Lee Randall: A gorgeous woman who likes to gorge

Published on Tuesday 24 November 2009 20:44

WE NOW resume our regularly scheduled broadcast after a short hiatus. When we last tuned in, our heroine – that would be me, folks – was banging on about big, bad supermarkets, all the better to deflect attention from her increasingly difficult efforts to maintain her weight loss and, with it, her sanity.

Truth be told, that half a stone I was wrestling with is now 10lbs, but, as I've been sternly warned by my more responsive readers not to try their patience, I shall draw a veil over the current difficulties. Suffice to say, I'm screwing up my resolve to renew my efforts and trying to salvage my self-esteem.

(And to all those friends who pester me with the never-ending question, "Are you still on that diet?", this is why I have to stay on a fecking diet! Do you finally understand? My body and I simply can't be trusted around food and drink.)

The cheery news is I have the tools for success at my disposal. The bad news is I've yet to redeploy them. And the weird news is I promised my latest surgical boffin that, once back from my holiday, I'd try a radical experiment and go for three months without eating any fruit or vegetables.

I know! Mental! But then so is Crohn's disease.

I gasped audibly, white-knuckled the seat of my chair, and bleated, "Won't I die?"

The tinkle of mildly patronising chuckling wafted across the eminent surgeon's desk. "You definitely won't die," he averred, and then added: "The five servings a day recommendation is somewhat arbitrary."

There ensued a full and frank discussion about the inadvisability of relying too heavily on free-range statistics, and from there we were on to the relative chances of contracting various diseases – cancer, mainly, though why I didn't ask about scurvy is anyone's guess. Too stunned?

We spoke in graphic detail about the by-products of intestinal fermentation – gas, not champagne, I'm afraid – leading us neatly back to the idea of my road-testing an elimination diet.

I've yet to come up with a cunning food plan. I rarely ate pasta in the first place, and gave up bread and rice and potatoes when I started dieting (and now view them with superstitious horror), so I envisage sustaining myself throughout the winter on rations of fish augmented by doses of porridge. By the spring equinox, then, I will surely qualify as an honorary resident of St Kilda.

Meanwhile, I have finally visited India, which you'll get to read about in due course in our travel section. Among our party was a 28-year-old woman so slender, blemish-free and beautiful that I took against her on sight.

Until we sat down to eat, and then, dear readers, I became putty in her hands. Why? Because she ate for England, Scotland and Wales, with side dishes for Northern Ireland. She scoffed everything on offer and, grinning, asked for more. Three times daily.

Ah, you're thinking, I know how she managed it. But you'd be wrong. She did not dash off for punitive mega-mile runs or swim compensatory laps each morning before our activities commenced. She was as floppy as any of us and even heroically slept through more than one bumpy bus journey.

You've probably written me off as easily, not to mention bizarrely, impressed, but pause for a moment's contemplation. When is the last time you watched any female over 15 tuck in to their grub with ferocious gusto, offering no apologies?

It's usually all sorts of fuss about salads and "Oh, do we dare order dessert?". There's chapter and verse about the need to make amends in the gym or via strict denial come tomorrow. Even when we are hellbent on loosening our belts and indulging ourselves, the "rules" demand mewls of demurral as we dine.

How wonderful, then, to meet a guilt-free woman who made no bones about her hearty appetite!