Bob’s soupy solution for a super you
OUT OF MY HEAD
Afoolproof diet that involves no suffering, no willpower, little sacrifice, no special foods, no gym membership and no calorie counting.
It will even save you money. Gee, I suspect that one paragraph has just sent my readership through the roof.
I’ve been on this ‘diet’ now for three months. Before you ask, I can’t say how many kilos I’ve lost, for genetic reasons – blokes like me approach bathroom scales with the same enthusiasm as they approach prostate checks.
Beyond refute is the status of my belt fastening – cinched a hole closer, and in a few months I should be into the notch last pierced when Jellytips were sixpence.
But I’m toying with you. What is this miracle of miniaturisation? Easy. Dinner – toss the concept out the window. Retune your brain and stomach to eating your main meal of the day at lunchtime, then have soup and toast in the evenings.
That’s it. Enlightenment in a sentence or two. Which is the only reason I’m divulging this now because such simplicity is impossible to parlay into a fortune.
Fad diets exist for one reason: to fatten the bank balance of the promoter. Books, food products, gimcrack nutritional science, programmes, seminars, endorsements – that whole scam package is unworkable here.
I can’t even pretend the notion is new. Dieticians have been saying this for decades (and probably ignoring their own advice for decades).
Where’s the sense in eating a huge meal at night, just before we fall asleep and all that food turns to fat? The new me says fuel up when you need it: at breakfast to put the kick into those crucial first laps of the day, then pit-stop mid-race to lay in energy for the home straight.
I always have a slap-up brekkie, often a steaming bowl of porridge with fruit on top and a generous sprinkling of muesli, followed by tea and toast with honey or jam. Delicious.
Cap that off with a brisk halfhour walk to work. Now, I sense what you are thinking: exercise – dangerous.
We all know someone who started out with a harmless soft jog, and before they knew it, they are doing hard tris, snorting carbs, wrecking their joints, injecting cortisone, spending all their money on ‘‘gear’’ and counting the seconds until their next ‘‘split’’, whatever that is.
However, I make a distinction here between medicinal exercise and the stuff that gets you high. Walking is strictly therapeutic.
Second trick of the diet is that we just aren’t wired in this part of the world to sit down to a huge meal at midday.
Work schedules also make no allowance. So my lunch/dinner tends to be half the size of a main. I don’t feel cheated in any way by that, and if I amreally hungry, fruit and veges are sanctioned.
A date scone covers the former, and gingernut biscuits tick the herbs and spices box.
As for that evening meal, the range of soups on the supermarket shelves now is astounding, in packets, cans and sachets. All microwave-friendly – although a tip from a pro: decant canned soup first.
Every ‘‘liquid dinner’’ is a tastetreat, and best of all, prep-times are stuff-all – the three little words(compounded) that any man longs to hear.
If you wish to stretch the definition of ‘‘soup’’, one wellknown brand’s butter chicken variety is so chunky you can serve it on a bed of instant rice for a restaurant-quality meal in under five minutes.
Please note that I could have mentioned brand-names there and had a free case of the stuff on my doorstep on Monday, but credibility is more important.
No, I amoffering this lifechanging wisdom entirely gratis, as my contribution to alleviating the obesity epidemic. When multinational food giants and their lapdog governments shaft us, we are all obliged to step into the breeches (smaller size) and do our bit.
Please, don’t thank me. It will just embarrass the both of us. Humility is one of my outstanding qualities.
I will say that if you adopt Bob’s Wonder Diet every winter– when soup is the staple of the season anyway – you will gambol onto the beaches in summer as a sleek gazelle, treating your skin to the holy trinity of sun, sea and SPF30.
Bob’s Wonder Diet is so effortless you’ll scarcely believe it. Oh, I do get hungry – but only at dawn, when I’m about to leap from bed for that hearty breakfast.
Here is a diet you can do in your sleep, literally and figuratively. And if you get invited out to dinner, don’t sweat it. Enjoy the meal – just cut back on the servings. That’s all you’ll want because your stomach has been retrained.
As any born-again beanpole will tell you, the payoffs of downsizing are huge. You can also enjoy the festive season guilt-free.
Sure, the padding will return by autumn –ready to cast off over the colder months. Now, what’s for dinner? Laksa or Grass-Fed Beef Fillet and Barley?
Footnote: Don’t write in – I’ll book a prostate check next week.