You know, I ought not to be having any problems at all.
November 2016 (when I joined Slimming World) marked the start of a gradual decline in my alcohol consumption, which is now rather modest. I count every alcoholic drink, and the average weekly consumption figures for each year - in alcohol units - have been as follows:
2016 (2 months) - 10.4 units per week
2017 - 8.6 units per week
2018 - 8.6 units per week
2019 - 7.7 units per week
2020 - 4.6 units per week
2021 - 4.0 units per week
2022 (so far) - 2.6 units per week
So my alcohol intake is surely not the problem.
As for foodstuffs, I've stuck to the Slimming World regime, counting every syn, and not cheating. There's no point in self-deception. Some days go badly - always when I'm socialising and eating out. But most days are well within the daily 15-syn limit, as I'm cooking at home and can micro-manage what I consume.
My diet is based almost wholly on lean cuts of fresh meat, fish, eggs, all kinds of vegetables and fruit, with pasta and some breakfast cereal, all washed down with water and tea and quite a lot of milk. I don't drink alcohol at home, and don't often have coffee. There are no soft drinks. There are no spreads. I completely avoid sweet and sticky things: there are no cakes, buns, biscuits, crackers, crisps or sweets in the house. I currently make do with a couple of oatcakes in the afternoon, with a smear of honey or conserve on top, representing my one synful indulgence when indoors. And insofar as it's possible to eat and drink wisely at pubs or restaurants, I do.
In fact, this is what I've eaten so far today, all of it at home:
Breakfast: Tea with 25ml of milk; I apple; 30g of Kellogg's All Bran Original with 75ml milk; another tea with 25ml of milk.
Lunch: 1 apple; baked beans and two rashers of bacon; 3 clementines; tea with 25ml of milk.
Afternoon snack: 2 Nairn's organic oatcakes with 2 tsp of blackcurrant conserve; 1 banana; 1 apple; tea with 25ml of milk.
Evening meal: 1 apple; 2 sea bream fillets with new potatoes, green beans, tomatoes, and soy sauce; 3 clementines; tea with 25ml milk.
Planned for my late evening snack: 300ml milk, to drink.
As you can see, it's all rather healthy and nutritious, with nothing to undermine the overall effect except the oatcakes with conserve popped on top. This is typical for each day at home, or away in the caravan. I'd assert then that my routine diet is balanced and in no way lacking in the kind of things the NHS would like everyone to consume. And devoid of junk foods.
So why isn't my digestion trouble-free?
Is something amiss? And yet I feel alert and energetic - completely normal; absolutely my usual self. I can't detect signs that I'm diseased, or have malfunctioning internal organs. I might of course have developed an issue recently with certain foodstuffs, a natural consequence of ageing. But I'm not knowingly allergic to anything, nor ever have been.
In my last post, I ruminated a bit on hard-to-digest foodstuffs. Pondering this more, I began to wonder about my fibre intake. My diet certainly hasn't been lacking in fibre. It must well exceed the 30g per day recommended by the NHS, because my breakfast bowl alone contains 30g of All Bran. Add to that my daily consumption of fruit and tomatoes, and all the fresh greens, beans and root vegetables I cook, and it could easily be that my daily fibre intake has regularly been double the recommended daily amount.
Well, apparently, you can have too much fibre! Signs of that include the kind of 'tummy pains' and intestinal bloating that I've been experiencing. So I think it's time to cut out the All Bran, as an unnecessary fibre overloading, and substitute something else for breakfast.
I've decided to revert to childhood, and make some porridge oats. I went down to the village a few hours ago and bought this:
