Felt like a slice or two of Landini’s tonight after gambling. They’re open to 1am on Thursday thru Saturday night, and it was pretty busy at 11pm.

Rode with the Awarewolfs last night after the Tuesday night races at the Velodrome. We started at about 21:30, and I didn’t get home until midnight. We re-grouped for a while at City Liquor on 5th & Elm, near my place. This was my first group ride at night, and it’s pretty fun screaming through intersections, hoping your peripheral vision sees the headlights of thru traffic. Back to spin tonight.

I just learned about the specifics of WWII food rationing in Britain. I knew they used ration books and coupons, and that it wasn’t very fun. But I learned they still ate more much meat, sugar, fats, and oils than I do today.
The ration allowed for 230g/week of fats and oils (margarine, butter, lard), 230g/week of sugar, and about 500g/week of meat and cheese. They also allowed 800 ml/week of milk, and 500g/week of jam. Vegetables weren’t rationed.

Geez, that’s a lot. I don’t even eat half of that. I doubt I eat 100g of sugar/week. I eat less than 200g/week of meat. I doubt I use 100g/week fats and oils. I avoid all dairy, and don’t eat jam.

Of course, I eat an amazing variety of fresh produce, unobtainable in wartime Britian.

Anyways, people have suggested that WWII rations-based diets would improve the public’s health. This should be fairly obvious. In fact, a woman has lost 10 stone on a 1940’s diet experiment, using vintage recipes.

The photo of a week’s rations (above) might look like deprivation to some. But to a McDougall’er, it looks like gluttony and health issues.

I saw them preparing the donuts last night, and thought I’d drop by after spin to watch the morning line. Blue bunnies for Easter! It’s not that I’m rabidly low-fat or anti-sugar, but I just don’t want that kind of treat in the morning. I’m good.

I traded my Sunday morning spin class for a 70km ride today with the awarewolfs, a local fixed-gear riding group. I love spin, but there’s nothing else like a group ride on the real road.

I don’t know why, but I’d rather eat veggie burgers in the morning, and cereal and fruit for dessert. I love the Boca “All-American Classics” patties, because they have that savoury liquid smoke flavouring. I pile the burger with onions, tomatoes, avocado, and greens (cabbage seen here). Add a litre of Diet Dr. Pepper, and you have a perfect way to start the day!

When I started my heath programme six months ago, I cut out dairy and limited my animal products to about 150g/week. That’s a pretty low amount, and even if I ate 500g/week of animal products, it’d total to less than 3% of my caloric intake. That’s my rationalisation for adding some eggs back to my diet. The real reason is that I like them in the morning, and they’re easy to make.

I’ve seen studies that show eating 3 eggs/day for a few weeks will increase LDL by more than 10%. I’ll try to keep it down to 2 eggs a week (100g/week).

This happens a lot. You go out for lunch with others, and you figure you’ll order the veggie sandwich. What you get is something else. This is what they call “wheat” bread, but it’s processed, doughy, and what I normally avoid. There’s no real vegetables in the sandwich, just some iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, and onion. There’s cheese instead of something healthy like humus. Oh well, the other options would have been worse, and at least it has calories.

In April, before I started eating whole, plant-based foods, my doctor called to tell me my AST (Aspartate Aminotransferase) and ALT (Alanine Aminotransferase) liver enzyme levels were elevated. They said it was probably related to a fatty liver, which didn’t sound good. I was a little scared about it. I started eating healthy in August. My October numbers were better, but were still high. Today I got my January test results, and they’re all normal!

Woo hoo! In less than 6 months of plant-based eating, I’ve lost 18 kg, and fixed my fatty liver. (Ok, I wasn’t actually diagnosed with fatty liver, but I probably would have developed one on my old fast-food diet.)