My Love Affair With Calories
I have a phobia about every type of diet ever invented. The F-plan, H-Plan, the Z-plan. I have my own diet. The Y-Diet, meaning why oh why do I have an aversion to them?
The only diets that really work in the long-term are well-balanced, combination ones. My personal diet consists of a healthy combination of foods. Protein and Iron (milk chocolate), fruit (Raspberry Pavlova) and vegetables (Cauliflower Cheese).
The phrase ‘slimming diet’ conjures up visions of deprivation, constant cravings or revolting combinations of hard-boiled eggs and beetroot, which turn your urine a worrying colour or make your farts smell like a compost heap on a hot day. And, worst of all, it means small, sensible portions.
I don’t do small or calorie-free. I never have done. Give me luscious, lip-smacking calories and hundreds of them. I’d rather eat one digestive biscuit with a huge chunk of full fat cheese at 200 calories, than a bowl of salad (without dressing), which probably contains no more than ten calories. Thing is, I can’t just stop at one biscuit. One packet maybe.
OK, so I love eating. Well, how about exercising to burn off all those yummy calories, I hear you suggest? Besides, as all the health supplements will tell you, exercising is supposed to be fun.
So why is it that I’ve never seen a happy jogger? I passed one the other morning as I strolled idly along, pushing my baby daughter in her pram. The last time I saw an agonised, contorted expression like that was on a woman in an advanced stage of labour. All that huffing, puffing, sweating and vibrating jowls, with nothing to show for it at the end except a sagging arse and other private bits that you would rather remained in a northerly position.
I admit that I did try jogging once, but only the once. I gave it up after I was overtaken by an elderly man in one of those motorised wheelchairs. He politely raised his cap to me and shouted, “Morning!” as he sailed past and onwards into the distance, becoming a mere speck on the horizon.
On the return jog, I passed a group of smirking road workers, one of whom suggested that I might move faster if I were to leave my chest at home next time. So that was definitely the end of that mode of exercise.
I joined a gym for a few months, but felt conscious about sharing it with serious exercise fanatics, with upper arm circumferences the equivalent of my hip measurement. As these mounds of solid muscle moved off of one machine, I would skulk up and tentatively change the weight from 100kg to 5kg, hoping that no one would notice. Mind you, the aforementioned Adonis’s were too busy admiring their own reflections in the chrome on the equipment to notice a pathetic weakling such as I.
All those Neanderthal, grunting noises that these guys emitted as they lifted the equivalent of my weight above their heads, was most off-putting, not to mention the sweat trickling onto the seats and the saliva that shot out of their mouths each time they exhaled. Revolting.
The only form of exercise I engage in these days is confined to the bedroom and, yes, that is the only work out that I would definitely regard as enjoyable.
As for my diet, I do actually eat salads, but with lashings of mayonnaise and grated, full fat cheese. I love crispy bacon fat more than the bacon and pork crackling more than the pork. And a meal is not complete without a deliciously, sickly pudding or maybe a fresh fruit salad, but with lashings of fresh cream.
I have always had extremely good intentions, but before the size 8, health freak inside of me has a chance to say, “Just a black coffee, thank you”, the gluttonous side has leapt in first, drooling, “I’ll have triple chocolate fudge cake with extra cream please.”
