Fat is a Bloggamist Issue...

Fat is a bloggamist issue right now, it seems. Lots of us are focusing on it, and Tara at Sticky Fingers has even gone so far as to set up a blog with two friends, specifically about losing weight and supporting those who are trying to do the same thing. Check out BlogToFit and be swept away by the enthusiasm and determination of the team...

Now, right at this moment, at this particular instant in time, I am not overweight. Sure, I am a few kilos heaver than I would like to be, and probably 4 or 5 more (9 - 10lbs) than my fighting weight, but I haven't been there since before I got pregnant with Boy #1, and frankly? It's a distant dream, and I know it.

I could get there of course, but only by making changes to my lifestyle that just don't seem worth it. I already go to the gym 3 times a week where I burn calories and sweat buckets in a most undignified fashion, I eat healthily, and I don't drink during the week. Or even very much at the weekends, sadly. (Though that self-discipline is more to do with the hideousness of dealing with children whilst battling a hangover than any weight-related concerns.) So if I want to shift those last kilos it would mean - horror - going on to skimmed milk, eating grilled chicken with salad, cutting out the carbs, and shunning the chocolate. Which, if you know me at all from reading my blog, is never going to happen.

It would also mean facing up the fact that the little lies I tell myself about food are just that. Lies. Come on, you know the ones I mean... you probably have your own. Here's my list, in no particular order, developed over many years of self-delusion;

- If you are travelling abroad, food has no calories. Once you leave these shores, the calories stay behind. (They can't get passports, apparantly.)

- If chocolate is eaten whilst you drink a diet coke? No calories. (In fact, the diet coke trick works with just about everything).

- It takes more calories to eat a stick of celery than that stick contains, so if you put it in a sandwich or salad, guess what? The rest of the snack has no calories either. (Unfortunately I don't particularly like uncooked celery but cucumber does just as good a job in my mind...)

- If a biscuit is broken in two, the calories have leaked out. Stands to reason.

- If it's a vegetable - no calories. (Which is handy, because put me in front of a plate of roasted vegetables and they're history...)

- If it's eaten standing up - you guessed it. No calories. Or at least, the immense effort of staying upright cancels them out.

- This one is a classic, of course. No calories if left on the children's plate.

- No calories if no-one sees you eat something.

- Butter is good fat. We need it in our diets or all our fingernails will break and our hair fall out. Actually, this happened to a friend when she was young and foolish and cut all fat out of her diet. I wish it hadn't - for her sake, obviously, but also for mine as now I feel entitled to have butter in the fridge. Which leads me on to...

- If it's on a crispbread (i.e. Ryvita), no calories. So a ryvita smothered with butter / peanut butter / cheese / taramasalata / guacamole (not all together, clearly) is a healthy snack. As is the second, third, fourth and fifth...

- If you walk to pick the children up from school, a Starbuck's Hot Chocolate is the least you need to keep you sustained on the long 20 minute trip.


Those are the first of my 'food fibs' that come to mind - and I haven't even scratched the surface or spent more than 10 minutes thinking about it. What are yours?

Come on, spill!