An Irishman's diet Week 4: Physical weight loss still eludes but, mentally, there's change
It's been an eventful first week on the managed diet. I'm now officially a fat bloke with a plan and a food tracker, I've implemented one or two changes that I'm hoping will correct everything that's wrong with my life, and I'm beginning to see improvements in my mindset, if not quite my body shape.
In other news, the slim well-dressed weight-management guru has eloped with a Japanese wrestler and been replaced by Mr Enthusiastic himself, the most positive weight manager you could imagine. In short, Disciplinia has been replaced by Enthousiasmos.
Having weighed in, the cheerful band of slimmer brothers, Fat Troop, F-Troop, call us what you like, offer up inspiring tales of how they've lost five pounds, six pounds and seven pounds.
I cringe when the septuagenarian (I kid you not) to my right informs us, having been coaxed by Mr Enthusiastic, that the only morsel of fat that has passed his lips in five weeks was a slice of pudding on Christmas Day.
I wonder outrageously if funeral directors will one day bury you by the pound and that the poor man is trying to reduce future funeral expenses.
When it's my turn to glorify in my miserable one-pound weight-loss, I'm embarrassed to make eye contact, especially when Mr Enthusiastic asks me to expand on "my wonderful news".
Wonderful news? I feel like I'm the worst newsreader on the Humpty Dumpty channel, and I try desperately to wriggle out of my poorish performance by arguing that while I've physically only lost the bare minimum, psychologically I've lost stones in bad eating habits, inadequate exercise routines and scorned the mind games of late-night chippers and other nibbles.
F-Troop smile at me, knowingly, as I release the parachute of denial for the last time. While I smile back, affectionately, through my clinched teeth, inside, my competitive streak is in over-drive.
I want to crush them all. To be the number one weight-loss fat bloke ever. And to show this bunch of weight-losers that I'm just as good as them. Next week I determine, by golly, to show them a thing or two about slimming.
Indignant, I sit quietly for the rest of the class, marvelling at the genuine feel-good factor that permeates as a lot of seriously overweight people glow in their hard-earned reductions having deconstructed their humble roast dinners and morning fries, replacing carbohydrate domination with vegetable balance.
It's no lie that hardcore snake-oil salesmen have become poster boys for green stir-fries.
As the class ends, the weight-guru brings to our attention how few calories are in Curly Wurlys. A few minutes later, F-Troop pass me in a lather of sweat as I saunter up the street to the local shop. When I get there I'm told there's been Curly Wurly panic buying and the chocolaty rope ladder is no longer in stock.
Later at home, the competitive spirit is marching around in my brain like, well, I suppose you could say, like that old demented war-drum frog-marching me to the nearest chipper. I'm suddenly in the results business - me, F-Troop and every other weight-watcher.
I'm the Graham Souness of the fat division and Freddy Shepherd is the trigger-happy weighing scales. But now it's personal and I'm truly committed to dramatic change.
I decide to make soup. Soup you say? Yes, soup. I search around for a recipe tripping through the exotica of Russian lemon, peach and mango with coconut milk and yoghurt, and German marrowfat pea with sausage soups, among many others, before deciding on carrot soup, mainly because that's the only vegetable left in the house and I don't fancy doing an evening shop.
It's a simple recipe. I fill our biggest pot with as many chopped carrots as I dare, and add two smallish potatoes, a nub of butter, a vegetable stock cube, cover with water and gently cook.
Adding a tablespoon of turmeric, paprika and cinnamon, I raid what's left of the herb pot and add coriander, parsley and rosemary. I also add lentils and a pepper to bulk it out. After about an hour, the soup - vegetables floating in water - looks like Victorian prison rations and, aesthetically speaking, pretty damn disgusting.
Tasting the unfinished product at this stage has often discouraged me from eating soup for months, so I dig out the hand-blender and machine-gun the lot, rotating the hand-blaster around the pot to break up all the orange pieces into a creamy consistency.
Adding more pepper than salt I sit down to an alternative evening meal for the next seven nights, determined to break new weight-loss records.
Does home-made soup guarantee weight loss? I'll let you know in a week.