Why do I always end up on the diet naughty step?

As the weeks move on, and I tick diets of my list, it is slowly becoming evident that I'm a pretty terrible dieter. I probably don't need to tell you that... if you've been following my blog it's pretty clear. I now know why I'm one of those girls that's constantly dieting but never thin.

The weight is moving in the right direction - albeit rather slowly. But to be fair that in itself is pretty amazing considering how bad I am. Today for instance I stood on the scales... nervously... not wanting to look... trying to balance from side to side to make sure the weight went down. It had today - one pound less. Phew!

But I was far from perfect this week - and I think I found the answer why in an unusual place... whilst wathcing Supernanny.  You see the thing is a lot of the same principles for avoiding a tantrum in your kids can be applied to dieting. You need discipline, you need to be identify the warning signs of a possible future strop (or in my case the possible future eating of cream cakes). Apparently giving a child choices is good - I think from the small sample of diets I've already done I known when I don't have a choice my dieting goes downhill pretty quicky. But at the same time you need boundaries - I need rules, I need a list of what I can and can't eat.

You also need to not over use the words "No", "Don't" and "Stop". Maybe in my case I would be better if i did use those words - or even just try them once... but the theory is explaining why you shouldn't do something works better.

When you think of all those things, and apply them to the diet I chose this week you can see why I struggled. I opted for the Special Kay diet - you may remember it from years ago. They now have a different version that doesn't involve relpacing two thirds of your meals with cereal. But I went for the old fashioned one - the one that promised you'd drop a jean size in a week, and be able to wear that red swimsuit in the adverts.

I started the week thinking I was rewarding myself. Living a relatively carb free world for weeks I'd been craving cereal so badly... but it turns out you really can have too much of a good thing. And anyway perhaps I didn't deserve a reward - there were certainly no gold stars on my dieting behaviour chart to date.

On the whole days one to five went smoothly; I just had my bowl for breakfast and my bowl for lunch. (and the ocassional handful here and there as a snack - that technically wasn't allowed). I tried to introduce choice though to stop me cheating... Special Kay Red Berries... Special Kay Blue Berries... Special Kay Sustain. The problem was the evening meal. I didn't have the boundaries I needed. If you tell me to have a healthy meal that isn't enough. I need to be told "don't eat pasta"... "you must not eat carbs after six" etc. Otherwise my creative mind can make pretty much everything healthy. One night I had sticky toffee pudding - a balanced diet has a bit of everything. Another night I had a naan bread with my curry - I haven't had one of those for ages... but a balanced diet has a bit of everything. So really like a child the boundaries weren't set and I pushed them, and displayed the lack of self discipline I really need to tackle.

So this week I'm going to try and find a diet that does have rules and regulations...but also choice. I'm not going to say "No don't eat that burger"... I will say "eating that burger will make you big and fat". I will have a reward chart with golden stars and everything, and maybe even certificates. One website I was just reading suggested making up a song to beckon your child to the dinner table. I sense this could get annoying for those around me... But perhaps if I follow these rules... perhaps if I apply them in addition to the next diet I do... i might, maybe, just about avoid ending up on the naughty step this week. Maybe...

RIP Jack LaLanne

Jack LaLanne was a fitness guru from the 1950s, and he was quite a man. Partly this was because he was able to work an all in one bright blue Lycra number well into his nineties. But in addition to this if it weren't for him we wouldn't have jumping jacks - I kid you not... Well actually we'd have them but they'd probably be called a side-straddle hop. Not quite as catchy I think you'll agree.

But where as he was responsible for no doubt thousands of people's weight loss - he was actually in my younger years partly responsible for why my once svelte body grew a lumpy layer of lard. It was back in my university years that I first discovered him. I was watching infomercials - one of my favorite TV hobbies. At that stage Jack LaLanne was famous for his juicer. Honestly it was amazing... you could even juice the pips and everything. I wanted one.... I needed one... I couldn't afford one. So instead I sat for hours watching the amazing commercial drinking beer and eating student fare such as kebabs and currys. See I told you he was to blame - it was all him, not my doing at all.

I never got his juicer - I did however once buy a set of knives, including one that could cut through coke cans and frozen spinach. Frozen spinach!!! Sorry, I digress...

Anyway on hearing the sad news that Jack LaLanne recently passed away I decided to dedicate my weeks dieting to him. I didn't opt for his juice diet, but one from his early days. Essentially it goes a little like this...

Breakfast: An egg and or meat, toast with honey and fruit.
Lunch: A raw vegetable salad and meat or cottage cheese.
Dinner: Meat or fish, vegetables... then a bowl of fruit, yogurt and honey.

And I learnt this week I can largely stick to this diet for once reason - the toast. If you know you have toast coming you are less tempted by the other sinful snacks (less tempted not completely un-tempted... but onto my inevitable cheating in a bit)... toast is the secret. It's like all your dieting needs combined in one. It gives you texture... sweetness... toast... carbs. Start the day with a piece of toast and a thin body you will boast. Spread the word.

He also advocated having a glass of wine if you felt like one - I did many nights this week. And he recommended exercising daily - i didn't many days this week. He also had a daily facial exercise you had to do. It is amazing. I would recommend looking it up on you tube and doing it. I don't know if it actually makes a difference but will make you smile.

Now onto the cheating... I was actually pretty good this week. All I had was....

5 Pringles
2 small new potatoes
2 Poppadoms
One chocolate pudding (valentines day ... probably can't be classed as good non cheating. was super tasty though)

For me though when it comes to cheating that's not bad! And neither was my weight loss... two pounds down this week. So thank you Jack LaLanne for providing me with a diet that I liked and enjoyed enough to cheat less. I won't be donning the blue Lycra body suit quite yet though.

At the end of the day it all comes down to science.

In physics you have Newton's three laws of motion. They keep the world ticking over... stop the university from imploding... or something like that anyway. You may be thinking what has this got to do with dieting? Well any true dieter (or professional cheater) will know the three fundamental rules of dieting.

1. If you are eating/staying at someones house you must eat their food. It would be rude to refuse.

2. If you are meeting up with old friends that you rarely see it is not acceptable to diet - you must have fun instead.

And lastly... If you make a cake you must lick the bowl.

These are rules that I've followed for most of my dieting life ( or at least from this week anyway). So you will see that it was completely out of my hands this week that I had to abide by each of these rules. If I hadn't the dieting universe wouldn't have been right. It is also why although I started the week doing the atkins diet... I ended it having done more of an "experimental" diet.

And like any true scientist you need to test new theories. I am pretty confident if you ate healthily in all instances other than the three rules you'd loose weight - but I needed a new challenge, someway of revolutionising the dieting world. So I added a couple of new rules...

4. If you go out dancing you can eat chips and/or a battered sausage.

5. If you are Gatwick you can eat a McDonalds.

So on to the conclusion. It has become evident that perhaps the addition of these extra rules was the greatest flaw of my plan. Let me explain... if d = normal diet, b = burgers, and bs = battered sausage ... then... d + b + bs = 3 pounds weight gain. 


In non scientific terms you could say I'm just a big fat cheater. You'd be right.... e = mc squared, eating = me slightly more rounded. My experimental diet failed big style. I promise I'll try harder this week... maybe....

The good...the bad... and the carbohydrates.

Generally I'm a fan of the low carb lifestyle. Any diet that allows you to drink cream freely, and stick your finger in the butter dish and eat it, can't be too bad. Some even advocate drinking champagne... that's my kind of thing. So this week I opted for a variation on a theme - the pig to twig diet.

You may think I was drawn in by the humorous name... but it was more the fact you can have Indian takeaways, and it encourages you to eat out at restaurants. I've eaten out three times this week and had a takeaway. Normally that would be excessive cheating, even by my standards!

But there are some strange things that happen to me though when I cut out the stodge - and attempt to survive mainly on scrambled egg and bacon.

Firstly I lose my appetite. One day I managed to survive till teatime having eaten just one boiled egg. I know this is hardly healthy, and wouldn't encourage eating of that sort in anyone, but I was busy and just didn't think about food. This is incredibly strange as normally I think about food probably once every three minutes, and actively plan my day around it... Even now as I write this I stopped for a moment, to think of what I might have for dinner.

The second is I crave cereal. When I was younger and low carbing it was frosties - now my tastes have matured slightly and it is crunchie nut cornflakes. Normally I wouldn't keep such evils in the house but we had guests over at New Year so I stocked up. (Note - having guests to stay is a dieters excuse to buy everything they wished they ate all year round, then not offer it, then have to eat it from fear of it going off)

My crunchie nut cornflakes had gone off slightly - I know this because I cheated. You knew it would come in there! I can't believe I've managed to make it look like perhaps I didn't for five paragraphs. Stale they were, but they tasted so good... which is why on two evenings I found myself shoving handfuls into my mouth. No milk, just dry. They tasted amazing. I wouldn't have been tempted by anything else... I ended up hiding them behind the sofa. Although out of sight, out of mind didn't really work - I just stopped typing again to think about them. Last night my other half was sat eating prawn crackers and I wasn't tempted at all. Had he been eating crunchie nut cornflakes or frosties... I might have gnawed his hand off. Perhaps even golden nuggets? My standards with food are generally lowered when I've had a few drinks...

Which brings me nicely to the drink. For the first two weeks of the pig to twig you're not meant to drink (alcohol that is...). I later read in the book this isn't because it screws up the diet, it's purely because you might be tempted to cheat. I thought, "Me? Cheat? Have you not read my blog? I can be trusted! I can drink the wine and not have the cereal" Clearly I was wrong.

So it is evident I am a cereal/serial cheater... I can see now that this will become my little weekly confession. But at least it's working... I left the important bit till last. One more week down, and one and a half pounds lighter.

A leopard never changes his spots.

And sadly neither does a diet cheater. I wanted to be able to say to you this week that I had stuck one hundred percent to the cabbage soup diet. Just so that you wouldn't think i was some sort of diet floozy. I'm not a dieter that fools around with wine and chocolate without any consideration for others. I can be committed. I can eat just celery if needs be, and I was determined to show that... after two solid weeks of essentially failing and eating the occasional bit of lard.

But the thing is a diet is like a good relationship. Firstly you have to have something in common. My belly may occasionally resemble a cabbage - but that's as far as it goes in this instance. You have to get on - we did not. You have to look forward to your future.... with the exception of the jacket potato i was allowed on day two I did not. That potato tasted amazing though. Really, really good.

The upshot of all of this...  I cheated on my diet with one of my best friends. The shame. I don't regret a thing though... Sometimes circumstances overtake your ability to only eat cabbage. In this instance my friend got engaged. There is no way the champagne was not going to flow - and anyway bubbles don't weight much, surely not??

The main problem with the cabbage soup diet was that it was hard to get back on track. I cheated and missed the banana and milk day... should i still do that? or skip to the veg and rice day?

At this point I should probably explain the diet for those that are not familiar ( and if you're not woo hoo for you!). Essentially you eat cabbage soup.. which whilst most reviews say is bland, i quite liked. But you are so limited with other food. Day one - soup and fruit. Day Two - soup and veg, and the beloved potato... just one though. Day three - soup and fruit and veg. Day four - soup and bananas and milk.. that's where i lost the plot. So after that I just stuck on day five like a bad record on loop... soup, beef and vegetables.

So the outcome of the week? Well despite my promiscuous diet ways I actually lost two and a half pounds... which does make you think... perhaps the cabbage soup diet does have a future in my life? perhaps I could make this diet work after all? Should I give it another go?...... The quick answer has to be no, although with two and a half pounds lost... i do end the week feeling quite satisfied.

If it sounds too good to be true... it probably is.

And that pretty much sums up the eat every thirteen minutes diet - the idea sounds fantastic, in reality all I can say is it's stupid. As a result of the stupidity of the diet by Saturday I cheated. I'm going to get that one out early. The result of the cheating was that I lost... nothing. This week I am therefore punishing myself - but more on that later.

It was meant to just be one meal that I cheated but extended right the way through Sunday, as is often the case with cheating. You really get into the swing of it. It's like riding a bike - even if you convince yourself you don't like cream cakes, once you give them a try you realise you never forget how enjoyable it is to eat them... and then you are having so much fun you don't want to stop. I didn't actually have cream cakes, but i did have chips... twice. The most annoying thing though is that I had lost weight when I weighed myself on Saturday - two pounds in fact. But I put this back on over the weekend... proving that not only is the diet stupid, I am too.

But why is it so stupid? Well let me first explain the basics of this diet... You eat three health meals each day. For example most days I had porridge for breakfast, soup and ryvita for lunch, and the meat or fish and veg for tea. Sounds alright. On top of this you can have three pieces of fruit, and half a pint of skimmed milk. Brilliant... In fact if that was the extent of the diet I could have stuck to it. It was the eating every thirteen minutes thing that wore me down.

Basically you have to keep a little pot of raw vegetables and a protein such as cooked chicken to hand. The food has to be chopped to the size of you little fingernail, and you can eat one bit every thirteen minutes. This is harder than it sounds. Basically I was either sat staring at this little pot... starving... salivating... waiting for thirteen minutes to pass so i could have another fingernail piece of bean. Then the moment would come, a flurry of joy would pass through my mind... I'd eat the fingernail piece of bean. Then sit and stare at the pot again. Like a dog watching someone cook, waiting for a scrap to fall on the ground.

That was one scenario. The other was that I'd be really busy at work, suddenly realise two hours had passed and i'd forgotten to eat not one fingernail piece of bean, but eight! The disappointment that I'd deprived my body of food... how could I? And surely it didn't work if you ate them all at once? I felt like i'd let myself, and the fingernail food, down.

I couldn't continue... I hate the eat every thirteen minute diet. It might not seem so bad this time next week though because now I'll move onto the punishment for my cheating ... (and perhaps punishing those around me)

This week I will be doing an oldie, but apparently not a goodie... the cabbage soup diet. It promises to help me lose up to ten pounds in a week.. and also to make me smell. Joy!

And so the results are in and....

.... I wanted to write the sound of a drum roll here, but google was not forthcoming with the goods. So imagine a drum roll.... and this week I lost 2 pounds!

So it seems eating the viking way pays off, which is strange as in my head vikings are fat and eat lots of chicken legs. In reality it's a pretty simple diet, and as i said before no processed food, just lots of fresh stuff. I'm not going to bore you with the detail of what I ate for every meal... One thing I will say is whilst I ate like a viking (except the puffin) I doubt I cooked like one. It felt a bit elaborate to conjure up a camp fire for the sake of cooking an omelette (apparently a favourite with vikings according to the magazine I stole the diet from... was it really? really?) I ate a lot of omelettes though despite my doubts.

I will however tell you what I have learnt this past week.... before admitting something.

Rye Bread. I don't know why in a modern age this still exists. We have nice bread now... I tried to like it, I really did. As any veteran dieter will say if you're allowed a food on your diet you will try your hardest to eat it. So i piled on smoke salmon, hid it under grilled sardines... but I was not to be convinced. The end result is I have a packet of rye bread which will remain in my cupboard forever more - only to be sent to some future harvest festival when I have kids. (Given I do not this gives an indication of how long it will be left uneaten)

Curly Kale. I went into this diet already hating this... and surprising don't, as long as it's sauteed and a little bit of salt is added. Then it's alright... tastes like seaweed from the chinese. So essentially I like the healthy veg, as long as I make it unhealthy. Try it though, is very good.

Roll mops: couldn't bring myself to put it in my mouth so will never know.

Now onto my confession, because one reason I started this blog is I thought by making my diets public it would be harder to cheat. So I'm going to be honest from the start - this week I cheated just a little titchy bit. Some of it was accidental.. on the first day I accidently ordered a diet coke, and didn't really think about fact Vikings wouldn't have had it. I'm sure they would have loved it though so am going to let it slide. It was the wine I had at the weekend that probably didn't help my weight loss! But hey ho there's always going to be weeks where the lardy girl comes out to play (in fact will probably happen at some point most weeks)... and vikings drunk beer so surely that's worse?

Next up the eat every thirteen minutes diet... one day in and am already regretting this whole ordeal... wish me luck and speak next week x