Jennifer Page's Blog, page 4

How I’ve changed my diet after reading Tim Spector’s The Diet Myth

For a few weeks, we’ve been trying to eat 10 portions of fruit and veg a day.

Then last week, I read Tim Spector’s book The Diet Myth in which he explores many common beliefs about diet such as whether vitamin tablets, fish oil and those little probiotic drinks are really good for you.

Losing weight, it turns out, isn’t just a question of eating less calories. For one thing, “our bodies simply seem to adapt to the new reduced calorie intake.” Plus we’re all different and we have different ...

Three books: The Kindness Project, The Diet Myth, Digger and Me

I’ve read several books this week – well, there’s not much to do these days and when a book grips me, I read and read and read until I finish it. And of everything I have read this week, The Kindness Project, The Diet Myth and Digger and Me have all really gripped me.

The Kindness Project by Sam Binnie tells the story of Alice, a reclusive academic from Cambridge who is summoned to a Cornish village after the death of her estranged mother. Once she’s there, she has the job of sorting out her ...

Gousto or Supermarket – which is better value?

I used to love Gousto boxes. During the first lockdown. I was missing eating out. What I really wanted was food that someone else had cooked but my husband wasn’t offering. So I ordered my first Gousto box. Okay, so I was still having to cook it, but someone else had assembled the ingredients and the dishes were a bit different from my normal fare.

We liked the recipes. A lot. Meat-free bulgogi, fish a la meuniere, sri lankan coconut dahl and chipotle mushroom burritos were just a few of our ...

Save the Cat

At the weekend, I read Katie Fforde’s latest book, A Springtime Affair. I have to admit, it wasn’t my favourite KF book but when a kitten was rescued in the very first chapter, it reminded me of Save the Cat! I doubt that Katie Fforde has read Save the Cat! but judging by the number of articles on the internet, it’s a very popular concept when trying to devise a plot.

The term Save the Cat! was coined by screenwriter Blake Snyder to describe the moment in a story when the protagonist shows th...

Motivation

People keep asking me about motivation which seems ironic: I’m the least motivated person I know.

How do you keep writing? Should you write every day, even when you don’t feel like it? Or wait for inspiration to strike?

In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert describes ideas as if they are beings in their own right. She describes them as having consciousness as they seek human partners to engage with. This seems far-fetched, unbelievable, yet that’s exactly how it feels to me when inspiration stri...