Remember the good old days

So dieting is difficult is it? Well, who can remember the ‘good old days’, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, were you a fellow dieter then?

Did you have to mix pasteurised milk with water to make skimmed milk? Or perhaps you boiled pasteurised milk and waited for it to cool down and then skimmed the fat off! ?

Did your milk-man even deliver skimmed or semi-skimmed milk? Years ago there only seemed to be two sorts available – pasteurised or sterilised, certainly not the variety available now.

Today we have skimmed, semi-skimmed, long life etc. all coming in bottles or cartons?

Did you ever see products giving you the calorie value/energy values. Manufacturers fought against showing these contents until the mid to late ’80s.

Nowadays the fat, energy and sodium contents should be printed on most packets. Can you remember seeing low sugar/low fat/low calorie products in the shops.

Nowadays the list of foods supplied in these alternatives is endless. What a choice of polyunsaturated spreads we have, years ago it was either butter, lard or the hard block margarine, nothing else was available.

We didn’t even have sweeteners years ago. You either had sugar in your tea or coffee, or went without. Can you remember trying to get used to drinking without the sugar?

When sweeteners did first appear on supermarket shelves, the taste left in your mouth was awful, it was worth getting used to a drink with no sugar, rather than using sweeteners.

Can you remember how your face used to pucker? The improvement in sweeteners in the last few years has been amazing.?

Can you remember the first calorie booklet? They only contained a very basic list, nowadays the items they contain seems endless, they give well over 20,000 items.

You are now getting the help you need from food manufacturers and supermarkets. This help isn’t extended by Thornton’s, the ‘toffee and chocolate’ people, who refuse to divulge how many calories their products contain – I wonder why!!! But although dieting has been made easier (by that I mean shopping) always beware of items that tell you one thing, but actually mean another:-?

i.e. low fat could be high in sugar, low sugar could be high in fat
even ‘no sugar added’, means the sugar could be already included as NATURAL SUGAR

Dreaming
Can you remember a time when you had not got any spare pounds, or those extra inches. When the zip on your skirt did not resemble a caterpillar crawling up your backside. Your blouses fastened with no gaps between. When your arms did not look like they belonged to Hulk Hogan. Your legs were matchsticks, not things that could hold up Nelson’s Column.

Well I can, I was thin, all bone, no meat, no spare tyres, no bulges anywhere, I felt great ……… but then I was only seven!!

So use the products that will help you to diet, but be aware of what is printed on the label. If in doubt, bring the labels to class, preferably before you’ve eaten the contents!

Whilst we’re talking about the ‘good old days’, what about the different diets that have come and gone:-?

The Grapefruit diet – it was the miracle!!
The Liquid diet – not gin I hasten to add
The Cambridge diet – anyone can reduce to 450 calories (doughnut and chicken drumstick)
Slim Fast – I don’t wobble anymore!!
The F Plan diet – what a gas!!

Yet still they come, but getting more high tech!.

The slim whilst you sleep pills, the slimming patch, which will only work if you stick it over your mouth etc. etc.

Can you remember any others??