Janus - a new year conundrum

The Christmas cards are ready to recycle, decorations packed away and the potted hyacinths are blooming. They fill the sitting room with a sweet aroma. 

I’ve managed a few walks since festive excesses forced the dial on my bathroom scales in a northerly direction. Subsequently my knee has complained. Perhaps I forgot, in my post-Christmas slumbers, to warm up before taking exercise.

Next week my routine - 9000 steps daily, weekly swimming & 3 sessions of HIIT & resistance work  - will restart. This week I’m exercising but not swimming.

And today, in my quest for new year fitness, I read we should all be eating 30g fibre daily. 

This is roughly what 30g looks like:-

■   half a cup of rolled oats - 9g fibre

■   two Weetabix - 3g fibre

■   a thick slice of brown bread - 2g fibre

■   a cup of cooked lentils - 4g fibre 

■   a potato cooked with the skin on - 2g fibre 

■   half a cup of chard (or silverbeet in New Zealand) - 1g fibre

■   a carrot - 3g fibre

■   an apple with the skin on - 4g fibre
                                                                   (BBC News)

For someone who hasn’t been weaned off carbs the above fibre-rich foods are ideal. But I rarely eat wheat-based carbs and packaged goods such as Weetabix nor wholemeal bread or potatoes. 

Every morning I do eat a cup or more of rolled oats with blueberries. As a wholemeal substitute I eat German rye bread and I’ll have to rethink the potato. That’s my new year conundrum. That’s why January is so named. Like Janus I feel pulled in two directions.

And I never buy The Daily Mail. Except for this week. Michael Mosley has placed a daily pull-out ‘The Fast 800 diet’ in the rag - for one week only. His methods and notions about ditching carbs have worked for me and his articles are very helpful and diets doable. My blood sugar and blood pressure are much better than they were when I was immobile. And his high protein/ low carb approaches have also done the business for me.

But I haven’t eaten wholemeal bread, the simple spud nor pasta since last Easter. If I am to up my fibre intake I will have to rethink. Maybe eat another apple a day, fill myself up with rye and take larger bowls of porridge. I’m happy to indulge in an extra raw carrot and we have chard growing in the garden.

It isn’t easy sticking to new year’s resolutions and I don’t want to undo my low carb regime in order to up my fibre intake. But it is a conundrum. As is buying The Daily Mail. What strange habits we foster when trying to renew ourselves. Today's Guardian front page shows that the low-carb diet may have to go to make way for higher fibre intake. It's unlike me to favour what I read in The Mail over The Guardian but I'm sticking with Michael Mosley. Low wheat, low sugar but high fibre. That's the conundrum.

Happy new year!