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I keep a little log.
This is something of an odd post. Originally published on 8 August 2006, I am republishing with today's date1 because it doesn't make sense to bury it in the back then. Back then, I weighed 10 kg than I do today and I credit this book — which is not a “diet” in any meaningful sense of the word — with much of that change. I’m not doing it any more, but I know I can go back to it if I feel the need, and it will get to work within a day or two. Seth Roberts was a fascinating person, and he is responsible for much of my interest in tracking aspects of my being. So, here’s the review …
Full disclosure: I started dieting a la Shangri-La a while ago, based on what I had picked up from various web sites. There wasn't an awful lot to it (more on that later). I certainly saw no need to spring for the book. But when Seth Roberts announced on his blog that his publisher was willing to give copies to bloggers to review, I leapt at the opportunity. The book duly arrived; I devoured it. Now to keep my side of the bargain.
When women gathered and men hunted, there wasn't always a lot to eat. Much of what there was would have struck modern palates as boring in the extreme. Nuts, roots, tubers, grass seeds, maybe sometimes ripe fruit or a bit of meat. The things that taste really good to us today -- sweet things, and salt and fat -- were in short supply. In fact, maybe that's why they taste good. So that they would be rewarding, so that we would seek them out, so that when they were available we would eat them to excess. Any calories we didn't use today we stored, as fat, till tomorrow, when food would once again be scarce. And when food was scarce, how much better it would be if we weren't ravenously hungry and focused on food all the time. We could cruise along, eating enough to stay as healthy as possible without going crazed in search of those sweet and fatty treats.
After eight difficult seasons of hot-water bottles and fingerless gloves, I may be about to embark on a comfortable winter. The room in which I work is large, and the heating very poor, and the cost of changing either is prohibitive. In search of ways to heat my body, rather than the space, I came across two suggestions new to me; electric heated throws and far infra-red heating panels.
All clients have discovered unspent money and are rushing to dole it out before the end of the year, because if they don’t, they won’t have it next year. Which is crazy, and leads to some rough days, but is, on balance, good for me.
Back in a lighter lockdown, and discovering that what this year has shown more than anything else is that we need one another more than we need outside things, but outside things do add to life.
I don’t really need to write much here; just enough to make sure that there is something to receive when I go out and try to logon from outside.
And bang, there it is. I couldn’t be happier. Not least because I feel I have dodged several bullets.
The good news is that my new passport arrived on Monday (first in November, but worth a mention). The bad is that we’re looking at another lockdown, albeit slightly lighter, and it seems highly unlikely that I’ll need a new passport before 2021 at the earliest. But we did manage a couple of days away in Florence, soaking up some culture to last through the dark days ahead. Marketing the podcast — at least as far as buying €30 of advertising on FB goes — was a complete bust. Not one new listener that I could detect. But more people do seem to be downloading the transcripts, so that’s surely a better use of the money.