June 2021 - Body Image

I’m having a real body image crisis at the moment and I can’t see a way out of it.

November 2019, I was the healthiest I’ve been in my adult life, I’d dropped 8 or 9 stone in weight, was exercising most days and was fitting into a 34 inch waist jean and large t-shirt. By mid February 2020 I’d slipped back up to a 36 waist, extra large.

I’d been quite proud of my success, I didn’t want to slip further and really had to do something about it. I dropped my maximum caloric intake down from 2000 a day to 1800 and increased my workout schedule from 3 to 5 times a week, I figured I’d be back on track in 3 or 4 months.

It’s now June 2021 and I’m still in the same place I was in February 2020. 18 months of 1800 calories a day and exercising 5 days a week and I’ve lost no weight, if anything I’m looking slightly more portly than before.

I’ve tried increasing my protein by swapping out a meal for a shake, I’ve tried upping my vitamin intake with supplements, I’ve tried cutting out carbs and reducing fat, I’ve increased the amount of water I drink. I can’t decrease my caloric intake further because I lose all energy and get a pretty hefty brain fog on much lower than my current level.

I’m completely stuck, I don’t know what to do and it’s really eating away at my already virtually nonexistent self esteem. I look at myself in the mirror and see a fat tub of lard. I look worse to myself now than I did before my original weight loss. My self loathing is a constant companion.

Creamy Mushroom Pasta

As a brit I've been having a real identity crisis when it comes to food recently, the British seem to have an overwhelming obsession with all things potato and I'm absolutely sick and tired of potatoes and potato based products (obviously excluding fried potatoes, frying just makes everything better).

Baring that in mind I've been eating a fair amount of pasta as of late and therefore a lot of the recipes I've come up with are pasta based. The recipe below is yet another pasta dish, it's a rich, flavourful and satisfying meal that feels a lot more decadent than it really is. Since both the sauce and pasta can be cooked in advance and kept in the fridge for several days, or even frozen, this can easily make a super quick, lazy midweek dinner.

You will need:
400g dried pasta
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
600g mushrooms, sliced
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp mustard powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground pepper
2 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tbsp hendersons relish
200g fat free quark
120g parmesan cheese
2 tbsp water
2 tsp cornflour

Method:
1. Cook the pasta in boiling water for 2 minutes less than the stated cooking time, drain, retaining the water and set aside.
2. Pre-heat the oil in a large saucepan, over a medium high heat.
3. Add the onions and mushrooms to the pan and cook for about 5 minutes.
4. Add the garlic, stir through and cook for another minute or so, until fragrant.
5. Add the mustard, salt, pepper, vinegar and relish, stir and cook for 2 or 3 minutes.
6. Stir through the quark and parmesan.
7. Add the cornflour to the water, mixing until all the cornflour dissolves, before adding to the pan and bringing up to the boil.
8. Add in the drained pasta, stir thoroughly and bring to a simmer, if the mix looks a little dry add in some of the retained pasta water and allow to simmer for 2 or 3 minutes.
9. Season to taste with a little more salt and pepper, stir through to ensure everything is evenly distributed and serve in 4 bowls.

Notes:
Swap out the vegetable oil for spray oil and cut down on the parmesan to make it more diet friendly. If you're not too bothered about calories, add more cheese and some broken up crispy bacon for more flavour and to give the dish a little texture.

Just A Bit Of A Rant About Employment

I’ve just received confirmation that all staff will be expected back in the office, on full working hours, from the 8th of March. I guess it’s back to 90 minute, traffic hell, commutes to and from work and skipping lunch breaks because of the extra pressure to perform that being in the office brings with it. 

Now I’ve got used to it and adjusted my body clock to account for it, losing those 3 hours from my day and my 30 minute workouts over lunch are really going to hit both my mental and physical health hard. 

So much for the pandemic permanently changing office work for the better, it seems far more likely to me that it’s going to change it for the worse.

If you don’t want to read the rantings of a perpetually working class, over opinionated, generation rent, aging millennial (yes, I am currently wearing skinny jeans… fucking zoomer.) I’d suggest you stop here… Otherwise, have at it.

I might not be a business analyst, but I’ve worked in industry for a long time and have weathered many a storm and remained relatively unscathed whilst doing so. This is thanks to being quite technically minded, trying my best to be an “information sponge”, having a reasonable level of insight into how things work and being a good judge of things to come. As I see it, thanks to business closures, caused by a mixture of the government mismanaging both the pandemic and brexit, it’s going to give the surviving employers greater scope to work their employees harder than ever. Surviving employers are going to want to take advantage of diminished competition to expand their market share and claw back lost revenue, but they’re going to want to do it without increasing costs because of the long term uncertainty that brexit has caused. 

This is likely to lead to them relying on a mixture of expendable “zero hour” contracted agency staff and expecting their existing full time work forces to increase productivity. A decrease in the amount of competition for employers generally leads to an increase in the amount of competition for employees, essentially a hell of a lot more people are now competing for a hell of a lot less jobs. Couple this with the fact that there’s now a massive influx of very talented, very experienced individuals who are currently unemployed and will be looking to start a new job ASAP and you have a situation where previously indispensable, relatively well paid, staff are now fairly easily replaced by equally capable people who are willing to accept lower pay out of desperation.

The foreseeable future is looking bleak from an employee standard point. The glass ceiling is going to be lowered, expanded and reinforced. Anyone below it will find themselves pushed into a more cramped, more competitive, higher stress environment. They will find themselves working harder and longer hours for the same or lower rates of pay. People at the lower end of the scale will find themselves suffering from stress caused by poor work/life balance, job insecurity and financial strains.

People above the glass ceiling will almost certainly experience the opposite of this, widening the gap between rich and poor. Basically because it’s been made harder for low level workers to break through, competition for high level jobs will decrease and therefore high level job security will increase. Meanwhile lower levels of business competition and an increased level of productivity to fill this void, whilst working to keep costs as low as possible though pressure on the workforce, is likely to create higher profits and therefore higher pay or bonuses to those upper echelons. 

Needless to say our current conservative government will be working hard in the background to ensure that this is the case, slowly chipping away at employee rights whilst firming up the control an employer can exert over their staff. As is generally the case with conservative policies, this will help to strengthen the stranglehold that large business concerns have over the economy, making it ever harder for smaller, independent businesses to compete on any level.

Basically if you’re already rich, and you’ve weathered the covid storm, you’re going to be doing great. If you’re poor, you’re basically screwed and as long as you continue to work, spend, repeat, whilst you’re capable at least, the government couldn’t give a damn if you sink or swim, live or die.

Ok, rant over… I’m perpetually tired and my bones hurt.

I Binged Today...

I binged today, it’s been the worst binge I’ve had in a long long time.

About 2 years ago, over the course of 10 months, I lost 8 stone (that’s 112lb or 51kg for anyone outside the UK). The last 2 years have been a real struggle to keep the weight off, a struggle that I’ve been slowly losing. As I relaxed my calorie count old habits re-emerged and I started to occasionally binge eat again. Since the peak of my weight loss I’ve managed to regain a around about a stone (14lb or 6.5kg) and I currently weigh in at almost exactly 17 stone (238lbs or 108kg).

Whilst this is nowhere near what I used to weigh, that being 25 stone (350lb or 159kg), it is by no means small and I’m still classified as clinically obese for a man of my height.

Unfortunately I’ve discovered that losing weight hasn’t really affected my ability to binge large quantities of food, nor has it really altered the maximum portion size that I’m able to eat. Today something in me briefly gave up and in the time it took me to regain control, a period of around 20 minutes, I ate 8 packets of Maltesers, 6 packets of Hula Hoops, 4 KitKats and 2 toasted crumpets. Considering this happened after I’d eaten my main meal, and having already consumed in the region of 1800 calories for the day, I should be feeling horribly bloated and generally ill. The problem is that so many years of constant binge eating has left my capacity to eat extremely high and because of that I barely even feel full. Had I not regained control of myself when I did I really don’t know when I would have stopped or how much I could have consumed.

Needless to say I’m extremely disappointed in myself and am currently feeling quite a lot of self loathing.

Super Simple Salmon

I love salmon, but don't often eat it because of the cost. When I do I like to taste the salmon, I want it front and centre with the rest of the meal complimenting the flavour rather than overpowering it.

Below are two simple, quick and delicious salmon recipes that I've absolutely loved eating.

Watercress Salmon Pasta

Pan fried salmon with tagliatelle in a watercress sauce.

You will need:
400g tagliatelle
1 small onion, roughly chopped
4 cloves of garlic
150g watercress
Juice of half a lemon
Salt and pepper to season
1 tbsp vegetable oil
Pinch of smoked salt flakes
4 good sized salmon steaks (around 200g each)

Method:
1. Cook the tagliatelle in boiling, salted water for 2-3 minutes less than the stated cooking time, drain the pasta, but retain the water in a bowl.
2. Add the onion, garlic, watercress, lemon juice, seasoning and 2-3 tbsp of the pasta water to a food processor and pulse until a paste is formed.
3. Add the watercress paste to the pasta, thoroughly stir through, place a lid on the pan, cook over a very low heat for 1 minute, remove from the heat and set aside.
4. Pre-heat the oil in a pan over a high heat, pat dry the salmon, season the flesh side liberally with the smoked salt and pepper, place in the pan skin side down and cook, uncovered, for 3-4 minutes.
5. Drizzle 1 tbsp of the pasta water over the salmon, put a lid on the pan, turn the heat down to low and cook for a further 2-3 minutes.
6. Remove the frying pan from the heat and set aside to rest for 1-2 minutes.
7. Serve up the pasta into 4 bowls and place a salmon steak on top of each.

Creamy Salmon Pasta

Pan fried salmon with tagliatelle and spinach in a creamy sauce.

You will need:
400g tagliatelle
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
4 spring onions, sliced to a thickness of around 5mm
200g reduced fat soft cheese
400g spinach
1 tbsp vegetable oil
4 good sized salmon steaks (around 200g each)
Pinch of smoked salt flakes
Salt and pepper to season

Method:
1. Cook the pasta in boiling, salted water for 2-3 minutes less than the stated cooking time, drain the pasta, but retain the water in a bowl.
2. Add the garlic, spring onion and 2 tbsp of the pasta water to the pasta, stir through, cover and cook over a very low heat for 1 minute.
3. Remove the pasta from the heat, stir through the soft cheese, if needed add in another tbsp of the pasta water, add the spinach to the pan, cover and set aside.
4. Pre-heat the oil in a pan over a high heat, pat dry the salmon, season the flesh side liberally with the smoked salt and pepper, place in the pan skin side down and cook, uncovered, for 3-4 minutes.
5. Drizzle 1 tbsp of the pasta water over the salmon, put a lid on the pan, turn the heat down to low and cook for a further 2-3 minutes.
6. Remove the frying pan from the heat and set aside to rest for 1-2 minutes.
7. The spinach should have started to wilt from the residual heat in the pasta pan, season to taste and stir the wilted spinach through the pasta.
8. Serve up the pasta into 4 bowls and place a salmon steak on top of each.

With both of these dishes if you wanted to really boost those salty savoury flavours you could add in a few capers as you're stirring everything through the pasta or grate some parmesan cheese over the dish before serving.

Both recipes could also be made a little more budget friendly by swapping the fresh salmon for frozen prawns, or even tinned salmon, and stirring them through just a few minutes before serving.

Happy Birthday God

Today would have been Lemmy Kilmister’s 75th birthday. He was a legend in his own life time, the only true God of rock and an important influence on me.

Music has always had a role in my life and, as a very young man, with very few friends, and almost no social skills, Motorhead were the first band that I discovered by myself.

No matter how much my musical tastes have changed, and will continue to change in the future, Motorhead have, and will continue to, always remain my all time favourite band.

Lemmy was always a big part of that, he just wanted to play rock n roll. He lived his life and played his music, he did it his way, whether it made money or not and that is something that deserves respect.

For me he seemed to embody the spirit of being your own person and, as long as you’re not hurting anyone else, doing what you want. Growing up as the weird outsider, that perceived attitude really spoke to me.

I’m not going to say that Lemmy made me the man I am today, because that’s simply not true, but he definitely affected me. The attitude I perceived him to have inspired, and continues to inspire, me and give me pause for thought. In a world where everyone, and everything, is constantly telling you how to think and feel, the ability to think to yourself “what would I do?” is an important one and I feel like Lemmy played a major role in teaching me that.

Happy Birthday!

The Midnight Rambler Rambles At Midnight

It's 1:30 in morning and I'm topping up the bath with hot water for the second time. I don't really have anything to say, but I felt like it was the right time to write something, so here I am chatting absolute shit into the void.

I do love a long, very long, soak in a hot bath, especially when I know that I have no reason to get out of bed in the morning. Candles lit, lights off, incense burning, a selection of beverages and an audiobook playing in the background, it's absolute bliss.

Today was my last day at work until the new year. With all the shit that's been going on I kind of forgot to use my holidays and if you don't use them then you lose them.

To be honest I kind of like using my days off at this time of year. Work is winding down, because of the bad weather, so I know that I won't be going back to a shit storm and it means I get a decent amount of time to enjoy the festive season at home.

I'm kind of hoping things ease up enough for me to risk visiting my parents and dropping off a few gifts for them, my siblings and my nieces. We're not a religious family, though some people I consider family lean towards the pagan side, but we all still celebrate Christmas. I know my parents will have the old family Christmas tree up in the bay window and I know that there will be a small pile of gifts sitting under it. I know my mum will still insist on cooking a huge turkey, even if it is just the two of them this year. I know that if I wanted them to they'd still set a place for me, even though it's been years since I last came home for Christmas. 

We might not see eye to eye and I don't talk to them much, I visit them even less, but I do love my parents and sometimes I even miss them. The house they live in has been the family home since I was 4 years old and that was a very long time ago. I hope it will continue to be the family home for many years to come, though I guess only time will tell.

When my previous relationship broke down I, and as much of my stuff as a car could carry, moved back in with them and, even though I no longer live there, a good chunk of my stuff is still in my old room. I know that I'll have to collect it one day, but I hope that it's by choice and not by necessity.

I kind of amass stuff, some of it potentially useful, some of it potentially collectable, some of it potentially interesting and probably most of it just tat. Because I'm never particularly sure which stuff belongs in which category I generally keep all of it, that means that I have a lot of stuff, spread over a lot of different places, and, because some of it genuinely is useful, but isn't necessarily were I need it at the time, I have quite a lot of duplicates. One day I'll get around to sorting it out and actually make use of my eBay account for a change.

I guess I'm rambling, it's now 2 in the morning, I've just finished smoking my pipe and I'm currently topping up my bath for the third time. I could probably ramble on some more, but I know most people won't read this and those that do probably got bored a while ago. I should probably sign off, finish up my drinks and make my way to bed… good night.

Dirty Old Creep

Apparently being in your mid 30’s makes you old and creepy. It really does sneak up on you, I never even noticed it happen.

To be honest I still feel like I’m mostly the same person as I was in my mid 20’s, I still have mostly the same interests, I’m still learning, I’m still evolving, my tastes are still expanding and if anything I’m actually fitter and healthier now than I was then.

The difference seems to be other people’s perceptions of me. Then, when I was hanging around in book shops, game stores, music shops, toy stores or just browsing film/comic/band merchandise, I was a harmless guy doing nerdy stuff and people largely ignored me. Now, when I’m being just as harmless and doing exactly the same thing, I’m seen as some old weirdo having a mid life crisis.

Just before all this covid malarkey kicked off, I was in a local book shop, flicking through a couple of graphic novels, and I overheard two women, that looked like they weren’t any younger than me, talking, far too loudly not to be heard, about “that big, hairy, old guy over by the comics” and how “he must be some kind of freak trying to hit on young girls”. As I was the only other person in the shop, and being a big, hairy, old guy, they were clearly talking about me. I just ignored them, made my purchase and left the store, but what they said kinda hurt and it really stuck with me. When did still having interests, and being a little childish, as an adult become a bad thing? Why does it mean that I have to have some kind of sinister motive? Can’t I just be an adult that enjoys nerdy things? And why, just because I’m a man and still enjoy those things, does it make me some kind of lecherous perve?

On the upside, being a bit older does mean that my beard is thicker and more majestic than ever, even if there is an awful lot of white hair in there.

My Covid Experience

Today is the first time, since getting a positive Covid test, that I’ve physically managed to hit 20km. It took considerably longer than it normally does and I felt absolutely horrible afterwards, but I did it.

For me being ill is never really something that crosses my mind, it happens very rarely and, most of the time, when it does happen it’s very mild and I’m over it in a day or two. When Covid hit the scene I obeyed the rules and followed all the guidelines, but not because I was worried about myself, I was doing it to protect the people in my life who are vulnerable. I’m relatively young, I’ve a very robust immune system and I’m fairly healthy. I thought that if I got it I’d either be asymptomatic or it would be extremely mild and I’d bounce back in a couple of days.

Several weeks ago someone in our office tested positive for Covid, the following day we were all sent home with our computers and remote logins. The day after that I started feeling a little rough, realised I’d lost my sense of taste and smell and booked myself a test for a Friday evening. 

It’s Monday morning, I’m burning up, I ache all over, I have absolutely no energy, I hardly have the strength to move around, I feel like I want to die and I’ve just received my positive result. 48 hours passes, it’s Wednesday and, admittedly, I’m starting to get over it, I still have no sense of taste and smell, I still ache, I still feel drained, I can’t really concentrate on anything, but I’m mostly functional. Monday morning rolls around and I’m well enough to be working from home, but I still have no sense of taste and smell, I still ache, I still feel drained and I’m still finding it a little difficult to concentrate.

It’s now a few weeks later and I’m still not 100%. My sense of taste and smell is back, but it seems extremely muted and things don’t quite taste the same. I’m physically able to exercise, but I get out of breath much easier, I’m not able to do as much and I ache afterwards. I’m finding it much easier to concentrate, but I’m easily distracted and feel like I’m catching myself just staring into space more often than usual. My general drive hasn’t really returned, though I’m not entirely sure there was all that much of it to begin with.

Covid 19 isn’t a joke, it isn’t a hoax, it is very infectious and, whilst I concede that it may well be being exaggerated, it is definitely hospitalising people, it is definitely killing people and it is definitely an absolutely horrible disease to suffer with.

Now could somebody please gently massage my shoulders, they really ache...

A Fever Dream?

Did I really witness Nigel Farage watching clear cut video evidence of Donald Trump suggesting people look into injecting disinfectant, then have him try to deny it and then call someone fake news on live television... or did I just fever dream that whole sequence? It seems so surreal that that's kind of what it feels like.

Politics makes me so angry at the moment. I had to turn off the tele and put the kettle on, if I hadn’t I felt like I might have lashed out in some stupid way.

A nice pot of tea, and 15 minutes of light exercise, and I’m feeling a lot better, so it’s off to the "home office" to get a day's work done.