The Magic Of Dieting - How I Discovered It (Again And Again)

Relax and enjoy my latest writings. This time I'm discussing dieting and how at just 11 years old, I discovered its joys. I explain that it still has a place in my life today, and why I don't necessarily see this as bad news.

For more memoir-style writing, please see 'Living for the City,' the story of my first job, also available on Free Tracks.

Transcript

Hello there, It's Mandy here. Thanks for joining me. I'm going to be reading a new piece that I've written on the subject of the wonder of dieting. It's part of a series of my memoir writings where hopefully there's no real plot and there's just me burbling on which I hope will be relaxing for you and help you to nod off to sleep. But before I begin, Please feel free to make yourself really comfortable. Settle down into your chair or your bed. Relax your hands. Drop your shoulders. And soften your jaw. That's wonderful. So if you're ready, Then I shall begin. The magic of dieting. Three weeks ago I decided to try a new diet. I paid £75 for a year's subscription to an app that could analyse your dinner from a photo My partner, Mr Mandy Sutter, Wondered aloud what I was doing when he found me grappling with my camera phone instead of scarfing down the sausage, Mash and beans he had just served up. Don't let it go cold, He said. I'm just trying to get all the ingredients into the picture, " I replied, Zooming in and out on my plate of food, Or it won't count them. "'What won't count what? ' he asked reasonably, Putting his own plate on the table. My new app i infused it's amazing it guesses the weight of everything and it's pretty accurate I had already put it through its paces with my lunch of pea and asparagus frittata and salad from our local deli. Oh no, Why has that happened? The app had misidentified the mashed potato as potato salad. I deleted the entry and searched in a seemingly endless list for the correct one. But what for? Asked Mr MS. Oh, You know, Healthy eating. I was too embarrassed to say the word diet. We have been together for 25 years and during that time he has witnessed my shedding and putting back on the same stone and a half about a dozen times. Ah yes, He said, Sitting down. I was still fiddling. Eat, Eat, He said. I will, In just a minute, I said. The app only listed the kind of mashed potato you buy ready-made, Not the kind you make at home. I'll have to settle for boiled potatoes, I said, Frowning. Perhaps this was how you lost weight with the app. Because you were fiddling with the camera instead of eating your dinner. Mr. MS didn't attempt to understand the boiled potatoes reference, But wisely tucked into his own tea. I did get the hang of the app a few days later. It featured an AI assistant to educate and encourage you at every turn. Despite a lifetime of dieting, I learnt a thing or two and enjoyed being congratulated at the end of the day. A fire emoji symbolised my excellent progress. But after only one week, An email arrived from the company behind the app. We have some difficult news, It said. Our company has gone into receivership. A day or two after this, The AI assistant stuttered and died. And no matter what angle you adopted to photograph your dinner, The app could not analyze the ingredients. It had been an interesting week, But unfortunately a very expensive one. As I write today, The app is still functioning at a basic level. I can input foods and maintain a record of what I've eaten. I am still on the diet until the app fails completely. Though I've learned enough to continue as I've begun, At least until cottage cheese starts to curdle on my tongue, Skier yogurt tastes like chalk, And I can't be bothered to chow through another plate of salad. Nowadays, Of course, We are told dieting doesn't work and that the key to lasting change is to make small adjustments to your lifestyle that will pay dividends over time. But this is difficult for people who don't thrive on routine. Mr Mandy Sutter is good at it. Soon after we met, I suggested he took up jogging as an antidote to stress. 25 years later, He is still doing it. I favour a more project-based approach to life. At school, I was rubbish at continuous assessment, But good at exams. I enjoy the satisfaction of completing things and moving on to the next task. Being a freelance writer has suited me. At our house, Mr. MS embraces the repetitive tasks like washing up, Making cups of tea and taking the bins out, Whilst I paint the sitting room bright yellow or decide that we are going vegetarian and cook a series of never-to-be-repeated meals. I would not be able to diet if it meant going on the same diet repeatedly. But as it is, I enjoy losing the same £20 that come back to me again and again, As faithfully as a spurned lover, By varying the methodology. This has gone on since I was 11. My mother took me to see the hospital dietician. Every week after school, I walked down long hospital corridors painted dark green and cream. I tried not to breathe as the underlying smell of cabbage and antiseptic evoked memories of visiting my seriously ill grandad and uncle in hospital, In the company of shut down adults who seemed to wish I wasn't there. I waited in the corridor outside the dietician's office. Eventually, She opened the door. I'll see you now, Amanda, " she said, In a tone of voice so cold that it would have been envied by a headmistress gearing up to expel the school bully. I shuffled in and sat down on another chair. The slim woman in the white coat, Of indeterminate age, Kept me waiting for a bit longer while she looked through some notes, Mine perhaps. I imagined bad things written there, Like slovenly, Lumpen and sullen. Adjectives my mum sometimes applied. I stared at the floor and at the brown boys shoes I was forced to wear because my feet were too big, Thinking about the huge pork pie I'd eaten after swimming yesterday. We had to queue for the bus outside the butcher's shop. The dietician looked up. There was never any smiling. On the scales now, Please. The big platform scales looked capable of weighing heifers. I stepped on. The dietician slid the arrow down the bar until the weights balanced. I had been careful not to drink anything that day, And had also been to the toilet countless times. But I had drawn the line at a laxative, Knowing that was only a short-term solution. 11 stone 7, She said. I had stayed the same. In my inner voice, I thanked God. I also thanked Jesus to be on the safe side. The result wasn't great, But it meant there was no need to talk about the pork pie, Nor the bag of cheese and onion crisps that had succeeded it. My relief was short-lived. You have failed to lose for three weeks now, " said the dietitian. Why do people always look over the top of their spectacles when they're telling you off? I'm going to reduce your calorie intake to 1000 a day. No, I couldn't help saying but she was handing over a new diet sheet Cottage cheese, Lettuce, Skimmed milk and yogurt jumped out at me. Skimmed milk came sterilized from the milkman in a long-necked glass bottle with a metal cap. Scottish cheese was okay, And you could have it with chives, But after three months I was getting tired of it. You weren't allowed to eat the one with pineapple. And as for lettuce, Iceberg, Romaine and Lollo Rosso hadn't been invented then, At least not in Bromley. There was only round lettuce which came floppy and tasteless and doctored with Heinz salad cream except that on this regime you weren't allowed that. Ski Yoghurt was very new to the UK and came in a distinctively shaped plastic carton with the narrow part at the top. It was file. I knew, Sitting there in the dietician's office, That this particular project had run out of steam. I was already tempting fate, Hiding multi-packs of Mars bars under my bed in a shoebox. On the walk home from the hospital, I called in at the baker's, Bought three jam doughnuts and ate them straight out of the bag. My rapture was laced with remorse. My failure to lose weight pushed away all the things I most wanted. My mum's approval, For my legs to stop chafing at the top, To be able to play netball. Later to be able to marry a doctor. Or even a barrister. But I just couldn't do it. With each swallow of white, Sugary flesh, The desired outcomes flew away from me like crows from a farmer's gun. It was exactly as my mother said. I was the architect of my own doom. Thinking back to that list today, Non-chafing thighs were the reasonable expectation. I would always have felt too embarrassed to mark my man as the games teacher screamed. Mum would always have found faults however I looked, And doctors were her obsession, Not mine. But it's amazing how deep these things go and how much I sometimes still long for a magic bullet. I have lost a few pounds on the app diet. Last week I noticed I wasn't just upset at being trounced in a table tennis match, My chosen sport these days, But outraged. Had I been assuming that my weight loss would guarantee a win? Were my few pounds of lost weight glittering around the edges with misplaced meaning? I think they were. But you promised! " I wanted to shout. A 2-2. If anyone ever did promise, Those people are now ghosts and can't be held to account. Though perhaps the dietician, Who was probably not that much older than me, Is still alive. She will be old now and hopefully very fat. It is a salutary experience to arrive at your goal weight and find that none of the changes you longed for have actually happened. It was 1978 and the summer term of my first year at university. My main friend was a biology student called Laura. We had two friends who were third years, Steve and Mike. We hung out together most evenings in the kitchen of Laura's accommodation block. The cooking facilities there were limited to one baby belling and a water heater, So dinner options were limited, But the space held a beautiful, Bleak neutrality, The ideal backdrop for existential discussions. Our hangouts were formulaic. Anyone for a brew? Steve would ask. He was a gentle spirit who wore his hair and beard long and his feet bare. His jeans would have fallen apart if he'd ever washed them. Mike by contrast always looked smart in blue checked shirts that might even have been ironed Black coffee for me, He said. Same, Said I, And Laura followed suit too. You've got a fast car, Sang Tracy Chapman from The Tape Machine. I want a ticket to anywhere. Outside by the campus late, The ducks squawked. Had a good weekend, I asked Mike. He'd been to see his long-term girlfriend. I was always half hoping to hear they'd split up. Yeah, You, He said. I thought back to my unsatisfactory weekend. I'd gone to the college bar with my gay friend, John. Two gay men who we knew from English had turned up there, One in a black dress and fishnet gloves and the other in a white boiler suit. John was the tutorial partner of the one in the white boiler suit. But they had blanked our shy hellos. Soon they became the centre of attention with their flamboyant dancing. John and I had looked at each other, Confirmed in our uncoolness. We approved in theory of gay people being out, But we felt effaced by their confidence. John had no interest in being that way. As for me, I was plump and shy and unable to wear any clothes that might have helped. Punk, Which I was nervously interested in, Was difficult to own while wearing a flowery skirt and cowboy boots. We left early to drink coffee in John's kitchen and share sour grapes. Yeah, I had a great weekend, I told Mike. I had swapped the flowery skirt tonight for black drainpipes. They weren't very punk, More Dorothy Perkins, But it was a start. Later, Perhaps I would rip holes in them and put safety pins through my pierced ears. They were skin tight and I'd had to lie down on the bed to get the zip up. It meant I couldn't sit down for very long, So I stood by the window with my mug of bitter Nescafe, Pretending to be entertained by the ducks. Steve, Done with the hot drinks, Sat down at the kitchen table opposite Mike. What about you, Steve? Asked Laura. Hitch down to London to see some mates, Said Steve. Gotta lift all the way, Guy in a transit van. We nodded appreciatively. We were in the north of England and all hitchhiked down the A1 when we wanted to go to London, Even Laura. Mike went into a story about having been picked up by a drunk driver who tackled the roundabouts without slowing down. I added one about my school friend Julia and I being picked up in Scotland by an ice cream van that only went at 20 miles an hour. As usual, Mike and I were the ones competing to tell the funniest anecdote, While Steve and Laura nodded and laughed. And now for something completely different, Said Mike, Quoting from Monty Python's Flying Circus, As you did. LSE Students' Union has barred Keith Joseph from speaking. I'd heard Joseph was a member of Thatcher's shadow cabinet and had refused to sign a statement saying he was pro-immigration. Surely that's against free speech, Said Steve. People should be allowed to make up their own minds. What? Even if they're a fascist? I chipped in. Steve Fround. Who says he's a fascist? To be honest, I didn't know. I was only repeating an accusation I'd heard in one of the college bars. Though maybe they'd said he was a racist. I couldn't remember. Anyway, Was there that much of a difference? It's the no platform policy itself that's fascist, Said Steve. Oh, I said, Trying to think of a good question to ask that wouldn't reveal my woeful lack of political knowledge. But Steve didn't need any encouragement to talk politics. He and Mike started arguing, Amicable but intense. Was Callaghan a good leader or was he too cautious? Admiring their grasp on such questions, I listened earnestly. As Laura appeared to. I tried to learn something but as usual I felt my mind float away like a dandelion clock blown in a summer breeze. I felt about politics the way I'd felt about Latin when I was at school, That I'd missed a vital lesson early on and could never hope to catch up. No amount of extra tuition would help. My grasp on politics these days is not much better. I sometimes borrow phrases and sentiments from Mr. MS, He doesn't mind, To use when the chips are down with political friends, When I fear they may have noticed that I'm nodding a lot and saying very little. I am sure I fool nobody. Back in the 70s, I knew the Prime Minister's name and colour, Of course, But that was as far as it went. Soon after ten, Laura and I ducked out, Mumbling about Laura having to get up early for the lab, True, And me having to get up for an early lecture, Untrue. Steve and Mike made another brew, Gearing up for more arguing. They are probably still there now. One more thing about politics. I always queried how people could be so sure about things. Earlier that year, I'd marched with Reclaim the Night and disagreed when the separatist feminists insisted that the well-meaning men who wanted to join us were unwelcome. I mean, I understood the symbolism, But was there any need to spit at them and shout in their faces, You're the problem, Not the solution? I had read and admired an Andrea Dworkin book, But I was terrified of the rad femmes on campus with their shaved heads and rainbow dungarees. Their certainty highlighted my own difficulty in knowing what I believed, What I stood for. Mike, Steve, Laura and I, As a group, Were more unlikely than likely. None of us were romantically involved with each other. If I'd wanted any of them, It would have been Mike, Of course, Since at that age I loved nothing better than longing for unattainable people, Just like Goethe's young Werther, Whose sorrows I was learning about as part of my English degree. Was Laura in love with Steve? We never talked about it. But I know we both felt flattered that two third years wanted to be our friends. Our attachment to Mike and Steve undoubtedly blocked both Laura and I. Neither of us had a boyfriend or even a sniff of one in that first year. Maybe that suited us for reasons of our own that we neither understood nor acknowledged. As our third term began, We both knew, Unsettlingly, That Steve and Mike would be leaving in June. Mike was getting married. During the Easter break, Steve had met someone back home in the West Country who he went on to marry. The whole first year at uni had been an identity crisis, As we were learning to call it in the 70s. This wasn't just true for me, A sheltered, Shy, Middle-class girl from Bromley, But for many, As social roles were changing across society. Of my two English student friends, One had tried to take her own life halfway through the second term. John and I had no idea she was even suffering. In shock, We went to see her at her parents' home in London and found her ill and distant. She came back to uni briefly, But soon her parents withdrew her. To my shame, I was relieved. I still had John and I'm in touch with him to this day, But although I was still fond of Laura, We'd grown apart. This was partly to do with the temperamental difference between arts and science students and partly to do with the timetabling. She had to be in the lab by nine o'clock every morning. I only had two compulsory assignments per week, One tutorial and one seminar. Attendance at lectures was optional, So I rarely attended them. Spending the time saved playing the new computer game Space Invaders and perfecting my game of pool My tutor was an alcoholic and often gave me a glass of whiskey at 10 in the morning, So my dissipation was assured. I was doing okay academically, Though struggling with the broad focus of a degree after the close focus of A-level. But my love of English literature was still in my heart. The work came easily, Which meant I undervalued it. So, As I thought about next year, It wasn't anticipation of the Shakespeare module, Which I was to love, That gripped me, But the difficulty of making new friends. It struck me that I knew just the right thing to smooth over the late 1970s. In one fell swoop, I could deal with the personal shock, The lack of purpose, The threat of nuclear war, The worry about the Yorkshire Ripper, Who had begun murdering, The merits and demerits of the no-platform policy, And how best to demonstrate that I was anti-apartheid. I would go on a diet. I went back to the old hospital leaflet. I chose 1250 calorie per day regime. Back came the skimmed milk, The dusty rivetas, The rubbery scotch eggs, The egg white omelettes and the sour ski yoghurt pineapple. They were like old work colleagues at a firm you thought you'd left for good. I greeted them with contempt, But then found their boring presence reassuring when everything else seemed to be changing. I resented having to measure everything again, Especially cheese, Of which you are only allowed half an ounce per day. But this time I didn't feel alone. A significant handful of students had anorexia, Heroin-chic was in, And self-denial had a cool all of its own. Plus, The edge of hardship and difficulty was addictive. It seemed like a penance, An appropriate one, Though for what I wasn't sure. And of course, This time I had chosen it myself. There was no anxious, Hypervigilant mother, No cold hospital dietician. Under this onslaught, My young body dropped pounds. Always keen on sewing my own clothes, As I am to this day, One of my markers of success was a frilly gypsy skirt that I'd made in a blood-red paisley cotton. Every three weeks I took the waistband off, Chopped an inch off it, Regathered the skirt and reattached the waistband. It was a tangible mark of my progress, Much less brutal than a tape measure or those dreadful livestock scales. And then, Suddenly, I was 30 pounds lighter and summer had arrived. My first year at university was over. Mum will be pleased, I thought, On my way back on the train. I was eager to see her reaction. Unaccountably, There wasn't one. Although happy to see me, She made no comment as she opened the front door of our house in Kent. I was staggered. When I'd arrived home for the two previous holidays, She said, Oh dear, You've put on, Haven't you? Even before saying hello. And even though I hadn't. In my childhood bedroom I unpacked the red paisley skirt and all the bras and pants I'd had to take in at the sides and slid them into the drawers of the cherry wood dressing table that I'd had since I was eight. The purple psychedelic wallpaper I'd begged for at 14 seemed a childish embarrassment now. I sank down on my single bed, Bewildered. Everything I'd held on to and been so sure of when I left home seemed to have gone out of the window. My disorientation was complete. I never did ask mum about her mystifying response or lack of it. She and Dad might have rowed. Something might have happened at work. Perhaps Dad, Who was often a little kinder than Mum, Had told her not to mention my weight. Mum also had health issues of her own, Some of them severe. I didn't ask, Because in our house you didn't question the adults and it was an unwritten rule not to comment on their behaviour. They questioned you and commented on your behaviour, Which could always do with improvement. Someone to talk to might have helped. But sympathetic listeners were thin on the ground in those days. I was to find my feet in my second year, Though not until the second term, And not until I'd been referred to the student counsellor. She didn't offer sympathy or listening either, But told me I had a mood disorder and gave me some medication. That was just the way it was. In the 70s we didn't go around expressing our feelings. Just got blind drunk every weekend and punched someone in the face. And that was just the women. I flushed the medication down the toilet and never went back for my follow-up appointment. Perhaps that was a bad decision, But I wanted to take my life back into my own hands. I joined a glam punk band as their singer. I was average as a singer, But because we were partly punk, That didn't matter. It was a far-reaching decision that carried me through the rest of my time at university and introduced me to my first husband. Compared to going on a diet, It was gold. Unfortunately, My body decided to take matters back into its own hands too. I steadily gained back every single pound I had worked so hard to lose. The fat was back. But the great thing was, The fat was ready and willing to be lost again the next time I felt I needed a sense of forward momentum, A sense that things were getting better. Just to tide me over and give me the confidence to make some real decisions, Decisions that would actually take me somewhere. But that's a story for another time. If you're still awake, I hope you've enjoyed my story about the magic of dieting. And if you're asleep, I hope you sleep very well.

Reviews

Well Mandy, I can relate all too well about being overweight and dieting. I was also heavy as a teenager and in my twenties. My first marriage was to a kind plump man with whom I had almost nothing in common. Needless to say the marriage was short lived. I’m sorry you had such a judgmental upbringing. At least you had English Lit and eventually you found Mr MS and hopefully a satisfying career. I certainly enjoy what you’re doing these days. Thanks Mandy for sharing your personal story.

I did doze on and off while listening but what I heard I enjoyed! Looking forward to more. Thanks Mandy 🙏🏻

Oh, Mandy … I listened to this in the morning instead of meditation. What a joyous start to my day. I laughed myself silly relating to similarities in politics, boys, and altering clothes to fit me on my journey of yoyo dieting. Please 🙏🏻 bring on more. You are the precious gem of all jewels. Thank you

Loved this! I always find your personal stories are the best!! I found this familiar and so funny 😆

Thank you Mandy for sharing your self with us. I really enjoy your memoir writing; funny, poignant, thoughtful. You are a true wordsmith and your love of English literature shines through.
For some of us “of a certain age” this is also a trip down memory lane: heroin chic, radical feminists, cottage cheese!!