Post baby bloat - The 5:2 diet

I've felt a little on the pudgy side lately.  Pants are getting tight and the kilos are creeping on, and I'm getting older so I thought about whether I should go on a diet or not, and have decided that I will.  I've never really dieted before and exercise is a lifestyle thing - I did try to do it regularly but I just am too lazy.  I need something I can maintain.

One of the people who is in my guild in World of Warcraft, suggested to me to try the Paleo, or Caveman diet.  The diet restricts you from eating processed carbohydrates and dairy but you can eat fruit, vegetables, meat - basically anything that Caveman could eat and gather - and it sounded ok in that it wasn't a starvation diet, you could still eat.  But cutting out carbs entirely is hard.  What would I eat for lunch?  And what about rice?  It was a good idea, but I wasn't sure if I could stick to it.

Then my sister recommended the 5:2 diet.  The principle is that you eat normally for 5 days and fast for 2 non consecutive days.  I wasn't sure about these starving diets because I thought it would slow your metabolism but apparently there are a lot of positive things said about this diet.

I came across an article called Two Day Diets: How Mini Fasts can help Maximise Weight Loss, and they had a lot of positive things to say.  An article in the Daily mail also had similar good reports. Fasting means eating 500 calories (2000kJ) a day (usual daily intake is 2000 calories, or just under 8500kJ).  This fasting appears to cause a drop in levels of growth factor, a hormone linked with cancer and diabetes, as well as a reduction in LDL and triglycerides in the blood.  Free radicals are also reduced, as well as levels of inflammation.

Professor Mattson, head of the neuroscience at the US National Institute on Ageing believes that it can protect the brain as well.  He states that dropping your food intake dramatically triggers protective processes in the brain, similar to the beneficial effects you get form exercise.  This could potentially protect the brain against degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

Professor Mattson has done a fair bit of research on fasting in rats - he showed that rats got nearly all the benefits of calorie restriction when they fasted every other day when compared to those who were on a low calorie regimen all the time.

In the International Journal of Obesity also reported that fasting for 2 days had more benefit than a persistent lower calorie regime, with reduced insulin resistance in patients.

That was enough convincing for me.  So I've decided that the easiest days to fast are somewhere between Tuesday and Friday - days which I work and don't have much time for lunch. Sat- Mon are days I eat with the family or go out, so I wouldn't be able to stick to it those days.

So what can I eat on my fasting days? There was a great list on Marie Claire about what I can eat:

Breakfast
Muller Light yoghurt (89 cals)
Banana (90 cals)
Boiled egg (89 cals)
45g porridge oats (166 cals)
Orange (59 cals)
Apple (53 cals)
Kiwi fruit (47 cals)
Crumpet (100 cals)
1 slice of brown bread (74 cals)
1/2 tin Heinz Baked Beans (100 cals)
 2 egg white omelette (34cals)
1 rice cake with sugar-free jam (45 cals)
Poached egg with a slice of ham (100cals)
Alpen Fruit and Nut Bar (109 cals)
50g Total 0% Greek Yoghurt (48 cals)
Half a slice of brown bread (37 cals)
Half a grapefruit (39 cals)

Lunch
Half a carton of New Covent Garden Soup Winter Broth with Bacon and Kale (96cals)
Pitta (147 cals)
Rice cake (38 cals)
Celery (7 cals)
Itsu miso soup sachet (44 cals)
1 tbsp Light Philadelphia soft cheese (28 cals)
Heinz Weight Watchers tomato soup (76 cals)
One slice of smoked salmon on two wheat crackers (48 cals)
87g cauliflower (23 cals)
Tuna salad (175cals)
Waitrose Beetroot and Cheese Salad (172 cals)
Mushrooms on wholemeal toast (110 cals)
Heinz Weight Watchers Carrot & Lentil Soup (87 cals)
1 cherry tomato (4 cals) Cadbury Highlights Hot Chocolate (40 cals)
1 Light Babybel cheese (40 cals)
Quarter of a tin of Heinz Baked Beans (49 cals)
50g cooked prawns (50 cals)

Dinner
Chicken breast (162 cals)
Cous cous (176 cals)
Young’s cod steak in parsley sauce (101 cals)
Tesco’s chilli chicken noodle salad (195 cals)
Roasted aubergine (18 cals)
38g peas (38 cals)
50g cooked prawns (40 cals)
10 spears of asparagus (50 cals)
Weight Watcher’s Mediterranean Veg Quiche (156 cals)
Morrisons NuMe Cottage Pie (300 cals)
Half fillet of salmon (185 cals)
1 roasted pepper (30 cals) 38g
Feta cheese (100 cals)
100g brown rice (135 cals)

I'll do a weekly update and see how I go!

Children: Speech improving

I am not sure if it is the speech therapy or time, but my son has had a marked improvement in his speaking in the last week or two.

He's been singing songs - lots of songs, not just one or two - which include Baa Baa Black Sheep, Row row row your boat, Big Balloon (Peppa pig), Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Fruit Salad... it's so heartwarming and encouraging!

Even last week at Daycare, the teacher said that he was very happy that day, talking a lot and singing, and that he was her favourite boy in the day care.  He is very friendly after all.

I'm supposed to be doing the choice boards with him now, but I find it a little hard as he already knows the words.  The choice boards are good if they aren't talking yet, I can see that, but I am still a little hesitant as to how to give him the most benefit from them.

The other great thing is that he's started looking at books.  He used to hate books, but every night he likes to read Charlie and Lola, and also Room on the Broom as well as his picture ABC book.  He would rather point at the pictures and talk about them than listen to me read the words, but it's a start.

I wonder what he'll be like at the end of the year?

Coming to work when sick - should you just stay at home?

Currently I am in the 4th week of illness with a cold that came on top of me still recovering from a cold.  I have been coughing up green phlegm and my cough is revolting, and my nose is runny and I sound awful.  Why don't I call in sick, people ask.

It's true - I often feel like it's some kind of show of weakness if I call in sick.  Obviously if I am REALLY sick with something dreadfully contagious then I don't go in to work - I don't want to give it to my patients.  But what about that cold that I'm carting around, perhaps I should be calling in sick?

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald made me think about the impact of my going in to work sick.  I mean, obviously I knew this already, working in the health care profession, but because colds just seem to be a part of life when you're in medicine, I hadn't really thought about it.

Turns out this attitude imposes a massive impost on the economy. A 2011 study done by health insurer Medibank Private found that people who went to work when they were sick cost the economy $34.1 billion in the 2009/2010 financial year – yes, you read that right – and lowered GDP by 2.7 per cent.

I guess I hadn't really thought about that aspect of it.  With a son in child care, and both parents working in hospitals, we just take the cycle of colds in stride.  For businesses I can see why they would encourage people to get sick, especially if they don't have much leway for covering sick leave.  This example from the article:

“I once looked after an office where all the team sat in pods down one side of the building. One of my team came back from overseas, where she caught a shocker of a ‘flu. Because she thought it would look suspicious for her not to return to work, she came into the office as pale as a ghost. She literally didn't stop coughing and sneezing until a few of her colleagues came to me complaining and suggesting I send her home,” Slezak says.

“I did send her home – via the doctor who gave her a medical certificate to stay home for the rest of the week. But she came back in the next day, claiming she felt better. Over the next six weeks it was like a domino effect as that ‘flu literally struck my entire team down, pod after pod. I had staff off sick for days at a time and at one point an entire business unit was out for the count. Even I wasn't able to escape it."

However, as a contracter, any day I call in sick, I don't get paid.  And when I work in the private hospital, it's really hard to find someone at last minute to cover you, and the patients you may have to cancel because you are sick have many inconveniences as well because THEY had to take the day off, or get their next of kin to take them in and thus they had to take a day off and having to reorganise all that can be a big drama and you end up with some very disgruntled people.

The best I can do is keep my mask on so that I don't cough my filthy secretions everywhere and wash my hands every time I touch my nose.  The article states that you are being selfish by coming into work when you're ill, but I don't think it's selfish.  There are deadlines and things to meet, and people who are relying on you and the domino effect of you being sick that affects your patients who are awaiting their surgeries.  Perhaps focussing on certain hygiene practices at work to help minimise transmission can help.

In Asian countries, mask wearing when ill seems to be a very common practice.  I think that it would be good if people in Australia did that as well - though it's all very well to cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze, that hand is covered in germs when you touch a door or a table or a pen, but perhaps with a mask over your face, hopefully most of that is caught in the cloth, and a quick rub of some quick drying antibacterial hand gel after you touch you face or nose would help minimising infecting co-workers.  If businesses could invest in that, so people who do want to come to work and help get their job done (rather than implying they are selfish and irresponsible) then productivity could be maintained.

My next dream car - Nissan LEAF

I love Nissans and I am pretty excited about the Nissan LEAF which is the one of the few 100% electric cars in Australia.  Naturally there's a huge waiting list so even if I wanted to buy one now I wouldn't get one anyway for a few years, I'm sure.

But just looking at it, its a nice sized car, and it doesn't look tiny like the other electric cars I've seen.  In fact, it looks about the size of my old Mazda 3.  (Images from Caradvice.com.au.)

The inside looks roomy, and looks like it could at least put 2 boosters in it for the kids.

It even comes with a whole host of extra technophile features that are totally unnecessary but make you feel like you're driving some sort of futuristic car.  These include:

• A timer for the airconditioner that can get you to warm up the car at 6.30am before you start to drive for workat 6.45am
• Built in SIM so it can constantly updates itself with new info
• Apps on your iPhone or Android so you can see how much charge you have left in the car, or even tell it to start charging remotely (if the car is plugged in)

It has a little 12V solar panel on the rear spoiler that helps power many of the interior accessories.

So how far can it drive?  On a full charge, the car can go 170km it says.  Not bad for city driving. Not sure if that would be ok for me when I drive about 100km a day but if I had no side trips, it would probably be ok for a trip to work and back.  With the air-con on, it probably brings it down to about 120km.

So how do you charge one of these babies?  Well, there are 3 ways to charge it.

• Home.  You can charge it at home if you have the right power system installed - an electrician can do that for you apparently for about $200.  It takes 8 hours to charge up a depleted battery.
• Charging stations.  I don't know where there are any of them around here, but that would be pretty cool.
• Fast charge can be done from a 415V power system so you can rapidly get it to 80% in 30 minutes.

According to Caradvice.com.au, the car drives very well.

When it comes to drivability, the Nissan Leaf is an interesting car. You’re actually going to feel it accelerate just like you would in a sportscar. It’s a bizarre sensation given there is no engine noise. It feels and sounds like a Japanese bullet train about to hit cruising speed as it accelerates from the lights. With 280Nm of torque available from a standstill, the Leaf is much more lively than a Prius and many other cars (no official 0-100km/h figures yet).

Steering feel is very light, much like a Lexus. That makes it easy to manoeuvre around town and get in and out of car parks. 

- Alborz Fallah, 2012 Nissan Leaf review

I am pretty excited hearing this.  I would really like to have one!  Here is the full list of energy saving features that the vehicle has.

Energy-saving features 
Automatic lights-on system
LED headlamps with load-sensing leveller
High luminance LED rear combination lights
Full colour rear view monitor, with vehicle width/distance display function
Rear windshield wiper (intermittent)
LED high-mount stop lights

Active safety features 
 VDC (Vehicle Dynamic Control [TCS functionality included])
ABS (Anti-lock Brake System)
EBD (Electronic Brakeforce Distribution)

Passive safety features 
High-strength safety bodyshell
Impact-energy-absorbing body construction to mitigate pedestrian injuries
SRS airbags for the driver and front passenger
SRS side airbags for the driver and front passenger
SRS curtain airbags
Two-stage load-limiter-equipped double pretensioner seatbelt for driver and front passenger
Emergency Locking Retractor (ELR)
3-point seatbelts for all seats

So, in a few years, guess what I'll be driving! :D

My son, the beautician

One day my son will probably be mad at me for writing about his quirky toddler behaviour.

He's always enjoyed putting moisturiser on himself, and putting it on me, but he's gone that little step further!

I have a Ped-Egg for the calluses on my feet.  I quite enjoy doing my feet whilst curled up in front of the television watching a movie. My son J watched me with interest and wanted to do it on my foot.  Now, I can hardly take it out without him running over to industriously file away at my foot with my Ped-Egg.

I also enjoy having a shower with the kids rather than popping them in the bath.  I have a facial scrub that I do every day in the shower and now, my son will put a blob of the facial scrub on his hands and scrub my face for me.  He also enjoys putting shampoo in my hair (though I wish he would learn to give me a head massage as well).

The other funny thing is tweezering my eyebrows.  He likes to pretend to use the tweezers to do my eyebrows though I have to be careful he doesn't poke me in the eye.

Makes me wonder - will my son one day become a beautician?  And if so, I wonder if he will get cross at me for all those dreadful home hair cuts I've been doing for him!

World War Z - how I liked the movie AND the book, and how it COULD happen

*** WARNING: SPOILERS! ***

When World War Z was advertised, I had no idea what it was about.  It didn't even occur to me that Z stood for Zombie until somebody told me.  It's not even that obvious from the trailers.  I do like seeing the major cities though in the posters that were out.  Of course, I like the Sydney one best.

Sydney, Australia

Berlin, Germany

Rome, Italy

Barcelona, Spain

Paris, France

Mexico City, Mexico

New York, USA

London, UK

Rio, Brazil

Moscow, Soviet Union

In the movie, the human race is infected by a saliva/blood borne virus that kills the host and animates it into a zombie. United Nations representative, Gerry Lane, has been asked by the government to try to track down the origin of the infection, and thus help find a vaccine to save the remaining population, and the rest of it plays out like Dawn of the Dead or Resident Evil or any of those other zombie movies with your fill of zombie action and scary moments.  Ultimately the solution lies in the zombies only attacking healthy people, so Gerry innoculates himself with a deadly virus and finds that the zombies largely ignore him.  There are some aspects from the book in it, but really, it's quite dissimilar.

There are some moments in the movie which I thought were great insights into human nature.  Jerusalem, Israel, was free from infection and when Gerry goes to investigate, they had early warning and their walls which were already high, were built even higher.  The whole city was built to repel attacks and so it survived quite well.  They also let in all refugees and Gerry found this a surprise, but they said "For every person we save, it's one less zombie to fight."  A really great sentiment, in my opinion.  Very different from the other perspective of saving a few people and then shutting out the rest so that they don't possibly contaminate the healthy population.

It's not a wonderful movie, but it's not bad for a zombie movie.  Entertaining, eye candy (in the form of Brad Pitt) and a bit of token science thrown in for an attempt at reality.

The book on the other hand (by Max Brooks), is a collection of war stories, collected 10 years after the Zombie war.  The interviewer is a United Nations agent, and the book is a wonderful insight into humanity in different cultures, as well as the different political methods which are unique to each country.  Zombies in the book walk, and don't run, and are relentless in their assault (unlike the movie where they chase you down).  They are also mindless in that they can't open doors, undo seatbelts - they are just automatons without reasoning, logic or learning who just seek and bite.  Zombies freeze in the cold, so many people went to the snow, but they reanimate when the snows melt.   They also are found in the ocean, walking along the ocean floor and can pop up on beaches after walking for long distances.  It is the brain which has to be destroyed for the zombie to stop, for even dismemebered, they will still come at a victim.

One recount of an organ transplant causing a zombie to rise was interesting - no doubt because of the organ trafficking that comes from China.  Another account by the someone in Tibet smuggling people out of China and how families would take their infected out seeking a cure was also quite interesting - it showed how the infection broke out in other places.  Another account of the Americans using chemical warfare in attempt to kill the healthy AND the undead merely provided more hosts for zombies - disastrous!  The Jerusalem story was very similar to the movie (obviously in a culture that had been constantly attacked for genocide multiple times), and in India, a place where people would make a pilgrimage to die became a zombie hot zone because people kept going there to die and then becoming zombies.  Another interesting facet of human behaviour was seen in a Palestinian refugee who was heading to Jerusalem, being dragged their by his father, thought that the zombie infection was some kind of cover-up or ruse, and even when inside the safety of Jerusalem, when he saw Israeli's fighting other Israeli's, he thought that it was a civil war and actually rejoiced for a moment before he saw the zombies for himself.

I really enjoyed the book.  I never thought war recounts could be interesting, but in this war story it was fighting an enemy that was relentless and unstoppable, with no agenda except human decimation.  It also dealt with the aftermath and rebuilding of civilisation.  How useful professions such health, farming, construction, engineering became the cornerstones for rebuilding society - and other professions which we value so highly in the current era such as banking, finance, and information technology suddenly became redundant.  Even the psychological aspect was dealt with in a really interesting manner - people were dying from "giving up" or "lack of hope" and someone went out and made movies of stories of hope which reduced the number of those sorts of deaths.

But the scary thing is that this COULD become possible - if mother nature decided to make it that way.  There are a number of mind controlling mechanisms between other species in nature that sound quite terrifying if they occurred in vertebrates or humans (information taken from io9).

The wasp Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga preys on the spider Plesiometa argyra in an Alien-like manner.  The female wasp stings the spider to paralyse it then lays an egg in its abdomen.  When the larva hatches, it feeds upon its host and the spider continues to go about its business as if nothing is wrong.  After a few weeks, the larva releases a chemical to build a web totally different from its normal web - basically just threads bonded together and the spider sits there waiting to die.  When the larva emerges, it kills its host with poison and sucks it dry, and then makes a cocoon which hangs from the web and the wasp will eventually emerge.  That the parasite can emit chemicals that can control the host's mind... creepy!

The Cordyceps family of fungi are all endoparasitic on insects and spiders.  The Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus attacks ants of the Camponotus leonardi species.  Once infected, the ant is compelled to go away from the nest to an area with specific types of conditions for the fungus to grow - and then clamps down with its jaws to the leaf to die there.  The fungus consumes all the ants tissues (except the muscles for clamping down with its mandibles) fortifying it structurally and once the fungus is ready to reproduce, the fruiting bodies erupt from the ant's head.  These ants when infected are commonly known as "zombie ants".  You can see an example of Cordyceps attacking ants on BBC here.  The Last of Us, a FPS game about zombies, the zombie infection is based upon Cordyceps.

Destroying the reproductive capabilities of its host is another nasty way for parasites to work.  The female larvae of the barnacle Sacculina carcini seek out crabs as their host.  They attach to the underside of her shell, creating a bulge which eventually becomes a knot.  Tendrils are then spread inside the host to draw nutrients.  A male Sacculina comes along and implants inside the female barnacle, and they continually reproduce.  The crab is now infertile and its behaviour is also modified by them - it stops growing and moulting and even cares for the barnacles' eggs.  If the crab infected was a male, the barnacle sterilises it and then causes changes in the crab to make it more like a female crab's body by widening and flattening the abdomen.  It forces hormone changes in the crab so that it acts more like a female, and also takes care of the barnacle's eggs.

The article details a great number of other interesting parasitic mind controlling infections - if you're into that kind of thing, I recommend reading it.

So my mind has been turning over these things since I watched the movie and read the book.  What if this happened?  What if I was a survivor?  What are the REALLY important things in life?  How can I be make my life a more productive and useful one?  I wonder if everyone who read the book ended up thinking these things - maybe not - but it is a really good example of how decadent and self indulgent our society has become, and maybe a good war would bring us back to the values which truly define the human spirit.

A change of reading habit

Perhaps it's because I'm busy these days, and between work and parenting and gaming I just don't have time to read books like I used to.  However, there is one rather embarrassing thing that I HAVE noticed about my reading habits..

... and that is that I read a book AFTER I have watched a movie.

Take Harry Potter, though that was what started it all, I think.  I watched the first movie and then after that I read the books as they came out.  That was well before I had children though.

More recently, there was Stephanie Meyer's Twilight.  I read the books after I watched the first movie.  I actually quite enjoy the movies, and I liked the last one especially as Bella came into her abilities.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - I watched both versions of the movie and then I read all three books.  The Swedish version is very good, I thought.  Though Lisbeth was annoying towards the end, but it was still a good read, and a good watch.

The other day I saw my sister watching Beautiful Creatures, and I only saw the end.  I didn't know what it was about but she told me it was a book, so I read the book.  I read all the books, actually.  Another teenage romance with a supernatural.  It was not a BAD read, but it was a teenager's book, really.

Hunger Games was another that I read after I watched the movie.  I haven't even read the second book yet, but probably because the book did not engage me as much as I thought it would.  Weird, since it was so popular and I managed to read through Beautiful Creatures, so why can't I get through this teenage book?

The latest one was World War Z.  Zombie movies are generally not my thing, but I watched this one because I had heard good things about it.  Then when I was talking about it, a World of Warcraft guildmate told me that he refused to watch it because it was nothing like the book.  So I was curious, I read the book.  And it really was different.  So different that it has been on my mind for days, that I thought I would write about it in its own post.

I even have a reading list of books to read from the movies I've watched!

• The Big Year.  I quite enjoyed the movie - it's about birding and competition, which is already something that interests me - so I would like to see how the book pans out.
• We bought a Zoo is another one which was a cute movie, and I wonder how it reads as a book.
• The Help - I really really enjoyed that movie.  My sister says it's a good book.