weight-loss | anounceofmedotcom

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.

My best friends and I are heading to Ibiza for a girl’s weekend at the end of April. As expected I am feeling an overwhelming excitement with the promise of 4 lazy days in the sun in our posh villa with a swimming pool and NO KIDS (bless them). However, with this feeling of bliss also comes the feeling of dread as I rifle through last year’s swimsuits and bikini’s, contemplating baring the flesh without the use of a toddler to hide the flab.

With almost 5 weeks till we jet (escape) off to our weekend away, I have decided it would be nice to leave 8lbs of body fat behind as well. So, this week I have embarked on my bikini diet, which I will try and achieve sensibly with not too much effort. It seems most celeb bikini diets I have perused in magazines recently, must be down to liposuction if you see the before and after photos, there is no way weight can be lost that quickly without drastic measures? Kerry Katona surely must have a live-in surgeon by now?

Diets are a fairly new phenomenon for me, as a teenager I could eat anything and not put on a pound, some may say how lucky I was but by earning the nickname Twiglet at school I didn’t see it that way. I craved curves and compensated by wearing baggy jumpers and backcombing my perm that bit bigger. Since having children my body has changed quite a bit, especially after carrying twins my figure took on a hippo like quality, thankfully having twin toddlers is good exercise so I did lose a bit of the baby fat. However, the back sand bags that your body kindly develops for storage during pregnancy are still there and my stomach is so far down the other end of washboard it is depressing. I would like to jump back in time and shake my 19-year-old self, wearing hipster combats and teeny tiny tank top, and say look how flat your stomach is, appreciate this!

According to research, the average UK woman goes on 61 different diets from the age of 16. I am confident that having a fairly fast metabolism, a mixture of healthy eating and exercise should do the trick for me. I don’t relish the thought of going down the route of Gwynnie and Madge by becoming ‘macrobiotic’ as it sounds far too clinical, no sugar, no alcohol, no carbs, no fun!

After consuming my measured portions for dinner last night, having drunk 4 pints of water during the day, fruit for a snack, why did I sit in front of the TV with an overwhelming urge to eat chocolate and drink red wine. Don’t get me wrong, they are 2 vices of mine that it doesn’t take much encouragement for me to partake in, but I can generally take them or leave them, especially if I’m on my own. But there I was last night, hubby working a night shift, me biting my nails, fidgeting, unable to focus on any programme, dreaming of the wonders of Galaxy in my fridge. The woman on the Galaxy advert isn’t helping either, she has hidden hers in a box under her bed and sneaks it out to eat it, are they trying to convey the message that I’m turning bulimic if I give in? And she clearly doesn’t have any podginess around her belly so why is she hiding it in the first place?

I decide after consuming half a family size Galaxy bar in record speed, that I will look into other snack ideas. Skeletal Posh Spice recommends freezing grapes individually so if you fancy a treat, you can take one out at a time to act as a gobstopper! This is the woman that says her absolute weakness is Roasted Curly Kale, now I like my vegetables but could never agree that my ‘weakness’ would be a bitter tasting cabbage, wouldn’t we all like her a little bit more if she said “Ooh my weakness is a Chicken Korma and Onion Bhaji”. Never going to happen though!

Other alternatives are Beyonce’s quick fix diet of mainly consuming water and maple syrup for short bursts, can’t be good for you. More run-of-the-mill diets seem to just get confusing and more demanding , Slimming World’s red day/green day, Weight Watchers points system, The Cambridge Diet (sachets as a meal replacement-eurgh!), Cabbage Soup Diet (one for Posh), or my particular favourite the Body Shape Diet – are you an apple or a pear shape, a circle or an inverted pyramid? My god!

While sitting in the hairdressers last week, every gossip mag I picked up had a photo of Scarlett Johansson in a bikini on the beach, it was obviously a sneaky pap shot as she was clearly oblivious to any attention. She looked great, particularly as she looked normal, bit of cellulite on her bottom and thighs, little bit of a belly apron over the bikini bottoms and not particularly pert bosoms. But still a very beautiful woman. Every headline was of a contrary opinion, taking nasty jibes at her “orange peel skin”, “fat belly” and the biggest shock “her bottom actually wobbles when she walks” which I presume without that ability would be a bit of a useless bottom? Personally, I’d rather have a bit of a padding for when I’m using it to cushion my seated position.

The upshot is, I need to cease purchasing chocolate, red wine and stop eating the kids leftovers. I don’t want to go back to the days of the Twiglet me but something curvy and not too wobbly would suit me fine. I’m kickstarting my exercise regime, by avoiding the metabolic calculation of my age on Wii fit and will do my best for Ibiza.