More diets!

Week 10 of the diet was going to plan, however an invitation to dinner from our friends Rosie and Yaz put a stop to that.   I’ll be honest weeks 5 through 10 had been rubbish in that despite sticking to my meager 1200 calories a day I didn’t lose any weight – NOTHING.  After much frantic internet research I discovered this miserable state of body affairs is called ‘plateauing’.   From what I understand through reducing your calorie intake to that of a dormouse, your metabolic rate slows to that of a sloth.  There are two ways to get it shifting again one is to bump up the exercise the other is to eat more for a few days.

It will come as no surprise to learn which route I took!  Of course had I not been ill with a cold for two weeks I would have been running from Britain but surprisingly I found that eating more comes very naturally to me.

Rosie is a ridiculously talented cook who can throw things together in a flash one of those irritating people who can make mayonnaise from scratch and everything in fact we’ve applied for her to go on masterchef… she doesn’t know it yet, anyway her tapas style starters were awesome, homemade cannellini bean hummus with lime, garlic, coriander and olive oil, baked manchego cheese with honey, wonderful little chorizo nibbley things with roasted salted almonds, great olives and a crusty artisan loaf.

Main course was succulent chicken thighs in a mystical rich sauce using preserved lemons, fluffy cous cous with overtones of dukkah – if case you’ve yet to try it dukkah is a delicious aromatic mix of nuts and seeds – baked aubergines with a herbed yogurt and pomegranate dressing and I think a fresh green salad but the four beers left over from New Year’s Eve did somewhat cloud my memory.

Muddy had baked her sweet potato chocolate brownies for desert, they sound weird but taste great and I had attempted a raspberry, ginger and orange coulis to go with them, which sounds nice but tasted weird or at least mine did although with a big dollop of crème fresh it all came together ok.

Gingerly, I stepped on the scales Bizarrely, despite eating more than I had since the beginning of January, I hadn’t put on any weight. In fact, thanks to Rosie, I actually lost another 2 pounds.