I’m not a big fan of diets. I know they are way of life for many and I have been threatening to go on one since I ate my own body weight in chocolate and red wine on New Years Eve, but does anyone really enjoy them? Whenever I’m around one of my dieting friends and we are faced with a cake/biscuit/glass of wine situation, they will sadly decline the offer of said treat because they are ‘on a diet’.

I have always been fairly blessed with a fast metabolism and used to be able to lose weight fairly easily. Now post babies and in the latter part of my 30s, it seems that my metabolism is taking a more relaxed approach in its ability to cut back my unwanted inches, meaning I’m having to actually work hard at losing weight.

However, the trouble is not my metabolism as such but my willpower. The minute my head is in diet mode, I feel the weight of food denial hanging heavy on my shoulders. By cutting out treats, I start to obsess about how much I’m missing them. I start eyeing up a forgotten bottle of Bailey’s that hasn’t been touched since Christmas with a yearning need for its calorific creamy wonder. I gladly eat healthy all day, keeping my calories to a minimum, happily quaffing my recommended 2 litres of water. But come about 5.30 while the kids are finishing off their dinner, I find myself crouched in the corner of the kitchen manically stuffing my face with KitKats and Babybel’s trying to satisfy my intense need for rubbish food, promising myself that tomorrow I’ll try harder.

I have been writing a number of diet articles for work recently and came across the diet involving intermittent fasting. Over a week you eat normally for 5 days and on 2 days you are only allowed to consume 500 calories for a woman and 600 for a man. Apart from sounding like you are preparing for surgery each week, it is said to not only help you lose weight but prolong your life in the process. So I do what every committed dieter does, I buy the book, giving myself another week to avoid it while I read up on it. However, while my Fasting Diet book sat hidden underneath a pile of other books, hubby picked it up for a flick through and got hooked! And as expected he has taken this diet on as if it were no mean feat, telling me how easy it is to change your lifestyle, fit in 2 days of fasting and asking me daily when I’m going to commit to it. The problem with me is the whole ‘change for life’ thing. Perhaps if the book promised that you only had to fast for a few weeks until your ‘mothers apron’ disappeared or you had a spring in your step enough to actually clean the house properly. But a change for life, what happens if I stop it, have I failed?

82 calories per chocolate biscuit…how depressing…

Most men find it easy to shed weight on a diet, it’s a nature thing as women retain fluid, store more fat in our thighs and generally drink less beer. So after a week of the fast diet, hubby has lost 4 pounds and feels better about himself already. And obviously he finds the whole fasting thing really easy and thinks everyone should eat like this, getting his work mates doing it and wondering why he has never done it before. Don’t get me wrong I am proud of him, he is very committed, just annoying that he is not affected by the lack of chocolate on his fast days and has even managed not to binge eat on his ‘normal days’. I will start it next week as it was sort of my idea in the first place, I don’t want to feel a total failure. I just need to work out which days I’m going to fast on first, think I’ll have a chocolate biscuit while I think about it.