I’ve spent nearly all my long life longing to lose a stone.
I doubt there is a potion or a regime I haven’t tried. Remember Limmits, the little biscuits, each 100 calories? You ate twelve of them a day, instead of everything else.
Then there were slimming drinks,WeightWatchers unsatisfying ready meals, and some amazing pills called Nobese which were rapidly banned.
And all sorts of diets: the drinking man’s diet, the banana-and-milk diet, the grapefruit diet, the milkshake diet, and a delicious one on which I lost no weight at all – the pineapple-and-lamb-chop diet.
I’ve twice been to starve farms. The first time was to the now defunct Shrubland Hall, when my son was four months old and I wanted to lose the post-baby fat.
I went with my sister-in-law, and we had a little cottage in the grounds, so other clients (patients?) would not be bothered by a bawling baby. All we got by way of sustenance was lemon and hay tea, and at night it had a spoon of honey in it.
It certainly worked, but it was Hell – especially as we were feeding the baby soft-boiled eggs and toast soldiers. When he spat this out, it was all I could do not to gobble it up.
The other time was to a now equally defunct ‘health farm’, Tower Lease in Bristol, where I went for a week with my mama.
I thought I’d kill three birds with one stone: I’d lose a stone, dutifully spend time with my mother and get going writing a cookbook.
That was Hell too. Writing recipes for coq au vin and pavlova when you are starving is tough. And Tower Lease was obsessed with colonic irrigation and mud baths.
So why, when the skinny jab became all the rage, why was I not at the head of the queue? My husband signed up and lost a stone and a half in a month. He loved it. He was never hungry, ate half the quantity he used to, stopped snacking completely and pretty well gave up drinking.
He said it increased his enjoyment of meals. He looks great, feels fit and needs new trousers.
But something puritan in me would not let me do something so effortless, painless and expensive. What’s the matter with good old willpower? So I held out.
That is until I discovered that half the people I know, including my doctor, are happily stabbing themselves.
I gave in. And can you believe it? I have not lost one single ounce in seven weeks. Two years ago, I did finally lose a stone after a determined calorie-counting diet, but I’d like to lose another, damn it.
I certainly have no appetite, I’m certainly eating and drinking half what I was and I am totally exhausted all the time, desperate for a siesta in the afternoon and bed at 9.30. And I’m not one single imperial pound lighter. Only lighter by several hundred pounds sterling.
PS I finally quit after two more weeks on the drug. And, oh God, the relief! To have some energy back, regain my appetite and not feel below par all the time.
Frankly, I’d rather be fat and happy.
