Lee Randall: Drink, be merry, but you won't stay slim

Published on Tuesday 30 June 2009 19:08

YOU may recall that when I first pitched up at SureSlim's offices in early December, the lovely Francesca warned that an integral aspect of the diet's success – utterly non-negotiable in its early weeks – was an avoidance of alcohol. Perhaps I'd rather wait until after Christmas to begin?

No, I replied, fired with crusading evangelism, I want the weight off more than I want to drink. Why, I once went four years without alcohol, I added, prompting her eyes to bug out on stalks.

I was in my late twenties at the time and my body went off on a strange metabolic tangent. Sometimes the entire day after imbibing just one ordinary-sized cocktail (honest) was lost to a killer hangover – the kind where you cannot move for fear of hurling, cannot see by anything stronger than candlelight, cannot tolerate the crashing din of your own breathing and cannot brush your teeth fast or often enough to kill the creepy-crawly things that have colonised the surface of your tongue and are forging a trail through your sinuses, the better to bathe your last, clinging-on-for-dear-life brain cells in acid.

Then again, at other times even a bucket of bevvy would pass through my system with minimum after-effects. Ultimately, it was the not knowing that wore me down. I used to say that if it was guaranteed that the culprit was drink three, I'd only ever have two. Uncertainty and the abundance of unexpectedly lost time prompted me to take the pledge.

Not drinking wasn't a big deal. I was quite popular as a designated driver, and it saved on my share of the restaurant bills. But in the due course of time I took it up again, and that wasn't such a big deal, either. Though it's undoubtedly impolitic to say so as the resident of a country suffering horrendously from its toxic relationship to the stuff, I enjoy alcohol.

I'm not fond of being drunk, nor particularly fond of myself when I'm in that condition, but a drink or two?

The pleasure is undeniable. It begins with a soft, floating feeling as the first molecules of alcohol rearrange your chemical byways, sanding down all those harsh edges. I also love the conviviality of time spent enjoying a drink in good company – when the company is a priority, not the drinking. I love the chink and crackle of ice in a glass, the sound of a cork popping, the laughter and easy conversation. (I try to flee before the sobbing, the fighting and the protestations of best-friendship.)

Then again, if I'm alone, a glass of wine often brings on the urge to dance around the kitchen, which does wonders for the cardiovascular system. (As someone far too self-conscious to dance in public, I find this a marvellous release.)

And yet… that noise you hear is the sound of the other shoe dropping. It's a steel-toe Doc Marten capable of ferocious damage.

Booze really is loaded with empty calories, but far worse is the way it impels me to consume, in a hoovering fashion, more calories still, by playing havoc with my impulse-control mechanism. The more I drink, the more I want to inhale the world on a plate. It's not just me – an entire kebab industry's kept in the black by this sequence of events. So to everyone still asking about the secret to my success, I'll admit cutting back on booze is a major factor. When I have a drink with dinner I'm fine. When I drink standing up, so to speak, caloric hell breaks loose, setting off a familiar cycle of overeating, followed by guilt, self-recrimination and unhappiness.

I have no intention of rerenouncing alcohol, but if I'm to retain my waistline, I'll have to choose when and how much I drink.