food and drink, health and fitness, personal

There seems to be a trend around to persuade people to stop eating reduced-calorie processed food and eat a pretty much everything in moderate amounts. You know it when it get to read about it in Metro (Wednesday's issue, page 11, I'll be damned if I ever manage find a Metro article online to link to). You know it when Channel 4 makes a show out of it: Cook Yourself Thin.

I could not agree more. Last spring I gave up diet coke, sugar free yogurts, light instant chocolate, Weight Watchers desserts, slimline tonic water, reduced-calorie fruit juices, sugar-free candy (at work only, while I allow myself some in the evening). I replaced some of these with their full-fat equivalent, and I lost weight. So much so that my 'skinny jeans' (once only wearable to 'standing-up' dos, and even that, only on an empty stomach) have now become my 'slightly loose jeans I go to work with').

I initially did not do it in order to lose weight (like most people, I thought the idea just did not make sense), but because I was sick and tired of finding that everything I ate had at least ten ingredients, nine of which man-made. Because folks, if you remove sugar and fat, you've got to add sweeteners, enhancers, emulsifiers, stabilisers, aromas and stuff, otherwise you may as well nibble on a piece of cardboard.

Of course I had to watch very carefully what I ate. And of course I had to do just a little more exercise. If you expect not to have to, then sorry mate but you are a bit thick and you deserve to stick to this week's boring diet fad. Oh and by the way, your breath stinks of ketosis.