One lunch or two?

I love food.

REALLY love food. I love eating out, eating in, eating at my desk, eating in my car…. Anywhere and everywhere.

What I don’t love is diets. They are boring, dull and zzzzzzzzzz…. Sorry I fell asleep even talking about them.

For those that don’t know me (how ambitious I am being, thinking that people outside my friendships group may read this!) I am five foot two inches, big boobed, and have even bigger hips. You could say I am ‘womanly’.

When I started at South West News I was warned about ‘the South West Stone’ that I was bound to put on. Apparently everybody who comes through the doors falls victim to it. ‘Not me. I’m not a statistic,’ I said to myself.

But then Friday rolled round. Lard day in the office. Sausage rolls, pasties, cakes…. I piled my plate. ‘Rude not to,’ I thought. ‘But I won’t do it every week.’ Who was I kidding? Never been one to resist a sausage roll….

So as I sat at the top end of the desk I wondered why my skirt was getting tighter. ‘I ate more than this when I was in Liverpool,’ I moaned forgetting that even though this was true I also worked as a waitress and ran about for 12 hours most days. Now I sat at my desk for nine hours a day – my only exercise being walking to the printer….

As I stood on the scales I gasped. The South West Stone had come up and hit me and I hadn’t even realised.

You would have thought that it would have made me stop eating as much but no. Like I said – I love food.

Not even the fact that all the girls I worked with only ate fruit on lard days and special k the rest of the week put me off eating my lush lunches. ‘Are you having another sausage roll?’ they would shriek. I felt embarrassed for 0.2 seconds – then I got over it.

But in January 2008 I decided enough was enough and joined the gym with my super fit friend Kim. ‘I’ll be your PT,’ she said.

And for a short time I was really good. I went to the gym three times a week, under Kim’s supervision, and started eating watermelon and salads. Uber healthy stuff.

Then the new girl started, Nicola Appleton. I should have known she was a food fiend like me – after all she has food in her name (even if it is healthy food….) As she piled sausage rolls and cake onto her Lard day plate I smiled – I knew I had found my food soul mate. ‘So you like sausage rolls?’ I asked. ‘Err, obviously,’ she said looking at me like I was stupid.

Then she was moved to sit next to me and we blossomed over our love of everything calorific. ‘I’ve brought us these chocolate mousses,’ she said after another trip to the local Sainsbury’s. Our afternoons were spent devouring whatever we could get our hands on.

One night I had pizza and – unusually – didn’t at the lot. ‘I’ll take it in for mine and Nic’s lunch tomorrow I thought,’ boxing it up with some salad.

The next day Nic had also thought ahead and brought chilli with salad. ‘But I want your pizza more,’ she said so we ate it bang on 12. ‘Are you a bit peckish?’ she said around 3pm. Obviously my answer is yes and we debated if having another lunch was wrong. No food is ever too much for us two though so we rushed to the microwave to heat it up. ‘Two lunches in one day? You better not make a habit of that,’ our boss Fiona said. We blushed a little but continued to tuck in.

Then came crunch time – a millionaire’s shortcake mousse which contained 515 calories. I was informed of the intake half way through the calorific treat – and choked. Now I am not one to count calories. Far from it. I find it really boring. But 515 calories for a small dessert is far too much even in my books.

‘I’m going on a diet,’ I said. Yep, that’s right I said it. The ‘D’ word. It lasted for a week. Then I turned into a girl.

Calorie counting, thinking I was fat, eating a salad leaf…. ‘You have become weird and boring,’ Nelmes said. Nic agreed the following day in work – so I had a maccies and the old Rowland was back.

I try and diet because I would like to lose this South West weight but I just find it hard… ‘I am reading a book about how to lose weight,’ my lovely friend Sarah emails down to me. I feel inspired for all of five minutes and then one of the features sends pic’n’mix round and I forget she even said anything.

‘You have a fantastic figure,’ the soldier says if I ever doubt myself. Sometimes I doubt him and wonder if he is a feeder who won’t be happy until I am 32 stone and can’t leave the house and rely only on him.... But then I realise I read too many real-life magazines….

I will shift this excess weight one day especially as my South West News stone has turned into two. And one day I will. My healthy eating regime was going to start today. But then Nic had a Big Mac and I had to copy her and have some fries. She would have felt lonely if I hadn’t….

So diet? No thanks, not today… I have a life to get on with…..