Do clothes make the woman?

Why do we wear clothes?  First of all to preserve our modesty and, for those of you who aren't so modest, it is also to adhere to the law.  There are of course nudist beaches and resorts, but as the Naked Rambler knows only too well, wandering around without any clothes on in public can get you arrested and even imprisoned.

Apart from these reasons, I wear clothes to be comfortable and because I like the colour, pattern or shape of a particular outfit.  I also try to wear clothes that flatter me, which can be particularly challenging if you are  petite like me.  When I was younger and slimmer than I am now, I would often look in the children's department for clothes to fit me.  There are of course specialist brands, but that can limit your choices at times.  Even they can let you down, when you find that their perfect short trouser length has suddenly become a little longer!

As a petite whose waistline has decided to disappear, I have been looking at several style and fashion blogs for suggestions about which styles will suit my new figure.  Apparently a "column of colour" will help to slim me down and make me look taller, as will vertical lines. However no belts, no horizontal lines and no wrap dresses in future.  Oh dear!  Here are some examples of these from my current wardrobe:

Wrap around dress = No

Horizontal stripes and belt = No No

You know what?  Rules are made to be broken.  I like both these outfits and I feel comfortable in them, so maybe next time I buy a new outfit I will follow the rules for dressing as a petite.  Maybe.

Little and large

When I was a young women I didn't mind being petite, as I was petite in every direction.  However now that I'm older I am becoming petite and podgy, which is not a great look.  I blame my hormones: my Mum told me I was petite and podgy in my early teens when my hormones first started playing up.  I have been battling with middle age spread for several years, starting with the menopause, and I think I'm definitely on the losing side. 


Part of the reason why I would like to be slim again is that when you are just over 5' tall every extra pound around your middle shows.  My next post will look at ways of disguising this. 


The main reason though is that abdominal fat isn't good for your health, especially as you become older, so I am going to try out a new diet.  I know!  I have already blogged about not following fad diets, but this one sounds healthy to me.   


Here is a summary of foods to eat:


2 servings of cruciferous vegetables a day, which includes broccoli, asparagus, spinach, beetroot and radishes.


1 piece of citrus fruit plus at least one other piece of fruit a day.

2 servings of insoluble fibre a day, which includes wholemeal bread, barley, couscous, brown rice, whole-grain cereal and wheat bran, seeds, carrots, cucumbers, courgettes, celery and tomatoes.   That's ok for me, apart from the tomatoes!

Add a portion of protein to every meal, plus keep up your intake of calcium-rich foods such as cheese, yoghurt, almonds and skimmed milk.

Use olive oil or rapeseed oil for cooking and salad dressings.

Add 2-3 tablespoons a day of ground flaxseed or sesame seeds to smoothies, yoghurt or salads, or stir into cottage cheese or sprinkle over steamed vegetables.

Drink at least 8 glasses of water a day.

These are the foods to avoid: 

Foods high in saturated fats.

Refined or processed foods.

Caffeine - I already drink decaffeinated coffee, which tastes quite good here in Spain .

Soya products.  Spanish supermarkets aren't exactly overflowing with vegetarian food so this one is easy.

Alcohol.  Oh dear!  I live in Jumilla, which is the "city of wine".  The information I was reading did talk about the effect on the liver after two drinks a day, so maybe I will allow myself one glass of wine a day.  After all, there is a school of thought that says wine in moderation is good for your health!

I won't be eating less food over the next few weeks, but I will be following these guidelines.  I will measure my waist and stand on the scales today (the result will be a secret between me and my scales!) and check them in a few weeks' time.  The verdict will be published on this blog with one of the following titles:

My middle-age spread has miraculously disappeared; OR

Still little and still large!

Release your inner child

As adults - particularly when we are women of a certain age - we are supposed to be the mature and sensible ones.  We are expected to behave in a certain way, which for those of us with children means not embarrassing them.  My daughter Kate gave me a mug with the words "If you're not embarrassing your children, you're not enjoying yourself".  I don't know whether that was meant to inspire me to enjoy myself more, but that's the way I have taken it.

I should add one proviso: if you still have children at school, please avoid showing them up in front of their peers.  However my children are now adults and don't seem to mind if I behave in what might be considered an inappropriate way, such as embarrassing dancing.  I could win gold medals for dancing in an embarrassing way, but I love letting my hair down (not literally, as it's short) and showing off my moves on the dance floor.

I also adore going on a swing - and children have been known to wait patiently to take their turn while the sixty-year old woman tries to see how high she can swing.  I don't know what they think, and I don't care.  I am letting my inner child have a good time.

Adults playground in Haydon Bridge

A couple of years ago we went back to the UK for my nephew's wedding and stayed in Haydon Bridge for the weekend.  We could have stayed at Langley Castle Hotel where the wedding was being held, however the B & B in Haydon Bridge where we had the whole place to ourselves was more fun and a lot cheaper!  One of the highlights of the weekend was going out for a walk and discovering the playground in the photo - eventually my daughters had to drag me away!

What do you enjoy doing that could be considered child-like?  Do you ever release your inner child and have fun doing so?  It's a great way to relieve any stress and in my case it scores high on the feel-good factor.

My schizophrenic wardrobe

I've read lots of good advice on other people's blogs about building a stylish wardrobe - check out the links and you will see what I mean.  Several factors should be taken into consideration, such as your current lifestyle, your shape and your colouring, as well as personal preferences.  Organised ladies have several beautifully co-ordinated capsule wardrobes, which may include one for their working life if they haven't retired; a more casual selection of clothes for their leisure time and some glamorous clothes for nights out.  They group their clothes so that they can immediately see what top goes with whatever skirt or pair of trousers they plan to wear on a particular day. You can bet your bottom dollar that they never wail "I've got nothing to wear"!  I admire them, I would like to emulate them, but although the sensible me tells me to choose neutral colours and classic styles - the frivolous, irresponsible me says "Look at that gorgeous colour.  Don't you love that pattern?"  and another unsuitable purchase ends up in my wardrobe.

You can see what I mean if you look at this section of my wardrobe.  Lots of difference colours and patterns, with a token beige jacket as a gesture towards a capsule wardrobe.  Skirts mixed in with tops and jackets, none of them really going with each other, this is hardly a wardrobe to brag about.  Looking at this, would you have a clue what my personal style is?  I thought not.

Now that I work from home, I don't have many smart daytime clothes.  I guess I am a smart casual person at best, with a few clothes for going out, and mainly trousers and tops.  What does your wardrobe say about you?

Cutting Out Column 3 = Pounds Lost

Today I am very pleased to introduce Jacqui, from  "Fancy a coffee and a chat?" who kindly agreed to be a guest blogger.  Jacqui raises some very interesting points about the dangers of hidden fats.

Over the years my wardrobe has increased in size due the need to store a whole range of clothes in a whole range of sizes. When I put on a few more pounds which required the next dress size up, I hung onto my previous clothes for when I lost those few pounds and could get back into them.

It didn’t happen!

I played golf 3 times a week and walked 2 dogs 3 times a day, I walked miles and miles and miles. Surely this would shift those stubborn pounds.

It didn’t happen!

There seemed to be some magic correlation between the increasing years and the increasing dress size. I couldn’t reverse the trend. I was the heaviest I’d ever been and desperate not to move up into the next dress size.

Then it happened. Life hit me like a brick wall.

Routine tests after an accident, where, by some quirk of fate I actually drove into a brick wall with my car, showed me to have a higher than normal cholesterol level, my triglyceride were at +3. My doctor told me I needed to get that back to normal or they would put me on statins. I’d never heard of statins but as an ‘under 60 but getting there fast’ I felt too young to be taking medication long term for a condition that can be controlled by eating properly. All I had to do was dramatically reduce my intake of saturated fats.

I agreed that I would try and turn it around in 3 months and scheduled a follow up cholesterol test for the end of September.

As soon as I got home I fired up my laptop and started to read up on saturated fats. I needed an easy reference to foods I could have and more importantly, those I needed to avoid. I found this list:  http://www.patient.co.uk/health/Low-Fat-Diet-Sheet.htm

I got my husband onside with my new eating regime and we went shopping for wholemeal bread, pasta & rice. We bought Quorn to replace mince in spaghetti bolognese. We bought a sack of potatoes and baked them all so I only needed to reheat in the microwave. We bought a block of Edam and grated the entire lot and stored in the fridge so I could have a little sprinkling of cheese when the need arose. (Oh how I love cheese, I miss cheese but I’m learning). I replaced bacon rashers with turkey rashers, vegetable oil with sunflower oil, margarine with high polyunsaturate spread. I checked every label for the content of saturated fat. It took 3 times longer to do our shopping but in the end I had food for a week that was as low in fat as it could get.

The recommended daily intake of saturated fat for an adult woman is 20gms. I had been seriously over this amount. For example, when I sat down with a good book, a frothy coffee and 2 short bread fingers, I was having over 12 gms of saturated fat. More than half my daily allowance in 2 biscuits! We had been buying a frozen fruit lattice pudding from the supermarket. It didn’t seem that big and we would have half each with a little drop of cream after dinner sometimes. I looked at the label, each serving was 6 gms of saturated fat, not too bad until I read one serving was one sixth of the pudding, we were having half each – a staggering 18 gms of saturated fat in one pudding, not even a whole meal.

Wow!

And so, for 4 weeks I have lived a low fat diet. I don’t count calories, I don’t weigh food, I don’t measure portion sizes. I have simply cut out anything from column 3. I have loads from column 1 and I have column 2 in moderation.

I am not hungry. I am not bored with my meals and I am not constantly thinking of food. I have found a  fat-free recipe for banana cake where the banana is used instead of fat and apple sauce is used as a sweetener. I have found a no-fat recipe for chocolate brownies which means I can have something nice with a coffee when I get the cravings.

And I drink water instead of fizzy drinks. I have more than trebled my daily intake of water.

And the result – I have dropped a dress size in 4 weeks. At first I kept a daily diary of everything I ate, but now I know what I can eat and don’t feel I even need to keep a record of it.

Today I’ve had:

Breakfast – muesli with fresh fruit (sliced banana & strawberries) and semi-skimmed milk

Lunch – roast chicken salad sandwich (brown bread of course, no margarine, no salad dressing)

Dinner – Salmon fillet with vegetable stir-fry and asparagus follows by low-fat yoghurt.

And as a reward for writing this I can now look forward to a coffee and a slice of banana cake.

It really is that simple. Today I wore a blouse and a pair of trousers that have not been out of my wardrobe in over 2 years. I have a new set of clothes that haven’t cost me a penny.

Finally I have broken the relationship where my size increases with my age.

Finally, it did happen!

And it feels really, really good.

Thanks, Jacqui, for your inspiring words.

Does dieting make you fat?

Many women notice that their weight starts to gradually increase once they have gone through the menopause, and in particular that their waists are thickening.  Some women accept this with resignation "it's normal at my age" and start filling their wardrobes with baggy clothes.  There's nothing wrong with this, as the important thing is to feel comfortable both with your body and with what you wear.   In particular do not get stressed about your weight - stress is bad for your blood pressure!  As we get older, we usually look better if we are slightly over-weight rather than being thin to the point of looking haggard.  The only danger is in being too complacent and allowing your weight to increase to the stage where it becomes a health risk.

Other women's reaction is that it's time to go on a diet.  If you decide to do this you are spoilt for choice and your main problem is deciding which of the latest diets is the most suitable for you.  How about the 5-Factor Diet, supposedly followed by Lady Gaga, Megan Fox and Kate Beckinsale?  Maybe you like the sound of the Zone Diet or South Beach Diet, both of which are also favoured by many celebrities?  The Dukan Diet has its followers, and of course there are the old favourites, Weight Watchers and Slimming World.  The best overall diet of 2012, according to 22 experts in diet and nutrition in the US, is the DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) and the Mediterranean Diet is also ranked highly, which is good news for those of us living in Spain!

Wait a minute though before you begin your brand new diet - and reflect on the title of this post: Does dieting make you fat?  Surely it makes you slim? Geoffrey Cannon wrote a book in 1983 with the title "Dieting makes you fat", which became an international best-seller.  The basic premise was that, although initially you lose weight on a diet by consuming fewer calories, dieting also lowers your metabolism, meaning you are more likely to put on weight again.

This goes back to the days of our cavemen ancestors when our bodies were programmed not to starve.  If you don't eat enough food, your body tries to conserve its fat stores by lowering your metabolism until you get enough food again. When you get back to eating normally after a diet, this lower metabolic rate means you usually put the lost weight back on again and sometimes you gain even more weight.  So you then decide to go on yet another diet.  Yes, it's that infamous yo-yo effect.

Even worse, diets that exclude specific food groups may be endangering your long-term health.  Low fat diets, for example, can ignore the fact that our bodies need a minimal amount of fat to be healthy and that some fats are actually essential for good health.  High protein diets diets may be fine for short-term weight loss but long-term they can be prejudicial for your health.

Most diets are based on the simple premise that if calories consumed are greater than calories burnt, you are going to gain weight.  If on the other hand calories consumed are less than calories burnt you should lose weight, the problem being that the emphasis is usually on consuming less calories, with just a passing reference to exercise, and too many diets start with a very restricted phase one.

I am not medically qualified and I am not a dietician, however many so-called dieting "experts" are no more qualified than I am to advise you.  What I do know from my research is that a combination of healthy eating and exercise is the best method of gradually losing weight and then maintaining a healthy weight for life and that the worst thing you can do is go on a crash diet.  Losing weight slowly and healthily should be your aim, combined with a sensible exercise programme.  If you have a particular health problem such as high blood pressure or diabetes, consult your doctor as well as looking on specialised websites such as these:
http://www.bhsoc.org/Healthy_Eating.stm and
http://www.diabetes.org.uk/Guide-to-diabetes/Food_and_recipes/.

I would love to hear about your dieting experiences and welcome any tips to help others.

I've got nothing to wear!

I've got nothing to wear!  Any male readers who stray into this blog by mistake will no doubt raise their eyebrows at this statement, especially if they have a wife, daughter, mother or lover (hopefully not all four!) with a wardrobe bulging full of clothes.  So what triggers this cry of woe?  What are the reasons why so many of us feel that we have nothing to wear?


1.  I've got nothing to wear that fits me. 

Unless you wake up in the morning to find that you've grown several dress sizes overnight or (even less likely) that you have miraculously shed your excess weight while sleeping, this is highly unlikely to be true.  Of course you may be a hoarder like me and have lots of clothes in your wardrobe that used to fit you ten years ago but are way too small now.  If so, it's time to be ruthless: give any that are still in  good condition to the charity shop and throw away the rest.  If you can squeeze into some clothes but they are bursting at the seams, either start exercising and eating sensibly until they fit you or follow the previous advice.  If you have lost weight, then see if you can alter the clothes to fit you properly or if, like me, you're no seamstress get a professional to do it for you.


2.  None of my clothes are suitable for my current lifestyle.  

This may be true if you have a wardrobe full of clothes that were suitable when you worked in an office and you have now retired.  My life is a lot less formal now that my only job is sitting in front of a PC at home, so I have gradually replaced my suits with more casual outfits.  I have kept a couple of suits though that can be worn as separates with my casual clothes, so use your imagination before discarding everything as unsuitable.

3.  The colours don't suit me.

I can't wear this old thing again!

Well this could be true, especially if you are prone to making impulse purchases in the sales!  Also, as we grow older, colours that we used to be able to wear easily can sometimes start looking a bit too bright, or maybe a bit too dull, for our colouring.  You may be able to disguise this by wearing a scarf in more flattering colours near your face, or by putting a cardigan in a colour that suits you over the offending garment.  Also, beware of colour analysis.  I had my colours "done" twice: the first time was when a work colleague recommended someone, and the consultant told me I was a Winter; the second time was when I was made redundant from a different job and I had a free colour analysis, and this consultant told me that I was an Autumn.  Hmm.  Luckily I didn't buy lots of new clothes based on my colour swatches, as I realised that some of the colours did nothing for me, otherwise most of my wardrobe would have been suffering from this symptom!  There are of course professionals out there who do give good advice, but don't take it all as gospel.

4.  I'm bored with my clothes.

This could very well be the real reason behind your complaint.  It's too easy to thrown on the same clothes every week and wear them in exactly the same way.  Why not lay out your usual outfits on your bed (if the bed is big enough!) and see if you can change them around a bit, or get a few different items out of your wardrobe to wear with them?  If you usually get dressed in a hurry, it's all too easy to put on the red top that you always wear with that particular black skirt or pair of trousers.  Find a different coloured top and you won't feel bored any more, as you will now have a brand new outfit.

Any other reasons why you have nothing to wear?  Please share them with us.