Review: my progress on Oviva

 pandemic forty-second Sunday

I thought I was done with my 2020 Year in Review posts, but then this week I had my penultimate phone meeting with my coach on the (outsourced) NHS-prescribed diabetes prevention programme. I had my end-of-programme blood test the week before, but no one's told me any results yet, so I don't know if it's worked, but I have met the goal set for me: to lose 5% of my starting body weight. They say that my risk of developing type 2 diabetes is 50% lower. I hope I'm in the good 50%.

I've done the whole 9-month programme in pandemic times, while on leave from teaching. I go back to university work as of Friday. Our house becomes a building site a month from Friday, and we won't have normal cooking facilities for up to three months. So I've been reviewing what I've learnt during the programme and thinking about how that can serve me as things shift.

So here's what I think I've learned, expressed in both the first and the second person:

  • You stay fuller longer when carbs are a lower proportion of my meals.
  • I'm happy eating the same thing over and over if it's easy to prepare.
  • I'm happy eating a lot of vegetables (half a plate) if they're vegetables I like. And since there are a lot of vegetables I don't like, it's a good thing I'm happy eating the same thing over and over.
  • Only two of your five-a-day should be fruit. 
  • Soups are always better the second day.
  • Salads don't have to involve a lot of chopping if you have the right things in jars...
  • I overeat for silly reasons. E.g. thinking that certain foods should come in pairs (eggs, slices of toast), treating drinks (e.g. coffee) as if they need to be paired with treats.
  • Putting foods out of sight puts them out of mind (mostly).
  • It's much easier to make it to exercise classes when they're in your house.
  • Exercise clothes make a good first layer to keep warm, further reducing time to get ready.
  • For dancing on carpet, wear your most worn-out trainers and put plastic packing tape over the balls of the feet to enable turns.
  • To control portion sizes, eat from cups, not bowls.