Food News 8

Start: 95.4 Last week: 89.2 This week: 89.7

Saturday 26 August: Woohoo, as the young people say. For a couple of days earlier in the week I hovered below the magic figure of 89.1 kg. Why is that magical? Because it is 14 stone in old money. I have no idea when I last weighed 14 stone. 30 years ago? Maybe 25. I know it is only a number, but still ... I didn’t write about it the day it happened, because it didn’t feel solid. Now it does. Daily weighing has become its own reward. And I am entirely able to ignore bad news. So my weight has popped up a notch? Doesn’t matter, because I know that the trend is relentlessly downward. But when it pops down a notch -- woohoo.

Tuesday 29 August: This appetite suppression, it’s very interesting, as became obvious on Sunday night. I’d had a social weekend, eating more than I would have on my own, but not as much as I might have pre Shangri-La diet. Then on Sunday I was due to go out to a concert, easy opportunity to skip dinner entirely as I really wasn’t feeling hungry. But we got to the venue too late to get in, so we wandered off in search of food. I can’t say I felt in the least bit hungry, but we went to a good Indian place and ordered very little, really. I felt full, not hungry, but I did not want to be a churl. And besides, I liked the idea of a little tasty something. When it came, I ate it, and enjoyed it. A lot. And it wasn’t difficult. So although I felt full, I clearly wasn’t full. That’s the hard part to explain to people, the sensation of being full and sated even when one clearly cannot be literally full because one has barely eaten for eight hours or thereabouts. All of which is by way of pathetic explanation for why this is the first week since I started that I haven’t lost week on week.