Less food, again

*  The slow advance of weight gain has advanced enough to go on another bout of dieting.  5:2 diet has worked before, but I always go off it completely and don't go onto any maintenance regime of one day a week fasting (as Michael Mosley found necessary.)   This time, rather than getting annoyed at the slowing rate of weight loss (the first 2 to 3 kilos seem to come off quickly, then it slows down somewhat), I haven't even weighed myself (and haven't done so for about 3 months, I reckon.)   I'm going to see how I go with the general feeling of tightness of pants and shirts and play it by ear.  I will weight myself eventually (and then probably be depressed over the weight I must have been at the start.)

*  In a bad start to the dieting enterprise, my wife last night made a fantastically good pork roast with baked vegetables and a mustard cream sauce.  The vegetables were potato, pumpkin, red capsicum, and onion - apparently, apart from some olive oil, she added dried thyme, fresh rosemary, and (maybe this made the difference) some balsamic vinegar, and gosh, it came out nice.   And although I recently made a cream mustard sauce which I thought nice, hers involved brandy as well as wine and some parsley, and it was of deeper flavour for it.

*  One thing I have liked in the past about the 5:2 diet is that, at least at the start, it has given me a feeling of mental sharpness on the fast days.   Unfortunately, the focus of this ability eventually turns into speculating on getting more variety into what I can eat to get my 600 calories, and an inordinate amount of time reading food labelling in the supermarket.   For this reason, I'm wondering if I am better off just going on a tighter fast, for the first few weeks at least - pretty much just liquids (although I will still take a small amount of milk in my tea or coffee) and see how I go.    Or maybe just have one or two of those 300 cal shake mixes?  We'll see...