ohhh chillies

Jirawan brought home some large green chilli peppers from the Turkish shop yesterday and cooked them off as I was making my evening meal, a small sausage wrap, two tiny chipolata's, some lettuce, 4 cherry tomatoes, 1 gherkin chopped, half red onion sliced, in a whole grain tortilla wrap....yup, thats it, thats my one meal.

I added a chopped chilli to my wrap and discovered while eating, it was... ,hotter than a burning pizza oven in hell....

wowser.. normally the big green chillies are just mild and sweet, not these badboys... but I hadn't had chillies for a while so the burn was fun..... until 6am when the burn decided to eat through  most of my lower intestines and seek an outlet.... which it did for about 2 hours.

96.9kg this morning.... no no Im not going to be eating those chillies again even though thats the best diet pill I've ever had.

Ahthankyew

Constipation has a reward....kinda

Diets do have drawbacks, I havn't been to the loo for a few days, and of course that bungs you up, even if you don't eat much. I try to eat fibre in the form of cabbage,lettuce, musli in small amounts,  as well as fresh fruit and veg.. but... ,yeah it can be a few days...and not always..ahem pleasent...

But the good thing is when you do go.... you go... and todays morning weigh-in produced 97.5kg so the drop continues...

Im going to start with the excercise when I hit 90.. nothing dramatic, I hate jogging, but a few weight routines and more regular quick walks to push  things along...

I'm actually starting to enjoy this process, the hunger is controllable as long as I don't drink, and indeed not drinking also drops the weight.

Really not sure if I'll ht 70 before we go on Holiday in October, 10kg a month is pushing it a bit, bbut should get to 80kg so I won't be quite soo chubby and puffing in the Thai heat when we get there.

Ahthankyew

missing money, lost and found

Today was a good day... I managed to locate a long lost but still growing pension pot, I started over 20 years ago and only paid into it for a few years before the financial shit, hit the bankruptcy fan...

But that pension pot was forgotton and left to die lonely. Until I accidently discovered an old letter about a year ago, that showed there was indeed a pension, and who administered it. Barclays... 

But after a bit of chasing, it turned out Barclays, had sold their pension business on to L&G who in turn sold the old pensions on to Re-assure... A long chain of emails ended up in a dead end when I didn't have the specific policy details and got no reply to emails.. so I gave up, and left it....lying there somewhere...

After mentioning this online to old collegues, it was suggested to get an advisor to hunt for it.. and as luck would have it, the sister of an old collegue is an advisor, agreed to check for me... and she found it... it was with Re-Assure, she confirmed they had it, and it was just a case of making direct contact with an 0800 number, but I can't use them here in NL, so after a bit of hunting around... 2 dead phone numbers later, and 30 mins on hold..

I got hold of the lovely Shannon, who indeed confirmed they had a pension, and... it was worth, a pretty penny... (not retire now on this pretty, but it adds a fair chunk to the pot).
So thank you so much to Sadef Latif, and her brother Amir, for helping me to locate the pension.


After updating Re-assure with my details, and confirming my ID, I can now make use of that pot at any time, either by transferring to a pension or cashing it in... Cashing it in has a tax hit though. It will be best if I leave it for a couple more years till we're ready to jump and get a bit more of that high interest savings action on it.

I won't say exactly how much it is, but it will help fund some of our plans to retire early which is a massive boost..

Yup, today was a good day.

Ahthankyew

back on track

Only mid way through the weekend fast, and sadly not able to fully embrace it, since Jirawan sneekily brought home 2 fried fish to eat on her way home from work, seeing how much I enjoyed the fish in London.. sweet, but..missing the point... But I've restricted myself to only half a piece of fish a day and some carbs.. 

98.2 this morning... so back on track..London didn't break me. Actually Im starting to see the results visually in my face at least; Im less puffy, though could be the haircut I got in London.

Picking up my programming and Thai lessons as well so keeping myself distracted from food and focused on things...might see 97.x tomorrow....

Ahthankyew

ok not a total disaster

Back from London, and its amazing how easy it is to put the weight back on, though I did my very best not to gorge on my usual Greggs, Fish and ch ..oh wait.there were a few....some, well a couple of slips...in my defence I didn't eat too much, but I sure ate the wrong things.

I didn't keep up my strict sub 1000kcal diet, while there, but we did so much walking I was hoping that it might have had a balancing effect and I'd still be in the mid 98's 

But no, 99.1kg on my return... not bad I suppose still under 100... but now we're back I need to get back to my sub 1000kcal and get back to 1kg a week.

Keep on keeping on losing the pounds.

Ahthankyew

London....well thats going to screw up my diet

I mean its not Edinbirgh, where I can get proper fish and chips and battered black pudding, but it is London, where I can get Nando's, proper curries and a reasonable facsimile of fish and chips (quite a few do haddock)... 

I did succumb tonight to a nice curry, but it was my end of weekend fast, though probably too big a portion, if I promise to be good tomorrow, I might be able to  walk it off.

Jirawan joins me tomorrow evening so I might take a walk to Denmark street and see how much some of my guitars are worth now... no buying though promise

Jirawan is visiting some family here so I will tag along and politely decline some of the wonderful thai food on ....fuck no I won't...but I will try to walk it off.

Ahthankyew

Holidays?

Its Monday, and I got to sleep-in for the 1st time in months. I now have 5 weeks of lovely summer holidays... well lovely when it stops raining.(looks outside,, hmm its trying to be sunny..maybe)

That means I have a lot of jobs to do that have been put off at least a year

A chance to sort out my studio, the big sell off needs to get started, by first making sure the studio is clean and set up. My old PC is up there and not doing much, so will get it prepped and maybe upgraded a little to use it as a back up machine., though I also have my brothers old Dell I3 Laptop which I upgraded a bit, and its now a fine little emergency machine.

If I get time the walls that were put up 14 years ago to block off the studio are still bare chipboard... might be time to put a bit of woodchip and paint on there. Will review when the studio is cleared out a bit.
Set up sales videos for all my extra sound and music gear, put ads on marktplats (Dutch local sales)

Clean up my little office, even though I have the studio, I like to code in my little office, but its damn untidy, there's a health hazard notice on the door... need to get at it, and also retire some of the older books on my big bookshelf so I can add some new ones..

Give the Bathroom a damn good clean, get the limecale off the shower and clean up a bit of black mold caused by the lack of working extracter and that old shower leak from a few years ago... I've now put a small extractor in there and its doing a fine job, so a bit of bleaching to tidy it up it will stay nice an bright.

That extractor issue does need to be fixed though, we had an electrician come a few years ago to resolve our fuses constantly blowing and he hardwired the extractor which seemed to be the cause , but I unplugged it not considering the impact on the bathroom.. I have it on now always, but I should get the place rewired.. The shorting was probably due to that shower leak now fixed and dried up... so a rewire will be a good plan... but pricey.

Clear the shed, and set up a list of sales for the hundreds of now quite old model kits in there that I had planned to build when I retire, but not an option now, so sell, probably quite valuable, we'll see, might pay for the rewire.

Clear out all my old SBC's. I got dozens of old OpenGLES2.0 based units, they're pretty pointless now for my coding purposes,  but people might want to pay 5 euros for them to drive an old project. I'm only doing OpenGLES.3.1 ane above now... so will keep the 5 or so units that can do that amd a rasp 3 for nostalgia. That won't provide much more than a nice meal for Jirawan and a salad for me.

Take a load of stuff to the local waste disposal, old beds, chairs and soooo many big boxes from appliances bought years ago... stuffed in shed (just in case) Also arrange for pick up for the bigger items..

Clean up the bike and take her out for a few runs, poor thing has been a bit neglected this summer, what with being in the UK for a month, and the actual weather not being up to snuff.. I am sadly going to say goodbye to her in the Autumn, vintage bikes are cool and it was great to finally own a Shadow, but I'll get a smaller more servicable bike to get around or just put the funds into the pension pot. Someone else can get some joy out of owning a vintage shadow.

Re-install the SolarPanels on the roof, not that there's been a lot of sun, but lets sort it, they blew off the roof a couple of years ago in a big storm, and have been stored in  the studio since, so going to rebuild the frame and put a few paving stones up on the roof to cement the frame to and keep it locked no matter how strong the wind is.

In the Garden our old Decking has decayed to an unsafe level, so going to lift that all up and either lay down grass or paving. Jirawan seems to have burned out her gardening hobby, so probably paving. That's quite a big job and I need a skip to take the crap away. (might kill a few birds with one stone there.

Theres a couple of bigger expensive jobs too, that really need a tradesman, we do want to redo the kitchen, it won't get done this year though as its going to cost too much and we're saving like crazy, but I'll cost out a few things and see if there's a way to get it done cheap.

Phew... holidays will be so relaxing, ......but at least I'll be thinner at the end of it :D

99.1kg today... getting quite used to being hungry but not eating, and 200-300g a day drop on the weekends with 50-100g on weekdays will soon see me looking like the Adonis I am under the flabby bits.

Ahthankyew

Busting through

99.8kg what a great feeling, I finally bust through the 100kg barrier.. might have a sausage to celebrate :D

Its the weekend though so, under 500kcal at weekend, ideally no food at all till late on Sunday.. but I'll do my best.

I'll need to scroll back quite a while to find when I was last under 100kg, but its been a while. EDIT July 2020.... 4 years over 100kg, My heart will be pretty pleased.

20kg to  go, maybe 30 we'll have to see.

update, sunday.. after a not fully empty Saturday... 99.6  :D

Ahthankyew

Well there's some kind of wall

Still cant get below 100kg, despite fasts and careful eating, though I have had 2 notable slips when I made dinner for friends and succumbed to some late night crispy pork from Jirawan(it was good)

But even so, the 1000 cal or less a day diet is being maintained and the fat is hanging in there between 100.3 and 101.2 .... grrr

Gotta move about a but more I suppose

Ahthankyew

New Challenge

Right, something new to push myself, I've failed miserably at learning Dutch over 16 years, though I can understand some, I fail to speak or write it.. I could get better but long term there's no real advantage. A few years from now I'll be in Thailand... So..

Going to learn an even harder langage than Dutch :D

Thai... I plan to sign up to a course that is apparently very good, and yes it costs but that will just drive me on.. I am going to keep it secret from Jirwan (she never reads these posts) but if I manage it, when we get to Thailand for our October break, I hope to be able to speak to her family and friends in at least some Basic Thai which will be a nice suprise for her.

This one will be hard  :D lets see if I am still capable of learning anything

Ahthankyew