A very hard pill to swallow

I'm struggling at the moment... a bit of a dilemma (an internal battle) that's keeping me awake at night but one I know I can't truly engage in. This feeds into some of the anger and frustration I mentioned yesterday.

OK, bottom line - I have to accept that this is NOT my battle. What my darling friend is going through is fundamentally her business and she has to walk the path so she gets to choose which path to follow.

This is written with love, but I'm really, really struggling not only with what's haapening to her, but also to have done some of my own background research, partly at her behest, and come across something (and told her about it)  which makes SO much sense to me in beefing up the fight against this bloody cancer, but for her to dismiss the prospect. Oh Lord, this is hard.
[reminder to self: ALWAYS keep in mind these are her decisions to make, fat lass - not yours]

What I'm talking about is Dr. Dominic D'Agostino's research into metabolic disease. One thread of his work (in a fascinating area) seems to indicate that switching to a strict ketogenic diet can dramatically increase cancer survival rates.

Huh, you might say - why the heck does this seem a likely option? Well, setting any reaction to peer-reviewed papers aside, in an article for CBN News he explains the basics - in that:

All cells, including cancer cells, are fueled by glucose. But if you deprive them of glucose, they switch to the alternate fuel, ketone bodies.

Except cancer cells. A defect prevents them from making the switch to using ketone bodies as fuel and therefore, cancer cells can ONLY [my emphasis] survive on glucose. All other cells can use either glucose or ketone bodies.

One of the most challenging parts to me is that D'Agostino also firmly advocates hyperbaric therapy (a.k.a. use of a diving decompression chamber) in the fight against cancers, and that's something we've also discussed and she would accept... it just isn't bloody well available here. The F word is about to emerge again!

But...
Hell, fat lass, even though you think you are right and you think it would help her and it's a relatively simple and straightforward change she could make to give herself a stronger fighting chance... this is not, repeat NOT, your call to make.

So shut your yap.

Oh, do have a heart!

No, really. We horrify my poor sister as we both love to eat offal of all sorts (she... er, doesn't!) and quite often have heart, pig or ox, but usually in a casserole-type dish. This weekend we tried something a little different.

We sliced a couple of decent inch or so thick 'steaks' from a beautifully fresh whole ox heart I'd picked up in the market and griddled them (without any oil apart from what had been massaged into them) on a hot ridged pan to have with buttered kale.

Oh my! Darling lovely hubby cooked them a pefect medium rare, brown outside and moist and pink in the middle. They were tender and so, so tasty. What's even better? There's more, just waiting for us, in the freezer. Yum!

Just got to pick up more kale...

Let's keep things real

Well, as you'll know I've been reading other peoples' weight-related posts for a long time and still find it to be a massive support, in all sorts of ways, particularly when times get tricky (er, like weeks of low- to moderate-ish level stress at work).

I know I've said in the past that my journey will never be over and that I still have things to learn along the way, but every now and again someone says something that makes a little 'click' happen and a lightbulb glow brightly in my brain.

Food... for thought, that is - wouldn't you agree?

Last week, one of Jeanette's posts did it, and the lightbulb glow has put me to thinking. Always a good thing for the fat lass - a little exercise for the grey matter. Anyhow, in that post she talked about shifting her mindset and getting back to the "Let food be thy medicine" approach.

Instead of letting herself think she isn't "allowed to have that food" she reframes things to look at it differently, and goes on the explain that this means she 'could' eat anything she wanted but she actively 'chooses' not to eat things which could damage her health or wellbeing. Ping! Lightbulb time.

A little recent history... although I have aimed to stay ketogenic (and have done so according to the dip-stick wee tests) I have also had the urge to eat something sweet for some weeks. To 'treat' or 'indulge' myself in some way, and make myself feel better (oh boy, remember that work stress business?). So, since Christmas I've been 'choosing' to nibble on sugar-free sweeties.

More recently I'd say this has become rather more of a bad habit than I like... from just one every now and again, to 'several' over the course of a day. Although there doesn't seem to have been any noticeable effect on my weight this doesn't, however, mean it isn't a burgeoning problem. The first step on a slippery slope, if you like.

Having read Jeanette's post I took a belated look at the little box these things come in and actually 'thought' about the contents. OK, the rest of the ingredients may look fairly innocent and 'natural', but the biggest percentage of their makeup, that sweet bit, is isomalt/sucralose.

Now I've 'justified' (excused, call it whatever) this behaviour to myself on the basis that this sweet stuff 'isn't' sugar. That it 'is' thus low-carb in a sense, so OK... no harm done, right? Hey, the body can't easily digest the stuff so it passes through the intestines a bit like dietary fibre.

Wrong! What I'd cheerfully bypassed in my head is that these substances are NOT natural in any sense (they are man-made 'Frankenfoodstuffs' in fact) and are certainly not an intrinsically good or healthy thing to be putting into my body.

Time to do a little reframing myself, methinks. OK, they are now OFF the shopping list for this fat lass. Thanks Jeanette, that was a wake-up call I rather needed!

More heavenly stuff...

Slow cooker dry 'roasting' madness has ensued chez nous - I think we're pretty much convinced now... or is that, perhaps, addicted?

We've now tried our hand with a gammon ham (soaked first to tone down the saltiness), a whole free range chicken (no added water but I stuffed a bunch of fresh sage leaves in the cavity), and a lamb shoulder joint (OK, we did slather this with yoghurt, mint and chilli).

All I can do is groan quietly with repletion and say 'yummy'. I think this technique is definitely a winner!

On a slightly tangential but food related note, I've been reading something written by Olga Tikhonova Irez over at Delicious Istanbul about her new kitchen. Now I'm a bit of a fan at the best of times, but she's excelled herself this time. Two phrases she's used in her most recent post are so beautifully poetic.

When she describes her kitchen (not the largest nor most high-tech in the world), she anthropomorphises and says of the kitchen:

She gracefully lets me use her modest premises in exchange for respect.

This touched me, that she feels her kitchen has a personality of its own. Mine does too... er, and not always a benevolent one mind you. Mine definitely informs me if I'm unwelcome!

The other phrase she used described the view from her window at the end of a day and she wrote:

When you would think the light is gone for the day, it flashes a Cheshire cat smile through the thickets of the trees in the neighbors garden...

Ooh, what a lovely image that brought to mind.

Other matters - weight is still more or less where I want it to be, although getting a pound or two off is still the game plan. Connie, the rower, is still going well. Lovely hubby and I are both healthy* and spring is surely not too far around the corner now we've hit February. All in all, life is good and I'm counting blessings whenever possible.

*I got a letter from my GP regarding the results of that mid-life health check. Apparently, the aim of this was to 'detect potential problems before they do real damage' and with my results I'm 'low risk' so they don't want to see me for five years. When I looked up exactly what these 'risks' they were interested in assessing were, the NHS listed "heart disease, stroke, diabetes, kidney disease and some forms of dementia". So, low risk eh? Sounds good enough to me!

Heaven on a plate...

Oh my goodness. Well, that last post was by way of scene setting in some ways. Now as part of this new more fat, less carbs regime, last night's dinner was a 'cheap and cheerful' experiment - one which worked beautifully and which will also give us a plenteous dinner tonight. This is one experiment which I'm guessing will become a fat lass and lovely hubby standard.

In essence it was 'roast' turkey legs, the legs being a nice dark, juicy, fatty part of the bird. These ones were 'roasted' reaaaally gently in the slow cooker for about ten hours though. It went like this - washed the two gargantuan turkey legs (boy, these are big boys!), and patted them dry. Gave 'em a light grind of sea salt and black pepper. Nothing else.

Popped the legs onto a low rack in the slow cooker (er, they only just fitted). Added NO liquid at all, nor any other ingredients. Set the slow cooker to Low, and just let the legs get on with it for about ten hours without opening the lid.

Result? Great! The meat turned out beautifully. Very tender, falling apart and wonderfully tasty. Better yet those tricky hard tendony bits that hide away in the centre of the meat slid out easy as pie. The skin had browned nicely, but it wasn't exactly crisp so as an added treat we pulled it off an popped it under a hot grill. Instant turkey chicharrones for our starter. Bliss!

A plate of the meat with buttered broccoli and kale was just divine. We have more to come tonight (two legs providing one hellacious amount of meat), and a bowlful of the most amazing drippings which I somehow think will form the basis of a cabbage soup.

Just wish we'd taken a photo.

Tweaks

To remind myself that any 'tweaking' will take a little time, as well as the effort... before the effects will show.

Hmmm, after a wee bit of head scratching my darling lovely hubby and I have made the decision to tweak things a bit and to reduce our carb intake even more and increase the fats.

This is because his daily blood glucose readings, although still perfectly acceptable, OK, reasonable and within limits, are not quite as stellar as they used to be (now in the low- to mid-5s rather than the mid- to high-4s). Nothing scary, just a noticeable shift over time.

Now that could be down to a natural progression in the diabetes over the years, despite all we're doing to migtigate things (after all, we have been told that it is, unfortunately, a progressive condition), or it could just be an unnoticed shift in our diet meaning we have been eating more carbs that we used to (and this'd be a bigger deal for him with Type 2 diabetes than for me).

Either way, we're going to see if we can make some changes and make a difference. Let's see what happens, eh?

Colour me happy, happy, happy!

Yippee! I'm not about to shuffle off this mortal coil imminently, it seems. Yep, got those blood results back and it appears to me that those lovely 'keto' gurus have got it absolutely cracked about the lack of 'danger' in eating plenty of tasty nuts, seeds, avocados, coconut, saturated animal fats and the like and steering clear of the sugars and starches (even grains - yes, even the 'healthy' whole grain option).

So, without further ado, but with a positively delighted fat lass drum roll: