My diet and "Eat to Live Forever"

GIllian McKeith next to a cracking buffet.

The idea of wanting to live forever is pretty horrific.  Carrying on in to your hundreds whilst everyone you've ever cared about has already passed away.  As with the Tom Hanks character in 'The Green Mile', it would feel like a punishment (even if you did have an immortal pet mouse to keep you company).

In his documentary aired last week, "Eat to Live Forever", food critic Giles Coren found plenty of people whose very aim was this.  If not live forever exactly, a desire to live until at least 150.  A very old age, no doubt, but certainly not one that would make as catchy a title.

In his quest to find entertaining television weirdos he of course heads to America.  I've always found there to be quite enough weirdos in the UK myself, so I'm not sure why documentaries always have to head across the pond to find them.

Maybe this is something UKIP could take up as a cause.  Nigel Farage being interviewed saying "this is a waste of license fee payers money travelling to find strange foreigners.  What we say is British nutters for British TV shows!  I suggest that if the BBC are struggling to find any unhinged lunatics, they should just come down to our next party conference".

In America the first people Giles meets are Paul McGlouthin and his wife, of the CR Way (a.k.a. the calorie restriction way).  They believe that to live a long and healthy life the secret is to eat a calorie restricted diet.  The average man is recommended to eat 2500 calories a day, but they say it should be 1800 instead.

This is not an idea that is new to me.  Many started to understand this concept following another documentary on the BBC back in 2012 - "Horizon: Eat, Fast and Live Longer".

Presented by Dr Michael Mosley, this documentary looked at the health benefits of fasting.  What attracted me to the findings of this program was that everything discussed was done through a scientific process.  This wasn't just hearsay.  It was this documentary that really launched the concept of the 5:2 diet.

To give you an idea of my own dieting, I started making a conscious effort to look after myself around 5 years.  Following my partner at the time I started doing Slimming World.

To boil it down to it's basics, the concept behind Slimming World was that you have 'free food' (lean meats, pasta, rice, legumes, etc) and 'super free food' (most fruit and veg).  You had to aim to have at least one third 'super free food' to two thirds of the 'free food'.

The key to this was that there was no weighing or points counting, you basically ate as much as you wanted until you felt genuinely full.  If you ate within these limits you could eat as much as you wanted and you would lose weight.  The group 'weigh-in' session I went to each week showed that this was genuinely true.

Not to say it was easy of course.  All the naughty food, like chocolate and booze, was given a 'syn' rating.  You could only have up to 10 syns a day.  Or, like me, you could save them up over the week, then on the weekend do a murder.

Seriously, after no biscuits for a week you would be ready to stab someone, so that's barely even a joke.

I must say though, this diet did work well for me.  Over about 6 months I ended up slowly managing to lose about one stone in weight.

But then I watched the Michael Mosley program and discovered the 5:2 diet.  The concept is simple.  On 5 days in the week you eat normally, and on 2 days in the week you can only consume 600 calories (500 for women).

Having never been a dieter that counted calories, it took me a bit of effort to work out what I could eat that would fit in to these limits.  After a process of weighing foods and using MyFitnessPal to check on calorie levels, this became my meals on a fast day:

Skip breakfast

Lunch - A tin of Mackeral in tomato sauce with spinach leaves

Dinner - fillet of cod with steamed brocolli and cauliflower

What I discovered was that with using veg you could have quite a plateful within the calorie limits.  Other than that I was having fish so I had a source of low cal protein, as protein tends to fill you up more.

It seems that for everyone who does this diet they have different good and bad points for them personally.  For me, the bad points were a lack of energy in the afternoon, and, I'm reliably informed by my girlfriend, a tendency to be a little snappy in the evening.  No surprise there, I am literally starving!

Another problem was dehydration.  I would drink plenty of fluid and feel fine throughout the day in that sense.  At night though, I would either end up having to get up in the middle of the night at least once for the toilet because of how much I had drunk, or if I stopped drinking long enough before bed time, I would end up feeling really dehydrated in the night.

It was like my body wasn't able to keep hold of the water like it would normally.  Again, I'm sure that's part of the starvation process.

The point of the diet though was mainly in the overall health benefits.  When Dr Micheal Mosley did it he found he went from being overweight and bordering on diabetic with very high cholesterol to having very good blood levels and losing weight.

The weight loss is the by product of fasting rather than the point really, although without doubt this is why most people give it a go.

In terms of my own health, a recent blood test showed that my cholesterol was 2.9 - very good.

Also, combining the 5:2 intermittent fasting along with my normal diet conscious of the Slimming World ethos and regular exercise meant that in total I went on to lose 2 and a half stone in weight.  I went from being overweight at over 15 stone to going down to 12.5 stone.

So, with everything combined, I've done pretty well.  I don't want to live forever, but hey, I want to have a good go at it and not be ill or in excessive pain whilst I'm at it.

Spot the odd one out

Back to the documentary and Giles Coren is on his calorie controlled diet.  One thing you notice about Paul McGlouthin and his associates from the 'CR Way' is that, frankly, they don't really look healthy.  Unsurprisingly, they are pretty skinny.

At one point McGlouthin congratulates Giles Coren on how good his skin looks, a way of saying how well the calorie restricted diet is working for him.  All you can think while he says this though is 'well, Giles might look well, but your skin looks awful!'  And it really did, unfortunately.

Writing them off as nutters isn't really fair, lets just say they are a little eccentric and a bit overpowering in their interpersonal skills (well, he was anyway, not so sure about his wife...).

Giles went to visit various other groups, including fruitarians (or just 'Fruits', really) and a Doctor who promotes the idea of 'faecal transplants', which involves squirting a healthy persons poop up your own backside to get all the good bacteria from it.  It looks like there might be something in that, but hey, maybe not for me quite yet.

What did look interesting though was the 'paleo' lifestyle.  The paleo diet is essentially a caveman diet.  You only eat what a caveman might have done.  So that means no cultivated food such as those containing flour or oats, and instead eating meat, fish, fruit and veg.  Anything processed is out, including sugar.

So this means no sweet snacks at all, no sugar in drinks, etc.  The main thing really, is no carbs (so no pasta, rice or bread).  That's the tricky part.

Yes, in the documentary the paleo community do come across as something of a cult, even with their own 'Jesus' leader figure.  The fact that you can call people linked only by a diet a 'community' seems extreme enough in itself.

Also, a drawback is that there seems to be very little science in understanding the true benefits or flaws of the paleo diet.  If I had one major criticism of Coren's documentary it's that the whole thing is a bit 'science lite'.

Yes, he has a Harley Street Doctor on call to discuss each diet, but she is only able to give the conventional scientific response.  As we know of the fasting diets, conventional medical advice would be to definitely avoid fasting, but the science definitely backs it up.

All this said though, I am attracted to the paleo diet.  The main reason was seeing so many people talking about how fit and healthy they feel.  Full of energy throughout the day, no problems sleeping, looking great and burning fat.  Even with looking online I have struggled to see evidence from people who have tried it and suffered.

But still, the Science is not conclusive.

What I have decided to do then is give the full paleo diet a go for a full month, to see how it effects me.  My bloods are already very good and I could have them tested again after the month has passed.

I'm even considering setting up a new blog to keep a diary of how I get on.  If you have any thoughts on this, please let me know.






EDIT - Well, I have indeed decided to try going paleo for a month.  My first day was today and I've set up a dedicated blog so I can keep a diary of how I get on, which you can find here - paleochallenge30days.blogspot.co.uk

What exactly is militant Liberalism?

The militants lair

Comedian Andrew Lawrence caused something of a minor shit-storm in comedy circles last week by posting on Facebook criticism of comedians appearing on BBC programs such as Mock the Week.  The general gist was that there are a lot of comedians making cheap jokes about UKIP, and he blames a liberal elite within the corporation, and the laziness of comics.

What could have been a contribution to a debate, however incorrect, was somewhat mired with statements bemoaning

"...moronic, liberal back-slapping on panel shows like Mock The Week where aging, balding, fat men, ethnic comedians and women-posing-as-comedians, sit congratulating themselves on how enlightened they are about the fact that UKIP are ridiculous and pathetic."

I think the part that particularly annoyed many was the concept of "women-posing-as-comedians."  It feels almost like he is imagining a producer with a need to fill quotas desperately searching for any woman he can find.  Eventually the char lady has powder applied and, bewildered and blinking under the studio lights, is sat next to Hugh Dennis and told not to break anything.

Contained within the entire statement are a number of breath-taking examples of foetid nonsense.  However, I don't intend on writing specifically in response to Andrew Lawrence, as plenty have already taken up that challenge.

What I will do though is pick up on one particular gem from it all.  He accuses the BBC of "deeply ingrained militant Liberal politics."

What exactly are militant Liberal politics?

The campaign against library closures steps up a notch

For a start I can't imagine an armed struggle being waged by a political faction in the name of liberalism.

A sniper assassinating government advisers on drug policies in a bid to further the aim of de-criminalising marajuana; "Outrage" kidnapping The Queen and forcing her to marry a Lesbian; a "No to page 3" activist pretending to go in for a topless photo shoot only to reveal under her blouse a bomb vest, taking out half of Fleet St.

Doesn't seem too likely does it?

Complaints about the BBC being too Liberal are not uncommon.  We hear it all the time from the likes of the Sun and other right-wing newspapers.  But then, complaining about bias of the corporation against a political position is not just the reserve of the right.

At the height of the anti-war movement against the invasion of Iraq we were always amazed at how you could get so little coverage of demonstrations, despite 10,000's people taking to the streets.  Thousands marching on any subject should surely be newsworthy?

When Israel stepped up it's murderous campaign against Palestinians, activists were again complaining about a pro-Israel bias.  But at the same time Zionists and other supporters of Israel were complaining that it instead had a pro-Palestinian bias!

What that suggests is that while it may not be perfect, and will always make mistakes, maybe the BBC is pretty unbiased after all.

Anyway, the suggestion that UKIP could complain about bias against them from the BBC is ridiculous.  Can anyone remember an episode of Question Time that didn't feature one of their members on the panel?  Whenever immigration is mentioned in any capacity in the news, there always appears to be a UKIP spokesperson on hand.

There is every possibility you may be reading that last bit of criticism of UKIP thinking "but you would say that, you're a Liberal"  To which I would say "get stuffed, I'm not a Liberal!  I'm a Socialist!!"

You can't argue with facts

A liberal wants to gently tweak the already existing Status Quo, where-as I want to change the entire system because it's the system that's at fault.  Agree with me or not but you would have to admit, that's militant!

A few comedians on Mock the Week suggesting Nigel Farage looks like a muppet?  No, that's not militant.  I understand in that context why supporters of right wing parties might complain about their treatment.

I mean, thank God no-one ever mentions Ed Miliband's appearance... oh, wait...

Driven to distraction

A Car

In a perfect world I wouldn't need a car.  Public transportation would get me wherever I needed, and at an affordable cost.  But that’s simply not the case.

I briefly had to commute from Bolton, where I lived at the time, in to Manchester where I worked.  It was hard to understand why the train system could claim to be short of money travelling at these peak times.

Stuffed in to carriages like victims escaping an atrocity (and Bolton isn't really that bad!), with guards at the entrance to the station to ensure nobody got through without a ticket.  They couldn't complain about the lack of numbers.

What was more annoying was that I was paying significantly more for a ticket than I would have done for fuel.  Yes, in my car I would have spent a lot of time queuing in traffic, but on the train I was given an experience that makes you feel jealous of veal.  When you add on the fact that the car took me door to door whilst with the train I had to also walk 20 minutes as part of my commute in all weathers, the ticket price was definitely not representing value for money.

Aside from the commute to work, the real reason I chose to drive a number of years ago was for comedy.  Any kind of career in stand up is virtually impossible without a car now.  There are a minority of pro acts who don’t drive, but these are pretty much all people who got established a number of years ago when the circuit was somewhat smaller to say the least.

 

Another car

Without a doubt though, one of the most stress making aspects of my career is to do with cars.  Fuel costs, repairs, the lot.  There’s nothing like driving along without a care in the world only for the oil light to come on followed by the car uncontrollably going up to maximum revs whilst huge clouds of smoke pour out of your exhaust pipe.

That example was at the end of last year and meant my turbo needed replacing at a cost of over £400!  Sometimes the costs can rack up that much that I feel that my existence is solely to earn money to continually fuel and maintain a car.

I’ve not had a lot of luck with cars.  I managed to write off the first car I owned for a start.  Whilst parking.  In my own car park!

Sounds stupid, and it was.  I just whizzed in too quick like the fearless boy racer moron I was.  Realising I was going too fast I went to slam on my brakes but my foot slipped on to the accelerator.  I was only to achieve a few feet of acceleration before hitting a wall, but that was enough to crumple up my bonnet.

As horrible as it was, I can’t really complain.  Friends had some sympathy at first thinking it was a low level perimeter wall I hadn't seen.  When they found out it was in fact a three story block of flats, their sympathy evaporated.  Needless to say, I couldn't really miss it.

If I learnt one lesson from that, aside from the obvious one about avoiding stationary... buildings, it was that if no-one else is involved, DO NOT claim on the insurance.

The car I wrote off was an old Punto, and after taking in to account my excess the insurance company paid out just £500.  Needless to say, they’ve taken many more times that amount of money from me over the years through increased premiums.  At its worst, I had pay an annual premium of £1600!

Over the last 5 years I’ve managed to stay clear of accidents, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that meant I could stay trouble free when it came to cars.  No, instead, the cars themselves would cause their own problems.

I had three Vauxhall’s in a row that all had some weird intermittent fault wrong with them.  Intermittent means that when the fault occurs you can’t drive the damn thing, but when a mechanic comes to look at it they can’t find a problem.  So there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Yet another... oh no, wait, that's an owl on a skateboard

Call me old fashioned, but I just want a car that works.  Simple.

So I made the leap, and spent real money on a car.  Part exchanged my pointless car in return, and drove off a Skoda Fabia that’s only three years old.  On paper, this should mean I have a dependable car that won’t cause me trouble but what it also means is that if this one causes me grief I am significantly out of pocket.

Fingers crossed it does work, otherwise I’m back on the trains again!

Rotherham, and why we shouldn't listen to the racists.

So what next for this stand-up comedians lighted hearted blog posts?  A post about the Rotherham recent child abuse scandal?  Well, that is bound to be a wheeze.  Ho, ho, ho, strap in comedy lovers...

Well, maybe not.  Yes, I am covering that subject, but I must admit that a report uncovering the sexual exploitation and abuse of over 1400 children in Rotheram isn't exactly a giggle fest.  Still, as with any major news story, there are plenty of contradictions at play.

First was watching the BBC news two mornings ago which included an interview with the group "Parents Against Child Sexual Exploitation".  It twisted my mind as to why such a group existed.  After all, who would be against that group?

The other issue is the groups name.  Why "parents" against child sexual exploitation and not just "people"?  I don't have children myself, but does that mean they think I would be in some way neutral on the issue?  Would I be expected to complain to the BBC, demanding to know why they hadn't invited on a pro-paedophile spokesperson to provide balance?  No, I will be happily maintaining my license fee payments for the foreseeable future.

Of course a big issue with this case is the impact of race and racism, as the perpetrators here were mostly men from a Pakistani background.  With the ongoing rumblings of Investigation Yewtree turning up historical abuse cases involving mostly white male celebrities, you might be fooled in to thinking that overall race isn't really a factor.  But that's not going to hold the right wing press back.

Reading The Sun on Thursday, unsurprisingly, warmed my urine to a rolling boil.  A particular highlight being columnist Trevor Kavanagh's take on the issue, where he blames:

'mostly white, mostly Labour politicians and police... (who) represent a political class, backed by the BBC, who waved in millions of migrants during 13 years of Labour government under the discredited flag of multiculturalism.  Their avowed objective was to change the face of Britain which they deemed to be "too white"'

Of course!!  How stupid of me not to realise that the problem all along was caused by Labour, the BBC and multiculturalism!  Case solved, thanks Trev.

Aside from rantings by columnists such as Kavangh, the general argument is that the police in Rotherham, backed by Labour, didn't investigate the claims out of a fear of being seen as racist.  It would be easy to write off this argument as barking mad, because it is.  For a start, the police not wanting to be racist???  My, my, how times change.

Scarily though, you cannot just ignore this argument, because it is one that is seated well and truly in the mainstream.  The Sun are not alone in turning this horrific story about child abuse in to one for their own agenda attacking Labour and multiculturalism.

In reality, the real problem in this case is precisely the same problem as there was in the case against Jimmy Saville.  Victims and their families were blamed for the abuse, and ignored.

£60k salary v. honour.  Salary wins!

Police in Rotherham ignored the complaints because they saw the girls as complicit in their own abuse.  "If you hang around with that kind of crowd, what do you expect to happen", was their position.  In reality, where girls in any way "chose" to spend time with their abusers, that was as a result of grooming.  That's how it works, and that is why there is an age of consent.  They are children, not consenting adults, and they need protecting.

Perhaps there is some cultural aspect as to why a minority of Pakistani men thought it was acceptable to abuse young girls (and not exclusively white girls either, like the media often suggests).  But then, there is a cultural explanation as to why older white celebrities thought it was ok to do exactly the same.

As much as I mocked the name of "Parents Against Child Sexual Exploitation" before, one thing you can say is that they don't make any issue of race.  They, and anyone who is genuinely concerned with helping put a stop to child abuse in this way, say that the real issue is to put a stop to victim blaming, and for the police to take complaints seriously.

The Edinburgh Festival Experience

6am at the Edinburgh festival

In my opinion Edinburgh is one of the most beautiful cities in the UK.  I say the UK, that could well change with the referendum in September of course.  Can the Scottish really turn down the chance to never have Tories rule them again?  I know I couldn't.

Part of the Union or not it’s a city that drips with beautiful architecture and culture.  But it’s also a challenge.  I have never visited somewhere before where you could walk for hours and always appear to be going uphill.  I'm not used to following directions to get to a destination and find that a left turn is impossible because the road I want is actually underneath the road I am on.  It is like Edinburgh was designed by two people, then they just stuck one map on top of the other and got on with it.

But in other ways Edinburgh really helps pack in the experience for you.  Have you ever been somewhere and wondered what it would look like at other times of the year, what impact the other seasons would have on the landscape?  Well that’s not a problem with Edinburgh because you will get the weather of every single season in just one day!

Being a child #1 - Haggis, neeps and titties

All this is exacerbated during the Fringe, as you have to traipse around the venues all day throughout the City centre (and as far as Leith and Haymarket to see shows by people conned in to thinking they had been booked in to a workable venue).  Outside weather ranging from downpours to heat waves just minutes apart, then into rooms which are stuffy and airless.  Make no mistake, during the biggest arts festival in the world, condensation is King.

The rooms for the shows themselves rarely help.  There are a number of spaces I have seen shows that are considered great rooms, but outside of Edinburgh the thought of putting on a show in these places would be considered mad.

Last year I did a solo stand up show for a week at 1am on the top deck of a bus.  No, really.  Only in Edinburgh would they spray paint a bus, park it in a courtyard, and call it a venue.  But, and this is the kicker, as Edinburgh festival venues go, this was pretty good!  Even at that stupid time I managed to fill it each night.  Yes, my face on posters can fill buses – now there’s an odd boast!

Flyering for your own solo show at midnight can be a lonely experience, I don’t think anyone would be surprised to hear.  Thankfully for me I have the antidote in that each time I am in Edinburgh I am performing as part of ComedySportz, a competitive improvised comedy show, with an entire troupe of my closest friends.  Unlike with stand up, here I am not on my own, and in fact have a number of people around me who have my back.  It does make all the difference.

With ComedySportz in a lovely Edinburgh dungeon

This year I only came up for a few days with these guys, and whilst performing with ComedySportz I was otherwise not performing, but instead watching shows.  My girlfriend Sally came with me so I could attempt the tourist experience.  That has been a learning experience in itself.  Mostly in that I now know our comedy tastes are more divergent than I first thought, but that where they match, they match very well indeed.

Funz and Gamez with Phil Ellis and friends and the improvised musical Baby Wants Candy had me in absolute stitches, whilst Sally instead looked rather bemused.  But that’s fine.

Following the sad passing of Robin Williams I have spent time looking up clips of his stand up and, apart from a few exceptions, I have to admit I just don’t get it.  But many of my peers and comedians who I respect very much hold him up as a seminal genius.  Not enjoying his stuff personally does not take away from the impact and importance of this man, and my ability to appreciate what he did.  Oft repeated but entirely true, comedy is indeed subjective.

Whilst certain comedy shows didn't hit home for Sally as much as for me, we did both love Kerry Godliman’s Face Time, so that was a trend bucking relief.

Being a child #2 - yes, it was mostly whiskey

We also had a wonderful archetypal Fringe experience with the short play Post-it – Notes on a Marriage, by being the only two people in the audience.  A touching play about the fragility of loving relationships, this was a unique experience.  A significant credit of course to the actors for their solid performance in these unusual circumstances, especially with taking time to shake our hands immediately after their bow.

Sore feet, shabby digs, wet clothes and endless flyering.  The Edinburgh festival can be punishing but despite all that, like the City itself, it has such a beauty and appeal that as a performer is hard to resist.

Comedians are a bizarre and rare breed.  Whether the manic energy of Robin Williams, Phil Ellis arm wrestling an 8 year old, Mary Poppins getting Ebola (thanks to the audience suggestion the night I saw Baby Wants Candy), or being willing to perform an hour of solo stand up at 1am on a bus it’s fair to say that, with a genuine reverence for the term, you don’t have to be mad to work here, but it probably does help.