Wafer thin wishing

Diets are boring. They are boring to do, they are boring to talk about, you are boring if you are on a diet. But they are essentially all about food and so warrant an inclusion in this blog which, much like my poor starved appetite, has been much neglected.

DUKAN

I previously embarked upon the Dukan diet about a year ago in a vague post Christmas attempt to shed the evidence of a thousand pigs wrapped in blankets. But it fell by the way side pretty sharpish because I am someone who enjoys delicious delicious beer and a packet of cheese and onion crisps to go with. And it’s pretty hard to stick to a regime when you spend your overdraft on eating out because it’s nice and fun but actually its Tuesday and you are fairly unsatisfied with your life so FUCK IT I’m having the steak.

But with a renewed sense of courage, some kind of point to prove and a pocket full of dreams, I am back on the Dukan. And in the same way that damp spreads and turns into a rancid smelling mould, I cannot ignore the Dukan’s large presence in my life any more. So let’s talk about it!

Dukan is all about protein and non-fat and yes, no carbohydrate.

Things that I have been eating a lot:

• Onken non-fat yoghurt (strawberry or vanilla)

• Sainsbury’s non-fat cottage cheese, usually plain but if I’m lucky/have planned ahead so as to get to a big Sainsbury’s, the one with pineapple in. Which I know sounds disgusting and that’s because it is.

• Pre-Sliced chicken flavoured either sweet chilli or tikka.

• Crab sticks.

• HAM

HAM is now a really important part of my life. To complete the Dukan diet successfully, you have to have a slightly relaxed moral compass. By this I mean, one has to feel fairly nonchalant about how many animals, particularly pigs, are being slaughtered in order to benefit your weight loss. And of course there are ways to make this more humane, for example making sure all your meat is organic or free range etc. But it’s pretty hard to find organic wafer thin ham in Tesco’s and I am on a budget. Cows take a pretty bad hit also, what with all the steak and jerky but even more so, yoghurt and skinny lattes. Good bye soya, I am back on the good stuff and have blocked out all my previous anti milk farming arguments. Animal rights issues certainly enter my mind each day as I peruse the cold meats aisle but I figure on this diet it’s either them or me, AND I CHOOSE LIFE.

Speaking of living, the beginning stages of Dukan can often make you feel like you are actually already dead and someone has hijacked your still warm corpse. Carbohydrates obviously provide energy needed to complete the day’s activities, without which you could be found staring slack jawed at a coat hanger for twenty minutes or brushing your hair with the cat. Working in a bar was particularly difficult for this as I was constantly on my feet, walking or cleaning with only half an hour to sit down and silently devour a pack of Bernard Matthews Turkey breast in a dark port-a-loo esc staff room that smelt like feet. Grim.

 Such lack of energy can seriously mess with your emotions. One moment you may be crying on the bus listening to Bob Dylan’s Girl From The North Country on repeat and the next, silently burning with rage in the checkout cue because if that bitch doesn’t slide down the shopping divider thing NOW you will cave her head in with her own butternut squash and walk away smiling.

One of the greatest lows is realising that actually it’s pretty disgusting to carry around half opened packets of ham and even worse, crab sticks. You definitely do not want to be that girl who smells of crab sticks.

So why do it? It is an effective diet, not that I have seen the merits massively, but a couple of people have commented that my face looks ‘healthy’. Which is nice. But more than this, I am hoping that the discipline involved will filter into other aspects of my life.

I once spent a week in a shack with a mud floor in the middle of rural Wales with no phone signal and no red wine, learning Kalaripayat (an ancient Indian martial art), in an attempt to internalise this physical excursion and use it to generate a true sense of meaning when pronouncing ‘Joe’, the first word of Samuel Beckett’s play, ‘Joe’. I never got it right.

But I am hoping to apply this psychophysical method to my personal life; the disciplined heavy protein eating being the physical act that concentrates my mind to choose a career path, excel within that field, meet my soul mate, live in a house with some tasteful Bauhaus elements, and raise some babies whilst all the while making shit loads of cash.

If my mother taught me anything it’s that FORTUNE FAVOURS THE BRAVE.

So crab sticks it is.