There was this guy on the radio a few weeks ago talking about a study he did into metabolism. So we're always told that to lose weight, we should eat less and exercise more, but according to his study, humans will burn the same amount of calories regardless of how much activity we do; you can run for an hour every day, or sit on your butt all day and you'll still burn the same amount. This is so disheartening. On the other hand, it made me look at the amount of calories I'm consuming. I have a massive weakness for crisps. I could easily eat a six pack in one sitting. At one stage in my life, I actually used to do so on a regular basis. Then I realised how ridiculous that was, and restricted myself to no more than two a day, which I mostly stuck to. And, oh boy, did the weight fall off. I was worried I would just waste away, but after a while it did stabilise.

After learning this fun new fact about metabolism, I started looking at the fat content of crisps, and it's a whopping 8.4g per pack. I honestly feel disgusted. I was eating 50g of fat in one sitting! How disgusting! A 100g serving of oven-baked chips contains less fat than a pack of crisps! Crisps 33.6% fat vs chips 4.3%. And you can reduce the fat of chips further by blotting them on kitchen towel. The reason I focus more on fat than calories is because of the findings of Dr Neal Barnard and The China Study, which shows that fat is the cause of type 2 diabetes, which runs in my family.

I also recently had cancer symptoms, which thankfully turned out to be something less serious, and it really made me think harder about what I was eating. I haven't used the deep fryer since January. All these things I was cooking by frying can actually be cooked in the grill. Yes, even my favourite chips! I haven't checked my weight recently, but my tummy fat has gone down. And even though exercise won't help shift the excess fat, it's still needed for good health.

On a related note, you should eat 30 different types of plant foods per week for a healthy gut biome. Despite my diet being 95% plant-based, I was actually quite far off the mark, and it did require a conscious effort to get there. My victory roll call:

Wheat, pumpkin seed, poppy seed, soya, potato, tomato, kale, broccoli, sweet pepper, carrot, maïs, flaxseed, mushroom, thyme, basil, blackcurrant, cherry, grape, blackberry, eggplant, chickpea, peach, oats, leek, parsley, oregano, sunflower seed, sesame seed, strawberry, peas.

The advice is 30 types, not 30 portions, so I'm counting the 3 or 4 peas that would be in the veggie fingers I ate, and that 5 types of fruit in one portion of fruit smoothie still counts as 5. I don't know if that's how it works. In any case, I would not have got that far without deliberately working to achieve it.

Fun fact! I typed this on a Dvorak keyboard and it's taken me 45 minutes.