The radio times reads like a fat camp schedule this week and I nearly mistook my Saturday supplement for a dieting magazine.

The moment Christmas is over, the world seems to go weight-loss mad and the chocolates we were encouraged to eat a few days ago have suddenly metamorphosed into the devil’s food.

Fortunately, the supermarkets seem to have cottoned onto the movement and the lighter choice special offers are well stocked up, for those of us who haven’t succumbed to the cut-price gym offers…

I am surprised at my surprise -

It happens every year, like hearts in February and witch hats at Hallowe’en; and, it should be easier to ignore the things that come round on a rolling timescale.

I am a little unsure why I’m giving it any headspace –

We all know that it’s a not very cunning commercial strategy to tap into new-year-new-you thinking, and take advantage of the few remaining people who are happy to be shepherded along by money making marketeers –

Or do we?

When I was naive enough to believe that the 1,000 kcal a day diets were actually okay for the normal body; and, that they were followed, with the rigidity of an army boot camp, by the other people who had also brought into the promises, I clearly shouldn’t be making assumptions –

Because I took things a little too literally when I got ill; and I didn’t question the notion that half a plate of food might not be the answer to eternal happiness that I was looking for – or that a diet plan might not be a set-in-stone prescription that should be followed to the dotted i and crossed t.

And I hadn’t yet lost the naivety that made me believe that everyone else was following the diet (to the crossed t); and, that the people who were penning the 200Kcal lunches after a cup of hot lemon for breakfast, were probably not practising what they preached.

In my desperation to fit in and my desire to do what everyone else was doing, I didn’t realise that, in January, we’re all meant to go on diets; and, by the 4th, most of us have stopped –

Because my eating disorder didn’t take do half measures and it tended to take things literally; whilst my head was far more likely to listen to anything other than myself.

This year, I’m accepting the fact that January will probably be magazine – and possibly paper – less, and that supermarkets will have to be entered with caution. I have a stack of DVDs on standby and I’m trying to tune out of the constant weightloss chatter –

And, whilst I’m not trying to change a key part of the supermarket calendar, or even criticise a movement that might help people be more aware of their health; I’d just like to point out to anyone, like me, who takes things a little too literally –

1,000 Kcal is probably not enough for a day –

And we do not all need to go on a diet come January –

And the people who are penning the programmes and writing the plans might be sitting there with a bar of chocolate – or a whole lot heavier than you are.

Tags: sign of the times, supermarkets

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