112. Sugar, Sugar, Everywhere...

Why have I become so fat?  There is really only one reason why I, or anyone else, gains weight. 

As long as I burn off the same number of calories every day through exercise as I consume as a result of eating, I will not gain weight.  If I don’t burn off my daily calorie intake, I gain weight – simple!

I don’t eat a lot.  Honestly, I don’t!  Much to Caroline’s consternation and she was brought up in a northern household where to waste food was a sin and plates were always left empty after meals, I often leave quite a lot of food on my plate.  I stop eating once I am no longer feeling hungry.  I accept that it is wasteful but as I paid for it and no one is offended as I cooked it, it doesn't matter.  I rarely eat between meals.

So, it must be the kind of food I eat.  I must be eating high calorie food.

According to the medical profession, the maximum sugar intake per day for a healthy life is 30 grams.  Have you any idea how little this really is?

Breakfast is the meal I look forward to most.  First thing in the morning is the only time of the day when I am really genuinely hungry.  I eat a sort of lunch every day, which is maybe a sandwich or something like a boiled egg and I always eat in the evening but I am never hungry before either of those meals.

I have come to realise recently that I eat lunch and dinner every day almost out of a sense of duty - I’m not really hungry but as it’s a mealtime, I eat. 

I am retired and I no longer work.  Caroline works full time and gets home between six and seven every evening.  She is always hungry because she leads an active, sometimes frenetic life, both physically and mentally:

“I didn’t have time for lunch,” is an almost daily refrain.

What we eat in the evening is whatever I have prepared that afternoon.  I sometimes wonder if I would prepare and eat dinner every day if I lived on my own.  I am fairly sure that I would not.

When I was 55 and before my liver problems, I weighed 165 pounds (11 stone, 11 pounds).  During my illness, my weight fell to 138 pounds (9 stone 12 pounds).  Since I have made a full recovery, cooking and eating are two of the few remaining pleasures left open to me.

I don’t smoke and obviously, I never drink alcohol.  My ongoing problems with severe arthritis mean that any type of aerobic physical activity is beyond my capability.  I cannot walk more than 50 metres without experiencing severe pain and I can’t jog any distance at all. 

Consequently, almost all my time is spent sitting and not moving and therefore I am burning very few calories.

My weight is steadily rising.  I have kept a record:

In August 2009, it was 147 pounds, 10st, 7lbs.

In August 2010, it was 165 pounds, 11st, 9lbs.

In August 2011, it had risen to 186 pounds, 13st, 4lbs.

By August 2012 my weight had risen to 195 pounds (13st 13lbs) and it has stayed there, ± 3 pounds, for the past three years.

As a result, I am 35 pounds, or more than two stone heavier than I should be.  

Before I put any sugar on my Weetabix and All Bran this morning, I put two and a half dessertspoons of sugar that I always add (I know!), on to the scales.  I was astounded by the weight of sugar: 35 grams!

I put the sugar back into the jar and then weighed the two teaspoons of Demerara sugar that I would have had with the first of my two cups of coffee that accompany my breakfast: 9 grams.

That means I consume 50 grams of sugar and that is almost twice the recommended healthy daily intake.  That is just at breakfast - no wonder I am so fat!

You probably think that more than 50 grams of sugar a day is an outrageous amount and I agree, but I do have an excuse - of sorts: I was a child of the 50s.  In September 1953, when sugar came off ration, I was 6.  This was the opening paragraph in the Daily Telegraph the next day:

Children all over Britain have been emptying out their piggybanks and heading straight for the nearest sweetshop as the first unrationed sweets went on sale today.

My diet as a 6-year-old was quite unlike that of a child of today.  In August that year, my 4-year-old brother and I had sat in a sidecar, alongside our parents on a motorcycle combination, as my father drove to Barcelona and back.  The trip took over five weeks. 

There were no official campsites in central France in 1953 and every evening we sought permission to camp in a farmer’s field and the following morning we drank warm, unpasteurised milk from that farm.  I can still recall the distinctive taste. 

The water wasn’t safe to drink.  There was no bottled water and so my brother and I had to drink rough, local wine.  We never liked it.  Butter and margarine couldn’t be stored in mid-summer without refrigeration and so bread and jam was just that – bread and jam.

I can’t remember it but I expect that after rationing ended, only a week after our return to the UK, I was spoiled by having sugar with virtually everything.  I even remember going to nursery with a sugar sandwich as a packed lunch.  Hence, I suppose, my problems with sugar until today.

As I write this, at 4 p.m. on Saturday afternoon, my sugar intake today, so far as I know, is zero grams.  I say “so far as I know” because I have no idea how much sugar is in processed foods.  I have looked at the sugar content of a 150ml tin of Schweppes tonic water: 5.1g per 100ml. 

That means that there is about a quarter of the recommended daily intake of sugar in just one small tin and I sometimes drink three tins a day.  Not anymore!  How much sugar is in supermarket bread?  What about ‘healthy’ yoghurts and soups?

Weetabix without sugar is just about edible but hardly enjoyable but coffee without sugar is fine.  If my experience with coffee, mirrors that which I had with tea, when I gave up sugar in it some forty years ago, I will soon adapt.

39. Tea and spuds

I did something on Monday that I know I will come to regret, as the ramifications will affect me for the foreseeable future - but I’d do it again.

On the days that Caroline is at work it is my custom and habit at around 1 pm to walk the 60 yards or so to a rather good café/restaurant around the corner.  I usually order a cheese and tomato or a ham roll, plus a coca cola for my lunch.

I am usually the only man in there.  Ladies of Winchmore Hill who lunch, don’t really have anywhere to go but there.  As I went in I could see that most tables were occupied with a number of women eating their salads and toasted panino.

Monday was cold and feeling both chilly and adventurous, I asked for a cup of tea instead of coke.  The proprietoress was a little miffed at this because she had seen me come in and she had already opened a bottle of coke.

If you have read Chocolate pastry which I posted on Saturday, August 7^th, you will know that I tend to get a bee in my bonnet about the making of tea.  You may remember the distress I suffered at the way Adrienne, a French girl, made my tea but that anguish is as nothing when compared with the suffering, pain and grief that I experienced this week.

On to my table, the ‘lady’ (I won’t name her) placed a cup of hot water, a tea bag still in its paper wrapping on the saucer, a jug of milk and a spoon.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Your tea.”

“No its not!  Tea is made with boiling water.  This isn’t tea.”

“It was boiling.”

“Yes, it may have been once but it certainly isn’t now.”

“That’s how my customers like it,” she said, defiantly.

“Do they?” I asked, incredulously.  “Do they really?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said.

“Ooooh,” said the ten or so Winchmore Hill Ladies, who were listening, enthralled.

I was suddenly aware that the place had gone quiet.

“Are you calling me a liar?” the owner asked.

“Aaaaah,” said the Winchmore Hill Ladies, leaning forwards in their seats.

‘Well, yes.  I suppose that I am,” I said, realising that I was way past the point of no return.

So that means that I’ve got to find somewhere else to eat in future.  Was it worth it?  Yes, of course it was.  The Crusade must go on!

********

I bought some shares ten weeks ago.  I have never bought shares before and there are a couple of reasons for this.  First of all I never had the money to speculate with and secondly, I know nothing whatsoever about business and it all seemed too risky to me anyway.

A friend of mine, who works for a small publicly-owned company, told me that things at work were looking up and were actually quite exciting.

“Ten months ago,” he told me, “the shares in the company were priced at 13p each.”  Now they were at 35p, with the prospect of an imminent sharp rise, he thought. 

“Should I buy some?” I asked.

“Oh God no,” he said,  “I’d feel awful if they plummeted back down and you’d never forgive me.”

“Don’t be silly.  Of course I would,” I said.  “It would be like playing a game of poker.  When I start to play poker I always assume that I will lose everything and so if I don’t, even if I’ve lost, I’m still a winner.”

“Well it’s up to you,” he said, “but please don’t spend more than you can afford to lose because things really could go horribly wrong.”

Over the next couple of days I told everyone about this company and the ridiculously underpriced shares.

Two weeks later my brother phoned me and he was jubilant and more excited than I’d ever heard him before.

“Have you heard the news?” he said.  “It was in the Business Report on the radio.  They’ve made a huge discovery in the North Sea.  Biggest since the sixties.”

“What’s the share price now,” I asked.

“74p,” he said.  We’ve more than doubled our money.  I’m going to buy a Mercedes.”

The following morning, my next-door neighbour, two friends, Julian the butcher over the road and a couple of his customers, contacted me by phone or in person to tell me how grateful they were.  I’d never been so popular.

Sadly, I couldn’t join in this euphoria, as I hadn’t actually bought any myself. I’m not going any further with this now but that just about sums up many aspects of my life – one missed opportunity after another!

Of course I did buy some the next day and even though I missed getting them at 35p, I did get them at 77.5p and now, ten weeks later on October 22^nd they are at 115.5p.

I’ve discovered a web site where I can watch constant, real time updates on the share price and I’m acquiring a whole new vocabulary.

I’ve learnt to despise the “Shorters” and to look out for the “spike” with the prospect of “topping up on the way down”.  When we have, “finished shaking out the doubters,” I intend to “buy on the rise“ and I vow to myself only ever to “buy on rumour, sell on fact” - or is it the other way round?

It’s like watching a very, very long, slow horse race. Sometimes my ‘horse’ is leading the field and sometimes, like this week when they have dropped 9.5p, it’s struggling.

I’m not selling yet though.  I’m in it for the long term.  I want a Mercedes too. 

I just wish they’d set the “spud date” and start “spudding” so we get some news.