Here we go again

It's that time of year again. Having exhorted us to fill our boots with exotic festive food, the newspapers and magazines are now full of the usual advice on how to shift the resultant weight and Get Fit. We must swim and walk and ride bikes and go to the gym (no mention, ever, of riding a horse) and jog. I see the miserable joggers, soaked to the skin, faces grimly determined, sloshing through roadside puddles, and I smile at them from the comfort of my car.

As for the diets....I've never understood the thinking behind "detoxing". Why would you want to drink hot water every morning before feasting on a kiwi fruit and two nuts? Gwynneth Paltrow is apparently detoxing on the juice of garden weeds. Apart from astonishment that Paltrow's garden has any weeds to juice, and a certain feeling of disgust, I'd just like to know, why? Who would even think of doing such a thing? How did it start? ("I'm just popping out to gather some weeds, darling. I thought the juice might  make a nice change"?)

And the diets. Today's Times suggests a week of meals that include such things as a quinoa salad, or a blueberry pancake for breakfast. Who has the time, never mind the inclination, to faff about with a blueberry pancake, cooked specially for oneself, first thing in the morning? What planet do these people live on?

Since I'm much the same  shape as I was in November   (barring my startling new nose.Remember
the nose?), I'm not changing anything about my lifestyle. Plus, I've broken my 'not-so-much-blogging this year'  resolution already. Damn.

Nanny comes to dinner

Apparently there is a move afoot to make restaurants put the calorie content beside all the dishes on their menus. Isn't that a great idea? Just when you thought you had escaped from your diet for an evening, there it will be, lurking among the prawn cocktails and the garlic mushrooms. There will no doubt be a choice of fat soup (500 calories) or thin soup (5 calories). You will be able to choose from plain steak (250 calories), steak with jus (300 calories), steak with jus and broccoli (305 calories), or steak and chips (5000 calories). There. Simple, isn't it?

And the puddings. Oh, the puddings! There we'll all be, with our little calorie counters, totting up what we've eaten so far, ditching the bread and butter pudding in favour of the sorbet, because we overdid it with that creamy peppercorn sauce.

I can't wait. Can you?

A grumble

I have just received more spam (the computer kind) about " losing those extra pounds" after Christmas, and this infuriates me.

I really resent the assumption that we all gorge ourselves over the festive season, and struggle to shed it afterwards, and I find the whole idea of see-sawing up and down (Christmas, up; get into-your-bikini-by-June, down) rather obscene.

But it seem that we are fascinated by diet and obesity. There is a proliferation of TV programmes about very fat people. Some of these have apparently been bed-bound for years, and that begs a rather obvious question that no-one seems prepared to address. Where is all that food coming from? For behind every beached, obese person, there has to be another (thinner) person with money and a shopping trolley and a handy supermarket. In other words, an accomplice.

A grumpy post, but that's how I'm feeling at the moment. I need sun.