Home-made brownies are not diet food.

If you’ve looked at my food diary for today, you’ll have noticed that I had 3 home-made peanut butter brownie squares for lunch AND 2 for my afternoon snack.

You will probably be thinking that I am a bit of a fuckwit. It’s hard to disagree, really. I could say that they are made with peanut butter and not chocolate, so have more protein in them than normal brownies, and that would be true, but it is also not the point. Somewhat more to the point is the fact that each brownie is barely 1 inch square, and therefore it wasn’t quite as much of a binge as some of you might be thinking.

Nonetheless, this wasn’t my best day on the nutrition front. It was, however, a good example of how easy it is to make stupid choices when you don’t plan ahead. The long and short of it is this: I made peanut butter brownies because it was a special occasion for someone at work and the peanut butter brownies make people very happy. I took them into work in a big cake tin and I confidently expected that they would all be gone by today. But this morning I left the house in a hurry and didn’t make myself lunch. When I got to work there were about fifteen brownies left. I had had a pretty filling breakfast and I didn’t feel like having a brownie, so I ignored them. As for lunch, I planned to go out and get some sushi later. Unfortunately, of course, I suddenly became very busy and couldn’t leave my desk to get lunch until about 4pm, which is waaaaay past the end of the lunch window in Central London. No lunch for YOU, sucker.

I was STARVING. I wanted lunch. Proper lunch. Carbs and protein and stuff. But there was no lunch. There was no food. There was, in short, nowhere to turn. Except, of course, towards the large tin of sweet, unusually proteinacious brownies on my desk.

I draw a tasteful veil over what happened next.

By 5pm I was full of brownies and self-loathing.

I wasn’t angry with myself for eating the brownies, as such. I was angry with myself because the rule is that I can eat anything I want. And whilst brownies are great as small, intense treats after a proper meal, no one wants a fucking brownie for lunch. I wanted a proper lunch and I hadn’t had one and the only person to blame was me. I could have spared ten minutes to go and get a jacket potato and beans. I could have asked someone else to pick something up for me. Or, of course, I could have been a bit more organised in the morning and found ten minutes to put together something that hit the spot yet was neitherstupidly fat soaked nor ludicrously spartan. Three bean salad? Tabbouleh? Bit of poached or grilled chicken? Smoked fish? Throw in a couple of pieces of fruit and a handful of dried fruit and nuts and you’ve got lunch and snacks to keep you going all day. I might have had one brownie as a snack in the afternoon, or I might not have wanted one. No big deal.

But no. I was a twat.

And now I am a twat in the grip of a monstrous sugar rush and a horribly upset stomach.

But look - I can either sit here and hate myself or I can try to take something positive from this. For a start, at least I know why it happened. It isn’t as if I walked past a table groaning with nutritious food and applied the entire tin of brownies to my face. The days when I’d eat a full lunch and then a load of brownies are long behind me; if I’d had a proper lunch with me none of this would have happened. So I know how to stop this from happening again. Hurrah!

Also, I’ve managed to avoid one of the major dieting traps, namely the post-fuck-up-binge. You know how it is. You’re on a diet that involves counting of some sort, whether it be Points, calories, checks or Syns (that’s Slimming World, that is). You have your Points quota. Unfortunately, things go wrong and you eat three brownies at 4pm. As the wave of orgiastic ecstasy that only a long-term dieter on a sugar rush ever really rides recedes, it dawns upon you that you have eaten the rest of today’s allowance and half of tomorrow’s. You have, in short, cocked up the day, because although in theory you could spend the rest of the day nibbling raw carrots, you know perfectly well that you won’t. Well, I’ve buggered it now, you think. Might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb. You’ve cocked up! It can’t get any worse! You might as well eat everything that isn’t nailed down today and start afresh tomorrow!

And before you know it you’re phoning for a pizza, or buying four assorted cream cakes from the patisserie counter, or tearing open a bag of Kettle Chips with your teeth, or having some sort of food that you don’t actually really want and wouldn’t be having if it hadn’t been for the three brownies earlier.

Even though I’m not counting anything anymore, I found myself falling into the trap. On the way home I suddenly realised that I had virtually talked myself into having fish and chips, and not at home in the form of potato wedges and oven-steamed fish, but out of fat-soaked newspaper. Why? Because the day was utterly spoilt. Because my copy book was so utterly blotted that the best thing I could do would be to throw it away, and also to set fire to the bin. But then I realised that after all that concentrated cakeyness, I didn’t want fried fish and chips. What I wanted was clean grilled meat and fresh salad - and that, if you think about it, is perfectly natural. That’s your body tapping you on the shoulder (yeah, yeah, it’s a metaphor or something, stay with me) and pointing out that when it wants fish and chips you’ll be the first to know, but actually it has had enough fat and sugar, and would really like some protein and salad now, please.

So that’s what I had. And it was lovely. If it was a dieter’s compromise, it certainly didn’t taste like one. And so I’m going to bed feeling relatively good about myself, and I’ll be starting again tomorrow.

(I threw the rest of the brownies away.)