The Sensible Diet

This post is something of a departure for me. It’s not about a videogame, a movie, a TV show or any kind of visual feast in either high or standard definition. But it’s about a topic that has been floating around my head for some time now, and that’s weight.

Have you ever sat down and tried to read a diet book? Whenever a new fad diet appears (Atkins, Zone, South Beach) there will be the accompanying book that will tell you that losing weight is easy on this programme..and on this programme only! All other diets are trash, this is the one genuine article. One diet to rule them all!

Generally speaking, this is a great big fib. The only diet book I have found to be sensible and well written is Audrey Eyton’s F2 Diet, but that wasn’t for me because you had to shovel down a whole lot of fibre to get the weight shifted.

I am going to shock and stun you with my own diet plan, and it won’t cost you a penny either! If it were to have a name, this would be the Sensible Diet. You see, dieting and losing weight is easy. In fact I would say it is very easy. Unless you have some kind of metabolic condition that makes you fat despite only eating lettuce leaves, it is mind bogglingly easy to lose weight.

What is the key to my superb plan? It’s something called Personal Responsibility. Personal Responsibility it somewhat lacking these days, because it’s never OUR problem, it’s always someone else’s. I tripped over a paving slab, I’m going to sue the council!! It’s their fault that I tripped over their paving slab, not my own, no no not at all! I can actually tell you that someone once tripped over a paving slab in Christchurch and demanded compensation and that the council buy her a new skirt because she ripped hers when she fell.

Call me old Captain Controversial if you will, but if I trip over a paving slab in the street I curse myself for not looking where I was going and carry on with my day.

A few months ago whilst being forced to listen to the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 (it’s banned in our office, but I was in a different office, an IT person working at lunchtime? It’ll never catch on) and some Tory shadow MP was bleating on about “What the government is going to do about the obesity crisis?”. Since when was it their responsibility to teach us all how to eat properly? What comes next? “Can the right honourable gentleman please tell me what the government is going to do to get my PVR set correctly? I keep missing the end of Coronation Street.”

Brummie comedian Jasper Carrot once summed up everything you need to know about why you are fat, and it goes thus:

This hole here (points to mouth), is larger than this hole here (points at backside)

There you go. It’s like the old computer saying, Garbage In, Garbage Out. If you put a load of fatty, processed and devoid of vitamins, minerals and fibre laden food in your mouth, don’t expect to be in the running for Rear of the Year.

But how is losing weight simple? In many ways it is a psychological hurdle, an invisible barrier that can be rather troublesome to break free of.

A few years ago here in Britain there was a TV programme called Your Money Or Your Life. In the show, Alvin Hall (a colourful American finance guru) would meet people with astronomical amounts of debt and try to set them back on the right path. As the series progressed it became more of a delve into the psyches of these serial spenders to try and ascertain why they thought they needed to spend so much money to make themselves happy.

This exploring the psychological roll appears in a lot of these self-help style TV shows now and to my mind it is the same with food. Even TV food Nazi “Dr” Gillian McKeith looked a little deeper than shouting “stop killing yourself with pies you fat fuck!”. Or words to that effect.

Why am I writing about this? A few years ago I lost around three stone in weight (that’s 42 pounds for my friends across the pond) to get down to a goal weight of just below thirteen stone. In the last year or so my weight has gone back up to between thirteen and a half to fourteen stone and despite a number of efforts to try and shift it again, I’ve always crumbled under the cake/pie/chocolate temptation.

As I mentioned in my last post, as I have to start looking for a new contract very soon I’m faced with the prospect of having to fit into my suit once again. It’s a very nice suit, but the trousers are a 34” waist, and I’m currently a 36. So with a goal in sight I decided to give it a bash (and I don’t want to have to buy another suit).

Everyone knows that junk food is bad and fresh food is good (hopefully). So I wondered why it is we get cravings for stodge, chocolate, fat and sugar. Do our bodies really need this stuff, or are we just obeying what the brain tells us it thinks it wants?

I don’t know about you, but if I eat a load of fatty junk, and wash it down with sugar enriched soda I end up feeling terrible. Bloated, lethargic and usually craving more food.

So I started by gradually reducing the amount of fat I take in a day, whole wheat ceral for breakfast and replacing crisps and chocolate bars at lunchtime with Twiglets, rice cakes and Sesame Snaps (you can buy these in Julian Graves, they are a great way to get a slow energy release from “good” carbohydrates). For dinner it’s rice, pasta and fewer potatoes with chicken rather than red meat.

Hey presto, what an incredible surprise, I back to thirteen stone again and if I continue this way for another couple of weeks I should be back in my suit trousers once more.
My mood has also improved greatly, no more headaches, tiredness or lethargy, I feel rather rejuvenated.

Remember George McFly in Back To The Future. “If you put your mind to it you can accomplish anything”. It’s true, if you’re determined to do something then you can do it, you just have to programme your mind to that way of thinking.

If you really need a push, listen to Paul McKenna’s “I Can Make You Thin” CD to get the ball rolling. The disc is around a half hours day-dreamy meditation that plants suggestions in your mind to resist the cravings and live a healthier life.
Obviously this CD won’t make you thin, I’m afraid you have do the hard work yourself, but it’s a start.

But don’t go mad, we still need fat and sugar to keep ourselves going, especially at this time of year with the autumn setting in and the winter just around the corner. You need an extra bit of stodge to keep your energy levels up, just not too much!

Normal service will be resumed again shortly, I just wanted to go on a slight detour for a change.

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