Musings of a Mediocre Mother
In my time, I must have tried them all; Atkins, Weight Watchers, food combining, calorie controlled, low fat, no carbs, ‘The Idiot Proof Diet’, (hey, proved them wrong!) etc. If someone told me that running naked around the garden whistling ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ would make me lose weight, I’d damn well give it a go.
It seems that pretty much every week of my life since about the age of 13 has started with the phrase, ‘I’m going on a diet’. By Tuesday, when I haven’t lost half a stone, my will power goes out of the window and I break my diet, again.
My husband, by contrast, has never dieted. He’s never ordered a salad instead of chips or skipped a meal through choice. A liquid lunch would involve beer rather than one of those god awful meal replacement drinks. And he certainly doesn’t have different sets of clothes depending on whether he’s going through a fat or thin stage.
Recently, however, he decided that he would like to shift a few pounds, call it the ‘Hairy Dieters Phenomenon’. I suspect that like a lot of men in the country he perceives The Hairy Bikers as proper men, unlike the ‘unctuous’ Nigel Slater, the ‘pukka’ Jamie Oliver or the ‘*!?@*#’, perma-tanned, hair highlighted Gordon Ramsey. (And just for the record Gordon, fabulous cook but swearing doesn’t make you manly). The Hairy Bikers have worked their way around the world on motorbikes, cooking and eating fat-laden dishes, every other one of them a pie of some sort, whilst oozing Geordie charm. Unsurprisingly, they put on a few pounds, unavoidable really. So, when they recently shed 6 stone between them, by sticking to a 1200 calories a day diet, filming it all and finding ways to produce low calorie pies, pasties and curries, who do you think has been the main consumer of the accompanying book? Blokes of course!
The book has sold out more times than they’ve had hot pies, but we are now the proud owners of a copy. Flicking through it I can already tell that’s it’s not a diet plan aimed at women. We know through years of experience that the only way to diet is to suffer. Why replace 1 sort of pie with a low calorie version when pies have never been part of our lives? Diet food is not supposed to be full of flavour. For some reason I think that if I spend time cooking and following a recipe, it should be to produce a full fat version of something in portion sizes fit for a (rather fat) king. But now in our house, it’s all about dry-frying and low fat mayonnaise, our little Friday/Saturday night drinks have become much drier affairs, in fact more like a party for one. And wouldn’t you know it, the weights falling off my other half. It’s like living with the incredible shrinking man, and rather than using this opportunity to shed a few pounds myself, I am perversely snacking and nibbling more. I hate the fact that he is able to diet so much better than me, beginners luck perhaps? But I should do something soon because he’ll weigh less than I do, and that, like white socks and sandals, is a complete no-no. I am very begrudgingly proud of him, but I hope he buys some smaller jeans soon so he can stop showing me how loose his waistband is…
Mediocre Mother
Comments