So the doctor said that the weight I have put on was likely to be caused from my lazy thyroid. Not at all then from my recent habit of celebrating the end of every work day with the modern equivalent of a Medieval banquet.

Thyroid medication should make my body burn down fat normally again but, just in case, I thought it would also be good to reduce my calories intake so on Saturday I dug out an old diet that my GP gave me ten years ago. It worked very well at the time, it’s very simple, flexible and easy to follow, it’s balanced and gives good results. No fads, just sensible. Wish me luck. No, wish me willpower. This grease-stained piece of paper will be my nutritional bible for the next six weeks:

Needless to say, the night before starting the diet I celebrated the end of my all-you-can-eat evenings with pizza, cheesecake and 30 Rock Season 2:

I spoke too soon.

Yesterday I was surprised at how easy I was finding it to stick to 2,000 calories a day – I should instead have shut up and braced myself. For today it was well hard, but I stuck to my meals so far (they were all ready for me to eat, and that helped enormously).

The evening is usually the hardest part of the day for me to go through without eating, but as part of my cunning plan to lose weight I also thought that if I go to bed early I lower the chances to hang about and raid the kitchen cupboards for something to snack on. So the past three nights I started doing my ablutions at 10pm (the habit I am developing this month) and I spent some time reading instead.

Right, here comes the evening then. I am ready. Bring it on (with a side of canned carrots).

Today’s Italian word is difficile, which means difficult.

Disclaimer: do not try this at home. Or if you do, remember that it is entirely your responsibility.

I have been eating tinned food for the last thirty-six hours. There’s a reason – and a plan – for it.

Over the last two months I stopped monitoring closely my food intake and, unsurprisingly, I put on two stone (twenty-eight pounds, or approximately thirteen kilos). I went from a tried and tested system of 80% control over food / 20% freedom to eat anything, to total anarchy.

I thought I could go back to the old system and very slowly lose the weight, but I feel so uncomfortable carrying these two extra stone around (not to mention that it has made my running an ordeal) that I decided a diet was needed.

I also realised that the way I feel about this is very similar to when I wanted so much to stop smoking but kept failing every attempt and was livid with frustration. So it just made sense to apply the same approach I used when I finally succeeded to stop smoking – six years ago!

During the weekend I wrote down all the ways I could think of to remove or change situations that lead me to overeat, for at least a period of time (this is not a diet that I intend to stay on indefinitely):

• walking past ‘forbidden’ food while shopping for groceries
• wondering what to have for breakfast/lunch/dinner
• becoming so hungry that food has to be had – now!
• letting blood sugar spike and crash, which starts a vicious circle

I also took into consideration a few elements that can interfere with optimal nutrition or dieting, such as:

• believing that I cannot have a good diet on my current tight budget
• hating cooking for myself
• resenting cleaning up after cooking
• fearing to lose muscle as well (or instead of) fat
• not having enough energy for sports

Enter Tim Ferriss. I recently read his book ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’ (which I highly recommend by the way) and was intrigued to find out that he had also applied his unique approach to nutrition, and in particular to nutrition for men who are focused on fitness results like himself. His method consists of deconstructing any challenge to get to the core and obtain quick results, and he has successfully applied it to language-learning, ballroom dancing, swimming, martial arts, and of course business, where it all started. The moment I watched him prepare his three-minute ‘slow-carb’ breakfast I knew that this was going to be the inspiration for my own fat loss (and quick breakfast).

His fat loss diet lists a number of foods that you can eat as much as you want of, but I wanted to set a limit because I know myself and unfortunately I can eat too much of anything, just for the sake of eating. I did not want to spend my days weighing stuff, so I thought that for a while I could live off tinned food. Pre-weighed, pre-calorie-counted, cheap and convenient.

On Sunday I added and subtracted quantities several times on paper until I reached what I believe is a good combination of nutrients (again, as a diet, therefore for a limited period of time). There’s fish and chicken, pulses and vegetables, oil and eggs. All good. There is no bread or pasta, nor rice or potatoes, and I know it is not ideal, but these are my trigger foods and just as I stayed away from pubs and clubs when I stopped smoking, I need to stay away from them for a while.

I repeat, some nutrients are missing, but I intend to catch up on Sunday, which for the time being I am maintaining as a day when I can let go of the rules.

So here is my 2,000 calories eating plan:

Breakfast:

• 2 eggs
• 1/2 tin sliced carrots
• 1/2 tin garden peas
• 1/2 tin green lentils

Post-workout:

• Protein shake (2 scoops)

Lunch 1:

• 1 tin tuna in spring water
• 1/2 tin sliced carrots
• 1/2 tin garden peas
• 1/2 tin red kidney beans
• 1 teaspoon olive oil

Lunch 2:

• 1 tin tuna in spring water
• 1/2 tin sliced carrots
• 1/2 tin garden peas
• 1/2 tin red kidney beans
• 1 teaspoon olive oil

Afternoon snack:

• Protein shake (1 scoop)

Dinner:

• half a pack (250g) chicken thighs
• 1/2 tin sliced carrots
• 1/2 tin garden peas
• 1/2 tin green lentils
• 1 teaspoon olive oil

After dinner snack:

• Protein shake (1 scoop)

Repeat for six days, take one day off, then start again. However, as I expect to be completely bored with it by Thursday, I am already putting together a comparable plan with different food for the following week.

I shopped for all those tins for a week over the weekend (I could not carry them all home in one go – and I live across the street from a supermarket!), and now I intend not to set foot in a shop unless absolutely necessary. I even considered leaving all cards and cash at home, but my Oyster card (London transport pass) doubles up as a credit card and fast-pay, so that card is the only thing in my wallet now.

I also cooked all the chicken yesterday, made six portions and froze five.

In the evening I open all the tins for the following day and put together the meals. I usually microwave my eggs in the morning, but I keep two hard-boiled ones in the fridge if I am in a hurry and cannot spare even two minutes. And that’s because I want all the chances on my side so that I do not need to think of food. If it’s time, I know what I should eat and I have it ready for me right there.

I got the idea of a second lunch from Tim Ferriss too. I have it between 4 and 5pm (three to four hours after lunch) and it keeps me going until dinner time without becoming so hungry that I jump on the first quick fix I can find.

The best thing about all of this? My four meals a day for six days cost me (protein powder and herbal teas included) forty-eight pounds.

I am just one and a half days into this project and I have no idea if it is going to work, but I have got a very good feeling about it. I will definitely let you know how it goes.

Interesting programme on TV last night: My Big Fat Diet, about Claire Sweeney stopping to control her food intake and exercise, and putting on two stone in just a few weeks.

The programme was not particularly full of incredible revelations (Sweeney goes to Hollywood where an agent tells her to drop several dress sizes if she wants to get any work – doh). I stuck with it though because it seemed to mirror what has been happening to me recently: after years of carefully checking daily food intake and exercising regularly, I gave up for nearly two months (no time, no energy, no concentration for either) and ballooned too.

Like Sweeney, we are at our best when we control what we eat. Our bodies simply do not know what is good for them, so we must consciously use our brains to talk some sense into them. And very much like her, I am now finding it incredibly difficult to lose the weight, and exercising has become more strenuous because of it.

Today’s Italian word is cibo, which means food.

So Oprah has stacked on the pounds again.

I have now following her yo-yo dieting for twenty-five years now, looked into every one of her new amazing weight loss regimes, and every single time I saw right through her achievements and found a woman with eating issues.

I have always been very interested in the image and idea of food that each individual has, be it because of family influence, body image unattainable goals presented by the media, or mind tricks that sometimes are not related with food at all but manifest themselves with eating disorders.

See, if even the most powerful woman in the world (according to many) struggles to keep her weight constant day in, day out, it must mean that weight management is a huge issue that is often underestimated and needs more attention.

Sometimes I am horrified at falling right into the trap the media are trying to set up and believing that overweight people simply eat too much and don’t exercise. Yes, that is the reason one puts on weight, but you can’t just tell people they are fat lazy pigs. What needs to be tackled is the reasons behind these behaviours, and we are not there yet.

I was reading how big companies have started to realise that ‘your home page is Google’, and the given example was how if you search for Diet Coke the third result is ‘Don’t Drink the Diet Coke‘, which links aspartame to depression and bipolar disorder.

Of course, I had to check. I could not find the result in question on google.co.uk (it is #4 if you search on google.com though). However, I started reading the following articles found among the first ten search results:

• One month without Diet Coke (a guy ditches it and feels so great he never goes back)
• Diet Coke to drop additive in DNA damage fear (phased out by the end of the year, i.e. we’re all still drinking it)
• Behind the Label: Diet Coke (benzoates combined with acids in Diet Coke create carcinogen benzene)

This is nothing I didn’t already know, but seeing it once again is going to make me think twice before grabbing a coke next time I feel like one.