Winning the Battle of the Bulge and other food tales

We are coming to the last week in the #WeActiveChallenge2019. It has been great to see all the tweets of #nursesactive getting involved in so many different activities during the month. These included walking, swimming, cycling, stair climbing, gardening, dancing, daredevil stunts, The Plank and everything in between! Apart from having fun and there being an air of competition across the various groups taking part, it was also a chance for folk to establish some new physical activity habits during the month. Regular readers of this blog will know I gave myself three personal challenges: To have a dry (alcohol free) month; to walk 200 miles (or more); and to lose some inches off my waistband.

As I write this blog, I am a few miles short of my target, but have some days in hand. True Confession 1 - I must confess to having had a couple of glasses of wine with a meal out with a friend (more of which later), but otherwise have (almost) remained alcohol free all month. And I have lost 13.5lbs so far, with my next weighing-in day on Wednesday. The strange thing is that despite losing nearly a stone in weight, when I look at myself in the mirror, I still see that gorgeous tanned hunk of a man, with bulging biceps, and a six-pack abdomen…  …but that might be because the mirror came from a fun fair closing down sale.  

Seriously, I am pleased to have taken a little bit of weight off. I checked my body mass index (BMI) to find it was standing at 25.3 (technically overweight) and I have to lose 2lbs more to achieve the ‘correct’ BMI for my age, height, gender and so on. You can check your BMI here (or not). Whilst I might still be a hair’s breadth away from being the correct weight, I’m a long way from being obese. People with a BMI of 30 or more are said to be obese, and as many research reports have shown, obesity brings with it all kinds of health problems and not just for the individual in some cases.

Last week, it was reported that nearly half (47.8%) of all pregnant women in Birmingham were overweight or obese. This puts both themselves and their baby at risk. Indeed, there is a higher chance of having a miscarriage, and overweight and obese pregnant women are three times more likely to develop gestational diabetes and much more likely to need an emergency caesarean section or an assisted birth. Additionally, there is a higher risk of foetal abnormalities such as spina bifida. Sadly, the evidence shows that the newborn of an obese mother is also likely to be obese at birth and remain so throughout childhood.  

Whilst pregnancy is not the time to lose weight, making some lifestyle changes such as eating more healthily and keeping active can help obese and overweight pregnant women manage their weight to minimise such complications, and enjoy a better pregnancy. Actually, it’s the same recipe I have been following during my #weactivechallenge2019 - sticking to a combination of healthy eating and regular exercise. As I have mentioned before, I have become evangelical about the RAG traffic light food labelling system and have simply cut out anything that shows even a hint of red! I also decided that my portion sizes were getting too large and have reduced these accordingly.

There are some downsides to this approach though! Whilst I have never been much of a person for eating out, unlike J who could eat out every night, I have reduced even further the number of times I have gone to a restaurant or thought about where I might eat (to the chagrin of J). That meal out with my friend; we were at one of those gastropub places offering up a range of homemade dishes. True Confession 2 – I had home made cheese and onion pie with chips and peas – and the cheese pie was to die for (well it might have temporarily added to my cholesterol levels and halted my weight loss) and I suppose on the plus side it was my choice and added a little bit of balance to things.

And it appears I’m not the only one getting fussy as to where to eat. Last week the industry reported that diners have stopped going to Indian, Italian and Chinese restaurants in great numbers. These days it appears that Japanese restaurants are stealing the market, along with Middle Eastern, Caribbean and specialist vegetarian restaurants. Dishes such as jerk chicken (ouch!), sushi and Usain Bolt’s breakfast of champions, ackee and saltfish, are becoming the increasingly popular choices.

What I didn’t see mentioned in the report was navarin of lamb, with cous cous and grilled vegetables. This was the kind of dish that Loyd Grossman once wanted to serve patients in hospital. The year was 2000, and the Grossman’s initiative to revitalise hospital meals cost the NHS a reported £40 million. The initiative was largely ignored by NHS Trusts because it was too expensive. Fast forward (not food) to 2019, and once again a big-name chef has been recruited to try and solve the problem of poor hospital meals. And given that some 300 million meals are served annually, getting it right is an absolute imperative. Prue Leith (who I recall from my Domestic Science schooldays) joins a long list of famous chefs including Albert Roux and James Martin to try and sort out the problem. I wish Prue well – she has been involved with improving food in hospitals for a while, so I would think she has a good understanding of the issues.

And in fairness, another great chef, Jamie Oliver also understood the problems. A few years ago, the British Medical Association (BMA) campaigned to have Jamie do to hospitals what he had achieved in improving school meals. He declined, but just like then, his words still resonate. Talking about why he wouldn’t respond to the BMA call he said: ‘Given the Government is now taking action on schools, there's no reason why they can't use the same techniques in hospitals without the need for the same TV programme or the same celebrity endorsement’. I think it’s a great challenge, and just as important as my #weactivechallnge2019 - I hope Prue rises to it and is just as successful in changing things for the better. And then all we have to do is make sure patients get to eat the food, which is a whole other issue and will have to wait for another blog!