Brendan O'Connor: 'So, I'm beginning my weight loss journey… again'

I’m like a guy who has been committed to a rehab facility by those who care about me, and has decided to go on one last big bender before I turn my back on my evil ways.

I write this on the eve of starting my diet tomorrow. And this time it’s for real. I have decided that I cannot be trusted to do the diet myself, so I’m going back to Ken Taylor’s Taylor Made Diet, whereby he will deliver me a low-GL diet and I will eat it and nothing else. So no choices to be made, no willpower required other than to stick to what he sends. What could possibly go wrong?

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The other difference between this and my recent, more home-made plans to lose weight is that this time I think I really want to lose some weight. I want to change. Hence I am putting myself in the hands of a higher power. Ken.

Given that I am viewing the diet as a regime being imposed from the outside, I am basically fighting against it. I have decided I am fooling it by going on a five-day eating binge before I knuckle down. But of course, as teachers and parents used to say, I’m only fooling myself. Every day of this eating bender is probably adding another week onto the diet at the other end.

It started on a Thursday night. Prosecco, wine, beer and a gigantic flock of chicken wings with chips on the side. For some insane reason, I even had a margarita (the drink, not the pizza). Friday was four pints and a burrito. Saturday was a take-out sushi and gyoza frenzy followed by Vienetta, both mint and regular. On Sunday, because the sea was choppy but I didn’t want to have driven to south Dublin in vain, I wandered into the market in Dun Laoghaire and got big thick old-school rashers, freshly made deep-fried doughnuts and gigantic almond croissants. And bread of course, to make the rashers into rasher sandwiches.

And that was just my breakfast. I concluded the afternoon with a few pints. And on and on it goes. I know it sounds as if I have the life of Reilly, but trust me, that in no way reflects my normal life. These are the actions of a condemned man, who considered every meal for five days his last meal.

Monday I went to Marks to get a nice salad for lunch, to treat myself on my last day, and I ended up buying a bag of tortilla chips and their nacho cheese dip. I justified this on the ground that their nacho cheese dip is often out of stock and it’s delicious. There’s always a reason, always an excuse. The sea is choppy so let’s have doughnuts. There’s nacho cheese dip there so I better buy it and eat it. That was my last criminal act before being committed to rehab. Chips and dips after dinner on a Monday night.

It’s as if my body and my mind are trying to find some kind of rock bottom, or maybe a point where I get sick of food and of all the delicious food choices available to us in 2019, so I will almost enjoy the monk-like regime of the Ken Taylor’s deliveries. Or maybe I just want to disgust myself so much that I will welcome healthy eating into my life.

So basically, I have a stone to lose, plus the four pounds I put on in the final five-day frenzy. I’m hoping I can do it in a month or six weeks. I’ll keep you informed obviously, because for every one of you who gives out about me writing about weight, I know there are ten of you craving any tips or insight.

Writing about weight is becoming a trickier and trickier issue. We are not really allowed to portray excess weight in a negative light these days. But equally, I have a right to my own feelings and my own story. And my feelings on this are that, one stone up, I am starting to not feel comfortable in myself, or indeed in my clothes. I can’t wear about 90pc of my clothes at this point. I have even bought two special cheap, emergency loose tops to get me through the next while.

I also feel less healthy in myself.

But most of all I feel I could easily be on the road back to where I was, four or five stone heavier than I am now, which, at this hour of my life, would not be good.

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