Diets

Following the triumph of the Chinese buffet date the other night, Tush Push Johnny dropped me an email to tell me about his progress on the Atkins diet.

Johnny told me he'd managed to shift six pounds of the stone he plans to lose before going to a stag weekend in Las Vegas by gorging himself on cheese, bacon and steak.

God knows what the point of imparting that piece of information was. Hardly whispering sweet nothings is it?

Anyhow, having gotten over the initial bepuzzlement the remark had caused me, I replied "good for you" and left it at that.

But it did trigger a thought in my mind about the nature of diets.

It's always the way that on any fad diet you will end up excluding something from your diet. It is usually the thing that you indulged in to get yourself fat in the first place (with the exception of Atkins of course).

And when it, inevitably, comes to a crashing halt the first thing you go for is the one thing that you've been trying to avoid. And it doesn't matter if it's the best quality dish going - you'll eat the cheapest, most god-awful quality version of your craving you can find if necessary.

I took this thought a step further - what if relationships are like diets. When you're in the happy state of being with someone you gorge yourself on love. But often it goes sour and the first thing you do is decide to withdraw it from your emotional diet.

Many months before all the various encounters I chronicle on this blog I thought I'd found a love in Alfie. Alfie was warm, loving and kind at first - a bit chipped from the experiences of his early troubled family life and time in the army - but nevertheless sweet.

But on closer examination and after many months of a relationship I realised he wasn't just chipped, he was broken and there was nothing I could do to fix him.

I think he felt this and so he started making up stories to try and induce my pity and keep me around. But then I caught him out. The love soured and all I could do, in the best interests of both of us, was to just walk away.

In the months after I put myself on a man free diet. But after a while I started to get cravings. I started wanting something more.

Then the Simon infatuation started. It was like dieters who dream about cream cakes, see cream cakes every-where.

Fortunately the cake was outside of my reach - on someone else's plate - and thankfully the craving subsided long enough to allow me to regain my focus, but then random cream cakes started springing up every where to tempt me.

Then the ultimate cream cake turned up - Luke - a cream filled, chocolate covered do-nut with sprinkles. I managed to gorge myself on it for a while, even though it turned out to be a poor quality bun made with faux cream, but then realised it was all gone.

Now I'm back on the diet. Can I have as much success as Johnny? Or will I find the right slice of high-quality chocolate fudge cake that will keep me happy for the rest of my days?

We'll have to see...





Suze x