How I took control of my weight
A year ago Cassandra Jardine fled a shop in tears because she was too fat for a size 14. Here she describes how she gained control of food -- and lost a stone
A little can help a lot: Cassandra before cutting out the sugar and taking up tennis; and the results are plain to see
This time last year I was a stone heavier than I am now. A stone might not sound like much, but it's the difference between a Michelin tyre around the waist and slight excess padding.
It is also the difference between pulling in my stomach for a family photo and ducking behind someone else, between wanting to buy new clothes and wearing old ones, and between defiance and (relative) contentment.
Defiance has always been my approach to weight, since that terrible teenage moment when I realised that, however much I starved myself, I was never going to look like the human equivalent of a racehorse.
It was in 1970, when I was 16, that I embarked on my first and only megadiet. It dawned on me then that I hadn't emerged from it with long, thin legs because I was born with short ones.
Nor was I ever going to have a tiny waist and a large bust, because I wasn't built that way. I had to face up to the fact, too, that even if I slimmed down my hamster cheeks, I was not going to develop big, Bambi eyes. So from then on there seemed little point in trying -- and every reason to have a chocolate to cheer myself up.
Since then, I've scarcely been on a diet, but I have constantly worried about my weight. I've never been able to bear the idea of cabbage soup for a month, or the nuttiness that comes from calorie counting. Instead, each day I've thought about how I'm not going to have more than I need.
But then, because a meal is so delicious and someone has gone to the trouble of making it, I've invariably ended up having a second helping.
Every now and then, I've gone on a spa break to kick-start a "new me". It's enormous fun slopping about in a towelling robe, drinking herbal tea and acquiring the standard headache after the first few hours, only to feel reborn and cleansed a day later.
I've enjoyed giggling with girlfriends about the special tongs these places provide as serving spoons to prevent you from taking more than two little bits of celery for lunch, but the effect has never lasted.
Like celebrity diets -- the charity Sense About Science yesterday warned that many such diets confuse people with dubious scientific claims -- a short, sharp shock doesn't help you deal with normal life.
At least I have not spent anywhere near the estimated €195,000 that the average woman spends in her lifetime fighting flab. But I've joined gyms a couple of times only to discover that I'm too busy to actually use the facilities for more than five minutes every couple of weeks in exchange for £100 a month.
I always kid myself I will get down to it when I've got over this cold or that work crisis.
But then, somehow, the next cold or work crisis has always come to the rescue. In fact, even when I had a lissome size-six Australian personal trainer as a lodger, who kept offering me the chance to trot around the park with her, I was able to resist her services.
Instead, I've tolerated the extra pounds, and for 17 years I used my children as the excuse. Even after five pregnancies, with breast-feeding in the past and my thyroid problem sorted out, I could still claim -- with some justification -- that I needed to eat to keep my strength up because it was such hard work to care for all my offspring and do a full-time job.
How others seemed to do both and fit into a pair of jeans always struck me as pure metabolic good luck.
Then, this time last year, I had a miserable epiphany in a big department store. My husband had taken me there to buy my Christmas present in the sales. I wanted a really smart suit so we trailed around various designer outlets looking for size 14s. Fortunately, there were a few; less happily, I couldn't fit into them. I left with tears streaming down my face.
As it happened, that same week I was interviewing the co-authors of a diet book. Unlike the stick-thin celebrities who generally promote such tomes, these were women I could identify with.
India Knight and Neris Thomas were two "eggs on legs" who had embraced the same love-me-for-myself anti-diet psychology as I had -- but had finally got a grip. Egging each other on -- this time in a good sense -- they had devised a variant on the Atkins' diet that had helped them shed a combined total of five stone.
Theirs was a diet I could follow and adapt to everyday life. It allowed me to eat fat -- cheese, bacon, avocados etc, which I love -- provided I cut out sugar and refined carbohydrates.
I was allowed chocolate occasionally, as long as it was dark and bitter. And I could drink: not wine but vodka with ice, fizzy water and lime, which is surprisingly pleasant. There was much more to it, but what stuck in my mind was the simple message about cutting out sugar in all its forms.
So now I start the day with scrambled eggs or smoked salmon and cream cheese; for lunch I have lots of protein and raw veg, and for supper whatever I fancy, minus the potatoes, pasta, rice etc.
It isn't hard to follow, it doesn't involve making a nuisance of myself when I go out to eat and it works best in combination with exercise.
Like my dog, I don't run unless chasing a ball, so I've been going to twice-weekly tennis lessons and a Pilates class once a week. I also signed up with a friend to do the 26-mile charity Moonwalk, for which we went on dawn treks each Sunday morning for two months to increase our stamina.
And it worked. Within a few weeks, my clothes were getting looser. Six weeks on, I stumbled across a 75pc-off sale at one of my favourite shops and discovered that not only could I fit into the size 14s, but they were even a bit roomy. At last my husband was able to buy me my Christmas present.
Since then, I have slackened off a little. After the Moonwalk in May, I let the exercise slip. I've gradually let various starchy, sugary foods re-enter my life and I started drinking wine again. Post-Christmas, I'm half a stone heavier than I was at my best, but at least I can still fit into those designer clothes.
More importantly, I've grasped some basic principles of weight maintenance. I've become better at resisting caffeine and alcohol because I know they keep me awake -- and feeling tired is fattening because you don't feel like exercise, or anything except instant sugary energy.
I've learnt that I don't need starch to keep going until the next meal: it's padding I don't need, both on my plate and around my waist.
And I've discovered that making controlled choices makes me feel better about myself rather than dressing up despair as defiance.
This January I am having another go -- just a rerun of last year, not total penance. For long legs, big eyes and a tiny waist, I accept that my only hopes lie in high heels, make-up and well-cut clothes.
But I need to keep reminding myself that, even if I will never be a racehorse, I do enjoy looking like a less lumpy version of myself.
- Cassandra Jardine
