In which I invent a new diet

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I know there is marching on the streets of London, and rebels taking government strongholds in Libya, and mounting unrest in Syria, and mourning in Japan. But forget that: I have invented a DIET. Hold the front page, baby.

Remember that great moment in The Big Chill, where Jeff Goldblum is on the telephone with the longest cord in the world, trying to pitch his editor an idea for a story? Jeff is busking it. He says:

'Hope, hope, where did our hope go. It's about lost hope'.

Pause.

'Yeah, well you think everything is boring. You wouldn't say that if it was the Lost Hope Diet.'

I actually hate diets. I disapprove of them on political and utilitarian grounds. They make lovely women feel inadequate, and they almost never work. If they did work, the Diet Industry would not be making millions, and a new stupid diet book would not come out each week, to bore us into catatonia. As Sarah and I said, rather dogmatically, in Backwards, the only thing that works is to eat a little less and move around a little more, but you can't make money out of that.

I often think, in a giving perspective rather than a morbid way, of one's deathbed. I can guarantee that when you are breathing your last, you will not be saying: thank God I never ate any carbohydrates. I am a proud size fourteen, and I shall not be moved.

However, even at my most hardline, I do admit there are times when everyone, men and women both, would like to shift half a stone. It's not a question of body hatred, but of feeling a little lighter, especially as the weather gets milder and thoughts of spring abound. I did that exact thing this week, without even trying.

I call it the Deadline Panic Diet. Because I took last week off, naughtily, I had to work twice as hard this week. I read five books, took five thousand words of notes, wrote four thousand words of actual book, and thought of almost nothing else. Because of this, I did not have time, in the day, for cooking proper meals, and was too tired in the evening. But I needed strength, and protein. So I found myself simply slapping a steak on the grill pan, and having it with garlic butter, or poaching a piece of salmon and eating it with mayonnaise. I had bacon for breakfast. In the evening, I had smoked mackerel fillets, or salt and pepper prawns, or tuna sashimi. There was no time for even salad (all that chopping), let alone side vegetables. In order not to get scurvy, I made a huge pot of my newly invented tomato and beetroot soup (recipe here), which happily lasted the week, and made sure all the food groups were represented.

I do not weigh myself much, but I had happened to get on the scales on Monday. I stepped on them this morning, and was amazed to find that half a stone had simply gone. I had felt no consciousness of deprivation, or even trying to diet in any way. I had made myself a big pot of popcorn with salt and olive oil on Tuesday, and naughtily bought scampi and chips from the van in the village on Friday. I still took sugar in my pitch-black morning coffee. But the essence of the week had been protein and soup.

So there we are, my darlings. In the spirit of public service broadcasting: that is what you do if you need to get into a slightly too-tight frock. Do not spend your hard-earned cash on Durkin or Murkin or whatever his name is; you can get it here for free.

And now for your Saturday photographs.

It was a day of clouds and sudden sun; the colours were singing:

Those were all taken within ten minutes of each other. See how the light shifts even in that short time?

Everything in the garden is suddenly bursting into leaf, as if they got a memo saying Grow, GROW:

But you can see that the bare winter tangle is still there:

My current favourite tree is that silvery one that you see each day in the foreground of the hill shot. Today, I went to examine it up close. To my absolute amazement, I found this:

I'm not sure I ever saw that on a tree before. This one is not on my normal walk, so I have only ever watched it from a distance. All the time, it was putting out incredible catkins.

Ladyships, in all their outrageous beauty:

(The Duchess has her 'seen it all before' face on, which makes me laugh.)

Today's hill is lost in the white sky:

Have a lovely weekend. And for my readers in Blighty, don't forget the clocks go forward tomorrow. I usually do.

The Possible Nine in Ten

I found this article via a little piece in Slate Magazine:

Breaking News on Food & Beverage Development - Europe

Fad diets are making Brits fat, claims gastro expert
By Caroline Scott-Thomas, 27-Nov-2009

Fad diets are contributing to Britain's obesity crisis, the president of the British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG) said at the Gastro 2009 conference in London this week.

There has been ongoing debate about which diets have the greatest impact on weight loss, and for the food industry this has had an impact on products, particularly in the aftermath of the low-carb Atkins diet phenomenon. Many diets have emphasised the importance of various proportions of fat, protein and carbohydrate.

But BSG president Professor Chris Hawkey told an audience of digestive specialists that if Britons continue to follow unhealthy diets and favour certain foods over others, nine in ten are likely to be overweight or obese by 2050. Currently that proportion stands at six in ten, according to the Department of Health, although a new BSG/YouGov poll found that only 49 per cent of British people consider themselves to be overweight.

"Food has been shrouded in myths and fairytales since time immemorial as people argue over what is good for you, what should be avoided or eaten to your heart's content," Hawkey said. "But what's important is to recognise that despite the popularity of fad diets, we are losing a grip on the fight with obesity.We need to do away with quirky diets and get people to realise what will keep them healthy in the long run."

Hawkey also highlighted BSG/YouGov findings about attitudes toward food and various diets. In particular, he said that one in 20 women would try the Atkins diet if trying to lose weight, although only two per cent of British people think it is healthy; 21 per cent of Londoners would try weight loss pills in order to lose weight; and nine per cent of Brits think that a diet high in fish is bad for their health.

Hawkey said: "The problem facing society is not the content of our diet but it's the quantity we are consuming and the consequential impact of obesity."

He also suggested some fad diets that he thinks are worth avoiding, including rawism, which involves only eating uncooked food; the Hallelujah diet, which only allows consumption of fruits and seeds on the basis of Genesis 1.29; the Hollywood Grapefruit diet, which claims that grapefruit contains an enzyme that burns fat; and the low-carb Atkins diet.

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My co-writer and I have been bashing on for ever about the paradox of the worship of thin actually leading people to be fat. There is a whole section on it in Backwards in High Heels. It seems to me to be psychology 101: if the ideal is of Victoria Beckham, every Hollywood starlet who ever faced a paparazzi, all the women styled by the crazy Rachel Zoe, and the general insanity of size zero, this ideal can never be attained by normal women. To get and stay that thin you require constant hunger, private chefs, no fat EVER, laxatives, three hours or more of exercise a day, a lot of cocaine, and freakish diets (raw food, white food, nothing after 6pm food), in varying combinations. So when the normal woman tries and fails to fit into a pair of size six skinny jeans, she punishes herself by eating all the pies. And on top of that, all that stupid dieting screws with your metabolism, and your sense of self, and your perspective, so it gets harder and harder to know what normal is any more.

Finally it is not just Sarah and I shouting into the wind, but a lovely empirical professor, with scientific facts and figures shooting out of his fingertips. I am pleased he sticks it to the diet industry, which makes me crosser than possibly any other, but I am terrified that no one will much listen. This will be news today and forgotten tomorrow. Professor Hawkey might have right on his side, but he does not have a great big fuck-off advertising budget to spread his message.

In the meantime, the scariest figure in that short piece is the prediction that by 2050, nine in ten Britons will be obese. If that does come true, there is a very real danger that I shall start becoming as grumpy and shouty as Quentin Letts and start talking about the people who have buggered up Britain. So do let's hope, for all our sakes, that the predictive modelling is off.

Oh, and can I just say: fruits and seeds based on the Bible? And ??? And ?

There, all better now.

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