Can you eat right on holiday? Sticking to my Low Carb, No Crap™ plan, or any other healthy lifestyle, may seem impossible. But I believe it can be done. Here’s how Roy and I have been trying to do it… and sometimes even succeeding.
Covid-related lockdowns and other restrictions have had different effects on different people – and brought about varying results. Some turned to so-called comfort food, obeyed the anti-science instructions to hunker down indoors, and naturally put on weight and became unhealthier.
Others – like Roy and me – did the opposite. We’d started on my Low Carb, No Crap™ eating and lifestyle plan just before the axe fell in March 2020. Over the next 18 months, unexpectedly locked down in Western Australia, we got steadily slimmer (Roy) and healthier (both of us) than we’d been for decades.
Building immunity in WA… and beyond
Following the real science, not the arrant nonsense trotted out by governments and their so-called health authorities everywhere, we built up our immunity by doing what they failed dismally to advise people to do:
- Exercising outdoors, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine. Gyms closed, but Roy had his bike and his coastal path to Mullaloo, while I had running shoes and the gorgeous Burns Beach on my doorstep.
- Prepared wholefood meals from scratch using the amazing fresh produce, free range and pastured meat, poultry, fish and eggs that – unlike toilet paper – continued to be freely available in WA.
- Maintained high levels of Vitamin D, through full sun exposure and supplementation.
In fact, the restrictions on personal liberties – especially travel – did our health a favour.
Easier at home
Firstly, it’s a lot easier to eat right at home, and it can be really hard to do so in restaurants. Even when you choose the salad or veggies instead of the fries, you know they’ve used inflammatory PUFA (polyunsaturated) seed oils, instead of the butter, coconut oil or EVOO you’d use at home. The balance of macros is wrong, too: too much meat, not enough veggies. With restaurants being closed for a while, plus the limitations on gatherings, there was less temptation to eat crap, or to drink too much.
It helped that we have abstemious friends and family in Australia. While they like the occasional tipple, son Carl and his wife Carrie are not great drinkers, and the same goes for daughter Blaire who lives just 2km from us. Friends Blaine and Debbie, for example, will maybe have a glass of wine at dinner, and maybe not even that.
And if this sounds boring, so be it. We’ve been getting to bed earlier, enjoying a better night’s sleep, and waking the next morning bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to a round of applause from my Oūra ring. (Click here for my post about this amazing device.)
Low Carb, No Crap™ while driving across Australia
Even driving across Australia, as we did in October 2022, wasn’t too difficult. We stuck with the intermittent fasting, limiting our eating window to about 6-8 hours of the day; where possible, we chose accommodation with a kitchen or kitchenette, or at least a fridge for fresh stuff.
Most restaurants catering to the East-West truckies serve meals centred around a large portion of protein, be it barramundi (a delicious Aussie sea bass), lamb shank, steak, lamb chops, pork belly or whatever. You just double up on the veggies and (mostly) say no to the fries, however painful that may be. (Here, here and here are the three relevant posts from my other blog Travels with Verne and Roy.)
They say that as one door closes, another opens. It’s true. If we hadn’t been locked down in Australia, Roy would never have lost 35kg and regained his health and vigour. If we’d continued travelling non-stop like we used to, I would have been kept busy with that, and with my first blog. I wouldn’t have had the idea to start this blog, which I so enjoy doing.
But now…
On the road again – to Singapore
I suspected that resuming overseas travel would present a challenge, and it did. My first trip was a solo one to Singapore at the end of October 2022. The idea was to catch up with old friends, and with my colleagues at Expat Living magazine. (Click here for my travel blog on that trip, in Travels with Verne and Roy.)
And it was great! But when everything you eat is from a restaurant – be it from a hawker stall, a five-star hotel champagne buffet, or anything in between – it’s pretty difficult to toe the LCNC™ line. I mean, I had to have at least one curry puff from Old Chang Kee, didn’t I?
I also had to have some of the fragrant fried rice at Westlake Chinese restaurant, along with the butter-fried pepper crab, the crumbed prawns and the tender venison stir-fry. I couldn’t do a champagne brunch – and pay close on S$200 for it! – without my fair share of free-flowing Leroy Duval. And it would have been rude not to have a cocktail afterwards at Chijmes; or the delicious three cocktails and accompanying snacks at One Altitude Bar on Sentosa Island with EL colleagues one evening.
That week in Singapore was wonderful – but I paid the price for falling off the LCNC™ wagon. I could feel it. One of the main problems, of course, was having to fit so much partying into just a week.
And then, just nine days later, Roy and I boarded a plane to South Africa, our first trip there for close on three years.
On the road again – to Durban
5 Days with Dale in Durban – little chance of Low Carb, No Crap™
With my sister, Dale, coming to join me in Durban, those first five days were never going to be anything but gin-laced and curry-and-samoosa-filled. (Yes, in South Africa they’re samoosas, not samosas. And taste so much better for that.)
In between hosting a carb-heavy memorial high tea for our late mother, Sheila, and illegally sprinkling her ashes in the Botanic Gardens, I knew, we’d be indulging at favourite bars and restaurants.
3 Days with Sally at Brookdale Hydro, KZN Midlands
Dale’s return flight to London had hardly taken off before Roy, I and our friend Sally were heading for Brookdale Health Hydro in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, a top spot located about two hours inland from Durban. (See here for my travel blog post about our previous visit.)
That was our saving grace: three days of eating light, clean and yet delicious food, with no coffee and no alcohol allowed. To take your mind off wine, are accompanied walks, Pilates, yoga, aquacise in the indoor heated pool and health talks.
Any dietary deprivation is more than made up for by outstanding massages and other treatments delivered by highly qualified therapists. I cannot praise them enough – this time, it was Miosha who won my gratitude for her strong, intuitive and healing touch. Thanks, Miosha!
You get breakfast, lunch and dinner, two light snacks, and a constant flow of green, rooibos or camomile tea that you can garnish with lemon slices, fresh ginger or cinnamon. They work on 1,200 calories for women, 1,500 for men. (You are allowed to ask for seconds, but I didn’t see anyone doing that.)
Meals aren’t overtly low-carb – for example, Brookdale makes its own yoghurt bread and a much tastier gluten-free seeded bread, and we were served boiled baby potatoes with our smoked trout fillets for lunch one day – but it’s never more than about 15-20g of carbs at a time, so it’s effectively low-carb.
As weight loss wasn’t my goal, and I didn’t want to feel deprived, I took my own dark chocolate and raw mixed tree nuts with me. In fact, I hardly needed them, and Roy didn’t need them at all.
What he did crave, however, was coffee. Sally had sensibly started tapering off her usual morning cup of freshly ground two weeks before B-Day. After suffering through four days of headaches, she said, she felt fine. I usually have decaf, so I had no problem.
My name is Roy, and I am a coffee-holic
But Roy… poor Roy! How he suffered. Having cheerfully – even impudently – ignored my sage advice to prepare for Brookdale by gradually substituting decaf for full-caf, going cold turkey hit him hard. For the three days of our stay, he flopped around listlessly, nursing a sore head, miserably sipping on camomile tea, and barely managing to drag his sorry arse to the daily aquacise in the indoor heated pool.
First stop after leaving Brookdale was for a double-shot small flat white at Gowrie Village in Nottingham Road. It was like putting a new battery into the Duracell bunny – Roy was back!
Actually, I don’t think caffeine – even the occasional triple-shot coffee – does Roy much harm, if any. As for me, I’m generally better off without it. What I do love when I’m here in South Africa, though, is what we call a red cappuccino – strong rooibos tea run through an espresso machine and topped with hot milk froth. It’s de rigeur to drizzle honey on top.
10 Days in Umhlanga: Low Carb, No Crap™ under strain
We no longer have our own apartment at The Oysters in the beachfront resort town of Umhlanga Rocks, 17km north of Durban; we sold it in January 2021. (Highly recommended for a holiday rental, if pricey.) So Roy booked alternative accommodation for us at Lighthouse Towers in the middle of the main Umhlanga village strip. The one-bedroom apartment had everything we needed, including partial sea views from its little balcony.
There we were surrounded by myriad bars and restaurants such as: Butcher Boys steakhouse, Big Fish for seafood and sushi, Lupa Italian, The Med, Steak & Ale bar, Steak & Oyster, Joita’s Portuguese, Marco’s Italian, Chef’s Table fine dining, Olive & Oil, The Sugar Club at the Beverly Hills, various options at the fabulous Oyster Box, and at least a couple of dozen more.
Your own kitchen
To stay even nominally Low Carb, No Crap™, it helps to have to have your own kitchen. (The feature photo at the top of this post is me in our Lighthouse Towers apartment kitchen, looking particularly virtuous.)
Having three or four good supermarkets within a five-minute walk, you can have your favourite teas and beverages on hand. What is more, you can keep the fridge stocked with fruit and healthy snacks like cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, cheeses, seed crackers, nuts and biltong.
Luckily, it’s easy to buy low-carb, low-GI and gluten-free options in this neighbourhood. Spar supermarket at the Umhlanga Centre in Ridge Road is a great source, and two impressive new supermarkets were opened just last week at the impossibly ritzy Oceans Mall. One is an upmarket version of our beloved Woolworths; the other, a foodie’s fantasy version of the once-humble Checkers.
So, while we ate out a lot in Umhlanga, it was when we wanted to, not because we had to. What’s more, with dozens of restaurants to choose from, we found several low-carb options on their menus. (This is my hero Prof. Tim Noakes’ country, after all, where his Banting (low carb) diet is widely known and followed.)
Here are just a few examples:
At The Med, for example, they serve a super-satisfying Vegetarreneo omelette, filled with cheese and ratatouille. Their utterly delicious bunless burger comes on a bed of mushrooms and tomato and is topped with mozzarella, bacon and avo. (For either the omelette or the burger, expect to pay less than A$10.)
It helps that the cost of dining out is still so reasonable. At Butcher Boys on our last night, we had two superb 300g wet-aged ribeye steaks, a Roquefort salad, a side order of the ubiquitous creamed spinach and roast butternut. Add on a bottle of Kanonkop Kadette (a yummy Bordeaux blend) – and, I have to admit, a Dom Pedro* to share for dessert – and the bill was under R1,000, or about A$90.
(* The archetypal South African post-prandial drink, a Dom Pedro is about as far from LCNC™ as it could possibly be: creamy vanilla ice cream thickly whizzed up with Jamieson whiskey. We are only human, after all.)
Thank goodness we’re winging our way homeward now. We’ll have a few weeks to recover, for me to get back to the gym and for Roy to get back on his bike. And then the whole family descends on Perth, and all merry Christmas breaks loose!
