Psychology | Depression
Depression isn’t just unhappiness, it’s much more than that, it’s a feeling of hopelessness. So why do we feel that our situation or our life is hopeless? Researchers are trying to find out how our brains work, mainly using scanners. They now know that our moods and memories are controlled by brain chemistry. This link between mood and memory might help us beat depression.
Frugal Food | Chicken and celery soup
I’ve made this soup a couple of times and it’s a thin soup that you can dip toasted bread into and has a unique flavour. It is very frugal when the celery is in season and doesn’t need much chicken. (more…)
This week’s ideas
I took lots of photos last Sunday for my Neodigital Art blogs. What do you think of this one? I converted it to monochrome, but with a slight blue tint. It’s the enchanted woodland of Merrion’s Wood. Neodigital Art is about being creative with your digital camera, scanner and maybe a graphics tablet. In fact any digital device you can lay your hands on. It is fast becoming a school of art. If you search for Neodigital Art using Google, you will I have been promoting it for a few years now. Want to join in? (more…)
The Frugal diet | calorie free water
There are few calories in fibre and so high fibre foods are healthy and will help in a weight loss diet. Water has no calories and will help give you a feeling of being full. Fruit and vegetables have a lot of fibre and a high water content. I cooked the chicken and celery soup in the picture yesterday and it was both high fibre, packed full of vitamins and contained a lot of water. It also tasted yummy! (more…)
The Frugal Diet | Fruit and veg
Most fruit and vegetables are high in fibre and vitamins and relatively low in calories. There is about 50 Kcal in a large apple, but 100 kcal in a large banana of the same weight (about 100 grams). There is more fibre weight for weight in the apple and less sugar. The same weight of grapes (100 grams) would have around 60 Kcal. The grapes contain more fructose (fruit sugar). Vegetables to choose are leafy vegetables rather than root vegetables. A baked potato is around 110 Kcal compared to only 15 kcal for the same weight of cabbage (100g). Mashed potato comes in slightly less than baked potato. (more…)
The Frugal Diet | Seafood.
Many people think a seafood diet is; see food, eat it! Most seafood is quite low in calories and so useful in a calorie controlled diet. Seafood can be expensive though. Those prawns were expensive and so I used a few and added some pink salmon. I have no idea why pink salmon is half the price of red salmon but it is. It all tastes the same to me! There is just under half a tin of salmon on my salad and that would be about 100 kcal. Add a few chips to the meal and it would be about 250 kcal. It would be fairly easy to keep to 1000 kcal a day, eating meals like that. (more…)
The Frugal Diet | Meals and Snacks
The stir fry I cooked for dinner has around 250 to 300 calories and so quite good. Counting calories can be confusing because the calorie is a unit of energy. The kilocalorie or kcal is a thousand calories and this has been adopted for diets and expressed as the Calorie with a big C! This is confusing and many foods are now marked with kcal to tell you how many calories they contain. I checked how many calories were in my morning biscuits, 250 kcal; that’s nearly as much as a meal! In fact if I do a salad with a can of sardines, it works out to around 250 kcal and that includes the oven chips! (more…)
Psychology | hormones
I was reminded of a joke about British bank holidays some time ago. Why are they called bank holidays? Because the banks are closed. Why are the banks closed? Because it’s a holiday! Two things can be inter-dependant and this appears to be the case with our emotions and our hormones. We become stressed and we produce cortisol, but it also appears cortisol makes us feel stressed. It could be that when we become stressed we produce cortisol; that makes us feel even worse and we are then forced to take action. The action can be ‘fight or flight’, to face up to what is making us feel stressed or to run away. (more…)
The Frugal Diet | Life Style
10,000 years ago, our ancestors ate mostly roots and berries, but also eggs. Not chicken eggs like us but the eggs of water birds like ducks. There was no farming and many of the foods we eat today came later from overseas. Chickens from Asia; turkeys, potatoes and beans from the Americas. We find eggs easy to digest because our bodies are designed to eat them. We haven’t changed physically very much in the last 10,000 years. Some foods that we eat would be impossible to eat if they weren’t cooked. Many allergies and other problems with food appear to be the result of ‘modern’ foods. Dairy foods in particular seem to create problems and many people have allergies. (more…)
The Frugal Diet | Size matters
250 calorie – stir fry
I cooked stir fry this week and if you’re trying to lose weight that might seem like a meal that is too fattening. I actually did too much rice again and the size of portions is important. If we have a takeaway Chinese meal we tend to have extras and large portions. I cooked the boiled rice and use about a cup full to a cup full of water and so half that rice is actually water! The pork I used was very lean diced pork. I used a whole chopped onion that was fried with the pork in as little oil as possible in a non stick wok. Then I added even more fibre at the end by adding peas. Most of the flavour came from the dash of soya sauce and the sprinkling of 5 spice. The whole meal came to around 250 calories and although it might not look much served up in a rice bowl; it was filling and I even had a little fruit for desert. (more…)
The Frugal Diet | Controlling the calories
I had to stick to a strict diet for decades for health reasons. The trick is to make it a permanent thing, a lifestyle choice. It’s a mistake to lust after foods that are bad for you. I’ve used a picture of one of my salads again this week. I have fewer chips on this one. It’s packed full of vitamins and fibre. It’s low fat, fairly low in carbohydrates and above all, it tasted good. I also tried to make it look nice, I could have tried harder! Mixing hot and cold food is a good idea and if you want to lose weight fast, add more lettuce and cut the chips a little. This meal is less than 250 calories and that should be your target for main meals like lunch and dinner. It’s not a good idea to eat less than 1,000 calories a day; everyone can lose weight on 1,000 calories a day. You might want a little snack between meals though and so it’s a good idea to aim for 250 – 300 calories per main meal. (more…)
The frugal diet | A perfect body
A perfect body or world peace?
On television the other night someone said that in a survey women were asked to choose between bringing about world peace or having a perfect body. Over 40% said they would choose a perfect body! This doesn’t really surprise me, I am constantly amused by the lengths women will go to in an attempt to look good. I saw a woman on television the same night, with thick makeup and false eyelashes that looked as long as the draught excluder on my kitchen door. She was heavier than me and at least 10 inches shorter. Does she really think all that crap on her face makes her look any better, when she has a body like a beached whale? (more…)
Keep Young and beautiful
Keep young and beautiful – if you want to be loved…
Slowing the ageing process.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could find a super-food that not only slows the ageing process, but helps us live longer and protects us against nasty diseases? This is exactly what I have been researching using all the resources the internet has to offer. I have been looking at the science of ageing!
Yes, I have not only found super-foods and an elusive dipeptide that appears to slow down ageing! You want me to share these secrets don’t you? This dipeptide is already used in anti-wrinkle creams and a lot of research has been done. (more…)
