Last updated at 10:08, Tuesday, 27 January 2009

My mother's slimming tablets wre basically amphetamines that made her tear around the house. Oh, the mood swings, but you should have seen her Hoover

David Myers

Happy New Year lovely Cumbrians! Is it that time already? Can it really be 2009? Ah well, let’s get on with it, attack it with optimism. I love the way the calendar works: Christmas comes, you get all lovely and festive, and then a few days later it’s New Year’s Eve. Time to make new year resolutions and turn over a new leaf. It’s like starting a pristine, new, exercise book at school. First the Shipyard hooters go off, someone is sick on your doorstep, the world stops for a couple of days, then it’s back to work, but it’s always a bit different. It’s a new beginning, and providing you haven’t been the one who was naked on the photocopier at the Christmas party, it’s a new year absolution, and a fresh start.
Before Christmas we are seduced by all these TV chefs, including those two Hairy Biking fellows, with tables sagging under the weight of Christmas goodies. We all eat cream, loads of butter, cake and have the odd drink or two – well after all, it’s only Christmas once a year.
But then January 2nd comes and it’s the dawn of the diet. Remember ladies and gentlemen, “a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips!” You wake up poor, with a hangover and then you are told you are fat. It’s Diet Season.
In fact some of those same TV chefs cash in on this as well. They show you how to cook a feast out of thin air and an atom, with only 3 calories. OK, your teeth and hair fall out but you will be thin by the summer. Some even produce exercise videos. Oh, can you imagine the Hairy Bikers one? ‘How to sleep yourself thin?’ or, ‘Big lads dance-tastic calorie burning aerobics for pie lovers’. It has to be a winner.
Now a lot of people in our beloved county are a tadge tubby. One, because it’s cold, and two, because our food is absolutely amazing. I include myself in this category too.
I have tried to diet a few times, with little success. My mother was on a constant diet. She used to eat Nimble bread: you remember, the one with the lass in a balloon. “Nimble, only 40 calories in every slice!” Yeah, right, well my mother would buy this polystyrene-like bread and simply eat 10 slices.
The only weight reduction that worked for her was when the doctor put her on slimming tablets – this was the 1960s. Basically they were amphetamines that made her tear around the house like a mumsey punk rocker. Oh, the mood swings, but you should have seen her Hoover.
I have always been a big lad, big bones, call it what you like, I could do with losing a few pounds. I first tried the Cambridge Diet. This was one of the first diets where you substituted meals with a kind of milk shake. Yes, I lost weight, but I could have chewed my own foot. The final disaster happened when I read the back of my expensive tin foil packet of misery and found out there were more calories in this than a bacon sandwich. Now there’s an idea – the Hairy Bikers Bacon Sandwich Diet: you enjoy the bacon sandwiches and take vitamin pills. So you are full and happy. Granted, your salt intake may be a bit heavy, but you would start the day happy.
Then came the Atkins. That sounded my sort of diet: steak, meat and cheese, all the time, and as much as you like. It wasn’t that simple – I craved greenery, my body lusted for peas. I started to lose weight, but my breath smelled like a dead cat, my head ached and my temperament was that of a baboon that’s had his bananas stolen. I had a job interview during this time and blew it by dreaming of spinach.

Like many Cumbrians I am back at work on January 5th. We are filming 30 programmes for BBC2 on British regional food. We are visiting our counties, looking at their identity and finding the best foods and chefs. At this point you are screaming that I have the cheek to call it work. I know, I know, I am a lucky old sausage but by programme 24 we won’t need health and safety we will need a nurse with a set of heart paddles standing by the camera. So Si and I are going to need to watch out for each other’s diets while we film. This won’t be easy – have you ever tried to take a bone off a Rottweiler?
We have a couple of really good gyms in Barrow, one of which I admit I am a member of, a bit lapsed perhaps, but the membership card is in my wallet. Within the nationwide chain, the Barrow branch is one of the busiest and most successful. So we south Cumbrians aren’t all pie eating lardies. I had a personal trainer for a while too. That really worked. He was great, you would turn up and he would encourage you to do what your body said you shouldn’t, whilst all the time watching your heart rate in case you conk out. I have to admit I felt great, and boy did it give me an appetite.
No, oddly enough, the only thing I have found that works is cutting down on my food and going to the gym. Funny that.

First published at 11:56, Monday, 26 January 2009
Published by http://www.cumbrialife.co.uk