Oh.. so that's how it's going to be...

This morning was my official 2 week weigh in, which I like to think of as 'gathering data'. So far, as expected. After the initial drop of 2kg, I rebounded a bit and the final scale loss over 2 weeks is 700g. That's about what I am expecting at my smallish calorie deficit.

The last week did have a few extra challenges, namely having the flu, which I already whinged and moaned about in my previous post. I forgot to mention something though, which could be important to the scale ups and downs (or, in this case, downs and ups). For two nights I took a decongenstant to clear my nose so that I could sleep. I'm not too sure how those things work, but obviously they do something to the water balance of the body. I should really have thought about it.. me.. dodgy kidney... drugs that (most likely) act on the kidneys.. The first night I woke up with some kidney pain but, as you do, I forgot about it the next day. The following night I woke up with some 'kicking you in the ribs' kidney pain radiating from my designer kidney and in the morning I was 'puffy', like puffy bags around my eyes. So, that's the end of taking decongestants for me and the puffiness is slowly going away. It could be that this phenomenon is contributing to the scale weight. We will see at the next two week weigh in. Ugh! Enough about weight and water retention already! Let's talk about food.

Yesterday I invested in an Easiyo icecream pack. It's a bit of a process to make the icecream, but not too strenuous. The automatic whisk might beg to differ on that last point. You mix the powder with water, freeze it, partially unfreeze it and then whisk it until it is all light and fluffy - this caused some serious complaining from my hand-held whisk. It's not exactly industrial. I only mention it because I'm always wary when kitchen appliances start sounding laboured. I once blew up a blender making a very thick smoothie - there was smoke and everything. Very traumatic. At least it blended my smoothie before giving up on life. If I'd had to go without my smoothie AND see the end of my blender.... all at once? that's too much to cope with. I'm quite excited about the fact that my new creation not only contains pro-biotics (live beneficial bacteria) but also has about 200 fewer calories per cup than regular icecream. Preliminary tastings suggest that it's acceptably delish and it should be the beginnings of a long and happy relationship.





Yesterday someone asked me what is the difference between a pre-biotic and a pro-biotic. In questioning my suppliers I understand this:


A pre-biotic, like Fructo-oligosaccharides or certain other fibres, provide the substances necessary for your body to produce more of it's own beneficial bacteria.


A pro-biotic actually delivers live bacteria to your insides. A pro-biotic really needs to be kept cold or the bacteria, with quirky names like Lactobacillus Acidophilus (that's them in the pic) , Lactobacillus casei and Bifidobacterium quickly die off. There's nothing quite as exciting as thinking about what lives in your GI tract, is there?