Here's the Video - CeraVe

I managed to find a video that Hyram did on his channel comparing CeraVe (I only realised the V was upper case like YESTERDAY... sorry) to Cetaphil. 

My understanding is that Cetaphil is all about saving the sensitive skin - it has really basic ingredients with absolutely no nothing extras so as not to irritate your skin or cause any reactions, so if you have very reactive skin, then that's probably the line for you. 

But if maximum moisturization is what you're after (like I am with the "shin-scale" issue - thanks Jz) then CeraVe is the way to go. 

Here's the video, or CLICK THIS LINK. 

Hashtag Save my Shins

I used to have super dry scaly skin on my shins, I'd had them forever. I'd all but given up on them, really, cos nothing seemed to work. Over the decades I've had this in varying degrees - but it has always been dry enough that when I run my fingernail over it it leaves a white line. Yup. Super dry. (I say "used to" cos they're not super dry and scaly no more. Whoopee!)

Pic taken off the web

On really bad days it looked like the picture above. Not fun. That's usually when I panic and slather on all the creams and petroleum jelly. 

Recently the boss saw my scaly legs and recommended a ceramide cream. Its magic I tell you. After using a very gentle moisturizing coconut scrub (that's meant for face!) I chucked some hyaluronic acid serum on my legs and then slathered the cream over it. By the next morning there was no more tight, dry feeling. It was actually feeling (and looking) tons better. 

While this cream is a local product that's mostly only available from derms and GP clinics, talks with the pharmacist near my place revealed that there is a very similar product from Cerave. The Moisturizing Cream, according to him, is "like for like". 

And it's NOT as expensive, plus more easy to get one's hands on. Well, one can buy it online in where-I-live and at certain pharmacies. But according to what I hear, it's readily got from drugstores across the US and UK. So here's me recommending this for the upcoming winter months (Aussie and NZ friends, keep this in mind when winter comes around for you in half a year's time!) if you typically have problems with dry flaky skin during the cold season.

While the skin on my shins is smoother and calmer, the distinct polygonal lines can still be seen, albeit without the dryness that used to accompany them. This, my boss says, will take about a month to slough off and then I'll see some new smoother skin come up to the surface by then. 

I just gotta keep on applying the stuff (or a lanolin cream... which is also very good for maintaining the skin barrier and preventing trans-epidermal water loss) and not get lazy with the scrub/serum/cream regimen. 

Hopefully by then I won't have to do a 3-step program and can scale it back (excuse the pun) to just a nightly cream.

(Yes, it's good for a night face cream too!)

The Waffle Place and NO Waffles - and a Pretty Mask

BIKSS ordered this house salad with smoked salmon. It has all the bitter lettuces (I'm not a fan) so I picked at the non bitter ones and had some of the fish and fruit. It's a honey place - they harvest their own - and the dressing was really fragrant. 

Then we had the panko chicken with truffle sauce on a bed of spinach.. which was awesome! I think this is my favourite dish from this restaurant. The same restaurant which is my new favourite waffle place. But we didn't have any waffles cos we're dealing with the elevated glucose right? Still, it was a good meal!

I'm happy to announce that since he's been on his diet, he's lost 7 kg and for the second time in a row (we test about once a week now - so this is the second test in two weeks) his pre- and post-prandial glucose readings have been normal. I'm really happy that it didn't take too long for us (ok, HIM) to see good results from the change in food habits. 

And on the topic of weight loss, the advice given by my doctor is that perhaps he should be aiming for a slightly lower BMI than his current number, and hopefully that'll help with his pressure too. 

So BIKSS has been shopping for a watch to reward himself with once he reaches his weight goal. He has about 4kg to go and I'm certain he can get there! 

Meanwhile, I've been stressing out about the masks that we're required by law to wear when leaving the house. The company that makes the ones I have seem to have messed up their sizing. When I ordered more of the L sizes they came out super huge, huger than the ones that BIKSS has currently (and HIS were supposed to be L too!). 

So we've done some swapping and I've done some measuring and now things are looking better, only I couldn't stand looking at the boring navy blue ones day in day out, so I went and ordered one from an online marketplace type shopping app. 

This is what it looks like. I'm really happy with it. It's a bit warmer than the everyday ones I wear, but perhaps I could wear it on date nights! 

It's reversible with the other side sporting a flat cheery gold colour. There's a slot for a filter but I'm not going to bother with that as the numbers have come way down and everyone's just supposed to still be wearing masks as a precautionary measure. 

First it was "wear a mask - so you don't catch it". Now it's "wear a mask - cos it works and you didn't catch it". 

So if I have to wear a mask on date nights to a nice restaurant, at least I can wear a pretty mask, thank you very much!

Watch It

This arrived in the post today. I knew BIKSS was getting it for me. I didn't expect it so soon.

It's gorgeous - and I absolutely love it!

(It's a Fossil FTW5066 Hybrid Smartwatch)

We Ate at a Pizza Hut and An Uncertain Cum

But we ate no pizza. And we were BOTH very surprised by how tasty and well made everything was. In the past, Pizza Hut wasn't the kind of establishment anyone went to if they wanted to eat real food. 

I might have to pull it out of the "never" box and put it in the "perfectly good dinner venue" box.

We ate a chicken salad...

and calamari rings...

... and meatballs with cheese and tomato sauce... 

which was so pretty bubbling in the pan that I took a video.

Preprandial reading for BIKSS was 4.7 that night.

Postprandial was 6.5.

We are both ecstatic! Me more than him, possibly. I'm so so super proud of the hard work he's put in over the last 30 days!

Now we'll just have to stick to this for another month or two, and then I think if everything is stable he can ease up slowly. 

My boss suggested testing his pancreas function by letting him have a meal of pancakes. HA! NO. Not in the next 6 months anyway. I doubt one's ill pancreas can bounce back to normal within just a couple of months. So that's a definite maybe but not anytime soon. We'll have to see how it goes in the meantime. 

He has been trying to walk a bit more too, especially after meals.. so that might be contributing to the better glucose management as well. 

Then we ALMOST didn't have sex. But we did. 

I was upset that these days by the time dinners are over and groceries are bought, it's usually late-ish when he comes back to my place. 

And since I'm used to long 2-hour work-me-up sessions (plus the perimenopause, plus the lack of spanking...) it feels very "rushed" for me and I guess part of me stresses that I can't get into it *enough* and that makes things worse you know? Yes. You know. 

Anyway, we did. Cos eventually I threw a 'faux' fit, more like a lament... and grabbed the blankie and pulled it over my face while I whined.

Which somehow signaled to him that he should pull off my undies and start licking my girlie bits. Ok, I'm not sure how MUCH that got me going, but it got me going enough. 

Midway through fucking he announced he would be quite happy to put Roger in my mouth and cum there. That suited me just fine. 

He pulled out, got up to my face, started fucking my mouth, and I felt the cum flow down my throat. 

So when he announced "Well I guess that didn't work" I was really surprised. 

Did you not just cum? I thought.  He went back to pussy and started pumping away... but um, there was no cum to be had.

That's when I told him I tasted him earlier, and felt the cum flow down my throat, when he was fucking my mouth. 

He stopped, perplexed, cos it wasn't his usual type of cum, and so he wasn't sure cos he didn't feel the jerky spasms, and well, it was all down my hatch so he didn't see any evidence of it either did he? 

"I can still taste you in the back of my mouth, if you wanna try and see if you can taste yourself you could kiss me and stick your tongue as far in as it will go... "

He actually took me up on that offer. 

No. He didn't taste himself in my mouth. I guess it was really far far back! 

But what a strange sexcounter that was for both of us!

The Cheapest and Dearest Dinners Last Week

Early last week we went to an area renowned for having a gazillion light and fan shops cos I wanted to replace my ceiling fan. It was making weird noises and I thought I'd better sort it out before it collapsed on me. 

While there we popped into the no-fuss food court for dinner. Cheapest meal yet. 

Spring rolls, barbequed wings and xiao long bao. Low carb, healthy-ish (nothing was deep fried, in any case) and very satisfying. 

The spring rolls are NOT the Vietnamese type - click HERE for more info / ingredients / pics. It's easy to get in a lot of local eateries, doesn't cost more than $2 each normally, and is light enough that dieters LOVE choosing this as a meal option. This pic doesn't do it justice - I was almost finished with mine before remembering to take a photo. 

BBQ chicken wings are also very popular here. Watch the video to see how it's done INDOORS! Amazing. 

And xiao long bao is a Chinese dumpling that's supposed to have meat AND soup wrapped in a wanton skin. However ours didn't seem to be as juicy as expected. Click the link in the name to read more about it. 

Total cost - $18 (inclusive of a sugarless iced tea for BIKSS and oldenlandia drink for me - click the link for a video explaining what it is).

It turns out that after BIKSS came by to listen to my fan, he declared that it wasn't going to fall on me and that I didn't have to change it if I could live with the sound. And wouldn't you know, the next day the sound disappeared. Tsk. 

After that simple but delicious meal in the everyday-lands BIKSS decided last Friday that we would go to the laguna where the rich people park their yachts and have dinner at one of the restaurants along the boardwalk.

The food was good, but pricey. I suppose the cheaper dinner balanced out this $80 meal. It's meant to be an Asian cuisine restaurant with a slightly more Japanese slant.

Grilled Barramundi in Soy Sauce

Stir fried vegetables with fungus and king oyster mushrooms

Deep fried crab cakes with miso sauce 

(which turned out to be battered soft-shell crab... but I'm not complaining)

I wasn't particularly impressed with dinner, but BIKSS enjoyed it quite a bit. I mean, it was alright, but I wouldn't pay 80 bucks for that. 50 maybe. 

After that we had a hot chocolate (for me) and camomile tea (for him) at another restaurant... and it'd been a while, but I really enjoyed just hanging out and chatting about everything and anything - and people watching - with BIKSS. 

It just felt like a proper date night! LOL. 

Beauty Rx and Red Light Therapy - Ingredients 101

I've decided that I shall invest in a red light therapy device. 

This is the one I've got my eye on. If anyone has had any experience with such technology PLEASE leave a comment, I'd love to hear your thoughts. I've seen some reviews and this seems to be somewhere in the not too expensive yet still pretty effective range. 

The reason I decided to go this route is cos a HIFU treatment would probably cost me about $700. And it basically does the same thing - stimulate collagen production. (Nasolabial folds, friends. I haz them.) 

Does the tech work? Yes. Will this one work as quickly? Probably not. But it's 1/8 the price and can be done painlessly (HIFU hurts a little, from what I hear) and at home. Cons - I have to be consistent. But if it's a portable device and easy to use, I don't see that being a problem. 

While having a chat with my aesthetic medicine specialist (aka skin doctor) at where-I-work, I learned a few key things about skincare. If you use nothing else, use these (and yes they have been listed in order of importance).

1) Vit C and E and Ferulic acid (if you can get a combination product) is probably one of the best things you can put on your face in the morning. 

1.1) If not, then just a Vit C + E combo will also be really beneficial and synergistic.

1.2) And if that isn't something that you can come by, at the very least, slap on a Vit C solo serum. She believes this is the MOST important thing you can put on your face. (Dr Youn says the same thing.. so I suppose 2 doctors can't be wrong.)

2) Niacinamide is probably the other thing you want to add to your skincare routine if you want to add something after the Vit C. It works wonders, does everything except wash your shoes, and is well tolerated by almost all skin types. You can read this if you want to dive deeper into studies about niacinamide. Or just refer to this table which was taken from HERE: 

3) Retinoids. Even tho under the column on significance it says "limited data", that doesn't mean the data we have isn't impressive. This is because most studies are concerned with the efficacy of prescription-grade retinoic acid,  however, it is worth noting that studies involving retinol and retinaldehyde do also show that there are improvements in the appearance of wrinkles, hyperpigmentation, and in the case of retinol (which is probably the easiest form to get hold of in a skincare product) biopsies show an increase in glycosaminoglycan expression (this holds tons of water and supports collagen and elastin in your skin) and procollagen I (which is the precursor to collagen). 

And the thing that helps in collagen synthesis is Vit C. So ta da! 

In skincare circles, retinoic acid (the prescription grade type, not regular retinol) is listed as the 2nd most important ingredient to combat ageing - after sunscreen. YES SUNSCREEN. 

Which is why I've gone a little bit crazy in my search for the perfect sunscreen. And by a little bit I mean VERY.

The Purito I had has now found a new home on BIKSS' work table. He's diligently slapping some on his face daily, especially since he has windows on one entire wall of his office and sometimes goes out to lunch in the worst mid-day sun! Our UV index goes up to 16, 17 even, cos we live on the equator!

For a quick look at the UV index where I live, here's a graph- 

I picked up the COSRX to replace the Purito (wanted to try a different brand cos the reviews say the texture is light and the green tea is fantastic) but while it's pretty good, I do find that the white cast can take a while to disappear, and it doesn't glide so good. So I thought, why not tinted sunscreen. Sukin was on sale a while ago here, and I picked up two tubes (one for me and one for BIKSS) at 30% discount AND an additional $5 off for ordering via the store's app. 

The colour and texture are fine. The smell tho - it's got a really sharp and pungent rose scent - like when the flowers are OVER ripe(?) ... altho I'm sure that's not the right word for it. You know what I mean?

When a flower has gone past the "light delicate scent" stage and begins to die I suppose. Or like when you walk into a shop that sells dried flowers and that sharp scent hits you at the back of your nose. Whatever it is, I'm eager to get done with it and move on. I'm not going to waste it, but you know... I've started looking for another tinted sunscreen. (The one I got for BIKSS isn't tinted btw, and I've asked him to open it and take a sniff but he hasn't yet.)

So the hunt was on for another tinted sunscreen - and I ended up with this one from Luxe Organix - Filipino brand made in Korea.

According to sites like Skincarisma and Incidecoder it isn't likely to upset my skin, and since I'm not sensitive to fragrance I really don't mind that it does contain some aromatic ingredients. At least I won't have to suffer the smell of dead flowers. 

It's mostly free of the bad stuff like alcohol and sulfates and parbens, which is good enough for me. And I'm not too worried about silicones cos from a science / chemistry perspective they're really not as bad as the web has made them out to be. Most disintegrate in under 2 years, and while they're not biodegradable they ARE still degradable. AKA - we're good.

Here's a good video explaining the science behind silicones and myths getting busted!

Today whilst ordering some of mum's supplies from a popular local pharmacy I discovered (yes, I practically rubbed my hands in glee!) they were having tons of discounts and promos on everything (because it's 10/10!) and they now have exclusive distributorship of Dear Klairs products in my country. 

cleansing oil

Prior to this, as far as I could tell, I could only get this online and have it shipped from somewhere else. This would involve extra cost for delivery and currency conversion fluctuations. So of COURSE I had to take advantage of the sale, and picked up a cleansing oil (mine's about to run out) and yet another sunblock - this time a super light weight one with semi-matte finish which I'm hoping will do the job! We're talking about 40% off here, folks. PLUS free shipping cos we bought lots of stuff and qualified for free home delivery.

sunblock

And now I have to get back to more webinar videos. I'm sorry about this long ass post. I didn't realise how much I was going on and um, it seems I tend to geek out on specific topics :) Let it not be said that there's nothing to be learnt on this blog hahaha. 

More Work and Mid Autumn Festival

I'm procrastinating. I have more webinar videos to get through and I told myself I would buckle down and get to them today. But guess who spent the morning baking granola bars and bread pudding in the kitchen and is now HERE writing a post instead of ploughing through videos.... LOL

It seems all the usual events / festivals are passing us by this year, what with not being able to move about in groups or congregate in large numbers. The mid-autumn festival went by with barely anyone showing off their lanterns (which is the traditional thing for kiddies to do here) and even the gardens and usual parks that have annual huge-ass lantern light-ups were but a tiny blip on social media this year. I had totally forgotten about going to see the sights until a friend posted some pics on facebook. Needless to say, we didn't visit the lantern display. 

In fact, I barely had any mooncakes too. Which is good, in a way, cos they're all nothing but sugar and carbs... but STILL! We usually make a trip across the border to buy tons of the stuff. But seeing as how Covid is still rampant over there, and there are quarantine orders on both sides of the border, it just wasn't possible. 

We did drive past Chinatown and here is the ONE LONE PICTURE I have to remember this year's mid-autumn festival by.

The female figure at the top of the moon (big yellow disc) is supposed to be Chang'e - that's pronounced chung (rhymes with hung) er (rhymes with her) - and you can read more about this Chinese moon goddess here.

More Like A Health Food Blog

 ... is what I've become. 

But it is what it is. 

Last week we tried a new poke bowl type place. It wasn't fantastic. I think we will go back to THIS PLACE if we ever want to have something like that for dinner. Even the tofu bowl we had (NOT my favourite) was still better than the new place.

Plus they didn't have size options and I felt it was just a bit too much for me, while not being quite big enough to feed both of us. 

I had the fish and avocado with shrooms and spinach leaves, and BIKSS had the chicken with romaine, feta and broccoli. The sauce didn't cut it I think. My sesame soy dressing was just too salty. 

The good thing about THAT date was that the mother wasn't home (she went to the sister's house) so we got in a little spanking before dinner. My butt is hopeless. We hadn't had any spanky play time in so long that everything HURT!

ARGH. 

Last Friday's dinner was way better. 

We picked a voucher for a place then on the way there realised we'd eaten there once before. That fancy place in town is also part of the same group of restaurants. 

Well then, at least we know the food's good. 

As it turns out, they recently changed chefs so while it wasn't exactly the same as what we'd eaten before, it was still good. I preferred the new version of their Greek salad, altho BIKSS liked that the old one had a stronger flavour.

We also had some really yummy stuffed jalapenos and a grilled salmon for our main. We ordered a keto version but when I got round to the skin at the end of the meal I realised it was sweet. Turns out the chef forgot and just went ahead and drizzled the honey lemon glaze over top. Ah well. Not a huge deal in the end. I ate half of it. and BIKSS didn't have any carbs the rest of the day so it was ok I suppose.

He did another blood test the day after, my boss confirms the pre-diabetic diagnosis, but he also think's I'm mad because 2 weeks is totally NOT long enough to reverse these numbers, he says. Give it 3-6 months he says. Fine fine fine. I shall be patient. 

Meanwhile BIKSS just has to be diligent about sticking to it. And I'm trying to get him to walk a bit more. Not necessarily the "get into workout gear and walk / job for an hour" type of walk, but you know, MOVE around. 

Also, I found this website and I think it has really easy to understand info and tips. 

The Best Prediabetes Diet for 2020

I don't know why a 2020 diet would be different from a 2019 diet... but okaaaaay.... 

I also copied this off a website somewhere but for the life of me I can't find it now. Still, good info here:

While many studies have shown that small amounts of regular exercise can reap huge benefits for people of all ages and fitness levels, a study published in The Lancet found that just 15 minutes of moderate physical activity - like taking a short walk - can increase life expectancy by 3 years and lower the risk of death by 14 per cent. This is the least amount of physical activity you can do to gain any health benefit. Also, a small study found that taking a short 15-minute walk three times a day (after breakfast, lunch and dinner) can help lower blood sugar levels compared to a 45-minute walk at another point during the day.

And there you have it. Walk. Get moving. Just 15 minutes a day is still very beneficial. Both for glucose levels AND triglyceride levels - this plays a huge part in a person's potential to have elevated glucose levels in the future. (This is why when I had sky high TGs my doctor told me to "eat like a diabetic". It worked.)

And with that, I shall leave you. Have a good week everyone. 

I'm meeting BIKSS for dinner tomorrow, I suppose I'll have more food pics! Haha.