Not everyone can afford or has the space for gym equipment.
Most people have a floor for push ups though.
If you have a room, a yogo mat and a facetime function then fifty quid a week buys you an hour with a personal trainer. Expensive? well its your health.
There was further unrest in the Paris suburbs, or “banlieues”, on Monday evening, with fireworks fired at police and rubbish bins and cars set alight. Similar incidents were reported in areas of Strasbourg in eastern France.
ICL model got its weekly (?) update. Infection estimates now: Germany 0.8%, Italy/France/UK ~4%, Spain 5.8%, Sweden 7.6%, Belgium 12.2%
Belgium's numbers are higher because they include care home data which most countries don't.
Clearly ICL have done a lot more work than me on this, but that looks low for Italy - wasn't there some study a while back that estimated around 20-30% of the population had been infected?
I would take all these numbers and double them. But I am not an epidemiologist, I am some bloke in the spare bedroom posting things on the internet.
Secondly, on WFH/weight loss. As with most things, routine is key. Once the novelty of wfh has worn off then routines are life savers (literally if it means avoiding snacking all day = putting on the pounds).
As to weight loss in general, I could write several books on it (my "proudest" moment was when putting up 17lbs overweight for an amateurs race once, and yes it was my horse so the owner was ok with it).
Of course usually by far the biggest contributor to weight gain is alcohol. Sadly. A bottle of wine is 1,000 calories right there on top of anything else you are ingesting. Fizzy or "health" drinks are likewise toxic. Also snacking as has been mentioned.
Then there is, as has been mentioned, the snacking. Most diets work not because of some magic formula (food combining, protein, etc), but because they regulate eating which people who are overweight generally don't do. Just having three meals a day and no more is often a big reduction in calories.
Next of course exercise. My diet book would be one page - eat less and exercise more.
Finally, the key is routine but this time with what and when you eat. Take any thought out of the process because the more you think about losing weight the more you think about food and the more you think about food.
So top tips to lose weight: 1. cut out alcohol 2. set out menus (out of preference the same thing same time every day, say toast and butter in the morning and some combination of salads - lots of cabbage and cottage cheese and tomatoes and perhaps some chicken breast - for lunch and supper 3. Don't eat between meals or if you do, have something (tomatoes, celery, carrots) to chew on with very or relatively few calories which is important psychologically. 4. Do more aerobic exercise if possible to get to the point whereby you get the natural "high". It will make you happier and more motivated.
Having lost most of the weight, it is really a simple input and output formula - but one complicated by many other psychological and behavioral factors that you allude to. Overcome them and the motivation and benefits become more accessible.
Something like MyFitnessPal for calorie counting was useful for me. Even over a few weeks then you quickly pick up the new habits.
At the risk of sparking the controversy saying something like this inevitably does, eating less meat and animal products can clearly help some people too [hides under table]. Getting the biggest nutritional bang for your calorific buck while still having a heaping plate of food for dinner is not a bad place to be (exactly as you say, having something to chew on matters and makes you feel less deprived).
Either way this is a cracking time to start.
Absolutely agree with all of that.
(and eg I used to amaze friends (ie bore them senseless) telling them how many calories were in what foods.)
Don't disagree with any of this, but another factor is satiation. And each person has to find what combination of food types, meal times and exercise actually work for them.
Personally for me, high protein diets based on fattier meats work well, as I feel sated for longer than I would having a greater bulk of vegetables or even fruit. The two habits I formed which helped the most were walking the dogs twice a day and not eating a carb with dinner.
The reason the Atkins diet worked was not some magical property of the regime but simply because if people had, say, sausages for breakfast then the resulting layer of fat on their tongues kept them feeling sated for a long time as you note and hence they didn't feel like eating anything or much else.
I am aware that you can snack on as much celery as you can fit in and you won't feel at all less hungry. Hence more of the benefit of snacking on low calorie stuff is just to keep your mouth moving and ingesting something.
I'd have thought the most urgent thing to relax as we soften the lockdown would be dentistry.
My wife's practice is completely closed and she doesn't expect it re-open before autumn at the earliest. Apparently dentistry is very high risk as there are a lot of aerosol generating procedures with the power tools.
Yes, that is correct. The viral risk is very high, and requires proper PPE. That is not going to be the case for a while due to shortages.
In Leics we have 4 emergency dentists equipped, and open, and a similar number of optometrists.
Secondly, on WFH/weight loss. As with most things, routine is key. Once the novelty of wfh has worn off then routines are life savers (literally if it means avoiding snacking all day = putting on the pounds).
As to weight loss in general, I could write several books on it (my "proudest" moment was when putting up 17lbs overweight for an amateurs race once, and yes it was my horse so the owner was ok with it).
Of course usually by far the biggest contributor to weight gain is alcohol. Sadly. A bottle of wine is 1,000 calories right there on top of anything else you are ingesting. Fizzy or "health" drinks are likewise toxic. Also snacking as has been mentioned.
Then there is, as has been mentioned, the snacking. Most diets work not because of some magic formula (food combining, protein, etc), but because they regulate eating which people who are overweight generally don't do. Just having three meals a day and no more is often a big reduction in calories.
Next of course exercise. My diet book would be one page - eat less and exercise more.
Finally, the key is routine but this time with what and when you eat. Take any thought out of the process because the more you think about losing weight the more you think about food and the more you think about food.
So top tips to lose weight: 1. cut out alcohol 2. set out menus (out of preference the same thing same time every day, say toast and butter in the morning and some combination of salads - lots of cabbage and cottage cheese and tomatoes and perhaps some chicken breast - for lunch and supper 3. Don't eat between meals or if you do, have something (tomatoes, celery, carrots) to chew on with very or relatively few calories which is important psychologically. 4. Do more aerobic exercise if possible to get to the point whereby you get the natural "high". It will make you happier and more motivated.
Very good advice here, and to stress the point about "taking the thinking out of it". This is key. It's why, for example, and speaking from experience, "cutting down" on smoking is so problematical. If you try and do that, what happens is you end up forever watching the clock as it moves at theory of evolution pace towards the time you have allocated for the next fag. In other words you are thinking about cigarettes all of the time. It utterly dominates.
There was further unrest in the Paris suburbs, or “banlieues”, on Monday evening, with fireworks fired at police and rubbish bins and cars set alight. Similar incidents were reported in areas of Strasbourg in eastern France.
There was further unrest in the Paris suburbs, or “banlieues”, on Monday evening, with fireworks fired at police and rubbish bins and cars set alight. Similar incidents were reported in areas of Strasbourg in eastern France.
Secondly, on WFH/weight loss. As with most things, routine is key. Once the novelty of wfh has worn off then routines are life savers (literally if it means avoiding snacking all day = putting on the pounds).
As to weight loss in general, I could write several books on it (my "proudest" moment was when putting up 17lbs overweight for an amateurs race once, and yes it was my horse so the owner was ok with it).
Of course usually by far the biggest contributor to weight gain is alcohol. Sadly. A bottle of wine is 1,000 calories right there on top of anything else you are ingesting. Fizzy or "health" drinks are likewise toxic. Also snacking as has been mentioned.
Then there is, as has been mentioned, the snacking. Most diets work not because of some magic formula (food combining, protein, etc), but because they regulate eating which people who are overweight generally don't do. Just having three meals a day and no more is often a big reduction in calories.
Next of course exercise. My diet book would be one page - eat less and exercise more.
Finally, the key is routine but this time with what and when you eat. Take any thought out of the process because the more you think about losing weight the more you think about food and the more you think about food.
So top tips to lose weight: 1. cut out alcohol 2. set out menus (out of preference the same thing same time every day, say toast and butter in the morning and some combination of salads - lots of cabbage and cottage cheese and tomatoes and perhaps some chicken breast - for lunch and supper 3. Don't eat between meals or if you do, have something (tomatoes, celery, carrots) to chew on with very or relatively few calories which is important psychologically. 4. Do more aerobic exercise if possible to get to the point whereby you get the natural "high". It will make you happier and more motivated.
In addition to that, I've found keeping a food diary is a great help. It stops you idly and mindlessly snacking (and eating more than you realise). And if you feel embarrassed at what you're putting in it, it's easy to tell yourself: well, if you don't want to write it down, don't eat it.
The other point about all the diet books out there is one you allude to. Losing weight is a bastard. It's not as easy as every foreword in all those books makes out. It takes sacrifice (minor in context!) and deprivation (ditto). It requires some discipline which can often be a factor for being overweight in the first place.
But neither am I of the "pull yourself together" persuasion. Plenty of overweight people would love to be able to lose weight but for such people (over)eating is a psychological demand reflecting other things going on in their lives from which they can take comfort with food.
Really interesting to read what works for people here.
What keeps my weight stable is a very simple policy of missing breakfast, usually a mid-morning hot drink but sometimes nil by mouth, until lunch. Lunch is usually a healthy soup, with green salad, bread, butter, cheese etc. Dinner varies, but high on healthy fats, good protein, bit of carb, big green salad, usually spinach leaves. Dessert. No snacking. Never really tempted to. Drink when I want. Two things I usually include in my diet are homemade sauerkraut (yum) and home made yoghurt. A note also needs to go to eggs.
The idea behind intermittent fasting is to give your body rest and recovery time in between bouts of digesting.
It's a mixture of intermittent fasting and a few ketogenic principles (but I do carbs). If you need a lever for the weight to go down, reduce the carbs.
One interesting thing I heard from a podcast (Chris beats Cancer, I think) was that no one really knows what is good or not good (as you say each to their own) but one thing that made me sit bolt upright was when he said something along the lines of "we don't know much at all apart from what has been proven beyond doubt scientifcally to increase mortality missing breakfast"!!!!!
On one or other of my wasting regimes in the past I have missed breakfast but can't say I enjoyed it, which of course is the point, but a good breakfast does set you up for the rest of the day rather than being in deficit waiting to make up the calories.
Secondly, on WFH/weight loss. As with most things, routine is key. Once the novelty of wfh has worn off then routines are life savers (literally if it means avoiding snacking all day = putting on the pounds).
As to weight loss in general, I could write several books on it (my "proudest" moment was when putting up 17lbs overweight for an amateurs race once, and yes it was my horse so the owner was ok with it).
Of course usually by far the biggest contributor to weight gain is alcohol. Sadly. A bottle of wine is 1,000 calories right there on top of anything else you are ingesting. Fizzy or "health" drinks are likewise toxic. Also snacking as has been mentioned.
Then there is, as has been mentioned, the snacking. Most diets work not because of some magic formula (food combining, protein, etc), but because they regulate eating which people who are overweight generally don't do. Just having three meals a day and no more is often a big reduction in calories.
Next of course exercise. My diet book would be one page - eat less and exercise more.
Finally, the key is routine but this time with what and when you eat. Take any thought out of the process because the more you think about losing weight the more you think about food and the more you think about food.
So top tips to lose weight: 1. cut out alcohol 2. set out menus (out of preference the same thing same time every day, say toast and butter in the morning and some combination of salads - lots of cabbage and cottage cheese and tomatoes and perhaps some chicken breast - for lunch and supper 3. Don't eat between meals or if you do, have something (tomatoes, celery, carrots) to chew on with very or relatively few calories which is important psychologically. 4. Do more aerobic exercise if possible to get to the point whereby you get the natural "high". It will make you happier and more motivated.
Having lost most of the weight, it is really a simple input and output formula - but one complicated by many other psychological and behavioral factors that you allude to. Overcome them and the motivation and benefits become more accessible.
Something like MyFitnessPal for calorie counting was useful for me. Even over a few weeks then you quickly pick up the new habits.
At the risk of sparking the controversy saying something like this inevitably does, eating less meat and animal products can clearly help some people too [hides under table]. Getting the biggest nutritional bang for your calorific buck while still having a heaping plate of food for dinner is not a bad place to be (exactly as you say, having something to chew on matters and makes you feel less deprived).
Either way this is a cracking time to start.
Absolutely agree with all of that.
(and eg I used to amaze friends (ie bore them senseless) telling them how many calories were in what foods.)
Don't disagree with any of this, but another factor is satiation. And each person has to find what combination of food types, meal times and exercise actually work for them.
Personally for me, high protein diets based on fattier meats work well, as I feel sated for longer than I would having a greater bulk of vegetables or even fruit. The two habits I formed which helped the most were walking the dogs twice a day and not eating a carb with dinner.
The reason the Atkins diet worked was not some magical property of the regime but simply because if people had, say, sausages for breakfast then the resulting layer of fat on their tongues kept them feeling sated for a long time as you note and hence they didn't feel like eating anything or much else.
I am aware that you can snack on as much celery as you can fit in and you won't feel at all less hungry. Hence more of the benefit of snacking on low calorie stuff is just to keep your mouth moving and ingesting something.
Fat does have satiating properties but that is not the whole story with Atkins. There are two forms of fuel for your body, Glucose (mainly from sugar and carbs) and Ketones (from fat). Your body prefers Glucose and will usually use that first. When it doesn't have any, it will go into 'ketosis' and start burning Ketones instead. That is what all fatloss is, regardless of regime. Your body being starved of Glucose and burning fat (your fat). Atkins and other ketogenic diets, instead of forcing you into starvation, simply deprive your body of enough sources of Glucose, so force your body into ketosis. Once there, you burn fat quickly, so you're losing more than you replace even though you're eating a fair bit. That's a very simplistic explanation, but that's how it works.
Secondly, on WFH/weight loss. As with most things, routine is key. Once the novelty of wfh has worn off then routines are life savers (literally if it means avoiding snacking all day = putting on the pounds).
As to weight loss in general, I could write several books on it (my "proudest" moment was when putting up 17lbs overweight for an amateurs race once, and yes it was my horse so the owner was ok with it).
Of course usually by far the biggest contributor to weight gain is alcohol. Sadly. A bottle of wine is 1,000 calories right there on top of anything else you are ingesting. Fizzy or "health" drinks are likewise toxic. Also snacking as has been mentioned.
Then there is, as has been mentioned, the snacking. Most diets work not because of some magic formula (food combining, protein, etc), but because they regulate eating which people who are overweight generally don't do. Just having three meals a day and no more is often a big reduction in calories.
Next of course exercise. My diet book would be one page - eat less and exercise more.
Finally, the key is routine but this time with what and when you eat. Take any thought out of the process because the more you think about losing weight the more you think about food and the more you think about food.
So top tips to lose weight: 1. cut out alcohol 2. set out menus (out of preference the same thing same time every day, say toast and butter in the morning and some combination of salads - lots of cabbage and cottage cheese and tomatoes and perhaps some chicken breast - for lunch and supper 3. Don't eat between meals or if you do, have something (tomatoes, celery, carrots) to chew on with very or relatively few calories which is important psychologically. 4. Do more aerobic exercise if possible to get to the point whereby you get the natural "high". It will make you happier and more motivated.
Very good advice here, and to stress the point about "taking the thinking out of it". This is key. It's why, for example, and speaking from experience, "cutting down" on smoking is so problematical. If you try and do that, what happens is you end up forever watching the clock as it moves at theory of evolution pace towards the time you have allocated for the next fag. In other words you are thinking about cigarettes all of the time. It utterly dominates.
Fantastic photography in most of the diet books making a lettuce leaf and half a tomato look amazing (plus, usually, inflating the size of any particular plate). Because the economics of diet books requires a big interest in food...
The prices of shit bikes on FB Marketplace have gone crazy. Everybody must be trying to buy them. The prices on proper weapons grade kit seems to be edging down which I guess reflects economic uncertainty as less people want to drop 5+ grand on a bike.
Secondly, on WFH/weight loss. As with most things, routine is key. Once the novelty of wfh has worn off then routines are life savers (literally if it means avoiding snacking all day = putting on the pounds).
As to weight loss in general, I could write several books on it (my "proudest" moment was when putting up 17lbs overweight for an amateurs race once, and yes it was my horse so the owner was ok with it).
Of course usually by far the biggest contributor to weight gain is alcohol. Sadly. A bottle of wine is 1,000 calories right there on top of anything else you are ingesting. Fizzy or "health" drinks are likewise toxic. Also snacking as has been mentioned.
Then there is, as has been mentioned, the snacking. Most diets work not because of some magic formula (food combining, protein, etc), but because they regulate eating which people who are overweight generally don't do. Just having three meals a day and no more is often a big reduction in calories.
Next of course exercise. My diet book would be one page - eat less and exercise more.
Finally, the key is routine but this time with what and when you eat. Take any thought out of the process because the more you think about losing weight the more you think about food and the more you think about food.
So top tips to lose weight: 1. cut out alcohol 2. set out menus (out of preference the same thing same time every day, say toast and butter in the morning and some combination of salads - lots of cabbage and cottage cheese and tomatoes and perhaps some chicken breast - for lunch and supper 3. Don't eat between meals or if you do, have something (tomatoes, celery, carrots) to chew on with very or relatively few calories which is important psychologically. 4. Do more aerobic exercise if possible to get to the point whereby you get the natural "high". It will make you happier and more motivated.
Having lost most of the weight, it is really a simple input and output formula - but one complicated by many other psychological and behavioral factors that you allude to. Overcome them and the motivation and benefits become more accessible.
Something like MyFitnessPal for calorie counting was useful for me. Even over a few weeks then you quickly pick up the new habits.
At the risk of sparking the controversy saying something like this inevitably does, eating less meat and animal products can clearly help some people too [hides under table]. Getting the biggest nutritional bang for your calorific buck while still having a heaping plate of food for dinner is not a bad place to be (exactly as you say, having something to chew on matters and makes you feel less deprived).
Either way this is a cracking time to start.
Surely you increase the nutritional density of meals by leaving out the bulk carbs. Plenty of meat and veg is what you need. Lose the potatoes.
Would it be fair to say a consensus is building that the way COVID spreads is a highly complex matter and that lockdown is helping only marginally if at all and with enormous drawbacks?
The data seems to show that the harder the lockdown, the worse the death toll is in terms of deaths per million citizens. Spain, Italy and Belgium are all faring very badly.
Forcing people to live together in cramped spaces could in some cases be counterproductive, it seems.
Boris & co weren't to know this, but the time to realise it and start the economy going again is now. Actually it was days ago. It may be too late.
But by acting now we may not cause the permanent damage the treasury is predicting today.
Look at Norway and Denmark on that chart of deaths per million. They are a fraction of Sweden's.
And Denmark is in a worse starting point than Sweden in terms of both population density, areas of high density, and land border with the rest of the Continent.
Care homes and lack of PPE are the problems, say Swedes
Secondly, on WFH/weight loss. As with most things, routine is key. Once the novelty of wfh has worn off then routines are life savers (literally if it means avoiding snacking all day = putting on the pounds).
As to weight loss in general, I could write several books on it (my "proudest" moment was when putting up 17lbs overweight for an amateurs race once, and yes it was my horse so the owner was ok with it).
Of course usually by far the biggest contributor to weight gain is alcohol. Sadly. A bottle of wine is 1,000 calories right there on top of anything else you are ingesting. Fizzy or "health" drinks are likewise toxic. Also snacking as has been mentioned.
Then there is, as has been mentioned, the snacking. Most diets work not because of some magic formula (food combining, protein, etc), but because they regulate eating which people who are overweight generally don't do. Just having three meals a day and no more is often a big reduction in calories.
Next of course exercise. My diet book would be one page - eat less and exercise more.
Finally, the key is routine but this time with what and when you eat. Take any thought out of the process because the more you think about losing weight the more you think about food and the more you think about food.
So top tips to lose weight: 1. cut out alcohol 2. set out menus (out of preference the same thing same time every day, say toast and butter in the morning and some combination of salads - lots of cabbage and cottage cheese and tomatoes and perhaps some chicken breast - for lunch and supper 3. Don't eat between meals or if you do, have something (tomatoes, celery, carrots) to chew on with very or relatively few calories which is important psychologically. 4. Do more aerobic exercise if possible to get to the point whereby you get the natural "high". It will make you happier and more motivated.
Having lost most of the weight, it is really a simple input and output formula - but one complicated by many other psychological and behavioral factors that you allude to. Overcome them and the motivation and benefits become more accessible.
Something like MyFitnessPal for calorie counting was useful for me. Even over a few weeks then you quickly pick up the new habits.
At the risk of sparking the controversy saying something like this inevitably does, eating less meat and animal products can clearly help some people too [hides under table]. Getting the biggest nutritional bang for your calorific buck while still having a heaping plate of food for dinner is not a bad place to be (exactly as you say, having something to chew on matters and makes you feel less deprived).
Either way this is a cracking time to start.
Absolutely agree with all of that.
(and eg I used to amaze friends (ie bore them senseless) telling them how many calories were in what foods.)
Don't disagree with any of this, but another factor is satiation. And each person has to find what combination of food types, meal times and exercise actually work for them.
Personally for me, high protein diets based on fattier meats work well, as I feel sated for longer than I would having a greater bulk of vegetables or even fruit. The two habits I formed which helped the most were walking the dogs twice a day and not eating a carb with dinner.
The reason the Atkins diet worked was not some magical property of the regime but simply because if people had, say, sausages for breakfast then the resulting layer of fat on their tongues kept them feeling sated for a long time as you note and hence they didn't feel like eating anything or much else.
I am aware that you can snack on as much celery as you can fit in and you won't feel at all less hungry. Hence more of the benefit of snacking on low calorie stuff is just to keep your mouth moving and ingesting something.
Fat does have satiating properties but that is not the whole story with Atkins. There are two forms of fuel for your body, Glucose (mainly from sugar and carbs) and Ketones (from fat). Your body prefers Glucose and will usually use that first. When it doesn't have any, it will go into 'ketosis' and start burning Ketones instead. That is what all fatloss is, regardless of regime. Your body being starved of Glucose and burning fat (your fat). Atkins and other ketogenic diets, instead of forcing you into starvation, simply deprive your body of enough sources of Glucose, so force your body into ketosis. Once there, you burn fat quickly, so you're losing more than you replace even though you're eating a fair bit. That's a very simplistic explanation, but that's how it works.
Interesting thanks. As an aside, I was never fitter (this after I had started work in an office) than when every day (jeez to think of it now) I had a sausage sandwich for breakfast. I hit the gym at lunchtime at 1,000 MPH!
Not everyone can afford or has the space for gym equipment.
Most people have a floor for push ups though.
I'm doing supersets of 35 press-ups and 40 bodyweight squats while I'm waiting for my gym equipment to arrive (next week, I've been told). It's not ideal but it's at least keeping me active and making me do something that gets me out of breath.
I wonder if the British government would get the PPE released from Turkey any faster if this prize-winning piece of poetry hadn't been written in 2016 by a guy called Johnson about another guy called Erdogan:
"There was a young fellow from Ankara, Who was a terrific wankerer. Till he sowed his wild oats, With the help of a goat, But he didn’t even stop to thankera."
Johnson's true vocation is third-rate comedian. I wouldn't object to him getting his own show on Channel 5, but running the country really is a bad joke.
It is worth considering the role of pensions in the economy if there is a massive contraction. This will reduce or wipe out pension fund assets due to company insolvencies and reduced profits. Thus defined benefit pension schemes will have large shortfalls. Their parent companies may face insolvency due to the need to make up these shortfalls,. The government may change the rules to reduce the benefits from these schemes.
Defined contribution schemes will just reduce the benefits that members will receive on retirement. One way or another, people will receive significantly smaller pensions due to the smaller economy.
DB scheme deficits do not affect the DB members` pension benefits. If firms go bust there is a protection scheme in place for the members.
DC schemes don`t have the ability to "reduce the benefits". The benefits are a function of the value of the underlying fund value (which will of course have plummeted).
Prior to this crisis, employees with DB schemes (commonly known as final salary, or career average etc schemes) were gold dust. Now they are gold dust, sprinkled with more gold dust, with knobs on.
Secondly, on WFH/weight loss. As with most things, routine is key. Once the novelty of wfh has worn off then routines are life savers (literally if it means avoiding snacking all day = putting on the pounds).
As to weight loss in general, I could write several books on it (my "proudest" moment was when putting up 17lbs overweight for an amateurs race once, and yes it was my horse so the owner was ok with it).
Of course usually by far the biggest c ontributor to weight gain is alcohol. Sadly. A bottle of wine is 1,000 calories right there on top of anything else you are ingesting. Fizzy or "health" drinks are likewise toxic. Also snacking as has been mentioned.
Then there is, as has been mentioned, the snacking. Most diets work not because of some magic formula (food combining, protein, etc), but because they regulate eating which people who are overweight generally don't do. Just having three meals a day and no more is often a big reduction in calories.
Next of course exercise. My diet book would be one page - eat less and exercise more.
Finally, the key is routine but this time with what and when you eat. Take any thought out of the process because the more you think about losing weight the more you think about food and the more you think about food.
So top tips to lose weight: 1. cut out alcohol 2. set out menus (out of preference the same thing same time every day, say toast and butter in the morning and some combination of salads - lots of cabbage and cottage cheese and tomatoes and perhaps some chicken breast - for lunch and supper 3. Don't eat between meals or if you do, have something (tomatoes, celery, carrots) to chew on with very or relatively few calories which is important psychologically. 4. Do more aerobic exercise if possible to get to the point whereby you get the natural "high". It will make you happier and more motivated.
In addition to that, I've found keeping a food diary is a great help. It stops you idly and mindlessly snacking (and eating more than you realise). And if you feel embarrassed at what you're putting in it, it's easy to tell yourself: well, if you don't want to write it down, don't eat it.
My fitness pal app is great for that. You can scan the foods barcode and you get a breakdown of your daily carbs fat and protein as well as calories obviously.
Secondly, on WFH/weight loss. As with most things, routine is key. Once the novelty of wfh has worn off then routines are life savers (literally if it means avoiding snacking all day = putting on the pounds).
As to weight loss in general, I could write several books on it (my "proudest" moment was when putting up 17lbs overweight for an amateurs race once, and yes it was my horse so the owner was ok with it).
Of course usually by far the biggest contributor to weight gain is alcohol. Sadly. A bottle of wine is 1,000 calories right there on top of anything else you are ingesting. Fizzy or "health" drinks are likewise toxic. Also snacking as has been mentioned.
Then there is, as has been mentioned, the snacking. Most diets work not because of some magic formula (food combining, protein, etc), but because they regulate eating which people who are overweight generally don't do. Just having three meals a day and no more is often a big reduction in calories.
Next of course exercise. My diet book would be one page - eat less and exercise more.
Finally, the key is routine but this time with what and when you eat. Take any thought out of the process because the more you think about losing weight the more you think about food and the more you think about food.
So top tips to lose weight: 1. cut out alcohol 2. set out menus (out of preference the same thing same time every day, say toast and butter in the morning and some combination of salads - lots of cabbage and cottage cheese and tomatoes and perhaps some chicken breast - for lunch and supper 3. Don't eat between meals or if you do, have something (tomatoes, celery, carrots) to chew on with very or relatively few calories which is important psychologically. 4. Do more aerobic exercise if possible to get to the point whereby you get the natural "high". It will make you happier and more motivated.
In addition to that, I've found keeping a food diary is a great help. It stops you idly and mindlessly snacking (and eating more than you realise). And if you feel embarrassed at what you're putting in it, it's easy to tell yourself: well, if you don't want to write it down, don't eat it.
The other point about all the diet books out there is one you allude to. Losing weight is a bastard. It's not as easy as every foreword in all those books makes out. It takes sacrifice (minor in context!) and deprivation (ditto). It requires some discipline which can often be a factor for being overweight in the first place.
But neither am I of the "pull yourself together" persuasion. Plenty of overweight people would love to be able to lose weight but for such people (over)eating is a psychological demand reflecting other things going on in their lives from which they can take comfort with food.
Really interesting to read what works for people here.
What keeps my weight stable is a very simple policy of missing breakfast, usually a mid-morning hot drink but sometimes nil by mouth, until lunch. Lunch is usually a healthy soup, with green salad, bread, butter, cheese etc. Dinner varies, but high on healthy fats, good protein, bit of carb, big green salad, usually spinach leaves. Dessert. No snacking. Never really tempted to. Drink when I want. Two things I usually include in my diet are homemade sauerkraut (yum) and home made yoghurt. A note also needs to go to eggs.
The idea behind intermittent fasting is to give your body rest and recovery time in between bouts of digesting.
It's a mixture of intermittent fasting and a few ketogenic principles (but I do carbs). If you need a lever for the weight to go down, reduce the carbs.
One interesting thing I heard from a podcast (Chris beats Cancer, I think) was that no one really knows what is good or not good (as you say each to their own) but one thing that made me sit bolt upright was when he said something along the lines of "we don't know much at all apart from what has been proven beyond doubt scientifcally to increase mortality missing breakfast"!!!!!
On one or other of my wasting regimes in the past I have missed breakfast but can't say I enjoyed it, which of course is the point, but a good breakfast does set you up for the rest of the day rather than being in deficit waiting to make up the calories.
But you are absolutely right that whatever works!
I'd be interested to read that, and see the studies. I can imagine if you were starving to death, missing breakfast would indeed correlate strongly with mortality, but potentially not imply causation.
I am very open to new ideas, but I would be puzzled as to how such a thing might work. I do 'break my fast' I simply do it later. Breakfast (as you mention) is usually toast - empty carbs, pasteurised milk, coffee, sugary cereal. It's not a very great asset to the body in its nutritional profile.
Not everyone can afford or has the space for gym equipment.
Most people have a floor for push ups though.
I'm doing supersets of 35 press-ups and 40 bodyweight squats while I'm waiting for my gym equipment to arrive (next week, I've been told). It's not ideal but it's at least keeping me active and making me do something that gets me out of breath.
Go for a run?
North Essex is not ready for such horrors, even if men in gimp suits drop by Tesco's.
The prices of shit bikes on FB Marketplace have gone crazy. Everybody must be trying to buy them. The prices on proper weapons grade kit seems to be edging down which I guess reflects economic uncertainty as less people want to drop 5+ grand on a bike.
I am spanking my Apollo Highway and the extremely nice bloke at my local bike shop (average price for bikes £X,000 - he makes them) doesn't mind fixing it for me and every other happy clappy biker every so often now as he can't get the parts for the ones he usually deals in and no one as you say is asking for a five grand bike right now. If I were to win the lottery I would commission him to build me my next bike as a thank you.
There was further unrest in the Paris suburbs, or “banlieues”, on Monday evening, with fireworks fired at police and rubbish bins and cars set alight. Similar incidents were reported in areas of Strasbourg in eastern France.
What are they protesting about this time?
Racist police...
There's been a general disobedience of the lockdown in these areas throughout. A lad on a motorbike got rammed by a police car over the weekend in Villeneuve-la-Garenne and it kicked off. Most of the photos doing the rounds are by Taha Bouhafs, French journalist with an Algerian background. Well, except for the ones of him being arrested as well.
I'd be interested to read that, and see the studies. I can imagine if you were starving to death, missing breakfast would indeed correlate strongly with mortality, but potentially not imply causation.
I am very open to new ideas, but I would be puzzled as to how such a thing might work. I do 'break my fast' I simply do it later. Breakfast (as you mention) is usually toast - empty carbs, pasteurised milk, coffee, sugary cereal. It's not a very great asset to the body in its nutritional profile.
I just googled it - absolutely no idea how valid it is. Sounds like you have some expertise in the area so would be interested in your views.
Google chris beats cancer - 87% higher risk breakfast
That said, it will have to wait an hour as I am off to do some exercise. Laters and thanks.
Would it be fair to say a consensus is building that the way COVID spreads is a highly complex matter and that lockdown is helping only marginally if at all and with enormous drawbacks?
The data seems to show that the harder the lockdown, the worse the death toll is in terms of deaths per million citizens. Spain, Italy and Belgium are all faring very badly.
Forcing people to live together in cramped spaces could in some cases be counterproductive, it seems.
Boris & co weren't to know this, but the time to realise it and start the economy going again is now. Actually it was days ago. It may be too late.
But by acting now we may not cause the permanent damage the treasury is predicting today.
Look at Norway and Denmark on that chart of deaths per million. They are a fraction of Sweden's.
And Denmark is in a worse starting point than Sweden in terms of both population density, areas of high density, and land border with the rest of the Continent.
Care homes and lack of PPE are the problems, say Swedes
Care homes and a lack of PPE are the problems, say absolutely everyone!
This morning I have tried to donate a few cases of PPE (full barrier gowns, face shields, masks and gloves) to local care homes and the ambulance station across the road from work (we are a vet practice with some spare in date hospital grade stock). They have all turned me down as they ‘have plenty of supplies and their normal supply chains are working fine’.
Will end up sending it in via the main procurement route into the local hospital trust but wanted it to be as local as possible.
Secondly, on WFH/weight loss. As with most things, routine is key. Once the novelty of wfh has worn off then routines are life savers (literally if it means avoiding snacking all day = putting on the pounds).
As to weight loss in general, I could write several books on it (my "proudest" moment was when putting up 17lbs overweight for an amateurs race once, and yes it was my horse so the owner was ok with it).
Of course usually by far the biggest contributor to weight gain is alcohol. Sadly. A bottle of wine is 1,000 calories right there on top of anything else you are ingesting. Fizzy or "health" drinks are likewise toxic. Also snacking as has been mentioned.
Then there is, as has been mentioned, the snacking. Most diets work not because of some magic formula (food combining, protein, etc), but because they regulate eating which people who are overweight generally don't do. Just having three meals a day and no more is often a big reduction in calories.
Next of course exercise. My diet book would be one page - eat less and exercise more.
Finally, the key is routine but this time with what and when you eat. Take any thought out of the process because the more you think about losing weight the more you think about food and the more you think about food.
So top tips to lose weight: 1. cut out alcohol 2. set out menus (out of preference the same thing same time every day, say toast and butter in the morning and some combination of salads - lots of cabbage and cottage cheese and tomatoes and perhaps some chicken breast - for lunch and supper 3. Don't eat between meals or if you do, have something (tomatoes, celery, carrots) to chew on with very or relatively few calories which is important psychologically. 4. Do more aerobic exercise if possible to get to the point whereby you get the natural "high". It will make you happier and more motivated.
Having lost most of the weight, it is really a simple input and output formula - but one complicated by many other psychological and behavioral factors that you allude to. Overcome them and the motivation and benefits become more accessible.
Something like MyFitnessPal for calorie counting was useful for me. Even over a few weeks then you quickly pick up the new habits.
At the risk of sparking the controversy saying something like this inevitably does, eating less meat and animal products can clearly help some people too [hides under table]. Getting the biggest nutritional bang for your calorific buck while still having a heaping plate of food for dinner is not a bad place to be (exactly as you say, having something to chew on matters and makes you feel less deprived).
Either way this is a cracking time to start.
Absolutely agree with all of that.
(and eg I used to amaze friends (ie bore them senseless) telling them how many calories were in what foods.)
Don't disagree with any of this, but another factor is satiation. And each person has to find what combination of food types, meal times and exercise actually work for them.
Personally for me, high protein diets based on fattier meats work well, as I feel sated for longer than I would having a greater bulk of vegetables or even fruit. The two habits I formed which helped the most were walking the dogs twice a day and not eating a carb with dinner.
The reason the Atkins diet worked was not some magical property of the regime but simply because if people had, say, sausages for breakfast then the resulting layer of fat on their tongues kept them feeling sated for a long time as you note and hence they didn't feel like eating anything or much else.
I am aware that you can snack on as much celery as you can fit in and you won't feel at all less hungry. Hence more of the benefit of snacking on low calorie stuff is just to keep your mouth moving and ingesting something.
Fat does have satiating properties but that is not the whole story with Atkins. There are two forms of fuel for your body, Glucose (mainly from sugar and carbs) and Ketones (from fat). Your body prefers Glucose and will usually use that first. When it doesn't have any, it will go into 'ketosis' and start burning Ketones instead. That is what all fatloss is, regardless of regime. Your body being starved of Glucose and burning fat (your fat). Atkins and other ketogenic diets, instead of forcing you into starvation, simply deprive your body of enough sources of Glucose, so force your body into ketosis. Once there, you burn fat quickly, so you're losing more than you replace even though you're eating a fair bit. That's a very simplistic explanation, but that's how it works.
Interesting thanks. As an aside, I was never fitter (this after I had started work in an office) than when every day (jeez to think of it now) I had a sausage sandwich for breakfast. I hit the gym at lunchtime at 1,000 MPH!
Love a sausage sandwich. Lashing of HP. Not had one for ages.
Not everyone can afford or has the space for gym equipment.
Most people have a floor for push ups though.
I'm doing supersets of 35 press-ups and 40 bodyweight squats while I'm waiting for my gym equipment to arrive (next week, I've been told). It's not ideal but it's at least keeping me active and making me do something that gets me out of breath.
Go for a run?
North Essex is not ready for such horrors, even if men in gimp suits drop by Tesco's.
Personally, I find it easier to do press ups/sit ups etc having done some cardio first.
Secondly, on WFH/weight loss. As with most things, routine is key. Once the novelty of wfh has worn off then routines are life savers (literally if it means avoiding snacking all day = putting on the pounds).
As to weight loss in general, I could write several books on it (my "proudest" moment was when putting up 17lbs overweight for an amateurs race once, and yes it was my horse so the owner was ok with it).
Of course usually by far the biggest c ontributor to weight gain is alcohol. Sadly. A bottle of wine is 1,000 calories right there on top of anything else you are ingesting. Fizzy or "health" drinks are likewise toxic. Also snacking as has been mentioned.
Then there is, as has been mentioned, the snacking. Most diets work not because of some magic formula (food combining, protein, etc), but because they regulate eating which people who are overweight generally don't do. Just having three meals a day and no more is often a big reduction in calories.
Next of course exercise. My diet book would be one page - eat less and exercise more.
Finally, the key is routine but this time with what and when you eat. Take any thought out of the process because the more you think about losing weight the more you think about food and the more you think about food.
So top tips to lose weight: 1. cut out alcohol 2. set out menus (out of preference the same thing same time every day, say toast and butter in the morning and some combination of salads - lots of cabbage and cottage cheese and tomatoes and perhaps some chicken breast - for lunch and supper 3. Don't eat between meals or if you do, have something (tomatoes, celery, carrots) to chew on with very or relatively few calories which is important psychologically. 4. Do more aerobic exercise if possible to get to the point whereby you get the natural "high". It will make you happier and more motivated.
In addition to that, I've found keeping a food diary is a great help. It stops you idly and mindlessly snacking (and eating more than you realise). And if you feel embarrassed at what you're putting in it, it's easy to tell yourself: well, if you don't want to write it down, don't eat it.
My fitness pal app is great for that. You can scan the foods barcode and you get a breakdown of your daily carbs fat and protein as well as calories obviously.
I used the myfitnesspal app for a while. At first I was sore amazed at being able to scan barcodes, but after a while I noticed that it was easier to add a Mr Kipling Bakewell tart to it than a sandwich (bread, cheese, chutney - three separate things to scan and possibly weigh) or something home-cooked like a bean chilli, and so it was encouraging me to do the wrong things.
I'm willing to admit that was as much my issues as the apps.
The drink is one of the things keeping me going. I probably should switch away from beer and drink more spirits, but I *like* beer. Stopping drinking would improve my physical health at the cost of my mental health. Same with a weekly takeaway - its not just calorie goodness, its keeping a local business going.
So what needs to happen is to balance that off with exercise. As my personal lockdown started I had gotten into a routine of running 5k a day. That's slipped a little and partly switched to the bike, but I am out more days than not. The challenge now is (a) make that every day and (b) start doing indoor exercise. I am poor at press ups etc - a challenge is now set. A dozen of each a day. What else can I do?
80% of your aerobic exercise should be easy. Mix it up for the remaining 20%, embrace hills for that bit if you have any nearby. There are barely from my front door and I think I've lost a bit of fitness compared to where I ran mostly pre-lockdown. I'm slightly lighter though.
Would it be fair to say a consensus is building that the way COVID spreads is a highly complex matter and that lockdown is helping only marginally if at all and with enormous drawbacks?
The data seems to show that the harder the lockdown, the worse the death toll is in terms of deaths per million citizens. Spain, Italy and Belgium are all faring very badly.
Forcing people to live together in cramped spaces could in some cases be counterproductive, it seems.
Boris & co weren't to know this, but the time to realise it and start the economy going again is now. Actually it was days ago. It may be too late.
But by acting now we may not cause the permanent damage the treasury is predicting today.
Look at Norway and Denmark on that chart of deaths per million. They are a fraction of Sweden's.
Maybe but Sweden's are a fraction of Belgium's Italy's and Spain's. There is just far too much uncertainty here to decide to destroy the world's fifth biggest economy.
And Devon/Cornwall is a fraction of London. Population density is clearly part of the equation. And that really isn't much of a surprise.
That is also completely inaccurate I am afraid. Japan has one of the lowest death rates despite having 130m people crammed into a a few mostly mountainous islands.
The lock downers are running out of excuses.
Like the Trumpton loonies in America the anti-lockdowners make fa lot of noise. The same half-dozen of you post dozens of a time a day all backing each other up. The evidence nevertheless suggests that most people don't agree with you.
Re how cautious people will be after lockdown is lifted, I suspect many, like myself, will go out more to shop and have a walk round town, grab a coffee etc but will be shunning restaurants/ pubs/ theatres/ sports venues/ cinemas for the forseeable.
Even when lockdown is eased (and ours was never that tight in the first place) a lot of things will still not be possible for most of this year. Like the gun-toting Trumpton loonies in America we will have a small minority screaming about their inalienable right to go to the pub but until such times as they become the majority common sense should prevail.
On another topic, our attempts at securing the PPE, testing material, drugs etc are descending into farce. In the aftermath I hope we take a long hard look at why we seem to have totally lost the ability (under successive governments) to manufacture essential supplies for ourselves any more. A re-engineerring of our economy is required methinks.
Here's a question that some business owners might want to think carefully about. Would they rather be kept closed by the government and given some financial support for longer, or allowed to reopen but in conditions which make it unlikely that they will achieve anything like the same revenues as before and with far less government support?
Because that's what I expect pubs, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, gyms and clubs are looking at.
Sadly I am not expecting too many of the restaurants in our town/small city to reopen at all. We used to have lunch in a restaurant about 3 times a week and the lunchtime demographic was 80% retired and I don't see many of them rushing back before a vaccine. 5 years from now our economy will look very different to how it looked at the beginning of 2020. I don't honestly expect the travel and leisure industries to go back to providing anything like the number of jobs that they did for a very long time indeed.
Secondly, on WFH/weight loss. As with most things, routine is key. Once the novelty of wfh has worn off then routines are life savers (literally if it means avoiding snacking all day = putting on the pounds).
As to weight loss in general, I could write several books on it (my "proudest" moment was when putting up 17lbs overweight for an amateurs race once, and yes it was my horse so the owner was ok with it).
Of course usually by far the biggest c ontributor to weight gain is alcohol. Sadly. A bottle of wine is 1,000 calories right there on top of anything else you are ingesting. Fizzy or "health" drinks are likewise toxic. Also snacking as has been mentioned.
Then there is, as has been mentioned, the snacking. Most diets work not because of some magic formula (food combining, protein, etc), but because they regulate eating which people who are overweight generally don't do. Just having three meals a day and no more is often a big reduction in calories.
Next of course exercise. My diet book would be one page - eat less and exercise more.
Finally, the key is routine but this time with what and when you eat. Take any thought out of the process because the more you think about losing weight the more you think about food and the more you think about food.
So top tips to lose weight: 1. cut out alcohol 2. set out menus (out of preference the same thing same time every day, say toast and butter in the morning and some combination of salads - lots of cabbage and cottage cheese and tomatoes and perhaps some chicken breast - for lunch and supper 3. Don't eat between meals or if you do, have something (tomatoes, celery, carrots) to chew on with very or relatively few calories which is important psychologically. 4. Do more aerobic exercise if possible to get to the point whereby you get the natural "high". It will make you happier and more motivated.
In addition to that, I've found keeping a food diary is a great help. It stops you idly and mindlessly snacking (and eating more than you realise). And if you feel embarrassed at what you're putting in it, it's easy to tell yourself: well, if you don't want to write it down, don't eat it.
My fitness pal app is great for that. You can scan the foods barcode and you get a breakdown of your daily carbs fat and protein as well as calories obviously.
I used the myfitnesspal app for a while. At first I was sore amazed at being able to scan barcodes, but after a while I noticed that it was easier to add a Mr Kipling Bakewell tart to it than a sandwich (bread, cheese, chutney - three separate things to scan and possibly weigh) or something home-cooked like a bean chilli, and so it was encouraging me to do the wrong things.
I'm willing to admit that was as much my issues as the apps.
Once you’ve added a particular meal/sandwich Combo once it is there for you to add in one go afterwards
I got May Fat/Protein/carb ratio down to 40/30/30 ish using it. At the start I was eating way too Many carbs. It worked, but I’ve gone back to my old ways now
'Death rate is 3.2%' is, I think, highly misleading and possibly meaningless since we don't know what the denominator is.
I genuinely missed the government deciding to ease restrictions though. Is she talking about the UK?
Germany. The point is that R may not be securely at 0.7 which is what triggered the decision to ease restrictions.
That makes it more likely that easing the restrictions will take their R back above 1 and they'll have to tighten them again. Question then arises as to whether that will happen... before or after we might decide to ease restrictions in the UK.
The last sentence there is important - under that interpretation, which I agree with, densely populated places aren't hit worse, necessarily, they're just hit earlier. Everywhere will get it, and death rates, if we could measure them consistently, will be roughly the same everywhere (or at least, everywhere in the developed world). The caveat to that is that if anywhere gets it at rates which exceed the country's health service's ability to cope, people will die who might otherwise have been saved. Hence lockdown The caveat to that is that lockdown will kill people too.
Would it be fair to say a consensus is building that the way COVID spreads is a highly complex matter and that lockdown is helping only marginally if at all and with enormous drawbacks?
The data seems to show that the harder the lockdown, the worse the death toll is in terms of deaths per million citizens. Spain, Italy and Belgium are all faring very badly.
Forcing people to live together in cramped spaces could in some cases be counterproductive, it seems.
Boris & co weren't to know this, but the time to realise it and start the economy going again is now. Actually it was days ago. It may be too late.
But by acting now we may not cause the permanent damage the treasury is predicting today.
Look at Norway and Denmark on that chart of deaths per million. They are a fraction of Sweden's.
And Denmark is in a worse starting point than Sweden in terms of both population density, areas of high density, and land border with the rest of the Continent.
Care homes and lack of PPE are the problems, say Swedes
Care homes and a lack of PPE are the problems, say absolutely everyone!
This morning I have tried to donate a few cases of PPE (full barrier gowns, face shields, masks and gloves) to local care homes and the ambulance station across the road from work (we are a vet practice with some spare in date hospital grade stock). They have all turned me down as they ‘have plenty of supplies and their normal supply chains are working fine’.
Will end up sending it in via the main procurement route into the local hospital trust but wanted it to be as local as possible.
Interesting. It seems that the shortages are quite localised, but no-one who does have stock wants to give it away as they never know when they'll be caught short. Good effort from yourself and other industries that have surplus stocks
Would it be fair to say a consensus is building that the way COVID spreads is a highly complex matter and that lockdown is helping only marginally if at all and with enormous drawbacks?
The data seems to show that the harder the lockdown, the worse the death toll is in terms of deaths per million citizens. Spain, Italy and Belgium are all faring very badly.
Forcing people to live together in cramped spaces could in some cases be counterproductive, it seems.
Boris & co weren't to know this, but the time to realise it and start the economy going again is now. Actually it was days ago. It may be too late.
But by acting now we may not cause the permanent damage the treasury is predicting today.
Look at Norway and Denmark on that chart of deaths per million. They are a fraction of Sweden's.
And Denmark is in a worse starting point than Sweden in terms of both population density, areas of high density, and land border with the rest of the Continent.
Care homes and lack of PPE are the problems, say Swedes
Care homes and a lack of PPE are the problems, say absolutely everyone!
This morning I have tried to donate a few cases of PPE (full barrier gowns, face shields, masks and gloves) to local care homes and the ambulance station across the road from work (we are a vet practice with some spare in date hospital grade stock). They have all turned me down as they ‘have plenty of supplies and their normal supply chains are working fine’.
Will end up sending it in via the main procurement route into the local hospital trust but wanted it to be as local as possible.
Interesting. It seems that the shortages are quite localised, but no-one who does have stock wants to give it away as they never know when they'll be caught short. Good effort from yourself and other industries that have surplus stocks
The last sentence there is important - under that interpretation, which I agree with, densely populated places aren't hit worse, necessarily, they're just hit earlier. Everywhere will get it, and death rates, if we could measure them consistently, will be roughly the same everywhere (or at least, everywhere in the developed world). The caveat to that is that if anywhere gets it at rates which exceed the country's health service's ability to cope, people will die who might otherwise have been saved. Hence lockdown The caveat to that is that lockdown will kill people too.
True, though countries which have mass tested like Germany and Norway and South Korea are doing best of all and will find it easiest to ease out if lockdown
Even when lockdown is eased (and ours was never that tight in the first place) a lot of things will still not be possible for most of this year. Like the gun-toting Trumpton loonies in America we will have a small minority screaming about their inalienable right to go to the pub but until such times as they become the majority common sense should prevail.
The protests in the US are astroturfed. We may not see anything equivalent here at all unless a similar astroturfing campaign is put in place.
I don't follow. People in cars are less likely to spread the virus than people cycling or walking. (Okay, I'm deliberately misunderstanding, I know it's about pollution).
As part of a coalition of companies, universities, and research institutions, we are working with the Government to boost testing capacity for COVID-19. Along with other partners, the Amazon logistics network is delivering test kits to diagnostic sites set up around the UK and to NHS staff and others on the front lines of this crisis.
I think most of us will be saying, why didn't the government get Amazon onboard ASAP. I imagine with their expertise (and the fact they know everything about us), not only transporting kits, things like prioritising who should get a test and where to put centres etc would be right in their wheel house.
Secondly, on WFH/weight loss. As with most things, routine is key. Once the novelty of wfh has worn off then routines are life savers (literally if it means avoiding snacking all day = putting on the pounds).
As to weight loss in general, I could write several books on it (my "proudest" moment was when putting up 17lbs overweight for an amateurs race once, and yes it was my horse so the owner was ok with it).
Of course usually by far the biggest c ontributor to weight gain is alcohol. Sadly. A bottle of wine is 1,000 calories right there on top of anything else you are ingesting. Fizzy or "health" drinks are likewise toxic. Also snacking as has been mentioned.
Then there is, as has been mentioned, the snacking. Most diets work not because of some magic formula (food combining, protein, etc), but because they regulate eating which people who are overweight generally don't do. Just having three meals a day and no more is often a big reduction in calories.
Next of course exercise. My diet book would be one page - eat less and exercise more.
Finally, the key is routine but this time with what and when you eat. Take any thought out of the process because the more you think about losing weight the more you think about food and the more you think about food.
So top tips to lose weight: 1. cut out alcohol 2. set out menus (out of preference the same thing same time every day, say toast and butter in the morning and some combination of salads - lots of cabbage and cottage cheese and tomatoes and perhaps some chicken breast - for lunch and supper 3. Don't eat between meals or if you do, have something (tomatoes, celery, carrots) to chew on with very or relatively few calories which is important psychologically. 4. Do more aerobic exercise if possible to get to the point whereby you get the natural "high". It will make you happier and more motivated.
In addition to that, I've found keeping a food diary is a great help. It stops you idly and mindlessly snacking (and eating more than you realise). And if you feel embarrassed at what you're putting in it, it's easy to tell yourself: well, if you don't want to write it down, don't eat it.
My fitness pal app is great for that. You can scan the foods barcode and you get a breakdown of your daily carbs fat and protein as well as calories obviously.
I used the myfitnesspal app for a while. At first I was sore amazed at being able to scan barcodes, but after a while I noticed that it was easier to add a Mr Kipling Bakewell tart to it than a sandwich (bread, cheese, chutney - three separate things to scan and possibly weigh) or something home-cooked like a bean chilli, and so it was encouraging me to do the wrong things.
I'm willing to admit that was as much my issues as the apps.
That's fair. When we were allowed to go out and about (in days of yore) I actually found the ease of scanning prepackaged foods beneficial - I had better sight/accountability for the rubbish I was snacking on when out and about, then at home it was just a matter of not having it in the house. Making a few 'recipes' on the app earlier on helped to.
In any event it's more important to train yourself to have a good eye for calories and nutrition as a way of not having to keep a food log in perpetuity. I'm sure my mates thought I was a modern day Howard Hughes.
Re how cautious people will be after lockdown is lifted, I suspect many, like myself, will go out more to shop and have a walk round town, grab a coffee etc but will be shunning restaurants/ pubs/ theatres/ sports venues/ cinemas for the forseeable.
Even when lockdown is eased (and ours was never that tight in the first place) a lot of things will still not be possible for most of this year. Like the gun-toting Trumpton loonies in America we will have a small minority screaming about their inalienable right to go to the pub but until such times as they become the majority common sense should prevail.
On another topic, our attempts at securing the PPE, testing material, drugs etc are descending into farce. In the aftermath I hope we take a long hard look at why we seem to have totally lost the ability (under successive governments) to manufacture essential supplies for ourselves any more. A re-engineerring of our economy is required methinks.
Here's a question that some business owners might want to think carefully about. Would they rather be kept closed by the government and given some financial support for longer, or allowed to reopen but in conditions which make it unlikely that they will achieve anything like the same revenues as before and with far less government support?
Because that's what I expect pubs, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, gyms and clubs are looking at.
Sadly I am not expecting too many of the restaurants in our town/small city to reopen at all. We used to have lunch in a restaurant about 3 times a week and the lunchtime demographic was 80% retired and I don't see many of them rushing back before a vaccine. 5 years from now our economy will look very different to how it looked at the beginning of 2020. I don't honestly expect the travel and leisure industries to go back to providing anything like the number of jobs that they did for a very long time indeed.
I went to a nice seafood restaurant in Maldon, Essex, at the beginning of March.
The place was empty, it was a weekday lunch, so when I finished my oysters I got chatting to the owner, a very nice Italian guy. He didn’t mind the lack of custom, as he said he had excellent business in the evenings. Then he told me about his plans for expansion. A second restaurant. And so on.
He was barely aware of the virus, but I was very aware of it. I knew what was coming down the line for him and his staff. I doubt if he will reopen, they will all lose their jobs.
It was a poignant moment. I didn’t mention my foreboding.
"lunchtime demographic was 80% retired and I don't see many of them rushing back before a vaccine."
That's not the attitude I've heard from 70+ year olds in last few days. The idea that they will stay in their houses for a year or more is for the birds. Twelve weeks - yeh, we'll do it. Longer? No way. Anecdotal of course.
Re how cautious people will be after lockdown is lifted, I suspect many, like myself, will go out more to shop and have a walk round town, grab a coffee etc but will be shunning restaurants/ pubs/ theatres/ sports venues/ cinemas for the forseeable.
Even when lockdown is eased (and ours was never that tight in the first place) a lot of things will still not be possible for most of this year. Like the gun-toting Trumpton loonies in America we will have a small minority screaming about their inalienable right to go to the pub but until such times as they become the majority common sense should prevail.
On another topic, our attempts at securing the PPE, testing material, drugs etc are descending into farce. In the aftermath I hope we take a long hard look at why we seem to have totally lost the ability (under successive governments) to manufacture essential supplies for ourselves any more. A re-engineerring of our economy is required methinks.
Here's a question that some business owners might want to think carefully about. Would they rather be kept closed by the government and given some financial support for longer, or allowed to reopen but in conditions which make it unlikely that they will achieve anything like the same revenues as before and with far less government support?
Because that's what I expect pubs, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, gyms and clubs are looking at.
Sadly I am not expecting too many of the restaurants in our town/small city to reopen at all. We used to have lunch in a restaurant about 3 times a week and the lunchtime demographic was 80% retired and I don't see many of them rushing back before a vaccine. 5 years from now our economy will look very different to how it looked at the beginning of 2020. I don't honestly expect the travel and leisure industries to go back to providing anything like the number of jobs that they did for a very long time indeed.
I'm hoping a relatively short shutdown of a few weeks won't make as much difference as you seem to think it might.
Would it be fair to say a consensus is building that the way COVID spreads is a highly complex matter and that lockdown is helping only marginally if at all and with enormous drawbacks?
The data seems to show that the harder the lockdown, the worse the death toll is in terms of deaths per million citizens. Spain, Italy and Belgium are all faring very badly.
Forcing people to live together in cramped spaces could in some cases be counterproductive, it seems.
Boris & co weren't to know this, but the time to realise it and start the economy going again is now. Actually it was days ago. It may be too late.
But by acting now we may not cause the permanent damage the treasury is predicting today.
Look at Norway and Denmark on that chart of deaths per million. They are a fraction of Sweden's.
And Denmark is in a worse starting point than Sweden in terms of both population density, areas of high density, and land border with the rest of the Continent.
Care homes and lack of PPE are the problems, say Swedes
Care homes and a lack of PPE are the problems, say absolutely everyone!
This morning I have tried to donate a few cases of PPE (full barrier gowns, face shields, masks and gloves) to local care homes and the ambulance station across the road from work (we are a vet practice with some spare in date hospital grade stock). They have all turned me down as they ‘have plenty of supplies and their normal supply chains are working fine’.
Will end up sending it in via the main procurement route into the local hospital trust but wanted it to be as local as possible.
Interesting. It seems that the shortages are quite localised, but no-one who does have stock wants to give it away as they never know when they'll be caught short. Good effort from yourself and other industries that have surplus stocks
It makes it a problem for PHE if there is enough stock around that extra supplies are being turned down but others are still short. It’s a massive logistics nightmare for sure.
There will always be localised shortages due to managerial issues and poor planning. I guess it makes good copy for the press about the scandal of PPE supplies but I don’t think the blame game is doing any good at present.
I have been impressed at the logistics for the nightingales. We have loaned monitors that were picked up promptly and hopefully are at work and although we have 24 drip and syringe pumps on standby we have been told that there are not yet required so someone appears to be on top of this side of it.
Re how cautious people will be after lockdown is lifted, I suspect many, like myself, will go out more to shop and have a walk round town, grab a coffee etc but will be shunning restaurants/ pubs/ theatres/ sports venues/ cinemas for the forseeable.
Even when lockdown is eased (and ours was never that tight in the first place) a lot of things will still not be possible for most of this year. Like the gun-toting Trumpton loonies in America we will have a small minority screaming about their inalienable right to go to the pub but until such times as they become the majority common sense should prevail.
On another topic, our attempts at securing the PPE, testing material, drugs etc are descending into farce. In the aftermath I hope we take a long hard look at why we seem to have totally lost the ability (under successive governments) to manufacture essential supplies for ourselves any more. A re-engineerring of our economy is required methinks.
Here's a question that some business owners might want to think carefully about. Would they rather be kept closed by the government and given some financial support for longer, or allowed to reopen but in conditions which make it unlikely that they will achieve anything like the same revenues as before and with far less government support?
Because that's what I expect pubs, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, gyms and clubs are looking at.
Sadly I am not expecting too many of the restaurants in our town/small city to reopen at all. We used to have lunch in a restaurant about 3 times a week and the lunchtime demographic was 80% retired and I don't see many of them rushing back before a vaccine. 5 years from now our economy will look very different to how it looked at the beginning of 2020. I don't honestly expect the travel and leisure industries to go back to providing anything like the number of jobs that they did for a very long time indeed.
I went to a nice seafood restaurant in Maldon, Essex, at the beginning of March.
The place was empty, it was a weekday lunch, so when I finished my oysters I got chatting to the owner, a very nice Italian guy. He didn’t mind the lack of custom, as he said he had excellent business in the evenings. Then he told me about his plans for expansion. A second restaurant. And so on.
He was barely aware of the virus, but I was very aware of it. I knew what was coming down the line for him and his staff. I doubt if he will reopen, they will all lose their jobs.
It was a poignant moment. I didn’t mention my foreboding.
"lunchtime demographic was 80% retired and I don't see many of them rushing back before a vaccine."
That's not the attitude I've heard from 70+ year olds in last few days. The idea that they will stay in their houses for a year or more is for the birds. Twelve weeks - yeh, we'll do it. Longer? No way. Anecdotal of course.
Would it be fair to say a consensus is building that the way COVID spreads is a highly complex matter and that lockdown is helping only marginally if at all and with enormous drawbacks?
The data seems to show that the harder the lockdown, the worse the death toll is in terms of deaths per million citizens. Spain, Italy and Belgium are all faring very badly.
Forcing people to live together in cramped spaces could in some cases be counterproductive, it seems.
Boris & co weren't to know this, but the time to realise it and start the economy going again is now. Actually it was days ago. It may be too late.
But by acting now we may not cause the permanent damage the treasury is predicting today.
Look at Norway and Denmark on that chart of deaths per million. They are a fraction of Sweden's.
Maybe but Sweden's are a fraction of Belgium's Italy's and Spain's. There is just far too much uncertainty here to decide to destroy the world's fifth biggest economy.
And Devon/Cornwall is a fraction of London. Population density is clearly part of the equation. And that really isn't much of a surprise.
That is also completely inaccurate I am afraid. Japan has one of the lowest death rates despite having 130m people crammed into a a few mostly mountainous islands.
The lock downers are running out of excuses.
Like the Trumpton loonies in America the anti-lockdowners make fa lot of noise. The same half-dozen of you post dozens of a time a day all backing each other up. The evidence nevertheless suggests that most people don't agree with you.
I have this heated debate with my brother in Peru, regularly (via WhatsApp). He’s passionately anti-lockdown and I am conflicted, but tending to be pro-lockdown if anything. However I confess his arguments are starting to sway me. Especially when I read stories like Nigel’s in the header.
We are lockdowning to protect the vulnerable, yet we aren’t protecting the vulnerable, so what’s the point of the lockdown?
Have to agree with this. If you are going to do a lockdown severe enough to trash the economy, then at least get the basic things right to stop spreading infections. And make some effort to find out which infection slowing-measures are most effective. eg what if closing schools makes little difference, but wearing some kind of mask in public makes a lot? What if the trillions spent on supporting closed businesses would be better spent on actually setting up proper testing and contact-tracing?
The zombie-like daily repetition of "we are making the right decisions at the right time" does not inspire any confidence. and is frankly insulting.
The last sentence there is important - under that interpretation, which I agree with, densely populated places aren't hit worse, necessarily, they're just hit earlier. Everywhere will get it, and death rates, if we could measure them consistently, will be roughly the same everywhere (or at least, everywhere in the developed world). The caveat to that is that if anywhere gets it at rates which exceed the country's health service's ability to cope, people will die who might otherwise have been saved. Hence lockdown The caveat to that is that lockdown will kill people too.
True, though countries which have mass tested like Germany and Norway and South Korea are doing best of all and will find it easiest to ease out if lockdown
Paradoxically, all three countries can expect a nasty economic hit, nonetheless. Korea and Germany are export-oriented. Norway sells oil.
Ouch.
Well all countries will get some economic hit but the fact they have more testing means they can ease out of lockdown quicker and get their shops and restaurants and factories going again more quickly
Would it be fair to say a consensus is building that the way COVID spreads is a highly complex matter and that lockdown is helping only marginally if at all and with enormous drawbacks?
The data seems to show that the harder the lockdown, the worse the death toll is in terms of deaths per million citizens. Spain, Italy and Belgium are all faring very badly.
Forcing people to live together in cramped spaces could in some cases be counterproductive, it seems.
Boris & co weren't to know this, but the time to realise it and start the economy going again is now. Actually it was days ago. It may be too late.
But by acting now we may not cause the permanent damage the treasury is predicting today.
Look at Norway and Denmark on that chart of deaths per million. They are a fraction of Sweden's.
And Denmark is in a worse starting point than Sweden in terms of both population density, areas of high density, and land border with the rest of the Continent.
Care homes and lack of PPE are the problems, say Swedes
Care homes and a lack of PPE are the problems, say absolutely everyone!
This morning I have tried to donate a few cases of PPE (full barrier gowns, face shields, masks and gloves) to local care homes and the ambulance station across the road from work (we are a vet practice with some spare in date hospital grade stock). They have all turned me down as they ‘have plenty of supplies and their normal supply chains are working fine’.
Will end up sending it in via the main procurement route into the local hospital trust but wanted it to be as local as possible.
Interesting. It seems that the shortages are quite localised, but no-one who does have stock wants to give it away as they never know when they'll be caught short. Good effort from yourself and other industries that have surplus stocks
It makes it a problem for PHE if there is enough stock around that extra supplies are being turned down but others are still short. It’s a massive logistics nightmare for sure.
There will always be localised shortages due to managerial issues and poor planning. I guess it makes good copy for the press about the scandal of PPE supplies but I don’t think the blame game is doing any good at present.
I have been impressed at the logistics for the nightingales. We have loaned monitors that were picked up promptly and hopefully are at work and although we have 24 drip and string pumps on standby we have been told that there are not yet required so someone appears to be on top of this side of it.
ISTR most of the logistics for the Nightingales was done by the military, so none of the usual bureaucracy (although no doubt they also bring some of their own). Well done to everyone involved.
Most of the "PPE Scandal" stories appear to originate from middleman speculators without confirmed stocks, moaning to the press that government/NHS aren't taking them seriously.
Pure twitter anecdata, but a tweet on Friday from a Berlin resident. I'd imagine one of the problems in giving a date for easing up is folk going gung ho in the lead up to it.
"Give me liberty or give me death". Ma'am, it's not an either/or choice.
Isn't Berlin famously alternative, and therefore bonkers in some respects.
If you talk to PHE people, they will make similar observation about areas of the country around weird religious cults, hippy communes etc. In some places these are significant to be seen in some data. Similar with some more mainstream communities.
There are also benefits - no toilet paper panics in the Asian community in all likelihood. Far more sensible on that one that the Nutters of Nappy Valley.
The last sentence there is important - under that interpretation, which I agree with, densely populated places aren't hit worse, necessarily, they're just hit earlier. Everywhere will get it, and death rates, if we could measure them consistently, will be roughly the same everywhere (or at least, everywhere in the developed world). The caveat to that is that if anywhere gets it at rates which exceed the country's health service's ability to cope, people will die who might otherwise have been saved. Hence lockdown The caveat to that is that lockdown will kill people too.
It's also a misreading of an exponential graph.
Yes they visually bunch somewhat, but there are two *orders of magnitude* between Norway and Belgium. The US is roughly double the UK. It is obfuscatory at best.
Re how cautious people will be after lockdown is lifted, I suspect many, like myself, will go out more to shop and have a walk round town, grab a coffee etc but will be shunning restaurants/ pubs/ theatres/ sports venues/ cinemas for the forseeable.
Even when lockdown is eased (and ours was never that tight in the first place) a lot of things will still not be possible for most of this year. Like the gun-toting Trumpton loonies in America we will have a small minority screaming about their inalienable right to go to the pub but until such times as they become the majority common sense should prevail.
On another topic, our attempts at securing the PPE, testing material, drugs etc are descending into farce. In the aftermath I hope we take a long hard look at why we seem to have totally lost the ability (under successive governments) to manufacture essential supplies for ourselves any more. A re-engineerring of our economy is required methinks.
Here's a question that some business owners might want to think carefully about. Would they rather be kept closed by the government and given some financial support for longer, or allowed to reopen but in conditions which make it unlikely that they will achieve anything like the same revenues as before and with far less government support?
Because that's what I expect pubs, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, gyms and clubs are looking at.
Sadly I am not expecting too many of the restaurants in our town/small city to reopen at all. We used to have lunch in a restaurant about 3 times a week and the lunchtime demographic was 80% retired and I don't see many of them rushing back before a vaccine. 5 years from now our economy will look very different to how it looked at the beginning of 2020. I don't honestly expect the travel and leisure industries to go back to providing anything like the number of jobs that they did for a very long time indeed.
I went to a nice seafood restaurant in Maldon, Essex, at the beginning of March.
The place was empty, it was a weekday lunch, so when I finished my oysters I got chatting to the owner, a very nice Italian guy. He didn’t mind the lack of custom, as he said he had excellent business in the evenings. Then he told me about his plans for expansion. A second restaurant. And so on.
He was barely aware of the virus, but I was very aware of it. I knew what was coming down the line for him and his staff. I doubt if he will reopen, they will all lose their jobs.
It was a poignant moment. I didn’t mention my foreboding.
"lunchtime demographic was 80% retired and I don't see many of them rushing back before a vaccine."
That's not the attitude I've heard from 70+ year olds in last few days. The idea that they will stay in their houses for a year or more is for the birds. Twelve weeks - yeh, we'll do it. Longer? No way. Anecdotal of course.
I hope you’re right. On brighter days I hope animal spirits will revive things quickly. On darker days I fear our towns and cities will be bleak, empty places for years to come
You talk as if we've been locked down for 4 months or 4 years, not 4 weeks.
Would it be fair to say a consensus is building that the way COVID spreads is a highly complex matter and that lockdown is helping only marginally if at all and with enormous drawbacks?
The data seems to show that the harder the lockdown, the worse the death toll is in terms of deaths per million citizens. Spain, Italy and Belgium are all faring very badly.
Forcing people to live together in cramped spaces could in some cases be counterproductive, it seems.
Boris & co weren't to know this, but the time to realise it and start the economy going again is now. Actually it was days ago. It may be too late.
But by acting now we may not cause the permanent damage the treasury is predicting today.
Look at Norway and Denmark on that chart of deaths per million. They are a fraction of Sweden's.
And Denmark is in a worse starting point than Sweden in terms of both population density, areas of high density, and land border with the rest of the Continent.
Care homes and lack of PPE are the problems, say Swedes
Care homes and a lack of PPE are the problems, say absolutely everyone!
This morning I have tried to donate a few cases of PPE (full barrier gowns, face shields, masks and gloves) to local care homes and the ambulance station across the road from work (we are a vet practice with some spare in date hospital grade stock). They have all turned me down as they ‘have plenty of supplies and their normal supply chains are working fine’.
Will end up sending it in via the main procurement route into the local hospital trust but wanted it to be as local as possible.
Interesting. It seems that the shortages are quite localised, but no-one who does have stock wants to give it away as they never know when they'll be caught short. Good effort from yourself and other industries that have surplus stocks
It makes it a problem for PHE if there is enough stock around that extra supplies are being turned down but others are still short. It’s a massive logistics nightmare for sure.
There will always be localised shortages due to managerial issues and poor planning. I guess it makes good copy for the press about the scandal of PPE supplies but I don’t think the blame game is doing any good at present.
I have been impressed at the logistics for the nightingales. We have loaned monitors that were picked up promptly and hopefully are at work and although we have 24 drip and string pumps on standby we have been told that there are not yet required so someone appears to be on top of this side of it.
ISTR most of the logistics for the Nightingales was done by the military, so none of the usual bureaucracy (although no doubt they also bring some of their own). Well done to everyone involved.
Most of the "PPE Scandal" stories appear to originate from middleman speculators without confirmed stocks, moaning to the press that government/NHS aren't taking them seriously.
my sister is a doctor in a London hospital and has been complaining bitterly about lack of PPE. and lack of fitting.
MyFitnessPal - as was noted above its actually quite hard to calculate healthy / home made food and easy to barcode zap processed shit. It got deleted. Strava - use this a lot, very helpful for tracking pace / time / distance as well as a bit of competition mainly with myself. Frustrating when it loses GPS and straightlines between the point where it loses lock and regains it LFConnect: Was using this in the gym for all the Life Fitness kit. Worked very well, integrated with Google Fit etc. But the gym is closed and I wonder when / if they will reopen.
Colleague of mine is a swimmer. Gazillions of lengths a week. He's seriously pissed off...
Not everyone can afford or has the space for gym equipment.
Most people have a floor for push ups though.
I'm doing supersets of 35 press-ups and 40 bodyweight squats while I'm waiting for my gym equipment to arrive (next week, I've been told). It's not ideal but it's at least keeping me active and making me do something that gets me out of breath.
What are supersets? I`m guessing the 35 is not in one go - or else I`m seriously impressed.
35 press-ups in one go immediately followed by 40 bodyweight squats. Then followed by sitting down and puffing.
The last sentence there is important - under that interpretation, which I agree with, densely populated places aren't hit worse, necessarily, they're just hit earlier. Everywhere will get it, and death rates, if we could measure them consistently, will be roughly the same everywhere (or at least, everywhere in the developed world). The caveat to that is that if anywhere gets it at rates which exceed the country's health service's ability to cope, people will die who might otherwise have been saved. Hence lockdown The caveat to that is that lockdown will kill people too.
It's also a misreading of an exponential graph.
Yes they visually bunch somewhat, but there are two *orders of magnitude* between Norway and Belgium. The US is roughly double the UK. It is obfuscatory at best.
But just looking at proxies for economic activity, Sweden has shut down "quite a lot", the UK "really quite a lot" and NZ "completely".
NZ's approach seems best suited to those with low population density, and easily policed borders. With a little relaxation of lockdown, heavy tracking and isolation, they should be able to recover more freedom more quickly than those of us who did less of a lockdown, later, with more nodes of greater population density, and less case tracking.
I'm not sure that a stricter, earlier lockdown in the UK would've made much difference to those underlying factors.
Re how cautious people will be after lockdown is lifted, I suspect many, like myself, will go out more to shop and have a walk round town, grab a coffee etc but will be shunning restaurants/ pubs/ theatres/ sports venues/ cinemas for the forseeable.
Even when lockdown is eased (and ours was never that tight in the first place) a lot of things will still not be possible for most of this year. Like the gun-toting Trumpton loonies in America we will have a small minority screaming about their inalienable right to go to the pub but until such times as they become the majority common sense should prevail.
On another topic, our attempts at securing the PPE, testing material, drugs etc are descending into farce. In the aftermath I hope we take a long hard look at why we seem to have totally lost the ability (under successive governments) to manufacture essential supplies for ourselves any more. A re-engineerring of our economy is required methinks.
Here's a question that some business owners might want to think carefully about. Would they rather be kept closed by the government and given some financial support for longer, or allowed to reopen but in conditions which make it unlikely that they will achieve anything like the same revenues as before and with far less government support?
Because that's what I expect pubs, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, gyms and clubs are looking at.
Sadly I am not expecting too many of the restaurants in our town/small city to reopen at all. We used to have lunch in a restaurant about 3 times a week and the lunchtime demographic was 80% retired and I don't see many of them rushing back before a vaccine. 5 years from now our economy will look very different to how it looked at the beginning of 2020. I don't honestly expect the travel and leisure industries to go back to providing anything like the number of jobs that they did for a very long time indeed.
I went to a nice seafood restaurant in Maldon, Essex, at the beginning of March.
The place was empty, it was a weekday lunch, so when I finished my oysters I got chatting to the owner, a very nice Italian guy. He didn’t mind the lack of custom, as he said he had excellent business in the evenings. Then he told me about his plans for expansion. A second restaurant. And so on.
He was barely aware of the virus, but I was very aware of it. I knew what was coming down the line for him and his staff. I doubt if he will reopen, they will all lose their jobs.
It was a poignant moment. I didn’t mention my foreboding.
"lunchtime demographic was 80% retired and I don't see many of them rushing back before a vaccine."
That's not the attitude I've heard from 70+ year olds in last few days. The idea that they will stay in their houses for a year or more is for the birds. Twelve weeks - yeh, we'll do it. Longer? No way. Anecdotal of course.
Secondly, on WFH/weight loss. As with most things, routine is key. Once the novelty of wfh has worn off then routines are life savers (literally if it means avoiding snacking all day = putting on the pounds).
As to weight loss in general, I could write several books on it (my "proudest" moment was when putting up 17lbs overweight for an amateurs race once, and yes it was my horse so the owner was ok with it).
Of course usually by far the biggest contributor to weight gain is alcohol. Sadly. A bottle of wine is 1,000 calories right there on top of anything else you are ingesting. Fizzy or "health" drinks are likewise toxic. Also snacking as has been mentioned.
Then there is, as has been mentioned, the snacking. Most diets work not because of some magic formula (food combining, protein, etc), but because they regulate eating which people who are overweight generally don't do. Just having three meals a day and no more is often a big reduction in calories.
Next of course exercise. My diet book would be one page - eat less and exercise more.
Finally, the key is routine but this time with what and when you eat. Take any thought out of the process because the more you think about losing weight the more you think about food and the more you think about food.
So top tips to lose weight: 1. cut out alcohol 2. set out menus (out of preference the same thing same time every day, say toast and butter in the morning and some combination of salads - lots of cabbage and cottage cheese and tomatoes and perhaps some chicken breast - for lunch and supper 3. Don't eat between meals or if you do, have something (tomatoes, celery, carrots) to chew on with very or relatively few calories which is important psychologically. 4. Do more aerobic exercise if possible to get to the point whereby you get the natural "high". It will make you happier and more motivated.
Having lost most of the weight, it is really a simple input and output formula - but one complicated by many other psychological and behavioral factors that you allude to. Overcome them and the motivation and benefits become more accessible.
Something like MyFitnessPal for calorie counting was useful for me. Even over a few weeks then you quickly pick up the new habits.
At the risk of sparking the controversy saying something like this inevitably does, eating less meat and animal products can clearly help some people too [hides under table]. Getting the biggest nutritional bang for your calorific buck while still having a heaping plate of food for dinner is not a bad place to be (exactly as you say, having something to chew on matters and makes you feel less deprived).
Either way this is a cracking time to start.
Absolutely agree with all of that.
(and eg I used to amaze friends (ie bore them senseless) telling them how many calories were in what foods.)
Don't disagree with any of this, but another factor is satiation. And each person has to find what combination of food types, meal times and exercise actually work for them.
Personally for me, high protein diets based on fattier meats work well, as I feel sated for longer than I would having a greater bulk of vegetables or even fruit. The two habits I formed which helped the most were walking the dogs twice a day and not eating a carb with dinner.
The reason the Atkins diet worked was not some magical property of the regime but simply because if people had, say, sausages for breakfast then the resulting layer of fat on their tongues kept them feeling sated for a long time as you note and hence they didn't feel like eating anything or much else.
I am aware that you can snack on as much celery as you can fit in and you won't feel at all less hungry. Hence more of the benefit of snacking on low calorie stuff is just to keep your mouth moving and ingesting something.
Fat does have satiating properties but that is not the whole story with Atkins. There are two forms of fuel for your body, Glucose (mainly from sugar and carbs) and Ketones (from fat). Your body prefers Glucose and will usually use that first. When it doesn't have any, it will go into 'ketosis' and start burning Ketones instead. That is what all fatloss is, regardless of regime. Your body being starved of Glucose and burning fat (your fat). Atkins and other ketogenic diets, instead of forcing you into starvation, simply deprive your body of enough sources of Glucose, so force your body into ketosis. Once there, you burn fat quickly, so you're losing more than you replace even though you're eating a fair bit. That's a very simplistic explanation, but that's how it works.
Apart from the fact that your body isn't yet being "starved" of glucose. It doesn't need it, not in the diet. You are supposed to burn fat when at rest. When you are more active increasingly the source of energy is glycogen in the muscles. Your brain burns ketones quite happily. For its small requirement of glucose the body can make it from fat or protein, a process called gluconeogenisis. Ditto it can top up glycogen supplies the same way. The big advantage of a low carb diet is that it doesn't trigger insulin/glucose swings. You tend to be much more steady state, and your body seems to switch to burning body fat more easily. Which is quite normal: it should be our main source of fuel.
If you are going to do a lockdown severe enough to trash the economy, then at least get the basic things right to stop spreading infections. And make some effort to find out which infection slowing-measures are most effective.
If lockdown is to avert hospital overload, as they say it is, then NHS management would probably regard having the virus burning through care homes as an irrelevance. Those infected in care homes aren't going to get to occupy a bed in a hospital.
Just returned from taking a relative to Queen Charlotte Hospital in West London for some tests.
- PPE hasn't run out there. Supplies are "tight" apparently, but no re-use or not using PPE. - The COVID wards (other side of the campus) are apparently busy but functional. - The non-COVID side is very quiet. - Tons of hand gel about, everyone wearing surgical masks, gowns for some procedures. - They have an issue with people cancelling/not appearing for planned appointments. People are not coming despite being told that they have medical conditions that require treatment, that the hospital isn't a death zone etc etc
Comments
I was dubious initially but it works very well.
There was further unrest in the Paris suburbs, or “banlieues”, on Monday evening, with fireworks fired at police and rubbish bins and cars set alight. Similar incidents were reported in areas of Strasbourg in eastern France.
I would take all these numbers and double them. But I am not an epidemiologist, I am some bloke in the spare bedroom posting things on the internet.
I am aware that you can snack on as much celery as you can fit in and you won't feel at all less hungry. Hence more of the benefit of snacking on low calorie stuff is just to keep your mouth moving and ingesting something.
In Leics we have 4 emergency dentists equipped, and open, and a similar number of optometrists.
https://twitter.com/nmsonline/status/1252351676687593472?s=20
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/880286/200420_local_authority_grant_payments.csv/preview
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11444484/essex-gimp-man-shoppers-tesco-coronavirus/
I'd missed that article (think I came late to the comments and I use Vanilla directly nowadays).
Probably wait until I get paid until the end of the month to make a contribution but I've made a note.
https://www.phonedog.com/2020/04/20/huawei-caught-dslr-photos-taken-smartphones
Good job we aren't going to trust this company with anything important.
One interesting thing I heard from a podcast (Chris beats Cancer, I think) was that no one really knows what is good or not good (as you say each to their own) but one thing that made me sit bolt upright was when he said something along the lines of "we don't know much at all apart from what has been proven beyond doubt scientifcally to increase mortality missing breakfast"!!!!!
On one or other of my wasting regimes in the past I have missed breakfast but can't say I enjoyed it, which of course is the point, but a good breakfast does set you up for the rest of the day rather than being in deficit waiting to make up the calories.
But you are absolutely right that whatever works!
Remember the exploding Samsung phones?
"There was a young fellow from Ankara,
Who was a terrific wankerer.
Till he sowed his wild oats, With the help of a goat,
But he didn’t even stop to thankera."
Johnson's true vocation is third-rate comedian. I wouldn't object to him getting his own show on Channel 5, but running the country really is a bad joke.
DC schemes don`t have the ability to "reduce the benefits". The benefits are a function of the value of the underlying fund value (which will of course have plummeted).
Prior to this crisis, employees with DB schemes (commonly known as final salary, or career average etc schemes) were gold dust. Now they are gold dust, sprinkled with more gold dust, with knobs on.
Gilded knobs.
I am very open to new ideas, but I would be puzzled as to how such a thing might work. I do 'break my fast' I simply do it later. Breakfast (as you mention) is usually toast - empty carbs, pasteurised milk, coffee, sugary cereal. It's not a very great asset to the body in its nutritional profile.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000h2pc
Surprised by only 11 under 45s in total, actually.
Google chris beats cancer - 87% higher risk breakfast
That said, it will have to wait an hour as I am off to do some exercise. Laters and thanks.
Will end up sending it in via the main procurement route into the local hospital trust but wanted it to be as local as possible.
https://twitter.com/TimAlberta/status/1252253431173206016?s=19
Social care 'an afterthought' in UK coronavirus response, says leaked letter
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/16/social-care-an-afterthought-in-uk-coronavirus-response-says-leaked-letter
Coronavirus: England and Wales care home deaths quadruple in a week
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/coronavirus-deaths-in-care-homes-in-england-and-wales-more-than-quadruple-in-a-week
Coronavirus: How big is the problem in care homes?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52284281
Cam Girls Can Barely Keep Up with Quarantine Demand.
"I can't just spend the whole month dildo-ing myself."
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/epg9xp/cam-girls-quarantine-demand
I'm willing to admit that was as much my issues as the apps.
https://twitter.com/GuidoFawkes/status/1252492403195424768?s=20
Yes, a $3k pro SLR camera still takes a much better photo than your $1k phone.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000h2pc
Sadly I am not expecting too many of the restaurants in our town/small city to reopen at all. We used to have lunch in a restaurant about 3 times a week and the lunchtime demographic was 80% retired and I don't see many of them rushing back before a vaccine. 5 years from now our economy will look very different to how it looked at the beginning of 2020. I don't honestly expect the travel and leisure industries to go back to providing anything like the number of jobs that they did for a very long time indeed.
I got May Fat/Protein/carb ratio down to 40/30/30 ish using it. At the start I was eating way too Many carbs. It worked, but I’ve gone back to my old ways now
The caveat to that is that if anywhere gets it at rates which exceed the country's health service's ability to cope, people will die who might otherwise have been saved. Hence lockdown
The caveat to that is that lockdown will kill people too.
Good effort from yourself and other industries that have surplus stocks
Unlike escorts and porn stars, the cam girls are having a good crisis.
As part of a coalition of companies, universities, and research institutions, we are working with the Government to boost testing capacity for COVID-19. Along with other partners, the Amazon logistics network is delivering test kits to diagnostic sites set up around the UK and to NHS staff and others on the front lines of this crisis.
I think most of us will be saying, why didn't the government get Amazon onboard ASAP. I imagine with their expertise (and the fact they know everything about us), not only transporting kits, things like prioritising who should get a test and where to put centres etc would be right in their wheel house.
In any event it's more important to train yourself to have a good eye for calories and nutrition as a way of not having to keep a food log in perpetuity. I'm sure my mates thought I was a modern day Howard Hughes.
That's not the attitude I've heard from 70+ year olds in last few days. The idea that they will stay in their houses for a year or more is for the birds. Twelve weeks - yeh, we'll do it. Longer? No way. Anecdotal of course.
There will always be localised shortages due to managerial issues and poor planning. I guess it makes good copy for the press about the scandal of PPE supplies but I don’t think the blame game is doing any good at present.
I have been impressed at the logistics for the nightingales. We have loaned monitors that were picked up promptly and hopefully are at work and although we have 24 drip and syringe pumps on standby we have been told that there are not yet required so someone appears to be on top of this side of it.
The zombie-like daily repetition of "we are making the right decisions at the right time" does not inspire any confidence. and is frankly insulting.
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1252541494025740295?s=20
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1252541498106810368?s=20
Most of the "PPE Scandal" stories appear to originate from middleman speculators without confirmed stocks, moaning to the press that government/NHS aren't taking them seriously.
If you talk to PHE people, they will make similar observation about areas of the country around weird religious cults, hippy communes etc. In some places these are significant to be seen in some data. Similar with some more mainstream communities.
There are also benefits - no toilet paper panics in the Asian community in all likelihood. Far more sensible on that one that the Nutters of Nappy Valley.
Yes they visually bunch somewhat, but there are two *orders of magnitude* between Norway and Belgium. The US is roughly double the UK. It is obfuscatory at best.
MyFitnessPal - as was noted above its actually quite hard to calculate healthy / home made food and easy to barcode zap processed shit. It got deleted.
Strava - use this a lot, very helpful for tracking pace / time / distance as well as a bit of competition mainly with myself. Frustrating when it loses GPS and straightlines between the point where it loses lock and regains it
LFConnect: Was using this in the gym for all the Life Fitness kit. Worked very well, integrated with Google Fit etc. But the gym is closed and I wonder when / if they will reopen.
Colleague of mine is a swimmer. Gazillions of lengths a week. He's seriously pissed off...
Peter Openshaw “would have recommended increasing the threat to high”,
https://twitter.com/p_openshaw/status/1251988236882280453?s=20
https://twitter.com/CPSThinkTank/status/1252498242341875713?s=20
NZ's approach seems best suited to those with low population density, and easily policed borders. With a little relaxation of lockdown, heavy tracking and isolation, they should be able to recover more freedom more quickly than those of us who did less of a lockdown, later, with more nodes of greater population density, and less case tracking.
I'm not sure that a stricter, earlier lockdown in the UK would've made much difference to those underlying factors.
I would be surprised if there was much infection happening from pedestrians or cyclists passing each other in the street.
Seems heartless, but possibly logical?
- PPE hasn't run out there. Supplies are "tight" apparently, but no re-use or not using PPE.
- The COVID wards (other side of the campus) are apparently busy but functional.
- The non-COVID side is very quiet.
- Tons of hand gel about, everyone wearing surgical masks, gowns for some procedures.
- They have an issue with people cancelling/not appearing for planned appointments. People are not coming despite being told that they have medical conditions that require treatment, that the hospital isn't a death zone etc etc