diet update: It's exactly one year since my doctor jabbed me in the arm, crunched some numbers and told me that my cholesterol levels were too high. He gave me a badly photocopied sheet donated by a margarine company and sent me away to see what changes I could wreak in two months flat. I embarked upon a puritanical low-fat diet, cutting out excess stodge and living off only permitted foodstuffs. No crisps, no pie, no pizza, no chocolate, but plenty of oily fish and un-sauced chicken. It was grim, but blimey it worked.
mid-March
X stone 7
mid-April
X stone
mid-May
(X-1) stone 7
By mid-May I'd lost a whole stone and my cholesterol was down by a third. My doctor was delighted by the latter (and decided he didn't need to prescribe me tablets for the rest of my life), whereas I was rather chuffed by the former (and the fact I'd dropped an entire waist size). My two month crash diet over, I took a reality check and reverted to a semi-sensible food intake. Cheese sometimes not never, salmon usually twice a week, biscuits thankyou, porridge most mornings, chocolate yeah why the hell not. Realistic, but not rigid. And I carried on weighing myself to see what happened.
mid-Sept
(X-1) stone 2
mid-March
(X-2) stone 13
Blimey, look at that. This morning I weigh a full stone and a half less than I weighed this time last year. That's an extra eight pounds lopped off my weight since May, despite the fact I'm no longer trying quite so hard as I used to. But I am still trying. And I have ten top weight-loss tips if you'd like to know how I'm doing it.
1)Stop eating pie: I love pie. Lovely thick pastry with meat and gravy stuffed inside. Gorgeous flaky casing containing stewed apple topped with cream. Plump fatty pork inside a thick pastry shell. Terribly tempting, but all that saturated fat is terribly bad for you. So I never buy pie any more, not ever. I'll happily consume it if someone else has cooked it, but I never stick pie in my shopping basket.
2)Cut back on puddings: What would you rather have? A steaming hot bowl of chocolate sponge topped off by thick sweet gloopy chocolate custard, or a yoghurt? Think again.
3)Snack on fruit: Sometimes, when the munchies strike, I'll head for the kitchen in search of something to nibble. I used to delve into the cupboard for a biscuit or a packet of crisps or even a Creme Egg, but now I have a bunch of grapes positioned on the worktop which I spot first. A handful of grapes satisfies my instant craving, and then I can return to what I was doing without touching the evil stodge-packed snacks. Most of the time, anyway.
4)Don't join a gym: No really, what's the point. I've lost all this weight without once crossing the threshold of a changing room, without once lifting a weight, without once leaping onto a treadmill, without once paying four hundred quid to some scuzzy establishment with dodgy showers and inadequate equipment. It can be done. Don't waste your money.
5)Use your feet: If there's a choice of riding somewhere or walking somewhere, and there's not much time difference between the two, then walk.
6)Stay single: I remain convinced that one of the worst things you can do to your waistline is to enter a relationship. Once there are two people to satisfy it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid food. Fancy lunch? Can I take you to a restaurant? I've knocked up a late night snack. Let's share this box of popcorn. I'm bored, let's go for a coffee. Stay single, however, and it's far easier to stick to your principles.
7)Weigh yourself daily: A daily weight check might make some people depressed, but I've found it the perfect inspiration to cut back. I weigh myself at the same time every morning (just before I climb into the bath), so I know if I'm heading down, staying stable or creeping up. And I then know whether I ought to eat less during the next 24 hours or whether I can afford to treat myself. It's a perfect feedback loop,
8)Don't trust what the scales say: Now that I've collected 365 days of data, it's become very clear that weighing oneself is a terribly inexact science. You can eat more and your weight go down, or you can go for a ten mile walk and your weight increase. Even something as simple as drinking a glass of water can affect your weight by a pound or two, so always remember there's a margin of error around what the scales are reading. I've taken to calculating a rolling seven day average, because I'm a geek with a spreadsheet, and these figures are rather more realistic.
9)Life's too short: If you allow a diet to rule your life, life won't be much fun. So always find time for a few treats, just to keep yourself happy. Over the last long birthday weekend, for example, I've gorged on a giant sirloin steak, one of my Mum's excellent roast beef dinners, half a lemon meringue pie, far too much birthday cake and an entire takeaway pizza. All very banned, officially, but stuff officially.
10)Have faith: It's perfectly possible to lose 22 pounds in twelve months and still eat badly sometimes. Take it from one who knows.
