Sandwiching healthy diets between meals more artery-clogging
The best diets are for a limited time only so there’s always a good nosh at the end of the tunnel to look forward to.
It was the morning after the night before and I felt bad. Weak. Anaemic. Tired. Frankly, I probably shouldn’t have even driven my partner into work.
But I did, and on returning home I did the only thing I could under the circumstances. Cobbling together a leftover brioche bun from the children’s breakfasts, some cheap mince I’d bought as an overindulgent dogfather, and that wonderfully awful supermarket cheese that isn’t really cheese but that melts as quickly as a solitary ice chip in an economy-class gin and tonic, I made a glorious, greasy double cheeseburger and inhaled the whole damn thing in about three minutes flat.
Just to be clear, this wasn’t a mopping up operation after the previous night’s cognac-fuelled high jinks. Rather, I was righting my shocked system after its first night’s exposure to dinner as prescribed by an absurdly popular celebrity personal trainer’s diet regimen. The program promises, with a little self-abnegation and even less salt, to transform my body.
Not that I have a problem with body image, mind you; in a world where men peacock about their flat stomachs and gym obsessions, a gent who walks around with a bit of a first-trimester belly is, if anything, a bit of a rebel. Or so I tell myself.
But there are the partner’s feelings about fitness to consider and, as it turns out, those of her GP as well who, thanks to some obscure clause in the household constitution, turns out to have a vote on what’s for dinner.
So here we are, three or four weeks into what promises to be a three-month program of self-denial. (Here I note that the ritual fasts of the great Abrahamic religions — Yom Kippur, Ramadan and Lent — last one, 30 and 40 days respectively, suggesting that it may in fact be easier to repair one’s soul than reduce one’s waistline.) But as a sometimes chaotic, often enthusiastic and generally — I think — decent home cook firmly in the “let’s over-engineer everything and add a block of butter just to be sure” school, being dropped into this whole thing has been something of a surprise.
The program’s basic thesis is that everything revolves around portion control. Unsurprising, then, that I have become very good very quickly at mise en place — French kitchen talk for “having your shit together”.
The recipes that come with the plan are measured out precisely and in measly grams. So out come the digital scales you bought during your molecular gastronomy phase, as well as a benchtop’s worth of little steel and glass bowls so all the ingredients can be divided up like the set of a pre-MasterChef era cooking show. A corollary to this is that you learn to ignore the pathetic looks as you ring up six mushrooms and a celery stick at the shops.
The recipes are basic enough so that even the most cack-handed can put something on a plate. If you’re the sort of person who clears out the under-stair cabinet to hang your own duck prosciutto, returning to the world of stir-and-dump cooking is a shock. To be fair, some of the recipes are tolerable. One night we made the beef and red wine stew. It was almost as good as a real boeuf bourguignon — once doped up with dark soy sauce and some proper stock and garnished with pearl onions braised in the classic manner.
Honestly, just because you’re trimming down doesn’t mean you have to live like you’re locked in the Bastille.
That said, when this is all over, you can bet I’ll be making us the biggest bowl of spaghetti carbonara you can find this side of Rome, with the eggs and cured pork jowl frothed practically into a zabaglione and about half a wheel of cheese thrown in. We will then sit our newly lithe frames down at the table and eat it all up like Lady and the Tramp, if Lady and the Tramp were real ravenous dogs with a carb addiction and not a couple of cartoon canines who daintily slurp their spaghetti strand by strand.