First, the good. This guy does comic book-style pin up posters of fat girls. I cannot begin to tell you how much I love this. As you know, I have been trying not to think about my health in terms of numbers on the scale, and also to like myself the way I am. Stuff like this makes it much easier.

Next, the bad. I decided to try and make rum raisin fudge last night, using my new and exciting sugar thermometer. Something went wrong somewhere – possibly the fact that I used a pan that wouldn’t let the sugar thermometer clip to the side of it – but although I thought the fudge was ready to come off the heat, twenty minutes of beating later it was still glossy and not grainy, which is a bit of a “fuck you, Katy” if you ask me. By that time I’d had enough of beating the mixture – TWENTY MINUTES PEOPLE – and grainy or not, I declared it fudge, poured it into the tin and left it to set. Except, of course, it didn’t set at all. What I appear to have made is some sort of delicious fudge-like substance, which tastes just like delicious rum-raisin fudge, but is not actually fudge at all. You can eat it with a spoon (although that way lies madness) and you can spread it on toast (shhhh) but you wouldn’t really cut it into squares and wrap it in paper. I think I shall probably either use it instead of peanut butter in brownies or just spread it over the middle, top and sides of a Victoria Sponge, but only time will tell.

And finally, the ugly. And I do mean ugly. The Fling is a new diet chocolate bar currently only available in California (which is where the Annaling is currently residing, although I’m not suggesting that she does a taste test unless she can get a bar without paying for it, frankly). It is under 85 calories per finger and each finger is covered in sparkly stuff. I’ve never, ever read such an insulting, condescending, patronising example of advertising in my life. Reading the FAQ, which is what I’ve linked to, actually made my brain try to crawl out of my ears. God knows who it’s supposed to be aimed at. Oversexualised toddlers on Weight Watchers? Beats me. Bonus points if you guess which bit actually made me throw something at my computer.

I share my favouritest most favourite dressing ever.

So I’m cooking from scratch a lot, and really enjoying it. Flavour, flavour, flavour.

It seems hugely ironic that I’m eating so much less, but enjoying what I do eat so much more than I used to. I’m eating lots of things that used to be verboten, and almost everything I eat is full fat (except that I prefer semi-skimmed milk, and although I like to cook with butter I prefer Clover on my bread). I am pretty sure that part of the reason I’m eating less is because what I am eating tastes so good. Diet food tastes like diet food to me – there’s always something missing.

In which I evangelise annoyingly.

(I should stop this, really. Or at least I should start taking some exercise and talking about that. But I can’t help it.)

I was trying to explain how I’m currently feeling about food to a colleague of mine. I said that what I love is the way that food is not currently loaded for me. If I’m hungry, I eat it and I really enjoy it. If I’m not hungry, I don’t want it, not even if I’m miserable and I’ve had a terrible day. It doesn’t fill that hole anymore. It’s just food.

“Because you’re finally motivated to resist,” she said.

Two weeks ago I joined Paul McKenna’s private army.

Seriously, I’m vaguely concerned. I’ve been listening to this CD every night and there’s a point at which I always fall asleep. Not properly asleep, because I wake up when he tells me to wake up, but lookintomyeyesnotaroundtheeyesintothemintotheeyesyou’reunder sleep. I’m not being funny, but the man could be telling me to do anything and I’d have no idea. It is entirely possible that one day I and five million other McKennettes will suddenly all look up from our desks at the same time, rise to our feet and stagger out with our arms in front of us to do … what? I DO NOT KNOW.

That’s it. I give up. I’m back.

Le Sigh.

Hello. I’m back. I’m back and I’m on a mission. I’m back because I give up. And when I say “I give up” I mean “I give up pretending that this blubbery mass is going to go away on its own: I might as well talk about it while I try and make it go away.

And so the story goes: I was doing so well. So, so well. See, when we started talking about this blog, it was when I was just starting on a fitness and thinness journey. By the time we actually got around to DOING it, a year or so later – and at a time compelled by new enthusiastic spirit that soon sadly disappeared – I was already more than half the way to the goals I had set myself -perhaps closer.

And then … oh, and then. Things unravel a lot quicker than they … Um … ravel. Don’t they?

in which I resort to mind control

So you’re probably wondering what I’ve been doing in the two months since I last posted. Maybe. Or not. But I’m going to tell you anyway, so it doesn’t matter. The answer is mainly:

1. Relentlessly putting on weight, and
2. Angsting about my relentless weight gain.

I have cancelled, renewed and cancelled my subscription to Weight Watchers about six times. I’ve flirted with low-carb diets despite knowing from experience that they don’t suit me. I’ve whinged. I have cringed in coffee shops as my Belgium-sized bum cleared countertops of crockery and sent small children flying. I briefly dated a bloke who seemed very nice and then blamed my saddlebags when it didn’t work out, even though rationally I can see that whatever the problem was it certainly wasn’t how I looked.

In which I learn that I can’t handle the truth.

Well, I am handling it now, I think, but then again I’ve thought that before.  

I speak, of course, of Weight Watchers.  Let’s recap.  Regular readers (can you have regular readers when you post once every two months?) will recall that four years ago I managed to lose 5.5 stone on Weight Watchers.  It worked for me.  For the most part I wasn’t hungry.  I didn’t exercise at all, which was pretty stupid, but I lost a lot of weight and I looked pretty good and I bought lots of lovely clothes.  Unfortunately, there came a point where I was hungry all the time, and instead of accepting that I  dieted down to a point where I couldn’t maintain it, and then started mainlining cake.  

Two years after hitting my lowest weight, I’m back to within a stone of where I started.

Aesthetically, I’m not as upset about this as you would think.  I don’t know if it’s because I’m older and more confident or what, but I look in the mirror and I quite like what I see.  My concerns about my weight these days genuinely are far more about health than about looks.  But they are there, those concerns: aching knees and ankles are my big concern, and I need to do something about it.  The question is what.

When I first started this blog with my now departed fellow porketeers, I was aiming to go back onto Weight Watchers and lose the weight again.  But here’s the thing: it didn’t work.  I couldn’t stick to it.  I would go on it, lose 4lb or 3.5lb in the first week, and then lose all control in the second week.  I exercised and lost inches, but I could not for the life of me bring myself to stick to Weight Watchers, which was strange because it worked so well for me the first time.  Then I decided that I wasn’t going to diet, I was just going to eat three meals a day and have whatever I liked as long as I cooked it from scratch.  Then I decided I was going to try low-carb dieting again, which I had previously tried six years before.  Then I decided I was going to eat whatever I liked.  

And then, a few weeks ago, I decided I was going to go back onto Weight Watchers.

Some things which are very tasty and also good for you, or at least not too bad for you.

(A continuing series.  Feel free to add your own in the comments.  Recipes welcome.)

Peanut butter porridge (feel free to substitute Nutella)

Smoked salmon sandwiches

Olives

Halva

Natural yogurt, with or without a dash of maple syrup

Sorbet

Mango

Cafe Noir biscuits

I went to the gym yesterday and today, and each time I did 20 minutes’ cardio, which I was quite pleased with, because I don’t think I’ve done any cardio for about five weeks and I was expecting to pass out after seven minutes. (I decided to use my appointments with my personal trainer for strength training, because whilst I adore him I don’t quite adore him enough to pay him to watch me listen to my iPod on the crosstrainer.)

I receive an email from Tesco Diets

Many moons ago, in my search for the Holy Grail of Slimming (i.e. a diet that allows you to lose weight, keep it off and not feel hungry or deprived), I signed up to Tesco Diets. I can’t really remember how it worked now, but I think it was basically calorie counting plus exercise counting.

(By exercise counting, by the way, I mean that thing where someone writes an article which says “1 hour on the cross trainer: two Mars Bars burned”, which would be great if it worked like that – but it doesn’t, because how many calories you burn depends on your height, your weight, your general level of fitness and how hard your heart is working. So a very out of condition person walking up a flight of stairs is likely to be burning considerably more calories per minute than a reasonably fit person on the cross-trainer. But I digress.)