​I first visited the doctors about my diet related problems about a year and a half ago, when my anxiety was really bad. I had actually taken myself off to A&E on one occasion, not because I thought I was dying or anything, but because I didn’t know what else to do and it was horrendous. Not that they did anything to help me of course! Anyway, I can remember sitting in the doctor’s office trying to explain how I had made myself ill following a low carb diet and how I had struggled to put it right with little success. I told him that often when I ate a meal it seemed to trigger a huge bout of anxiety but that I was confused as it wasn’t consistent. I could eat a meal and be fine or then I could eat the same meal and get really bad anxiety. Well, all he heard (I think!) was blah, blah, blah anxiety, ah anxiety! I tried to explain that I didn’t think I was causing it in my head and that it seemed to be coming from my stomach in a kind of ‘fizzy’ (don’t know how else to describe it?) way. His response… we could try some anti-depressants? Erm, no thanks, I politely declined (how did I know we were going to get there?) it’s definitely something to do with food or the diet. ‘How about some counselling?’ was his next question. I suppose that’s better than anti-depressants but I just didn’t feel that was the answer either. I felt something was going wrong inside me and I needed help! He suggested we run some blood tests and that was it, he was out of any other options. So I left with the print out for blood tests feeling not much further forward.

​I got the blood tests done and they showed high serum ferritin, slightly raised cholesterol, and a TSH level of 1.46. The only thing the doctor suggested was a liver scan so an appointment was requested and again I left the doctor’s office feeling like they weren’t really helping.  Luckily, whilst this was going on, I had also been to see Billy (https://www.facebook.com/billycraig.co.uk/?ref=ts&fref=ts) and I had started to implement the small meals throughout the day scenario, adding in a small amount of carbs with each meal (potatoes!) and was starting to feel a little better. The anxiety was starting to calm down a bit, but could still be bad at times.

I returned to the doctor’s surgery to ask them to test my thyroid hormones as I was still hellishly tired. I struggled to walk down the road. It was awful! Again, I felt like she wasn’t really listening as she asked had I been tested for coeliac disease. No, I replied, but I tried to explain about my low carb diet and how I felt like it was more likely to be related to thyroid. She looked at me and ‘hmmm’ed but agreed to request the tests I asked for (T3 and T4, not just TSH), although she was only a locum doctor and they would have to go through the main doctor. I dropped the request off at the desk. It was approved and I had more blood tests done. When the results came back though, they hadn’t tested the T3 and T4, they had only tested TSH again, which they again claimed was normal. It’s a huge range though, from 0.4 to 4.5, and if you are not converting T4 to T3 or if your cells are not taking up T3 normally, your results can still show within this ‘normal’ range. I was still no further forward, although she did let me know that I wasn’t coeliac!
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As the doctors were obviously not going to test my T3 and T4 I decided to go and get them done privately. I booked and paid for T3 and T4 tests and off I went again! Finally the results came back with low thyroid hormones and suggested hypothyroidism. Back to the doctor’s I went, with my private test results. When I handed them over to the doctor, he looked at me and said ‘why didn’t we test them?’ Are you kidding me? That’s a very good question… why didn’t you test them? ‘I don’t know’ I replied. In order for them to do anything about it, they would have to test them. I was pretty cross at this point. Private tests aren’t cheap and now, after I’d paid out for them, the local doctors were going to test them? Off I went again for more blood tests. Both T3 and T4 came back low (T4 was 10.6 pmol/L and T3 was 4.6 pmol/L) so what did the doctor suggest? To get them retested of course!! Oh. My. God. So back I went for more tests!

​This time when the tests came back they hadn’t even tested the T3 and T4, just the TSH, which was, of course, in the ‘normal’ range again (even though it had gone up to 2.41). When I protested that they hadn’t tested the same thyroid hormones this time, she replied that they don’t tend to treat hypothyroidism at local doctor’s surgeries, it’s more the private clinics that do those tests!! Great, so if you have money they take you seriously? Then she said, well we don’t give out T4 here anyway, we give out thyroxine!! I was momentarily stumped (and did a quick check in my brain!) and said isn’t T4 thyroxine? Her reply was ‘well, yes, you probably know more about it than I do’. Who doesn’t want to hear their doctor say that to them when they’re after help!! Also, this time they had done a fasting glucose test which came back at 8.2 mmol/L. ‘You’re diabetic’ she said to me. ‘What should I do about that then?’ I replied. What was her response? To limit carbs to control my blood sugar!! What??? Isn’t that what got me into this mess? I asked her if that wouldn’t just put me back to a low carb diet and she said ‘no, because they wouldn’t be restricted as much as they were on the diet.’ Outstanding! She didn’t even ask how many carbs I ate on my diet so how would she even know? I told her I wasn’t going to do anything about it right then and promptly left!

​The whole experience was farcical! I can tell you that I went home and carried on eating tons of potatoes! By this time I was starting to feel much better, I was falling asleep within 5 minutes of going to bed (something which I’ve never done before in my life!!), I was sleeping for up to 5 hours before waking up to pee and then going straight back to sleep, I was feeling less tired (less like walking through custard), my anxiety was getting a lot less (just tiny niggly bits), and for the first time I got my period after 28 days (previously it was every 9-10 weeks). If these weren't signs that things were improving then I don’t know what would be! Why would I set myself back with less carbs following the doctor’s advice, when they can’t even get simple tests sorted out? For anybody now panicking about me ignoring the doctor’s advice, these are some thoughts from Billy…

“Insulin is responsible for blood sugar going down and cortisol (yes the very same cortisol I'm always banging on about folks) does the opposite and sends blood sugar up. So the two work as opposites to function exactly as we need them to. Carbohydrates (Glucose in particular), raises insulin and lowers cortisol. Yep that’s it folk nasty old sugar has some gooooood effects. Let’s clarify that, insulin takes blood sugar down and glucose causes insulin to work. Cortisol raises blood sugar and is lowered by glucose. So how can sugar be the cause of diabetes? And how can low carb, low GI etc. be the answer that we need? Clearly diabetes is a bigger story than some would have us believe.”

If you’re wondering what happened to the liver scan, well that wasn’t straightforward either. I didn’t hear anything for ages. Every time I returned to the doctor’s office I asked if I would get an appointment through the post. Yes, I was told. On one visit they said they would chase it up for me. Eventually I rang the surgery to ask what was going on. They gave me the relevant department’s telephone number and told me to phone up and ask!! Erm, do I work there now? I phoned, as I felt it might never happen if I didn’t, and they had no record of the request!! Haha! Well couldn’t see that coming! They told me to phone the doctor’s office back and tell them to phone the hospital in the next couple of hours. I am a secretary now!! Eventually they sort it out and ring me (a few days later) to say they can fit me in that day. Great but I’m not supposed to eat before the test and I’ve had breakfast!! I was fitted in a few days later. When the results finally came back they said I had fatty liver disease. To be honest now I can’t actually remember what they said to me about it! I had given up with the doctors advice and lost all faith in them anyway.
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I haven’t been back to the doctors since! I keep meaning to, just to get a retest to prove I’m not diabetic, but I can’t summon up the will to be bothered!! I feel so much better now, better than I’ve felt in years, not just since the low carb debacle! I will go back and get the test done though as I’d like the evidence to show people that you can fix problems with the right foods and the right approach – which evidently is not the same as the doctors approach!

 ​It’s really important to remember though, that these are my ramblings, my experiences with the doctors, and in no way am I suggesting that all doctors seem to know very little about what actually goes on in the body or that people should stop visiting their doctors. I think it’s really important for people to take responsibility for their own health and to not just take the tablets that the doctors hand out. I would have been on anti-depressants from the get go if it was down to my doctor! Even when I had to request a letter from the doctors for my university (when I had to take a few months out), the doctor wrote in the letter that I wasn’t ready to take the next step – which was the anti-depressants! That’s not what I said to him, but he just had no idea that there were any other options out there. Or if he did, he certainly wasn’t suggesting them to me! Don’t outsource your health – it’s too important. One of the most exciting films about health is currently in the making… ‘On the Back of a Tiger’ by Brad Abrahams and Jeremy Stuart, which is a film painting an alternate picture of the workings of life, and its profound effect on the nature of disease, aging, nutrition, and consciousness. There is plenty of information about it on their facebook page https://www.facebook.com/onthebackofatiger/timeline. Check it out!! It was funded via a Kickstarter campaign with a goal of $38,000. It was funded eventually with a total of $81,000!! It makes me so joyful that these alternative views are finally going to be out there, and that so many people contributed to the funding! Your health is so important. Life is so much more fun when you feel good! Hope you enjoyed my ramblings! Take care and remember, this is just me ‘thinking out loud’. x 

​I’ve had lots of people connecting with me who have also done a low carb diet, who are now extremely tired and can’t seem to eat carbs without them, as they put it, going straight to their waistline. So what exactly is going on? You do seem to be stuck in some kind of dietary hell. You know you can’t stay low carb because you have terrible symptoms (in my case it was anxiety, hair loss, insomnia, tiredness, feeling cold all the time, and generally feeling miserable) but the fear of weight gain is awful. Who wants to put weight on when we live in a culture that celebrates thinness? I certainly didn’t! It’s not just low carb diets that do this either, any kind of diet that is unsustainable will generally lead to some kind of weight gain eventually. Why is this? Mainstream advice for people who want to lose weight is always to eat less and move more, but is this really good advice? How many people do you know who have been on a diet, who are now happy with their size and just happy with life in general? Or are they miserable, hopping from one diet to another, losing weight and then gaining weight when one diet stops working? What about people who obsessively go to the gym (or zumba, or spinning, or whatever the latest trend is)? Do they suddenly get the physique they are after? Are they happy and bursting with energy? In my experience they are not. People on diets, who are exercising their lives away, are generally miserable and tired, and are constantly thinking about how they can lose the next/last x amount of pounds. We spend our lives chasing a ‘look’ that society tells us is acceptable. Doesn’t it seem just a little crazy that we should have to obsess so much about food and diets to get ‘healthy’? The word ‘healthy’ when connected with food can mean pretty much anything really depending on what crazy reports have just been released, i.e. egg scare, red meat scare, saturated fat scare, sugar scare, I mean really? What is there left for us to eat?
So, consider this statement that I have seen written in quite a few places lately…
You cannot lose weight to get healthy, you have to get healthy to lose weight.

Two and a half years ago I had the body shape that society celebrates. I weighed 124 lbs and looked exactly like I thought I wanted to look. I also had no boobs, no booty and no periods! I can tell you that I was about as far from healthy as it is possible to get. When I started eating carbs again I put on a whopping 80 lbs in 5 months. To understand why you put on weight after a diet you need to understand what happens to your body when you go on a diet. You take in less food (calories) so your body immediately perceives a food shortage or a stress. One of the first things a body will do to compensate is to allocate less energy to staying warm. This is why many people feel the cold so badly. I hear many people complaining about our UK weather (not always that great but not really that cold either) and saying they have put the heating on in the summer! I used to be one of these people. We went on holiday to Tenerife (2 ½ years ago to celebrate my 40th birthday – just as my world fell apart) and I still had a cold nose! My feet were perpetually cold and I could not get them warm in bed! This signals a decrease in your metabolic rate which your body is lowering in response to being given less food. 

​The term ‘metabolism’ describes all chemical reactions involved in maintaining the living state of the cells and the organism. Keeping your metabolic rate high is one of the best things you can do for your health and will give you a normal body temperature of 98.6° F (37° C). Your body cannot keep your metabolic rate high if you are not giving it enough fuel (food) for energy production. 

​So you have started your diet (which ever one you picked – there’s enough to choose from!!) and initially it seems to be working. You step on the scales and you have lost weight. Hurrah! After a few weeks (or months – it will be different for everybody) the diet seems to stop working. Why? You’re still sticking to the diet so what is going on? Well, your body has now downgraded your metabolic rate to a rate consistent with the amount of food you are eating. Now if you want to lose more weight you will have to eat less food. Your metabolic rate declines further. You are so obsessed with losing weight that you miss other symptoms of your metabolic rate hitting the floor. Cold hands and feet are often one of the first signs, along with dry skin on hands and feet. You can also suffer hair loss, constipation, insomnia, loss of sex drive, mood swings and constant urination (these are some of the common signs but there are many ways a low metabolism can manifest itself). Some people on a diet will feel constantly hungry whereas others may totally lose their appetite, which is what happened to me. This is generally because stress hormones step in to save the day. Adrenaline can make you feel pretty darn good, which is why some people initially feel great on a diet. If you skip a meal your body will still need to get glucose from somewhere so that you don’t get hypoglycaemia. Your body does store some sugar in your liver and muscles as glycogen but these are quickly depleted if you are not eating enough fuel to replenish them. In order to get the glucose that your body desperately needs, your body will raise stress hormones to break down your own muscle tissue to make glucose. This is not a good state of affairs! Adrenaline is also an appetite suppressant so it will just perpetuate the cycle. You feel good when you skip meals so you carry on skipping them. This is a slippery slope! Stress hormones are only meant to be used to get you through brief periods of stress, not to carry you through life! Eventually they take their toll, like they did with me, and you are left thinking ‘what the hell has happened to my life’!

​So we come to the time where we know we have to eat more food to get better and to get our bodies back into a healthy state. Unfortunately our metabolism is now in the gutter and it’s going to take a bit of time to put right. My first bit of advice would probably be… don’t do what I did! Lol! In my desperate attempt to get better quickly I upped my carbs and my calories immediately to a very high amount, and because I had no real urge to eat much real food I ate tons of crap in the mistaken belief that the calories alone would push my metabolism up. I completely disregarded (just didn’t think about) the fact we need plenty of vitamins and minerals to function well. Also, as your metabolism rises, your body will need more vitamins and minerals. To up your metabolism you need to eat more food and this is where the weight gain comes in. Possibly, if you increase your calorie levels slower than I did, and you include some real food with vitamins and minerals, you won’t gain as much weight as I did, but you should expect to gain some weight. Your body has been under the impression that you have been through a famine and now it’s going to store a level of fat that is appropriate to its environment (for a more detailed description of weight and set point theory you can read Billy’s blog article here http://www.billycraig.co.uk/blog/category/diets). According to Matt Stone in his ‘Diet Recovery 2’ book, this increase in body fat is important as it increases the hormone leptin, which then sends a signal to your brain that triggers a big rise in metabolic rate. Along with the fat gain, I also had a lot of water retention, which is taking a long time to go away! Although the other day I noticed that I can now kneel down. For over 2 years I haven’t been able to because of the amount of water retention in my legs! So it is slowly receding. Getting into water retention in more detail will take another blog post (!), but suffice to say that in a low metabolic state (hypothyroidism) carbon dioxide is deficient and salt is excessively excreted, and it’s likely that the cell will hold onto water, calcium and estrogen. All a bit technical I know, without a more detailed explanation, but I want this blog post to end sometime soon!! So to get rid of water retention you just have to raise your metabolic rate, which is what we want for our health anyway. Unfortunately there is no quick way to do this. I tried to up my calories too fast, without adequate vitamins and minerals and just ran into more problems! You’ve probably taken years to get your body into whatever state it is in now (I know I did the low carb thing for over 3 years) so it’s going to take months, maybe even years to put it completely right.

​At this point people are generally saying ‘so what should I eat?’ Well this is the million dollar question! If I started laying down the law about what you should eat then I would be no better than 99.9% of the ‘health’ sites out there! It’s probably better that you don’t have a strict plan anyway. Stressing about your food is one of the worst things you can do. Try to relax and eat some ‘real’ foods. What do I mean by real? Foods that have good vitamin and mineral content, like potatoes! Ha… you knew I was going to mention potatoes first right? No, you don’t have to go out and buy potatoes if you don’t really like them, but yes they do contain a good portion of vitamins and minerals. Just eat a variety of foods and don’t stress over the odd crappy meal. Look at signs from your body that suggest you are on the right track. Are you sleeping better? Are you feeling happier? Sometimes, when you first start eating proper, regular meals you will feel worse. Yes, that’s right, you will gain weight and possibly feel worse! Ha, run away, fast!! I’m joking! The reason for this is that when you actually start to eat good, nourishing food again you switch your stress hormones off. Yes, that’s a good thing but then your body has to start functioning using your ‘in the basement’ metabolism, so give yourself a break. Try to get plenty of sleep (if you can – it took me a while to be able to sleep but you will get there) and relax. Be kind to yourself, you are not lazy, your body needs a chance to fix itself. If you rush off to the gym the minute you put some weight on then any extra energy will be going on that activity rather than fixing your body and raising your metabolism. 

​Yes, putting on weight can be depressing but after a while something miraculous begins to happen. You start to feel better, not just in your body but in your mind. You no longer care that you are ‘fat’ because you feel good, your moods are stable, and, dare we say it, you are happy!! I find that I am generally very silly now with my kids! We laugh… a LOT! I laugh even on my own! At myself! Ha…even writing that made me laugh! The freedom from worrying about your body size is incredible and I say that with a body size 18, having been an 8-10 all my life. Follow Facebook sites or read things that inspire you, not ones that big up dieting/celebrate thinness/do anything to add to your woes!! One of the ones I have followed for quite some time is Erin Brown (https://www.facebook.com/iamerinbrown?fref=ts). She used to be called Fit Mama Training, and yes I admit I initially started following her because she used to be bigger and she managed to get herself a nice figure. Gradually, though, I realised she stood for a lot more than that and her posts often bring a tear to my eye! She speaks out about, well, just about anything really and refuses to apologise for being big. If you are looking for female solidarity then Erin is it! I owe her a huge thank you for helping me realise it’s ok to be whoever you are, whatever your size. 

​The fact that I put on a lot of extra weight could also be down to the stress I was under in my relationship. My ex didn’t like the weight gain and thought I was crazy (I probably am!). It’s hard enough to deal with weight gain and feeling awful, without your partner running a mile because of it. Stress can be a huge factor in how well your metabolism functions. It’s often easier said than done to reduce stress in your life but even just reducing it a little can make a big difference. For me, moving out of the house I shared with my ex made a huge difference to my stress levels. It was like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

​So we come full circle, back to… you can’t lose weight to get healthy, you have to get healthy to lose weight. There is a big difference between losing weight and losing fat anyway. Mostly when you diet you lose water weight and muscle mass, as your body will try to hang on to your body fat. You really want to keep the muscle mass and lose the fat (duh!!) so you have to do that by building your body back up. Yes it takes time but I think in the end it’s definitely worth it. In fact I know it’s worth it, even just to feel better before losing any weight at all!

​Now my temperature will go up in response to meals (initially it might go down as you kill the stress hormones) and it will often go as high as 37.2° C, which gives me a nice warmth in my fingers and toes! I still can’t sustain it for more than an hour or two though, and my fingers (and often my nose) will go cold and won’t warm up until I eat again. It will just take time. As I’ve said before, you learn to have more patience! You can’t force things – that’s generally what gets us into a mess in the first place!

​I hope you have enjoyed my ramblings and that I haven’t put you off trying to heal your body! Remember my thoughts are exactly that, my thoughts and you should never just blindly listen to somebody else. That’s also what gets us into these messes! That said, it’s difficult to research health because there is so much stuff out there it’s difficult to know what to believe. That’s why I’m now a big believer in listening to your body and learning to be more intuitive. Eat good food, plenty of it (or enough that you’re not going hungry), eat regularly, and try not to restrict anything. Once you start restricting things you generally want them more. Allow yourself to have them now and again. Fill yourself up with enough good food and my guess is that you won’t crave things so much. Often cravings stem from just not eating enough in the first place. Try to focus on things other than how you think you look. It might not seem like it now but really, in the grand scheme of things, it’s just not that important. It’s only really important to the people who make tons of money from making us feel that way in the first place! If people don’t love us for who we are, well, what’s up with that?! I walked away (eventually, obviously it’s very traumatic at the time) because I believe I’m worth more. Ultimately, isn’t that what it comes down to? What you believe you are worth? 

As always, I’d love to hear any thoughts, comments or stories from you. I believe sharing stories and making connections can help you feel better, and to not feel so alone. I wish that I had been able to read some stories like this when I was going through the worst of it. Take care and remember, this is just me thinking out loud! x

​On 15th September 2015 I flew to Iceland with my sister, and my sister’s boyfriend, for a 5 day holiday. For me, it was partly to celebrate my PhD and partly to celebrate, well, life really and feeling better! A year and a half ago, I wouldn’t have been able contemplate making such a trip, such was my tiredness and my anxiety. I barely left the house. So this was a holiday of celebration, a momentous occasion for me, and I wanted to do something special. Iceland was certainly that! So much so, we are already planning next year’s trip! Anyway, I wanted to share with you some of the highlights, some of the worries I had before going, and some of the downright silly stuff! Enjoy!

​My first main concern was regarding potatoes! Ha, yes, I hear you say, we all worry about potatoes when planning a trip! If you’ve read my other blog pieces then you will know that my body seems to function best when I eat potatoes all day long. This is slightly trickier than planning to grab a butty when you are out and about. Then there is the fact I eat 5 or 6 meals per day. Again, if I enjoyed sandwiches, then it would be no problem. I don’t! So, how to organise that many potato based meals every day without dragging us all back to the apartment or constantly eating out. Neither of which was an option if we wanted to get out and about to see as many things as possible, without spending every last penny on food! I have worked out (from previously having to take meals out with me) that if I boil some potatoes, then whilst they are still hot, roll them around in lots of butter and salt, they actually still taste good when they have cooled down. Who’d have thought?! So my plan was to make a couple of meals each day to take out with me and just eat them cold. It worked well and I’m glad to report I had no traumas over meals, I simply made extra meals when I was cooking tea at night!

We flew to Iceland with EasyJet, and flights from Manchester to Reykjavik cost us only £100 return. These cheap flights were what made us realise that we actually could afford the trip if we were careful. We rented an apartment just outside the centre of Reykjavik (think we used Holiday Lettings site) which cost us around £240 for 5 nights (just £80 each) and we booked the Flybus from the airport to our apartment which was around £25 return. So, all in, travel and accommodation cost around £205 each. Not too shabby! Then, of course, we wanted to do some of the trips. Obviously we were going to do the northern lights tour (no question about that!) and that cost around £35. It was just the basic tour – coach to somewhere we could see the lights. There are other options available, such as seeing the lights by boat, on a glacier etc. with more cost involved but we were happy with the basic one. There are a lot of tours available but most are pretty expensive. After much deliberation, we decided on the Golden Circle tour which included a trip to a hot spa. This cost around £67.50 and for this you got to see Gullfoss waterfall, Geysir geothermal area, Thingvellir National Park and visit Fontana’s natural steam baths. We booked these 2 tours before we went but left the rest of the time open so we could decide on things to do when we were there.

Getting there was no problem. The flight (although ridiculously early!) was pleasant enough and only took around 2 ½ hours, and it was easy to find the Flybus. It takes around 45 mins from the airport to Reykjavik, so we were at our apartment by 11.30am. The apartment was very nice, cosy (as it said in the description) and very warm! Good god was it warm! We never did figure out where the heat was coming from but every time we entered the apartment a wall of hot air hit us! This is probably very nice when the temperature is minus degrees but for us it was a bit much. It was a basement flat but it was light and airy with big windows. It had one bedroom and one sofa bed. My sister’s boyfriend had originally said he would sleep on the sofa bed (the trip was originally me and my sister!!) but I just thought it would be nicer for them to sleep together. Shoot me now! The sofa bed (as usual, as I have yet to find a comfy one) was one that you shouldn’t even (or maybe you should) put your worst enemy on! Your bum ended up about a foot lower than the rest of you! So I ended up taking the cushions off and putting them on the floor – pretty comfy at least. Next problem… my sister tends to pee a lot in the night! Why would this affect me though, you ask? Well because she had to walk through the living area (where I was sleeping) to get to the bathroom. She woke me up every time! So note to self… some things are worth paying more for! Next time we will have an apartment with bedrooms for everybody!

​In order to combat the hot temperature of the apartment we left the windows open at night. I hate sleeping in hot rooms, and always like to have some fresh air circulating! One morning, around 6.50am a fluffy grey cat decided to take advantage of the windows at ground level and joined us in our apartment! It’s quite surreal to wake up to a loud meow, thinking ‘do I even HAVE a cat?’

​Eating out in Iceland is fairly expensive. A meal in a restaurant seemed to easily cost around £20 (just the main course) and was often more, so most of the time we ate back at the apartment. We did find American burger places that cost around £11 for a nice meal though (I know, we didn’t exactly sample the local cuisine, but you do what you can with the budget you have!) There was a small supermarket on the main street, which had a variety of things (it had potatoes and eggs, so for me it was a winner! Lol!) and it was fairly reasonably priced. The only thing that caused me a problem was butter. Yes, butter! I probably should have looked up the word for butter before I went but I did not know a word of Icelandic when we touched down in the plane. I am one of those people that eat real butter. There are some health reasons why this is the case (that’s another blog post!) but mainly it’s because it tastes so much better. No, your ‘like butter’ is NOT like butter and yes I can tell it’s not butter thank you very much! So I stood looking at butter like products in the fridge and pondered which I should buy. I eventually settled on a big block that looked like it might be butter (no idea what I was basing that on) and off we went. It was foul! Looking up the word for butter – SMJÖR – it seemed like I had chosen a product that was ‘like butter’ – SMJÖRLIKA – or something like that!! Anyway, I reluctantly used it with my potatoes but was back to searching out butter the next day at the supermarket. This time I found the SMJÖR and headed back happily. Nope, it had barely any taste! What was going on with Icelandic butter? On further translations though, it turned out I had bought unsalted Icelandic butter. Oh, the trauma! Luckily my sister and her fella are aware of how bonkers I am so were unsurprised when I went back for another attempt! Finally, on just my 3rd attempt, I had lovely Icelandic, salted butter! None of it was wasted though as my sister and her fella thought there was nothing wrong with any of them!

The only other real trauma was with the shower in the apartment. The shower was in a little laundry/shower room, where the whole room is like a wet room and the plug hole was in the middle of the floor. The showers are sort of old fashioned looking… a large round flat metal head and a metal pipe leading up to it (well the one in the apartment and the ones at the spa were like this), and the one in our apartment had 3 flat metal levers to control it. Not a dial in sight! No indication of which might be which. Also, I think they have no health and safety about the heat of their water, which gets ridiculously hot. So I messed about with the levers until all was well and started to enjoy my shower. It poured a huge amount of water onto your head and was fantastic. The plug hole didn’t drain too fast though so water started to build up around my ankles, not really a problem, until it was time to turn everything off! I hadn’t really taken much notice of which lever did which so I just moved the ones I thought would turn it off. I pushed them all in the various up down, side to side positions (or so I thought) and didn’t manage to turn the water off. I only managed to make it so hot I had to leap out of the shower curtain! Then I couldn’t reach the levers properly! The room (which had someone else’s washing hanging in it as it was a communal laundry/shower room) started to fill up with steam and I was sloshing round in water past my ankles!! I went from one side of the shower to the other, trying to avoid the scalding water and push the levers around, whilst the room turned into a steam room! Finally, I had to fling the door open, and yell for my sister to come rescue me. Turns out there was just one direction (not the boy band!) that I hadn’t pushed the lever to the right in. Doh!

More of a trauma for my sister and her fella was the fact that alcohol is only sold via government shops, you can’t just pick it up in the local supermarket (you can get real coke in the supermarket so that was good enough for me! Apparently, Icelanders drink more coco cola per capita than any other nation) so you have to search out the few shops that sell it and they are only open between certain hours. On the last occasion we went to one of these shops, my sister’s fella chose the 10% beer to accompany his other beer (perhaps in celebration to the fact we’d made it to one of these shops) and then was unable to finish the card game we were playing in the evening! Mumbled something about us being able to sort it out and then promptly passed out on the bed! 

​The trips were great! On the second day we decided to go on the whale watching tour in the afternoon as the Northern Lights tour wasn’t until the evening. They warned us as we got on the boat that it was pretty rough out in the open sea. They weren’t wrong! It was a fairly awesome experience as the boat rocked about quite a bit. Unfortunately not everyone found it awesome, and some people were downstairs on the boat, quietly vomiting into brown bags!! Not us though, we stayed on the upper deck, outside, watching the choppy waves and the spray, but unfortunately not the whales. There were no whales to be seen! The waves were so big you couldn’t tell if there were whales there or not. It was a bit disappointing initially but when we arrived back in the harbour we were given complimentary tickets to go out again. When we went out a couple of days later it could not have been more different. It was so calm it was like a millpond! I’ve never seen the sea so calm. Even better, we got to see Minke whales, Harbour porpoises, and dolphins. Perfect!

​For the Northern Lights tour we were picked up outside our apartment at 9.30pm. I was ridiculously excited! Seeing the northern lights has been on my to do list for quite some time. If there’s a chance we might see them at home, I call my sister and we go on a late night excursion! We’ve never managed to see them yet but I do have some very funny tales about our trips (again, another blog post!!) The coach drove us to a car park by a cave – apparently parts of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty were filmed there – where it was nice and dark, away from the city lights. We all piled off the coach and stared up at the sky! At first you have no clue what you are looking for. It’s not as obvious as you see in photographs and often starts as a very thin white area that looks like cloud. You realise it’s not cloud though as it moves and dances across the sky. It may not have been as glorious technicolour as I was expecting but that did not make it any less special. Standing there, watching the lights swirling across the sky was a truly magical experience and I highly recommend it. I felt quite emotional and also more determined to see it again (and again, and again!). Then we were ushered back on to the coach and the experience was over. We had an hour watching the lights but I wish we had had much longer. The tour was good, as obviously they know exactly where to take you, and they tell you what you are looking out for, and point out the first movements when you get there, but I still can’t help but think it would be better to hire a car and drive yourself out somewhere away from the city. Then you can stay and watch the lights as long as you like. I guess the company operate the tours every night (when the lights are active and the weather clear) so they see them all the time, and probably just want to get home to bed, but for the average person it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity and it would be nice to get a bit longer!

The Golden Circle tour was an all day tour and we got picked up (again outside our apartment) at 8.30am. I know, very early, but we deliberately booked it later in the week so we could recover from our late night watching the northern lights. There is much more time spent on the coach on this trip but they do tell you interesting facts on the journey, and you do get plenty of stops. First off we had a stop at a little centre where you can read people’s stories about earthquakes in Iceland and you can see the gap between the tectonic plates. Next stop was Gullfoss, the beautiful waterfall. It was immense! You can get pretty close to it and at one part of the path you get wet from the spray. 

​After that it was the Geysir geothermal area where you get to see the boiling mud pits and the exploding geyser. The geyser erupts around every 8 minutes so you don’t have to wait too long to see it. After we’d had a good look around this area we got to try out the Icelandic Lamb Soup in the café. This was the first (and only!) traditional Icelandic dish we tried and it was absolutely delicious! 

With our stomachs full of excellent food we headed off to our next stop, the Fontana Wellness Centre (natural steam baths). First they showed us how they bake their traditional rye bread in the bubbling earth outside the centre, and we got to try some of the hot, freshly baked bread (with real butter!). Delicious! Then into the baths we went…mmmm! The four pools were all different temperatures so when one got too hot you could move into a slightly cooler one. There was a lake just outside the centre that you could walk down to, and at the edge it was warm, which lulled you into a false sense of oooo… a warm lake! As soon as you got ankle deep it was freezing! My sister made a rather interesting entrance to the lake though, as she tried to ease herself off the decking (I had wandered down the gravelly slope and was wondering what she was doing) and promptly disappeared. Yes, the daft girl had stumbled as she stepped down and then fell in!! I didn’t laugh for too long, promise!! Then it turned out she had cut her toe and was leaving a rather dubious trail of blood behind her – not very becoming of a wellness centre! The staff were quick to hand over a plaster though and we soon had her cut toe sorted out! I can’t describe how relaxing this was. It was such a beautiful day, the sky was a beautiful blue colour and we were outside in lovely hot water. Bliss! 

​The last stop of the day was at Thingvellir National Park, where we got to see the tectonic plate rift between the North American plate and the Eurasian plate. It was immense! What an absolutely epic day. We were all shattered when we arrived back at our uber hot apartment!

On our last day we chose to wander round Reykjavik and check out some of the museums. We were thinking of doing another tour but they were all pretty expensive so decided against it. First my sister and I went to the Icelandic Phallological Museum, which is basically a museum of penises and penile parts belonging to all types of mammal found in the country! My sister’s boyfriend gave that one a miss and wandered off to see other things! After that we checked out the Northern Lights centre (Aurora Reykjavik) which had some interesting information about the lights and how to capture them on your camera (we should have gone there before our northern lights tour! Lol!), plus it had a film of many aurora’s that have been captured, which was absolutely beautiful. I bought myself a very funky hat from the gift shop there for my next northern lights excursion! Our last stop on the last day was the Whales of Iceland Museum. I didn’t really know what to expect as we hadn’t looked up anything about these museums, we had only googled things to do around Reykjavik and then headed on out! Well, it was truly amazing. This should definitely be on your list of things to do in Reykjavik! Whales of Iceland is an amazing (yes I know I just said that, but it really is!) exhibition of life-size models of whales and dolphins. What a great way to learn about whales and dolphins and get an idea of just how big they are!

All in all, an incredible holiday, and yes we do plan to return next year. We had an excellent time, with lots of laughs and not a cross word among us! What will we be doing differently? Well, we will definitely hire a car so we can see more of the Island. The tours are great but very expensive for what they are. Most of the places we visited on the Golden Circle tour (apart from the spa baths) are actually free to get in, so with a coach tour you are only really paying for the travel (and a little bit of information on the way there). We did pay more for our trip as it included the spa baths but of course you can just drive there yourself and pay to go in. Next time I also want to go see glaciers and volcanos! Hopefully next year I will be able to do more walking or hiking. This time I was just about fine with the walking we did. It was about a 25 minute walk from our apartment, through the City Centre and down to the harbour. I think we did that most days. On the last day my sister and I got the bus from the City Centre to the harbour as I was getting a bit tired and didn’t want to ruin the last day. We met her fella down at the harbour (as he had been avoiding the penis museum!!) It was great that I was able to do all the things we’d planned without getting ridiculously tired. The strangest thing that happened healthwise was that my skin (which was getting nice and soft) went very dry after the spa baths. I wasn’t expecting that as I thought all the minerals in the water would be good for it. Although after a couple of days the dryness started to disappear again. My sleep wasn’t that great whilst we were away but it’s hard to say if that was because I was in a strange bed (or rather on some cushions on the floor), or because my sister peed a lot (!), or because I probably should have eaten a bit more food because of all the walking I was doing (a lot more than normal!). I tried not to worry too much about it but by the time we came home I was shattered! When we came through security on the way home and the man asked where I had been I just stared at him! Lol! He had to repeat it before I could answer. When I finally got home that night and tried to get a good night’s sleep, both children were sick and a mouse appeared in my daughter’s bedroom! Aaaggghh… welcome home! Farewell Iceland… we will be back!