Teenage Sons, Insomnia and Day 5 of the Weight Loss Challenge.

Huh. I was going great guns with the diet and then on Day 5 I lost no weight. Nothing. Not even a flicker of movement on the Wii scales.

So I did only do 45 mins exercise instead of the 60 minutes BUT I should have lost at least half a stone through the worry of having a teenage son. Seems only fair doesn't it?

Yep, so late afternoon on Thursday Young Sam springs it on me he needs a lift to the local big town for a pub crawl. The journey there and back is the best part of an hour and en route we discuss how he is to get safely home. He proposes to catch the last train back with his mates just after 12pm and then two of them will share a taxi home. I say I will wait up till 12ish in case there is a problem with the train and then I will go to bed. The proviso is he is to ring me if there is a transportation problem as being a light sleeper/insomniac I am most likely to wake up at the sound of the telephone ringing or I'll be awake anyway.

So we get to town. I pull in and wait for him to send me a text that all is well and I can leave.

Note - AT THIS STAGE HIS PHONE IS WORKING.

So while I am waiting my eyes fall upon a crumpled bag of sweets one of the boys has left in one of the compartments. I am mesmerized by its pink and white stripes. I focus on the music playing, on the people in the wine bars, but all the time I am consciously aware of this bag of sweets which seems to have the allure of George Clooney clothed in a jock strap which is a size too small......

Oh God. It's so tempting. Delicious, yummy forbidden sweets are in the bag...What am I do? Just me and a little itsy packet of sweeties. Together. Alone.

I can't resist. Game over.

I reach over and take a peak..... A heavenly aroma ascends my nostrils.... sweet, sugary, forbidden goodies...

Okay, so the strawberry bon bon had passed its best. 3 weeks left in the car being constantly frozen and defrosted in our present weather had kind of affected it but it still tasted pretty darn good. As did those couple of other unidentifiably manky sweets.....

Mmmmmmmmmmm...

Fortunately, Sam's text arrived before I got stuck into one of those reels of sugary chewy laces. It had sort of melted and reformed but we were still going to have a real good conversation....

Anyway, so I get home. I wait up. 12 o'clock comes and goes. I amuse myself by watching Al Murray; (Not for those easily offended!)



And then England winning The Ashes...



There is still no sign of Sam. One o'clock comes and goes. I doze a bit. When I wake up it's 1.50pm. Oh dear, he should be home. What if he's frozen, lying in a ditch somewhere?

I send a text. No reply.

I try not to panic. Sam's a sensible lad. But, nevertheless, I have visions of him in danger. At 2.20 I ring his phone - perhaps he's gone to a nightclub and didn't hear the text.

Again, no reply.

It's 2 .40. I go upstairs and open up my PC. I can look up the early morning trains and find out when he might be back.

Suddenly, I hear a car pull up outside. I look out the window - it's a taxi. He's home. I start to shut down the PC when I hear a gentle tap on the door. Hmm... why doesn't he let himself in?

I go downstairs and let him in. He's sober and happy and has a good time with his friends. He even has a tray of yummy looking chips and onion rings.

"Where's your key?"

"Oh, I forgot it."

"I tried phoning you."

"Oh." (Pulls phone from pocket.) "The battery's dead."

There's noting like being prepared for all eventualities is there? Anyway, there wasn't much else for me to say but;

"GIVE ME YOUR CHIPS!"

 I tell you what they were darn good chips too. Nice and fresh. With tomato sauce. Yummy.

So Sam and I tiptoe upstairs. We stop on the upstairs landing for a moment.

"Listen," I say, tilting my head to one side. A huge roar suddenly erupts. "That's your father snoring. See what I have to put up with."

Sam grins. I put cotton wool in my ears. We go to bed.

So Day Five was a dieting disaster. I worked hard yesterday on Day 6 - weigh in is in about 4 hours. But for the moment it's back to bed and pray for sleep.

The Weight Loss Challenge Day Three

Right, so after 3 full days on the diet I am 5lbs lighter. And I haven't even cut off my toenails yet - how good is that?!

I'm also suffering from no side effects like headaches, tiredness and queasiness as so often happens when starting a new dieting regime. In fact, I feel more awake than usual which is bizarre as I've added a hour of exercise each day which I haven't done on a regular basis since the clocks went back in October. I ought to be completely knackered  but I'm not -although irritatingly my insomnia has returned with a vengeance these past three nights and I've barely slept a wink. Now it could be my metabolism speeding up again and taking a few days to settle down or it could be I'm going to descend into another few months of the eternal sleepless hell. At the moment, I don't feel particularly tired so I'm coping well without the rest but that could change at any moment and by next week I could be wiggling my ears, talking gibberish and marching to school with my pots and pans spouting diatribe about the state of education. Okay, I do that anyway but sometimes without any sleep I can go off the rails a bit more than usual....

Anyway, talking of pots and pans Mr T has been eyeing up saucepans whilst on his vacations. In particular, he has expressed an interest in the non stick variety with durable silicon handles. Ha! There is no pan immune to the cooking disabilities of Mrs T! So let Mr T spend his money on pans: I will be spending my cash on some nice undies. (The ones with the lock and key obviously.)

Here's one I burnt earlier - well about 6 weeks ago. I'm still working on chipping off the charred remains of a white sauce. When I get a moment I'll go to that thing called "The Shed" and find the steel wool. This is a stainless steel saucepan - they burn nicely but you can still save them - no can do with that stuff they call non-stick and nobody can convince me otherwise!

Well tomorrow is young Master Ben's 10th birthday and the day he returns to school. He always misses out with a birthday so near to Christmas so later today I am taking the boys into London for a special treat - we are going to see The Lion King in the West End. It's a while since I've been to West End for a stage production so I'm really quite excited - I just hope I'm not overcome by sleep deprivation by then and nod off during the performance! I think The Lion King is one of my favourite, if not my very favourite, Disney film and although I'm not a huge fan of Jeremy Irons I think he articulates the part of Scar brilliantly. Here's one of my favourite clips;



I just love that line; "It's clear from your vacant expressions, the lights aren't all on upstairs."

Wonderful!

Mrs T's Weight Loss Challenge

Firstly, belated Christmas Greetings and my very best wishes for a Healthy and Happy New Year to you all.

So you want the good news or the bad news first?

Okay, so bad news is more interesting, so let's get that done with first...

Over Christmas I had a tummy bug. I'll try to put this diplomatically without offending those of you with delicate sensibilities....well you know the post I wrote here about being caught short. Well it was kinda like that - only on Christmas Day and I was just about to sit down for my roast turkey!

Now it could have been worse - I could have got the squits AND run out of loo roll. But I didn't. Hoorah!

Anyway, do you want some more bad news?

Yesterday, I started yet another diet. Groan. However, being the eternal optimist hopefully I will have more success than my Hot Dish Diet and my Mad Axeman Diet.

Yes, that's means Dear Readers you will be subjected to hideous accounts of my periodic starvation followed by even more hideous accounts of my self indulgent gorging. However, the good news is this diet will only last precisely 26 days as later in the month I am off for a family wedding - which is why I need to shift the excess pounds. Now my goal is 14lb. That's a stone or about 6.35kilos (for those of you under 40 who have no idea what I'm talking about.)

Now my first weigh-in was yesterday morning. I expected bad news and boy did I get it. I know, I know, I should have weighed less having had the runs but I encountered a small problem - or 6 - as the boys got 6 tins of chocolates between them for Christmas - and naturally I had to eat all the chocolates they didn't like- except the strawberry and orange creams which I shall be donating to the Women's Institute. I might even decorate a bra with them in the upcoming W I "Decorate a Bra Competition."  (I'm not kidding folks there really is such a competition - and believe me I have some seriously good ideas which I may inflict on you in due course. By the way, just in case you are concerned, I will not be posting pictures of myself in a bra decorated with applique patches of Daniel Craig.)

Now I can hear some of you folks out there saying 14lbs in 26 days is a totally unrealistic and unnatural target and to do that Mrs T would have to become bulimic. Now let me say that there is absolutely no chance of me sticking my fingers down my throat - I mean why would you when you can use a spoon? No seriously, I just like to set myself big targets. There's psychology involved in this - which I could explain but basically it would be far too long winded and boring so let's just say I'm nuts and let's see how it goes.

Okay for anyone whose interested I will be following the basic principles of the Dukan diet. I will, however, be upping the recommended exercise margin.

Right, I weighed in today, after just 1 day and I'm already 2lbs lighter. Onwards and upwards!

If any of you folks want to join me on this masochistic diet or perhaps share diet tips or dieting successes and failures with me then please do!

Mrs T's Hot Dish Diet; A Perfect Recipe for The New Year!

Last year in my BBC article New Year Resolutions I came up with a new diet to help women lose weight. It was a totally revolutionary concept and I called it The Mad Axeman Instant Weight Loss Programme. You see, I'd come to the conclusion that the only way I'd ever lose weight was if I was handcuffed to a madman holding a loaded shotgun to my head demanding my abstinence from food under pain of my losing a body part; a darn good approach to dieting if you ask me and a hell of a lot cheaper than signing up to a programme that charges you to tell you how fat you are - I've got a husband for that.

Unfortunately, my revolutionary new diet failed. Abysmally. In a desperate attempt to fulfil my ambitions I wrote to all the nutters I could think off who might assist me in my endeavours. As (bad) luck would have it most of them were on Death Row so couldn't spare the time. A few celebrities trying to cash in on the publicity did turn up though. However, being celebs (who get confused easily) they didn't all bring the right equipment. For example;

Brad Pitt proved he's been taking fatherhood too seriously by forgetting his weapon altogether and arriving with a dummy instead; I think Angelina was after some parenting tips.

Simon Cowell turned up with only his ego; I reminded him I only wanted to lose weight not commit suicide.

Tiger Woods arrived with his club at which point I said "Can you move into the light - My flash is not working" and he legged it. Pity; it looked a promising scenario.

Ashton Kutcher's weapon of choice was his mobile phone. Yep, he thought he was going to be clever by threatening to bore me into dieting with his moronic Twitter ramblings. A promising idea but one which overlooked the fact that I knew the perfect place to shove his mobile. Yeah, Up There. Yep, you know just where I mean! And for anyone out there who thinks Ashton Kutcher is actually a range of designer cushions let me tell you he is actually a toyboy actor (I think) married to Demi Moore..... although hang on...let me check my Upholstery Manual..... Nope got it wrong...he's a small Taiwanese clothing exporter of polyester night shirts......

All credit to the lovely Tommy Cruise who you know I just adore.. who did turn up with a loaded shotgun. Unfortunately for him I'd put my bullet proof knee protectors on. So no joy for Little Tommy and no joy for Mrs T...

Anyhow, this year I've come up with an even better diet. It's called Mrs T's Hot Dish Diet. Now I know all my lady friends in India will be getting excited thinking they've got one up on my English and American readers with their shelves of lovely spices all at the ready. Not so my friends, not so! Mrs T can't have a diet based on curries because well ...poor Mrs T's tummy can't take anything stronger than a Korma. In fact the last time I had a Madras I broke the world record for the 100 metres dash.

No, it's not a curry based diet. It's a Hot Dish as in a Hot Male Dish. Confused? Right, let me explain. Here's the theory...

A hot, sexy, handsome celeb like my favourite Pierce Brosnan or perhaps the younger Daniel Craig or even an athletic God like Kobe Bryant or the (yummy) Andy Roddick offers himself up as a dinner date as a reward for the most successful woman to lose weight and get fit over the course of a year.....

And there you have it! It's as simple and easy as that! A cheap and effective cure for weight gain and obesity without having to even consume lettuce! Can you imagine the results? Women all over the world would lose weight instantly at the thought of a date with the likes of George Clooney or Clive Owen. A world wide contest would ensue for The Dinner Date of a Lifetime. There would be qualifying heats where contestants model aprons instead of bikinis and fight it out with frying pans and cudgels instead of singing and dancing. Hideously insincere speeches like;

"I want to be a nun and work for a pittance training rescue donkeys to sniff out water in the Sahara desert"

would be replaced by heart rendering pleading such as;

"Oh please, please, please let me have a date with George! I've lost 21 stone, run the New York Marathon, produced my own range of diet suppressants, climbed Mount Everest and now I'm a size Zero. I really want a date with George cos I know he'll love my Before and After piccys!"

( Possibly followed by copious weeping.)

Yep, it's time to dump the The Miss World Beauty Pageant and replace it with The Hot Dish Diet Pageant. Personally, I reckon I could lose half a stone in one day at the thought of a date with Daniel Craig. In fact, just trying on every outfit in my wardrobe would probably result in enough sweat loss to reduce my waistline by an inch. (Obviously a LOT of squeezing and panting involved there.)

What d'you reckon folks? A perfect diet scenario?! Now all I need is a nice hot male.... Anyone got any suggestions who Mrs T should approach for her Hot Dish? Or any of you guys out there want to volunteer? (Photos and particulars to my email please.) Note; I am discerning - so don't try and fob me off with piccys of Gordon Brown or Peter Mandelson.

Ps: Coming next - a true story about U2's Bono!