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PIEMEN'S TALES As Christmas 2006 approached, a group of the
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heavier members of the Road Transport Group at Commercial Motor's owner RBI decided to collectively recover from the festive excesses. But just to provide an Incentive, there was a 210-a-head side bet, winner takes all. The exercise started on 2 January, to allow one last binge, with the final weigh-in at the beginning of April. This is the situation aftertwo months.
Still shaking after the weigh-in, where I tipped the scales at a hefty 19st (121kg), I found January's weight loss a breeze and the first stone dripped away with relative ease. Happy with this I then looked forward to dumping the next 14Ib (6kg)— and therein lies the problem. I am still looking forward to it, as during February 'it proved nigh-on impossible to break through 18st (114kg). Thankfully, February is a short month and I'm already back making progress. Despite this temporary pitstop I will soon be back in the race.
Not for roe fancy American branded diets. My approach is much simpler —cut out the junk, and obey the principle that if you consume more calories than you use, you grow fat. I've tried to reduce portion sizes, virtually removed chips and other fried food from my diet and cut out unnecessary snacks between meals. That's not to say I've been starving. Bacon can be grilled, eggs can be fried in zero-fat aerosol
medium and there are virtually no calories in vegetables. Tinned tomatoes on two toasts is under 250 calories. When a treat Is called for, Jaffa Cakes are particularly non-damaging. The result after eight weeks17Ib (8kg) gone and looser trousers, but four overseas press trips in March threaten to undo it all.
This diet has not gone well at all! When I started I weighed 18st 2Ib (115kg), which was the heaviest I had ever been. The first halt a stone fell off almost instantly-simply by cutting out the beer. As the weight loss started to slow down so I switched to Fatkins to give it another kick-start. It worked too, and by week f ive I had stuffed my face with enough bacon, lamb, sausages, beef burgers and cheese to take me down to 17st (108kg). Then it all went wrong. I went to Seville for the weekend and fell off the wagon it was a paella that did it (and eight bottles of beer). Two days later I weighed myself to discover that two days of eating whatever I wanted had added a staggering 8Ib (4kg). Since then I've been on WeightWatchers but progress is slow. I'm currently on 17st 4Ib (1 10kg) -but I'm about to embark on three press trips so things aren't looking good for the next weigh-in. chocolate, cheese and snacks; in came oranges, bananas, and jacket potatoes plus anything with a low saturated fat rating. Copious cups of tea were replaced with bottled water, good for flushing out the system and staving off hunger pains. Exercise was the next part of the strategy, walking to start with, either to the train station or part of the way rather than jumping on a bus. With a starting weight of 17st (108kg) I didn't want to keel over before I had managed to drop a few pounds. My weight is now 15st 2Ib (96kg).
I started out at 16st 2Ib (103kg), positively sylph-like compared with some of my colleagues, but still enough to make the canter up the stairs more like a waddle. Fortunately, my wife also decided to start on a postChristmas diet, which has made the evening meal easier: we've been cooking low-fat meals with minimal (usually brown) carbohydrates stirfries, bean stews, grilled fish with salad, that sort of thing. We've found the recipes in a book called SuperFoods SuperFast* to be very good, But I've had a bad cold, and my work has kept me desk-bound, so I haven't had much exercise. That's my excuse for only losing 9Ib (4kg).