What No Cake!?

Anyone who knows me knows that I love my cake, along with many other lovely food-types. And over Christmas and New Year I ate a lot, a heck of a lot. My parents-in-law laid on a spectacular buffet on New Years Day evening, and once I'd eaten my 31st cocktail sausage of the night I realised I had a bit of a problem.  When we got home I stepped on the bathroom scales, and to be honest I'm surprised they didn't fall through the floor. I was the heaviest I'd ever been so knew I needed to take drastic action...

No more of this!

For the first week I went on a complete detox. I cut out all meat (except fish), bread, milk, refined sugar, so on and so on. After the first week was over I became less strict, eating meat a couple of times a week, the odd sandwich, and once a week a bit of a treat (it was a slice of the above cake last weekend!).  And the result.... I've lost a stone and a half in less than a month!  And that's without doing any extra exercise, although I do lead a pretty active life with plenty of walking and a fairly manual job.

What has amazed me most of all though is how different my taste buds are now.  As well as being a chocoholic, cakeoholic, biscuitoholic, pastryoholic and toastoholic, I was also a cerealoholic, ate at least two bowls a day - loved the stuff.  Two weeks after starting my 'detox diet', I had a bowl of a certain-type of cereal that I've enjoyed most days for the last eight years of my life, and I couldn't even eat half the bowl, it was far too sweet. This means my palate has been retrained and it was a real eye-opener. In short, the food industry is drugging us all with sugar, and sugar is more addictive than cocaine (so I've been told anyway!). The more sugar that's put into our food, the more sugar we want, or 'think' we want, so they keep adding more and more of it.  Really crazy that they are allowed to get away with it, but as long as we provide the demand (because we've been manipulated into wanting sugar!) they are going to keep doing it.  

Anyway, I have some advice for anyone wanting to get healthy, or go on a diet or a detox, or whatever you want to call it. Ignore all the fad diets, don't worry about signing up the gym, just eat as many foods that are completely natural and have not been interfered with by humans. Although it is quite hard to get off the sugar, it most certainly does not mean you can only eat boring foods. Just look at this...

Completely good for you!

Yes that scrumptious looking dessert above is totally natural and healthy, made with only avocado, dates, cacao (raw chocolate - which is good for you) plus the visible fresh fruit.

Right, before I'm asked by the blog police to rename this blog 'Healthy Eating On The Axe', I best include some bird news. Not that there is much...

On Tuesday morning a female Pintail was on the Estuary with a small flock of Wigeon just north of Coronation Corner.  Sadly though the gulls haven't produced anything better than three Med Gulls, which is 1% of the number counted at Ferrybridge today!  I do wish they'd spread out a bit more.

I'll end this blog post with a pic that I forgotten I'd taken, of our beloved Axe Estuary at dusk on a mid winters day...