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knows the rules – new diets always start on a
Monday. It’s one of only two good things that Monday has to offer, the other
one being bank holidays. No one in their right mind chooses to start a diet on
a Saturday because Saturday is the day you’ve been looking forward to for the
previous five days and the last thing you want to be doing is getting used to a
new set of rules and restricting yourself. Saturday is about getting rid of the
weekday baggage, but today I’ve felt like I’ve spent the whole day acquiring
more.
     
    On a conventional diet, while it’s not
always written into the plan, there is usually some leeway. Some people choose
weigh-in day as the perfect opportunity to have a cheeky takeaway or chocolate
bar, knowing they have a full week to make up for it, and of course some people
choose a Saturday or Sunday to just kick back and relax for a day or two. The
problem I have is that by changing diet every five days, there is absolutely no
room for manoeuvre. With a weigh-in every five days and with me having chosen
to document the results of each individual diet, I have made it much harder on
myself. Maybe it’s a stroke of genius on my part. Maybe the fact that it’s easy
to cheat on other diets is the reason that I’ve struggled to succeed. Who
knows? All I know right now is that I’m writing this on a Saturday afternoon
and, having chosen to have my normal meal at lunchtime, all I have to look
forward to tonight is a bowl of Special K and an early night thanks to the TV
schedulers insisting on screening nothing but singing and dancing shows.
     
    It’s day 7 overall and day two of the
Special K diet today, and it’s been even harder than yesterday due to the fact
that we were booked in for lunch at our local pub. We had arranged the
gathering weeks in advance in honour of our daughter’s first birthday and it
hadn’t really sunk in that it would clash with my 50-day challenge. It made me
think about all of the other potential clashes that are set to occur over the coming
weeks and exactly how I’m going to overcome them. I know for sure that we’ve
booked a dinner and dance in aid of the local school, but I haven’t a clue when
it is. If it falls during the cabbage soup diet, I’d better hope they have
cabbage soup on the menu, as that’s all I’m allowed to eat for the entire five
days. Today I managed to overcome the problem by once again choosing to count
my pub lunch as my normal meal option and shifting the second bowl of Special K
to the evening. I find eating out extremely pleasurable but there are a few
occasions when it can turn into a miserable experience, such as being on a
diet, on a budget or on a date with Jenny Harris.
     
    I put myself through the misery of
reading through every item on the menu as well as going through everything on
the specials board in minute detail. I watched like a hawk as plates were
getting delivered to the tables around us, and I listened intently as each of
our party ordered something I wanted but couldn’t have. I opted for the pork
roast and compromised by cutting off the fat and forgoing any apple sauce or
gravy. After refusing dessert, it was then back home for further torment in the
form of having to refuse biscuits and cake approximately every three-and-a-half
minutes.
     
    "It’s okay, Nan, I don’t want to
spoil my dinner," I’d say sarcastically. Of course, being a Nan, she kept on and on at me, telling me I should have one. Why is it that the older
generations are so keen for you to eat? When I go around to my Nan’s house, food seems to arrive in front of me every few minutes. Strangely though, it
can arrive in any order. It can be sweet, followed by savoury followed by sweet
and finished off with spicy. I’ve since worked out that the order in which it
gets served is simply the order that it was stored in the larder. My Nan is a relatively svelte lady and, as she lives on her own, she could easily get by on a
very small weekly