Going on a diet always makes me cross. It’s not the cabbage or the high fibre, or whichever other fad I’m in thrall to, it’s the injustice of it all. Why do I have to go on a diet at all? Why can’t I just be one of those people who eats what they like and stays thin — loses weight, even? I have one girlfriend who has to scoff like a trucker just to stop her size eight jeans from sliding off her hips (admittedly she has an overactive thyroid, but what’s a life-threatening metabolic disorder compared to the joy of being obliged to unwrap a Green & Black’s three times a day?).
And how about those people who simply “forget to eat”? How can you forget to eat? Surely that would be like forgetting to breathe or forgetting the names of your children. Even worse: those women who used to be sympathetically-sized who, after childbirth, suddenly develop the metabolism of a gerbil on amphetamines. “It’s all that running after little Jamie/Flossie,” they insist, popping another Jaffa cake and smiling indulgently while little Jamie/Flossie sits, stationary, in the middle of the floor playing nicely with an educational toy. I, on the other hand, have two children who require more athletic supervision than the monkey house at London Zoo. And yet I’ve ended up with the backside of a baboon.
But, if having to watch what I eat makes me cross, being fat makes me even crosser. Whenever I get too heavy, I lack drive; I become depressed, despondent, grumpy. I snap at my husband when he says I look nice, telling him not to be so bloody ridiculous; how can a person with the backside of a baboon ever look nice? Being overweight doesn’t just affect my health, my knee joints and my ability to fit into 85 per cent of my wardrobe; it messes with my head, too. Over the years I’ve tried countless “weight-loss programmes”. All have worked to begin with, some have lasted longer than others, but most have been unworkable. My own theory is that most diets are designed for men.
Only men alphabetise their record collections, right? Only men can tell you who scored the winning goal in some (forgive the tautology) boring football match in 1984. And only men are interested in reading 73 pages of pseudo-science about why eating broccoli every 36 hours will kick-start your metabolism. I know this because, of all my friends who caught the Atkins bug, only the blokes bothered to read the stuff at the beginning about why it supposedly worked. All the women cut to the bit about drinking double cream for breakfast.
On a personal level, all diets require a degree of organisation and a lot of staying power. I am woefully lacking in both those areas. It’s true, I make lists, but on bits of paper which then get lost. When I go to the supermarket I ricochet around the aisles like a demented pinball, desperately trying to remember what I went in for. As for staying power, I have a debilitatingly short attention span.
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What was I saying? Oh, yes. How to lose weight without becoming a cliché; how to make a radical change that will bypass my weaknesses and establish new workable and, just as importantly, sustainable eating habits.
A meeting with Vicky Pennington, a nutritionist for Boots, confirmed what I already knew: that, broadly speaking, I eat well. I do so at the right times of day and I don’t even eat that much. Where I fall down is on the treats. The things that I eat when I’m not hungry, just feeling in need of comfort. Violet creams. A muffin on the way to work. A Marks & Spencer chicken tikka masala on a Sunday night. That, said Vicky, was what I needed to cut down on. In other words, stop being so greedy.
At first there was no change, just the empty void when once there was cocoa and hydro- genated fats. I didn’t replace my comfort food with a healthy alternative. Instead I asked whether I was really hungry or just feeling greedy. If it was just greed, I’d have a cup of tea. If I was hungry, I would have something proper to eat, like a chicken sandwich, which would sustain me. It was a remarkably easy habit to change.
After about a week, I got spots, something that has never happened to me, not even when I was a teenager. Then I woke up one morning and for the first time in about two years I didn’t feel like I’d been trampled by elephants during the night. My joints didn’t ache and my eyes were not bloodshot. A few days later, I experienced a slightly roomier waistband. And, for once, I did not celebrate with a bar of chocolate.
All this, and without laying off the spuds. The other day, as I was buttering my morning toast (wholemeal, of course), my husband helpfully informed me that one of my chins had gone. I was so happy I forgot to be cross with him for implying that I had more than one in the first place.
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That said, the weight loss is not rapid. I’ve been at it since just before the new year and I’m still no Kate Moss. But I feel much better simply eating normal quantities of normal food. That and the fact that when you’re not eating pro-cessed rubbish you realise just how unnatural it is. It’s similar to the feeling you get when you stop smoking: suddenly all these people setting fire to little sticks and then sucking hard on them look deeply weird, even when, until recently, you, too, were one of them.
Make your diet a success
Vicky Pennington, the Boots nutritionist, gives tips on staying motivated on a diet.