have virtually no pain. As soon as I stand up and try to walk I experience extreme pain in my left hip and knee. It is very hard for me to tell which is worse. My mobility is now very restricted. I take co-codamol three time each day and oral morphine as required at bedtime. Other than the latter helping me get through the night I am not convinced that any of them help much with the pain. The word "morphine" scares me and I try to limit using it but that does not stop my local Pharmacy delivering repeat prescriptions each month whether I ask for it or not. My GP told me that the recent follow up x-rays had shown that my hip has deteriorated greatly and that he was not at all surprised when I mentioned how much the pain had increased. It is now totally down to the Consultant to decide whether he considers this warrants moving me up the waiting list. Apparently, he is still on holiday. I hope he is having a good time!!

Phoned Simpson's Medical Practice today for a follow up appointment with my GP. He is on holiday as well. 🤣 Told they can book me in for the first available telephone consultation after he returns. "Okay, when is that?" says I "10:00am ( +or- 30 minutes) on Friday 25 August?" I was tempted to ask if that was this year or next but these Receptionists are not known for their sense of humor.

I have been waiting for feedback as it has been about 10 days since the surgeon who will probably carry out my hip replacement operation was requested to review the results of my follow up x-rays on my hip and knee. I decided yesterday to telephone the Manager of the hospital department who supports the surgeon to hear if they have any news for me. Yes they do.................he is on holiday! The nice lady Manager says she will immediately send him another email so that he has two waiting when he returns. I resist the urge to eat my bar of Bournville. I will give the cat a good kicking instead..........................except I don't have one!

My problem is because of the pain I experience from my hip and knee I cannot work out in any of the ways that I would like. I will try to persevere using the kettle ball but weight training and upper body strength exercise is totally alien to me. When I was a footballer none of the training I did involved weights although I know they do that now. I really miss my daily cycle rides. I have lost 35pounds to date which leaves me 22 pounds still to go by the 13th October. My son-in-law has it fixed in his mind that I like bars of Bournville chocolate and he is not wrong. He comes round to see me and as he leaves gives me a bar of chocolate. I say, "Thanks but you know I am on this diet." He laughs as he leaves saying one will not hurt me. He means well but it WILL hurt me as it will break my cycle of not cheating myself once since I started my diet. I should have thrown it away but it sits like the elephant in the room at the back of a food cupboard with all the other products I cannot eat any more. 🤣

Another diet week completed and weighed in today. I always place the scales on the same horizontal tile in the kitchen floor for luck. Another kilo lost making a grand total of 16 kilos in 13 weeks. That leaves me exactly another 10 kilos to achieve by the 13th October I have noticed a pattern reoccurring. In every 4 weeks I have one week when I lose nothing and the other three weeks I lose between one and three kilos. For a while the scales were telling me I was losing weight but my body did not seem to be any different. Then I was being told my face looked slimmer but nothing seemed to be happening to all the weight I had added to my gut. Now I can see the difference it is finally making to the fat around my waist. Onward and downwards. 😉

Double save really! What a way to end a football match. Did you notice the England player who had been red carded having already been substituted consoling the Spanish player who missed the penalty. Talked to him for some time with his arms round the Spaniard. Showed real compassion and sportsmanship.

I once stood in line for 10 hours on the pavement in White Hart Lane so I could get in to watch the Gooners beat the Spuds to win the league and I had chicken pox .......or German measles? Not many people know that.

Sunday is my weekly weigh in day on my carnivore/fasting diet. Today I completed 12 weeks since I started the diet following standing on my bathroom scales and giving myself the shock of my life. Today also turned out to be somewhat of a milestone as have achieved a total loss of 15 kilo's or 2 stone 5lb in old money. When I started I set myself an overall target of losing 26 kilo's (4 stone) by the 13th October. I will probably then stop the carnivore aspect and revert to a more balanced but low carb diet as opposed to basically my current ZERO carb diet. The catalyst for this diet, apart from my shame at letting myself get to this state, is the fact I absolutely need to prior to the day my turn arises for my hip replacement operation. I was sent for further x-rays a week ago so there is light at the end of the tunnel. I asked the Manager for the Hospital Specialist that will carry out my operation if there was any chance of the operation being before the 13th October and was told extremely unlikely. The diet works for me because I only eat food that I have always enjoyed eating. There is not one single item I am eating now simply because I am on a diet. Do I miss the two Magnum's I bought every day with my newspaper? Sure I do but no enough that I give in. So no kidding myself that the odd treat here and there is okay because it is not. I have not cheated once since I started. I am not counting a wee dab of mint source on my lamb chops. As for the fasting aspect. I used to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner because I always eat B L & D augmented with liberal amounts of comfort, junk food in between. Now I only eat food between the hours of 10am - 6 pm. So I am eating basically two meals a day and if I am not hungry quite often only one meal. Now here is the thing. After the first couple of weeks when my body realized it had to start burning fat for fuel as its carb fix was no more I lost my appetite. Or more particularly, I never feel hungry............ever. I don't believe I am missing out on any essential vitamins etc but just in case I dissolve one very nice tasting electrolyte tablet every day in a pint of water which I drink from every time I open the fridge. Today is basically fish day. For lunch, and it will be lunch, smoked haddock fillets with lots of butter and two poached eggs. Dinner is a wallet emptying amount of Scottish smoked salmon and king prawns I will saute in butter for 4 minutes in the air fryer. Tomorrow my main meal is a rather nice looking, heavily marbled, rib eye steak. Total carbs in that lot virtually zero. I don't believe in experts....................................any experts. Don't tell me its unhealthy I don't care. My only priority is to make sure I don't get turned down for my hip operation because of my weight.

The Guy who sat immediately behind me at Tynecastle not only had his Hearts season ticket but also holds a season ticket at the Villa. We had plenty of Villa stories to swap at half time at the Hearts. I enjoyed my time at the Villa and Hearts but I will for ever more be a Gooner. I was 8 years old when my "Grandad" stood me on a wooden box on the North Bank. My Scots grandson is a Gooner as well. 😄

Went for a haircut today with my 11 year old Grandson. I had to smile listening to Morgan giving detailed instruction to Sweeney Turk . He seemed very pleased with the end result. I only the other hand simply said short on the back and sides, trimmed on top. He simply ignored me and cut it short all over. 😄 Last of the summer wine 🤣

The Moei River being the natural border between Thailand and Myanmar Great fishing apparently on this particular stretch but sadly not tested by me. Also home for several large (Thai) casino complexes but on which side of the river? 🤣

That seems a touch excessive. 😉 I have one that gets me all the TV I could ever want and a second as back up just in case it ever goes tits up whilst I am in the middle of watching a footy match I do not ever want to miss. I still subscribe to Netflix so Sai can continue to watch in Thailand.

I used to think, like most people I guess, that Alzheimer's was something that only old people sadly to go down with in their later years. Unfortunately that is not true and probably never was. My wife was in her late 30's when she started to exhibit the signs of early dementia but was not diagnosed as such. Her doctor shoved her onto antidepressants for a year and promptly forgot about her. It was not until I went myself to see her doctor to complain that a series of tests were carried out and Alzheimer's was the awful news. At the time I was told that she was the third youngest person in Scotland to receive such a diagnosis. We now know that is no longer the case by a long way. Dementia is an awful disease. You watch the person you knew and love be taken away from you in stages until they cannot recognize you and vice versa. Eventually the body starts to close down. No quality of life and bedridden. Technically my wife died of pneumonia alleviated by the enhanced application of morphine. Sometimes life is just not fair.

I don't think that is surprising. We know domestic tourists do not fill western style bars. A year or so before covid wiped everyone out for a long while there were many comments in this forum as to the fact that apart from the bars that were always busy there were many others with few or sometimes no customers. The reason being that there were simply far too many bars all chasing the same diminishing number of potential customers. Well covid restrictions are over and tourists have returned however has the overall picture changed for the better? This forum keeps showing new bars and new developments all over the place. Are we not back to the same pre-covid problem of far too many bars all chasing the same diminished number of potential customers? Every new bar that comes on stream just adds to the problem does it not? I can only currently watch from afar. I know this is just one example and may not be representative of the whole but I viewed a U-Tube video recently which was filmed in the evening and featured a walk down Soi 6. It was absolutely rammed with pussy but you could count the number of customers on one hand. I would be interested to know from those in Town if my comments make sense or am I talking out of the back of my ass? It wouldn't be the first time.😄

In my dreams! I doubt if there are many people my age with two good hips and knees who could do that range of exercises. 😄 Unfortunately, I now have quite limited mobility. I am standing and "walking" with my left knee now bone on bone. I am absolutely certain that the x-rays I had on Friday will show how much deterioration there has been since the previous x-rays in January. The Specialist previously almost ignored my knee putting me in the queue for a left hip replacement. I have no doubt that is needed but the often quite extreme pain I experience in my knee is much more than residual pain from the hip. I think I will limit myself to using nampla69's kettlelbells suggestion which I should be able to use without generating too much additional pain in my hip/knee. Google search says 4kg to start with for an absolute beginner to get used to using them. What would I do without Amazon.

Is that where you get food for the week? The first time I went on a week's fishing holiday with two mates we stayed in a caravan and basically lived on a breakfast/dinner fry up for the whole week. The day I got back my Scottish Grannie "Annie" said as I walked in the door: "You must be hungry. I will cook you a nice fry up!" I didn't have the heart to say "NO." 🤣

My thanks to all who offered suggestions for exercises that I could do with my bad hip and knee. I had never heard of resistance bands and I can see how I could use those to work out without getting additional pain. When I was football training in the gym the mantra always was "No pain -No gain". Very different pain to that I experience currently.

Exercise: During my discussion with the Practice Nurse today I mentioned the fact that the pain I was experiencing in my hip/knee was precluding me doing virtually any exercise. I cannot use a cycling machine or anything similar. The nurse suggested using dumbbells as a very good source of cardiovascular exercise. That seemed like a good suggestion but I have absolutely no experience of using any form of weights for exercise. As a complete novice can anyone suggest what weights I should use to start with and subsequently progress.

I had my meeting today with the senior Nurse at my Medical Practice to discuss my somewhat raised HbA1c level. It turns out my reading was 41 which she said just places me in the pre-diabetic category. I told her I had been on a virtual zero carb fasting diet since the 13th April and had so far lost 12 kilo's and that I have a target of another 14 kilo's to go by 15 October when I will revert to a more balanced diet. I explained I am doing that to prepare for my hip replacement operation and subsequent recovery. We discussed what she described as the current world wide diabetes "epidemic" which she blamed totally on the lies told by the food industry. I left her with her best wishes as there was no additional advice she needed to give me. Six hours later I visited St John's Hospital for further xray's on my hip and knee. How I walked from their enormous car park to their Xray Department I do not know as the pain in my knee was intense. I am certain that the result of the xray will show just how bad is the current state of my knee and hip. As the request for the xray's came from the hospital that will carry out the treatment I am very hopeful I will not have to wait much longer.

No!! I was scared I might like it.

Could not agree more!

I was too scared to visit Devil's Den. Rather have a chicken Vindaloo and 6 pints to remind me what my ass is for!