On the final episode of the BBC series The Men Who Made Us Thin last night we learned about the fierce opposition to a proposed tax of eight per cent on sugary soft drinks. Opposition that was lead by the multi-million pound soft drinks industry that stood to lose out if such a tax was passed.

In much the same way that soft drinks giants pour sugar into their disgusting products, they poured millions into the US cities daring to suggest a tiny tax on overly-sugared drinks. America has this highly admirable system of referendums for states wishing to raise or change taxes. Admirable but only up to a point for what kind of taxpayer ever votes in favour of higher or new taxes? Read More→

How are you? How are you feeling? Hungry? Do you look at the clock for the answer to that question, as many of us have been trained to do since childhood? Because if so, it just might be the cause of a weight issue.

When I began this diet one of the things that attracted me to it was the promise of never feeling hungry. I’d heard this promise before. Other high-protein regimes made similar claims. “Try this diet” the features editor at my first paper entreated me. “You’re never hungry!” I can’t now remember which diet she referred to. Might’ve been the diet I think was called The Guy’s Hospital Diet which was basically eating a lot of hard-boiled eggs! No link here because I can’t find it online. Did I dream it up? Have you heard of it?

Anyway it sounds very Paleo/high protein and while it was, I seem to recall, based on some kind of chemical reaction if you stuck precisely to the diet, a pleasant side effect was that you stayed full for longer. Far too many of us eat when we are told to. Told to by the clock. But could you eat “off clock” and go on a much better trigger for eating, ie your appetite? Read More→

This is a diet blog so thought was about time I talked about cooking. I had bit of a clearout over the long bank holiday weekend (I know how to live!) and the kitchen shelf that contains all my cookery books is now tidy and sorted. I was bit surprised to realise I hadn’t bought a single cookbook in about, oooh, must be 20 years. Last one was Nigel Slater’s 30-Minute Cook which I still use. I adore this book because it’s full of butter and cream. He rightly says if you want low-fat recipes, buy a different book. He’s also very generous in his measures and his food is lovely.

That aside though, everything is from the 70s. The decade when I learned to cook. I took up cooking as a hobby when I went to college in 1976. In fact Facebook thinks I took Domestic Science at University. That’s not so very far from the truth. Here’s why. Read More→

Why do we hang onto beliefs even when facts prove them wrong? I’m not talking about the existence of god or not, though I firmly feel that if some atheists were given proof-positive that god existed they’d STILL be atheists.

Why? Because our beliefs matter a heck of a lot to us. They are who we are. They are our identity. When they’re questioned, it can cause real problems. As the lovely Bad Science doctor and author Ben Goldacre has pointed out time and time again, facts don’t refute personal beliefs – they make people hang onto them even more. Why and what has this to do with dieting, but especially Paleo high-protein/high fat dieting? Quite a lot! Read More→

Yes, this is still a diet blog. So how do you like yours? Wet or dry? Do you even know? I speak of whether you like your food wet or dry. Do you like “messed about with” food as my partner calls it or do you like it served plain and unadorned? Steak Diane, Steak Au Poivre or just plain steak? This matters. One of the hardest things about eschewing carbs for me – very much a wet person – is how do you soak up your sauce?

I like my protein served in a rich sauce but I like the mashed potatoes, chips, rice or pasta that goes with to soak up the sauce. Carbs also act as a thickening agent. So bland carbs such as mashed pots or boiled rice are perfect accompaniments for spicy or rich sauces. I miss my carbs as much for the taste as for the function they perform. However, there is no need to mourn them. You can replace them and you can still eat the Paleo mostly protein and fat way with hardly any carbs. How? Read More→

I’ve been meaning to write about exercise for some time now but last week came the perfect excuse. The programme I talked about in a previous blog called, The Men Who Made Us Thin, dealt in the most recent episode with exercise. In a word, it doesn’t work. It won’t help you lose weight and if you’re fat, ever likely it’s not because you don’t exercise. More likely being overweight makes you less likely to exercise.

But I’ll go further than that programme. I reckon exercise can make you fat. I trained for a marathon a few years ago. Gained weight every week. I also used to go to dance and aerobic classes every day. Gained weight. Why? Read More→

And now for a hundred carat gold-plated encrusted in diamonds full size plug. For which, as ever, I have neither been asked to make nor paid. This one’s on me. All my plugs are!

Saturday night TV in the UK is absolutely terrible. Dreadful. Beyond hope. So Saturday nights I either crack open the DVD boxsets – usually West Wing or Mad Men – or I give up on TV altogether and listen to the radio instead. My favourite programme of the week is BBC Radio 4’s Archive on 4. which goes out from 8 to 9pm Saturday nights. This Saturday, it’s all about eggs. Bliss that it is to be in England where we have such a fine radio station. Read More→

I’m taking bit of a flier here but I reckon there can’t be many diet bloggers or writers who tell you that nostalgia is aiding their weight loss. I’ve always been bit of a nostalgia freak. Ever since I was nine years old and found a much-loved Matchbox car I thought was lost. It was a red double-decker bus and I said, “I’m so glad I’ve found this. It’s got lots of memories.” And my father smiled indulgently at my mother and said, “Nine years old and she talks about having memories…”

But it’s his fault I was this way. Still am this way. He was forever telling us how much better things used to be. Even nostalgia used to be better. I’m sure that Matchbox toy was just very precious to me and the memories remark was merely a typical childish imitation of how I heard my parents – but especially my father – speak. Always with the memories.

However, I’ve discovered this year that being a nostalgia freak is brilliant for weight loss. How so I hope I hear you ask. Read More→

Over the weekend I got out some old favourite clothes, what I call my favourite shirts – after the Haircut 100 song of the same name – to see how they looked. Needless to say, none of these clothes are actual shirts. Some are even, ahem, underwear bought when slimmer and hardly worn. One lovely pair of flower-print designer knickers bought in a sale at Kendals I’ve never worn as despite the label saying large, the fit said otherwise. However, I got them out and I tried them on. They fit!

Also tried on a 38DD bra I bought yonks ago in Marks. It fitted once, briefly, and then it… didn’t anymore. But I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. I’d been properly measured and fitted for this bra so I was determined that one day, one day I’d get back into it. Well, yesterday I did. And while, yes, it’s bit tight it’s nowhere near as tight as I thought it would be. Like most Marks bras, it’s a beautifully-designed piece of kit and does the job superbly.

So is this a better way to judge and measure your progress? Surely beats the tyranny of the tape measure and bathroom scales? Read More→

So I feel I should address a TV programme and article that went out this week in the UK in which Guardian newspaper journalist Jacques Peretti says not only do diets fail but they’re not meant to work. The business model is based on failure. A product is sold which is predicated on not working. If it worked, there’d be no diet industry.

I made much the same point myself a few days ago and that was before I saw the pre-publicity for this programme called The Men Who Made Us Thin – except that they didn’t. They made and continue to make fat fat profits on selling us a thin ideal. Peretti also covered this in his previous short TV series The Men Who Made Us Fat.

Admitting how the diet industry relies on failure a former WeightWatchers finance director told Peretti in his latest film that their business model was based on an 84% failure rate. That’s how they made their billions. “They just keep coming back!” he beamed, as if he’d discovered how to spin household dust into pure gold. Perhaps he had. So why do I stick with it, knowing diets don’t work? Read More→