Are you a coffee or tea person?

When I was very much younger, living with my parents, I used to drink milky tea. Pretty much everyone in the household did so it seemed the natural thing to do. Then for some reason, at I can’t remember what age, I decided I didn’t like tea anymore.

I remember working for a firm of accountants who had pods of tea, coffee or hot chocolate, that you tipped into you mug then topped it up with hot water. The tea and the coffee came in with milk, or without milk options. I was still predominately drinking white tea then. We ran out of white tea, so I moved over to white coffee instead. It was tolerable. Then we ran out of white coffee as well, so I migrated to black coffee.

I’ve never really been a big fan of milk, or dairy type products, yoghurts and the like. It all tastes like gone off milk to me. It therefore didn’t seem too much of a problem to shift to black coffee.

Since then, I’ve never gone back to drinking milk in my hot beverage, or drinking tea. The traditional sort anyway.

When I changed jobs in August 1990 the new company had a Maxpax machine. Unlimited, short stumpy looking paper cups full of tepid watery stuff that didn’t resemble anything particularly. I do recall getting through somewhere in the region of eight cups of this black liquid throughout the average day, until one day I decided imbibing that quantity of caffeine probably wasn’t good for me. I decided to go cold turkey and just stop, substituting my intake with water instead. For the first two weeks I had the worst withdrawal headaches I can ever remember.

Over the years, I have refined my taste buds and consider myself a bit of a coffee snob now. We rarely drink instant coffee, and we now grind beans first thing in the morning ready for my travel cafetiere to take to work each morning. If we are at home, the coffee pot goes on for a good two mugs worth to start the day.

When I first started my current substantive post, one of my team kindly offered to make me a coffee and said they had decent stuff, promptly producing a tub of Azera. I turned my nose up and retrieved my travel mug and asked her to take a deep sniff of what I called real coffee. She never offered again.

I have never returned to tea drinking with the exception of going through a phase of raspberry tea in the afternoons but honestly found that a bit too sweet. After a bit of research I swapped that for mint tea, and now tend to have a mint tea when I’m at home or out and about in the afternoon.

Two mugs of real coffee in the morning, occasionally a mint tea in the afternoon, but the rest of the day its good old water. Unless its wine Wednesday of course (in the evening)!

Focus, focus

Wednesday evening’s #bellringing meeting agenda had 15 items on it and the meeting was scheduled for 2 hours with 9 attendees. Focus and a good Chairperson was going to be required in order to get through that lot in the time allowed. The meeting platform of choice was Zoom.

Usually this particular meeting is well managed and several email and offline discussions would have already taken place, so a lot of it is for informational purposes, but sometimes assigning actions to move things forward, and the odd formal bit of business that requires sign off.

There are some quite major projects on the go as well as needing to ensure the core business activities are kept on track. Fortunately this group are all well versed and good humoured, so the meetings don’t tend to feel like they drag or are unnecessary.

The meeting rattled through, including some sticky subjects, business duly conducted and only 10 minutes over published time. I think I only got one action out of it, so all good. 🤣

One of the things I can’t help but notice during these types of meetings is people’s refreshment choice. There were several glasses of wine in evidence, a couple of reds, 1 white I think and possibly 1 rose. There were a couple of mugs, presumably with tea or coffee in, unless they were cunningly disguising their beer or wine. My own beverage of choice was red wine, but it was wine Wednesday in our house after all 😀

Double Trouble

Every now and then, half way through a workday afternoon I get a real hankering for cake or biscuits. I’m supposed to be dieting but a long afternoon often needs a sugar boost to get me through to the end of the day. Its really not helpful having an M&S and WHSmith on site. It makes it too easy to pop along for a snack.

For some reason, Wednesday was a day that needed feeding. I’d brought my breakfast in and had it at about 9am. Yoghurt and grape nuts. Pretty good. I’d brought my lunch in too, homemade leek & potato soup with a slice of C’s homemade multiseed bread 😋. So far so good.

I had a couple of video conferences over the lunchtime period so I’d eaten my soup by 12:30. After the calls, I went for a walk around the hospital site to get some fresh air. Despite being damp out, it was warm and quite pleasant.

When I got back to my desk, I ate my Fibre One cake bar, swiftly followed by the popcorn bar, which I sometimes save for snack later on. But I still wasn’t satisfied.

Purse in hand I went to M&S firmly resolved just to get a small packet of biscuits. But I want cake. I REALLY want cake. But I want something savoury too. And something sweet for a sugar kick.

Before I knew it I’d got 2 packets of sweets, a packet of pitta chips and a twin pack of lemon curd whitby buns (why don’t they sell them in singles?).

I know, I’ll have the sweets this afternoon because I need a quick sugar hit, then save everything else for tomorrow.

Apparently not. I’ll get back to my desk, then scoff the lot. Now I have a sugar high and full up so I’ll not want my dinner. Doh!

Weighing in on Mindful eating

A number of years ago I joined Weight Watchers to try to lose weight before step-daughter #1’s wedding. Through diligence, planning, counting and going to a pop up class at work, with some colleagues, I managed to lose nearly 4 stones. I got down to a size 10, something I hadn’t been for very, very, very many years, and some would say was possibly too much. Once the wedding was over though I had no goal to aim for, so my love of food started slipping. I didn’t plan so much, I didn’t count so much, and gradually all of that weight I’d lost, and then some, crept back on.

A couple of years ago my boss and I decided to start Slimming World instead, but neither of us could attend a class in the evening due to other commitments, so we just used the app. Things started off OK and I lost a few pound here and there. I even got to my half stone loss award. So far so good. But there wasn’t anything driving the need to lose weight, other than the fact that I was heavier than I should have neen according to my BMI. The trouble is, I like food. And beer. And wine. Although I should say that I don’t drink regularly or in large quantities. Usually one pint and I’m done. So the weight has just been bobbing along the same line, give or take a pound or two here and there.

For me, the most significant issue has been lack of tangible reason for REALLY putting some effort in to losing weight. We eat well, and varied diet. Only problem is I don’t like fruit, of any description in any form. We do follow SW recipes, but we do indulge in treats and nibbles and naughty but nice food. Life’s too short, right?

There’s lots of empirical evidence that suggests that being on the heavier side increases your risk of heart disease, diabetes and so on. And now they’re linking obesity to a higher risk of contracting Covid-19. I don’t get easily swayed by things like that, there’s always some bandwagon to jump on. One week it’s don’t eat chocolate, the next they’re telling you that dark chocolate is good for you, in small quantities. And many other examples.

I think that if you want to diet, or exercise, or whatever, you should only be doing it for yourself and not to impress anyone else or jump on some gimmicky bandwagon.

I do want to lose a bit of weight but I’m not going to give up everything I enjoy about food and drink, to fit some stereotype of femininity or social construct. I will put a bit more effort back into counting and planning and if I lose a few pounds, hurrah.