Salad Days

Tuesday, 15 December 2009 15:42

I always thought that becoming a parent would make me more active, physically. In a way it does. I was never one for playing much sport, but some of the headlong dives I have made in order to prevent various material posessions from damage at the hands of a curious toddler have been nothing short of spectacular. I'm sure the experience gained would make me a formidable goalkeeper. Then there is the weight training I have received from continually picking up my aforementioned bundle of joy; although during the 2 brief periods of my life where I found time to actually go to a gym and work out, not once did the weights I was lifting manage to punch me in the face on the way up and then kick me in the sweetbreads on the way down.

Despite all this extra-curricular physical work, being a parent also involves a lot more lying down in dim lighting with a glass of merlot once your child has gone to bed, and I suspect it is for this reason that I piled on a few extra pounds since she arrived. So when my wife and two of our friends decided to diet together I happily agreed to join the pact. What I agreed to was a strict 11-day 'calorie shifting' diet.

To ensure that I am not irresponsibly promoting "extreme" dieting, I should point out that I followed a detailed diet plan that included all the major food groups. I ate a variety of foods and I ate enough of them. I had no problem with any of the foods that were on the menu. My issue was the combinations I was expected to eat. Normally when you put 2 or more food types together you create "a meal". If there is a name for any of the combos on this diet, I wouldn't want the word in my vocabulary. For example, one meal was hard boiled eggs and milk. That particularly offensive combination came up twice. Another was fish and scrambled eggs. You know something isn't right when you are eating your dinner in front of the TV and wishing you could swap for the cockroaches on "I'm A Celebrity".

Anyway, the good news is that I lost a considerable amount of weight - 11lbs in just over a week (9lbs of which stayed off, the other 2lb reappeared when I walked past some bread). So instead of being a lot heavier than I want to be, it looks like I will be proudly starting the new year just slightly heavier than I want to be.