Leaving the Rat Race - The Mid Life Devil's Advocate View

It’s very tempting to think that we can give up our stressful (high paying) job and opt for a simpler way of life. As we travel through mid life, this option looks ever more appealing.

If we take a less stressful job (with less money) we won’t need to spend so much. No more commuting or expensive business suits. Let’s stop trying to keep up with the neighbours and friends and opt for a simpler way of life. We’ve seen most of the world so let’s explore our own country – we’ve always said that we would do that and it’ll be much cheaper than going to the Maldives again.

We can grow our own vegetables, keep chickens and pigs and make our own clothes. We can use green energy. We can cycle to most places, so we only need one car – maybe we don’t need a car at all.

This is all very ‘doable’ and lots of families have travelled this road before. There are many benefits and also a host of issues that you need to consider. The job of the Mid Life Devil’s Advocate is to help you to understand some of these issues. The Advocate isn’t trying to dissuade you from taking up The Good Life, just making sure that you’re aware of some of the ‘warts’.

So what is the Devil’s Advocate’s view of The Good Life? Here are some points to ponder:

• The first thing that you will consider is growing your own vegetables. See The Mid Life Devil’s Advocate’s earlier advice on growing your own.
•  If that doesn’t put you off, you’re made of stern stuff – excellent!
• You may consider keeping chickens to lay eggs and provide a Sunday roast. Your chickens will not lay eggs every day. Some days you will have no eggs, other days you may have several.
• If you want to breed your own chickens you will need a cockerel. Cockerels crow at first light. They will wake you up. They will also wake your neighbours up, who may not share your passion for chickens.
• When your eggs hatch, statistically, half of the chicks will be male, which don’t lay eggs. You can rear these to eat when they mature. This requires you killing them when the time comes. Your kids will probably have given names to all of the chickens and might be horrified when you tell them that ‘We’re having Brad Pitt for dinner on Sunday.’ They may never speak to you again when you kill their pets.
• After you’ve killed the chicken you have to pluck the feathers (ideally when the body is still warm). You then hang it up somewhere, out of reach of the cat and the local fox. Later, you have to cut off its head and feet and pull out its insides (which you can also eat). There is a lot of blood involved and it’s quite a smelly business, all in all. At least it teaches your kids where meat comes from – their pets.
• You may decide to keep a pig in the garden which will eat the family’s leftovers and which you can kill when it matures and enjoy gammons and hams.
• Pigs grow quite quickly and will, indeed, eat your scraps. They will also eat everything else in the garden and leave it looking like a ploughed field. They are very lovable (and very intelligent) and you may find that you can’t bring yourself to slaughter it. Your pig then becomes an expensive pet.
• You could also keep sheep for wool and lamb chops. They won’t turn your garden into a municipal replica of the Somme in 1915 (see Pigs above) but they will eat all of your flowers as well as the grass. They may also become pets if you can’t bring yourself to have them slaughtered.
• You will then have a source of wool which you can use to spin into yarn and make your own clothes. Very green and very worthy. Also very itchy.
• If you can bring yourself to have your sheep slaughtered, don’t ask for the head to be returned from the slaughterhouse with the rest of the meat (unless sheep’s eyes and brains are a particular favourite of yours). The kids will not be impressed.
• Soon you will want a shed. More expense. Rats live under sheds. Wasps often build nests in sheds. Wasps sting.
• Camping holidays can be great fun. Unless it rains every day and the kids are bored and need to be entertained. At that point, the Maldives look a very attractive option for next year (and probably no more expensive).
• When you take up cycling you get a very smug feeling inside. You’re getting fit and helping the planet at the same time by not driving your car. You soon realise that roads have hills that you’d never noticed in your car. It’s hard work. Your bottom begins to hurt as it rubs against the saddle. Then you get a puncture and it starts to rain. You push your bike home and open the scotch bottle.
• Having a wood burning fire is so good for the planet and you don’t need the central heating any more. In the winter, it’s great fun getting up in the cold, with frost on the windows, walking downstairs and lighting the wood burner. Within a couple of hours it’s almost warm enough to take off your thermal vest. Don’t forget to order more wood before your stock runs out.
• Your green windmill was a great investment and produces enough electricity to meet most of your needs. On windy days.
• Your compost heap will probably become home for a family of rats.
• Charity shops stock a wide range of clothes, mostly from dead people. Very reasonably priced.
• You can hang your washing out to dry in the garden rather than using the tumble dryer. Remember to take them in when it starts to rain and be prepared to wash off the bird poo.
• Bartering is worth exploring if you have skills to barter – if you have no skills to barter, keep your credit card handy.

If you are keen to adopt The Good Life, don’t let the Mid Life Devil’s Advocate put you off. The points above are all exaggerated (some more than others) to give you a real flavour of what’s in store for you. It is a commendable vision and if you are serious, go for it!

Good luck,

The Mid Life Devil’s Advocate

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The Keys to Successful Dieting in Midlife - or not! The Mid Life Devil’s Advocate View

Most of us would like to be slimmer and we have all (almost without exception) tried to lose weight at some point. Midlife is a time when we are prone to putting on weight and dieting becomes more important in our lives – at least for those of us who worry about these things.

So we do our research and find out which is the best diet for our own particular body and our own particular lifestyle. When I was doing my degree, some years ago now, one of my friends went on a ‘beer diet’. He didn’t eat for 5 days, but carried on drinking beer every evening. He did lose weight but this is definitely not to be recommended!

We might try the Atkins diet, the cabbage diet, the ‘this’ diet and the ‘that’ diet and we lose some weight. Hooray. So what’s the problem?

The job of the Mid Life Devil’s Advocate is to help you to understand the reality of dieting. The Advocate isn’t trying to dissuade you from dieting, quite the reverse. He just wants to give you the reality of what you’re contemplating.

So what is the Devil’s Advocate’s view of dieting? Here are some points to ponder:

• Statistically, most of us don’t keep our weight off when we finish our diets – so why bother?
• To maintain a constant healthy weight, men need 2,500 calories per day, women need 2,000 calories per day – not fair, but that’s the way it is.
• So anything more than this will be stored in the body as fat.
• All the things you like to eat are fattening – it’s one of the laws of nature:
• A Big Mac and medium fries (UK size) contains about 800 calories
• A Danish Pastry contains nearly 300 calories
• 100g of chocolate contains about 500 calories
• 100g of popcorn contains about 400 calories
• A traditional Christmas dinner contains about 1,000 calories
• A medium size tub of potato salad contains about 1,000 calories
• A decent BLT sandwich contains 800 calories
• A Caesar Salad (which you might expect to be low in calories) contains about 750 calories (it’s the dressing)
• On the other hand:
• An apple contains about 50 calories
• A portion of carrots contains about 15 calories
• You can see where this is going …
• You need to have a calorie deficiency of 3,500 calories to lose a pound in weight – so, if you’re a man and you eat 2,000 calories per day (2.5 decent Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwiches) you will lose 1lb per week. It’s a long haul.
• So willpower and staying power are important. Do you have will power?
• You will start off very confidently – then you get hungry.
• You won’t lose much weight in the first few days so you lose your enthusiasm.
• You decide to keep a food diary – you conveniently forget to write down the biscuits that you eat with your coffee.
• You do very well during most of the day and then start nibbling while you’re watching TV. And you don’t nibble apples …
• You decide to have just one alcoholic drink – then two, then three. Fun, but alcohol is loaded with calories.
• A bag of crisps (fries) has about 200 calories in it – that’s a small bag though, not the big ones!
• Cereals for breakfast are a healthy option and the adverts tell us that there aren’t too many calories in a portion. True, but not the portion size that you eat!
• You will lose weight if you use more calories than you consume. So you decide to do more exercise. This makes you hungry and you eat more.
• You join a Gym on January 1^st. On February 1^st your membership lapses.
• Exercise is hard work and you decide that, rather than exercise, you will eat less. This is hard work too.
• It’s the QUANTITY of food that counts. It’s all very well eating the right type of foods but you mustn’t eat large quantities of food. You know this but you still eat Seconds, sometimes Thirds.
• When you have friends for dinner you cook a lot of food, saying that you don’t want your guests to starve and any leftovers can be eaten the next day. You eat it all anyway, because it’s there, on the table, looking at you.
• You go out for drinks with your friends and you’re really good. Slimline drinks all evening. Then one of your friends suggests going for a curry or a kebab. Oh dear, all that effort wasted!
• You will soon start to believe that the bathroom scales are broken.

If you are keen to go on a diet, don’t let the Mid Life Devil’s Advocate put you off. The points above are all exaggerated (apart from the calorie contents) to give you a real flavour of what’s in store for you.

If you feel that you need to lose weight, then try to lose some of your excess pounds. Just understand that you’re in it for the long haul. It’s really about a lifestyle change more than a short term diet and you need to understand this. 

Try making some simple changes – stop having sugar in your drinks, use semi-skimmed milk, don’t eat after 8pm, only put butter/spread on one side of your sandwich (and not too much butter/spread either!) These are simple changes which add up.

Remember – taking in more calories than you use up will lead to weight gain. Pig out occasionally by all means, but make sure you restrict yourself afterwards to make up for it.

Good luck,

The Devil’s Advocate

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