All diets start on Monday.
I didn’t even realise I had a set of stupid diet rules. Even when I’d blindly followed said rules for such a long time that they felt not just instinctively true but factually correct.
It was only when I leapt down this bonkers rabbit hole and discussed my own manufactured diet-nutteries with pals on social media that I discovered so many of us have a similar personal manifesto of skewed beliefs around food. And these are mantras that we are perfectly aware are bonkers, but believe anyway, regardless of education, common sense or levels of self-awareness.
Doing a shit job of womaning
I don’t exclusively blame the magazines that I’ve been reading since a I was young teenager back in Victorian Times, for all of the creation of these myths but they certainly didn’t help. You know the mags I mean. The ones which are sold on the premise of being ‘women’s interest’ but which mainly serve to make us feel like we are doing a shitty job of being a woman - not pretty enough, sexy enough, slim enough, successful enough.
Nowadays a telltale sign that I’m starting to feel a bit glum is my heading straight to the magazine aisle whenever I’m in a supermarket, to source a publication which will make me feel less than I am. A magazine which will no doubt be full of images which will confound my wavering self-esteem by only presenting women only as a means for a certain type of decoration. Women who are beautiful in a very specific way - delicate torsos, giraffe length limbs, and exquisitely symmetrical faces. These genetically privileged models, which if you ever see in real life (and I have) look completely alien compared to most women. It seems odd that they are held as the norm, the way women should look, and that the rest of us are being told that we’re doing the female appearance wrong. It’s the dog equivalent of a Yorkshire terrier being told again and again they should look like a Greyhound. Never gonna happen. (Also dogs don’t give a shit about that stuff. Be more dog.)
How many of these nutzo diet rules, (kindly gathered with pals from Facebook) you have either consciously or accidentally subscribed to?
Stupidest diet rules
- Diets are only allowed to start on Monday mornings.
- It is impossible to start a diet without first having a 'last supper' of every nutritionally insulting food available. This often takes place in the car, parked outside the nearest supermarket.
- It is illegal to purchase a 2-pack of cream buns and only eat 1.
- It is illegal to purchase a 2-pack of cream buns if a 4-pack is available.
- At points of desperation, all food is binge food. Digestive biscuits with peanut butter? Branflakes with milk and Golden Syrup? An un-defrosted apple pie? YES PLEASE!
- A single Jaffa Cake (who has ever eaten a single Jaffa Cake?) can render any diet pointless, regardless of length of time on said diet, or previous success.
- A gain of 0.5lb (even if one has already lost 50lb) can also render a diet null and void.
- Secret eating has no calories.
- Very expensive food and drink also has no calories.
- When getting weighed, only stones and pounds actually count and have the ability to judge you. Kilograms are just numbers.
- 'Cheat days' can also last 6 months/2 years/ a decade.
- Eating a portion of grapefruit with breakfast will absorb any calories in a croissant.
- Eating a portion of grapefruit with breakfast will absorb any calories in a full English.
- Also see side salad calorie cancellation policy accompanying any meal.
- Ditto any desert containing rhubarb, consumed after a roast dinner.
- Lying on the couch thinking about running 5km is almost as good as running 5km - although you have to be wearing running gear and trainers for it to burn calories.
- Calories don’t count on your birthday.
- Or Christmas Day.
- If someone eats more than you, your calories don’t count.
- The action of getting dressed to workout can count as working out if you wear a lycra get-up that is just a bit small. Extra calories are burned if your sports bra is so tight and sturdy that it restricts your breathing to the point of inducing panic attack symptoms.
- Going for a stroll and burning off 150 calories makes you completely within your rights to eat 10,000 calories on a MacDonald’s breakfast.
- If you slip up at breakfast (or indeed any time) you might as well eat everything in sight for the rest of the day and ‘start again’ tomorrow, or the next time a Monday comes around.
- Any calories in a meal are immediately cancelled if accompanied by a ‘diet’ drink.
- Chips or desert from someone else’s plate do not count
- Have a red hot bath before weigh in and melt off at least a pound.
- You have to have a "weigh day poo" before even thinking about getting on the scales!
