You Can with the Dukan

Apologies if you’ve had the misfortune of speaking to me in the last couple of months, because I have officially turned into one of those people. Yeah I’ve started doing a “fad” diet and it is now all I can talk about, all I can tell you is what I can eat, what I am going to eat, how much weight I’ve lost, how much weight I have to lose and how regular my bowels are. Though in fairness I always talk about how regular my bowels are so you probably haven’t noticed the difference! So far I’ve managed to keep diet talk off this blog, but no more I must break free and speak my mind, as I have nothing else to talk about. Though I am hoping that I will contain all the diet talk in one blog-sized burst and not bore you incessantly for weeks to come. But apologies if this article does read like a copy of Woman’s Own.

Google any fad diet and you’ll find articles about how it does work, how it doesn’t work, how it will give you cancer and how it is responsible for the death of Diana, Princess of Wales – but then that’s your own fault for reading the Daily Express’ website. The diet I chose to embark upon is called the Dukan diet, named after it’s French creator Dr Dukan, and not chosen for some clever alliterative pun such as the one I have used to name this blog entry. Though that is helpful.
I embarked on the Dukan lifestyle, as he likes to refer it (lifestyle being that you can now only talk about dieting and annoy waiters by asking for special things from the menu), after seeing a colleague at work follow the same plan and rapidly disappear in front of my very eyes. Now I know I am hardly obese (don’t disagree that’s rude). I haven’t had to be taken to London Zoo’s elephant house to be weighed, I don’t have to be positioned correctly on a plane in order to keep the plane aerodynamic nor do I need to be hoisted out of a Piccadilly line carriage chair at the end of my daily commute. Though sadly that last statement is only true because I live on the Northern line. However, I have noticed a little bit of tummy, an annoying bit that even with a token amount of exercise and broadly healthy eating won’t go away. Every now and again it occasionally grows, at Christmas or bingey weekends, like a plant you occasionally get round to watering. Given enough time and slices of cake my tummy was sure to develop its own postcode if left unchecked. And with the recent 30^th anniversary celebrations of my birth I felt now was the time to get in check before middle-aged spread, like a virulent fungal infection, took hold. Also I’ve never really felt comfortable being topless anywhere, I don’t look obese but if I lie down people have mistaken my belly for a speed hump. When I tend to get changed for swimming I find myself holding a towel around at nipple height to cover my modesty, like a pregnant women. But enough was enough, no more would I be ashamed of my body it was time for a change.

This is the book I’ve been using:

It looks lovely and fluffy on the outside, but the inside is like the culinary edition of Mein Kampf a strict list of rules and regulations that need to be adhered to in order to achieve weight loss. Dr Dukan takes great pleasure in reminding you every step of the way that even one false move will result in you being a fat bastard.

I’ll give you a quick overview of how the diet works, but on a serious note (for once) if you are following any weight loss plan make sure you do it sensibly and check you are following all the rules. Don’t just follow some half-baked summary some idiot has written on a blog – get what I mean? Good, now I’ve finished being your disapproving mother I can get on.
Dukan is primarily a high protein diet, by feeding your body just protein it’s forced to raid its fat stores to supplement your carbohydrate and sugar deficiency – like a crooked builder raiding a pensioner’s bank account. The diet is broken up into phases, Phase 1 is called The Attack Phase, this doesn’t involve any attacking, unless you actually unleash the pent up rage you will find quickly builds up against Dr Dukan when you’ve been following the diet for any length of time. In Phase 1 you can only eat lean proteins (poultry, lean beef or ham, fish, eggs etc.), 0% fat dairy products (skimmed milk, yoghurts, cottage cheese etc.) and a few selected condiments, and that is it. Drinks can only be coffee or tea (skimmed milk and sweetener only), non-fruit based diet fizzy drinks, water and skimmed milk. Sounds about as an appetising as a bowl of sawdust!

Here’s a typical meal from Dukan Day 1:

Personally I don’t find anything on that list actually disgusting. The main problem, I found, is what your tummy craves that it can’t have rather than having to eat horrid things. Though saying that mention “cottage cheese” enough and bystanders do seem to have a terrible affliction where they spontaneously projectile vomit in your face. And I soon learnt that bringing prawns into the office was about as welcome, with my colleagues, as if I’d brought a plague of locusts in, or turned up for the day with the rotting corpse of Bernard Manning.

Another delightful meal was this one, which I arranged into the shape of a bearded face simply to add some excitement to dinner:

During Phase 1 you can eat as much of the above foods as you like, but only them. This is a rapid weight loss phase, I lost 2kgs (4lbs) in just three days, this weight lost I suspect was almost entirely made up of taste buds jumping off my tongue in a bid to kill themselves. However this phase is only a temporary phase, up to a week and then you have to move to Phase 2, or you will die (possibly – almost certainly from taste boredom).

I found Day 1 of the Phase 1 wasn’t too bad, I was detoxing from the 40kgs of birthday cake I gorged on the day before. By Day 2 I wanted to kill people, slowly and painfully. Day 2 was awful and there was lots of grumpiness (apologies to those in the office that day). By Day 4 the worst was over my stomach surrendered even if now again I would start hallucinating about chocolate and pizza.
The Dukan book helpfully provides some recipes for this stage to turn the bland range of foods into a selection of bland meals.

Unfortunately the quantities in the book are absolutely mad, the very first recipe is for a selection of salmon voul-a-vents (without any pastry!), that serve 50. Fifty!!! I am not organising a f**king Dukan dinner party, why would I want 50 of the bloody things. It’s as if Dukan himself knows that anyone on the diet would have to instantly form some kind of group therapy organisation to get through it, and of course there’d need to be catering.

I made one recipe in this phase, this was these Mint Mousses:

It was primarily fat-free fromage frais, mixed with sweetener, green food colouring and peppermint flavouring. And tasted like you’d accidentally inhaled the contents of a dentist’s hoover bag. It had the consistency and flavour of what you spit out of your mouth when brushing your teeth. No matter how bored I was of fat free vanilla yoghurts I never became so bored that I had a second one of these, and most of the contents of the above photo went in the bin (except the ramekins which have to be destroyed).

There was a depressing point in Phase 1 where I started getting jealous of what I was feeding the plants!

After a few days you advance to Phase 2 – The Cruise Phase. In order to stop your gastric system completely collapsing, Phase 2 alternates the protein days from Phase 1 with days where you can add in most vegetables and a few more condiments. As long as you do the same number of protein days as protein and veg days you’re fine, so you can do this in any combination you like. Given that protein and veg days are a little easy to do when eating with friends or being cooked for by other people, I tended to mix up the pattern to get the protein and veg days to fall favourably.

By the time you get to Phase 2 you’ll be craving a lettuce leaf, your body will want anything to add to its restricted menu. I had a particular lust for cherry tomatoes that was happily filled in Phase 2. I found the protein & veg days so much more tolerable than the protein only days.

At this point the Dukan book happily provides some top tips to get you through the challenging times. First tip is that it’s really easy to order off a restaurant menu on Phase 2. Just choose something like salmon or an omelette or a salad and avoid dessert. Dukan is lying. It’s bloody impossible to find any menus you can eat anything off. I looked through five before going out for a meal with friends, pretty much every salad required four things to be taken off – breadsticks, oil, cheese, avocado etc. By the time I’d gone through all those changes with any waitress she’d already start lining up a massive turd to drop into my dinner. I found that the simplest thing to order, in terms of least changes, was to go to Pizza Express and order the Goat’s Cheese Salad – without any Goat’s Cheese. Which is about as exciting as rushing out and buying a brand new games console, without buying any games for it.

His next top tip, is if you wish to avoid the embarrassment of explaining to family members your new diet. Then just dip pieces of chicken in your boiled egg instead of toast soldiers, they’ll never know. Really?! How much does Dukan think toast and cooked chicken look the same? Or how far away does he think family members sit at the breakfast table? Is there about 100 meters distance between the chairs in his dining room, strategically placed so no one can clearly identify the foods going into their fellow diner’s mouths? Of course your family will notice, they probably won’t mention it in front of you. Mainly because they’ll be discussing the fact that you madly started dipping bits of chicken in your boiled egg, behind your back for fear that any moment you’re going to crack and start killing them. Even if your family did fall for your rouse, and believed the chicken you were dipping in your egg was toast, that’s the only “secret” meal Dukan recommends. After how many meals of just boiled eggs and toast do you think your family will think you’ve gone bloody mad anyway?

Another problem is Dukan isn’t really very portable. Eating on the move doesn’t really work as meats and dairy products aren’t really that travel friendly. Recently I went on a week filming with work, where I was on the road all day and found that while the crew were sitting eating lunch in a pub I was sat in the van in the pub car park eating luke warm vanilla yogurt and fish sticks. A more tragic site could not be imagined, well not without the death of a well-loved family pet or the cancellation of The Apprentice or something.

That said Dukan is an effective diet, after the first month I lost an impressive 7kgs (15lbs), and a large number of invites to dinners out – which for the social reclusive like me, can only be a good thing! I’ve tried a couple of Dukan’s other recipes namely the Iced Chocolate Soufflé and the Tofu Choc Cream, and they’re ok. Don’t get me wrong they’re not amazing chocolate desserts, if you went to Hotel Chocolait and got those, you’d piss in the shop assistant’s face in disgust. But when your taste buds are crying out for variation and new flavours they seem to do the job. If you’re wondering how they can be on the list, they’re primarily made with zero fat fromage frais, egg whites and a low fat cocoa powder. In fact the whole dessert is so low fat, it’s like the anti-matter version of Vanessa Feltz, put them in the same room and the resultant explosion will destroy of all BBC London Radio station. Which isn’t necessarily the worst idea ever?

After 50 days I lost a total of 11 kgs (or 24 lbs) and reached my final target weight, a healthy slim
Matty not afraid to bare his new svelte chest – though don’t worry I won’t be doing it in the office or on the Underground or anything. From my experience Dukan worked for me, if you can put up with the tough rules, and the taste boredom oh and the bad breath – ketosis takes hold in the first week and if you don’t use regular mouth wash your breath could be used to cut through steel. I’m now in Stage 3: Consolidation, where I start introducing normal foods again slowly, so I don’t balloon up instantly like the deployment of a car airbag. I am allowed things like cheese and bread again, which when you’ve not had anything tasty for 50 days is amazing:

Most excitingly I can have two “Celebration Meals” a week where I can eat anything I like – as long as I don’t go silly with quantities.

For my first free choice meal I had this:

Followed by this:

Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Finally I’ll be back to a normal diet after this phase, and hopefully I’ll never need to write another blog about tedious dieting. And if you’re lucky you’ll never need to read another blog about tedious dieting!

Sadly, for you, I’m off filming in a glamorous and secret location for the next week so no blogs for a little while but I will be back soon!

I’m Not a Football Fan Get Me Out of Here

This weekend saw the start of the Footbally Eurovision World Cup Thingy (see I can talk expertly on subjects I don’t know about), as Europe gets very excited to see who will win Football trophies when they exclude all the good South American teams who would win them otherwise.

Previously on this blog I have talked at great length about how I don’t hate Football, but generally find it easier to say you do to get out of arguments:

http://dramattics.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/its-just-easier-to-hate-football.html

Anyway with England’s first game tonight, against France (see I know stuff), you may find that you are forced to watch the game against your will, even if you are supposed to be working. For some reason you’re allowed time off work to watch England play, but not to watch Cash in the Attic – it hardly seems fair. If you do find yourself in this football watching predicament, here’s some my top survival guide to how to get through the game:

1)      Don’t at any point say “It’s Only a Game” – yes, of course it is only a game. But the average football watcher won’t take kindly to you pointing out the one thing they’ve been looking forward to for the last two years, in their otherwise tedious life, is only a game. It’s shattering the illusion, like telling small children the tooth fairy isn’t real (though arguably less important).

2)      If possible avoid watching in a pub. Traditionally football fans prefer the pub environment for games, despite the fact that at home or in the office, you can usually have a chair, drink and actually be able to see the screen. Still the fans will attempt to take you to a pub, where you are only allowed to order drinks during half-time and there’s enough testosterone in the room that it’s a miracle people aren’t asphyxiated.

3)      Spend time enjoying seeing your normal friends behave oddly. Perfectly rational people you know, become perfectly irrational watching football at the best of times. When England play all bets are off. People you’ve known for years will start screaming, swearing and generally behaving madly towards people they’ve never ever met on the screen. During last World Cup I heard a perfectly a normal neighbour of mine shout “Lampard, you c**t!” at the screen before apologising to his wife and kids, by saying “Sorry, but he is a c**t!”. As an added bonus here, you can enjoying the irony of seeing out of shape, un-athletic friends who probably would have heart failure kicking a ball, shout at people in far better health than they are at how bad they are at football. I always laugh, though remember Rule 1, laugh internally!

4)      Organise a sweepstake. You might not care about football in the slightest, or about who wins the European Championship. But join an office sweepstake and find yourself swept up in the excitement of all simply because of the promise of being able to win cash. I can find myself cheering for even the most obscure of European nations for the promise of thirty-two quid should I win. Discretion on when to cheer on, may be required if your team is playing England – though you will find it hard to not radiate a glow of smugness should your team knock England out.

5)      A good trick if you’re fed up of people moaning that you know nothing about football is to memorise a few key facts from a newspaper pull-out. With luck someone will ask you your opinion in an attempt to mock you, and you can reply with the correct answer and wipe that smug look of their face. I’ll never forget the time I picked up the cliché “The Spanish team never perform as well as they should on paper”, which I regurgitated when asked on this particular team’s success. Until this point I believed the phrase “jaw-dropping” was metaphorical. It isn’t!

6)      Why not set yourself your own spotting challenge to see how many companies have inappropriately and sometimes appalling crudely high-jacked the nation’s support of England in a desperate bid to flog more of their unrelated products. This year, this has become a bit harder as the Olympics has stolen the thunder of the European Championship. Although this does add the bonus game of seeing how cunningly some products who haven’t paid the Olympics for sponsorship have cleverly embodied the spirit of the Olympics without using the word Olympics. And now I’ve mentioned “OIympics” three times in one sentence Sebastian Coe will be coming round my house to smash in my kneecaps.

7)      If all the above tips don’t save you, you can always team up with a similarly unimpressed friend and spend the entire game discussing the most banal of vaguely related football things. If you are going to be made to watch the football against your will, then get your own back, by discussing which team has the nicest socks, which player you think most needs a hug, and which team the person in black is playing for. If you want to go for extra bonus annoying points, start asking football watchers what the rules are, or confound them by trying to get them to explain to you the offside rule in five thousand words or less.

8)      Despite all evidence to the contrary England fans will convince themselves that this is England’s year, this year England will sweep to victory and “football will come home”. It won’t, but this won’t stop England’s fans. I realise optimism to me is a stranger, but this is taking optimism to a whole new cultish level. The fans will charge in regardless, like a hedgehog convinced it can stop that thirty-tonne approaching juggernaut. And when England inevitably crash out, our England fans will be just as crushed as our metaphorical hedgehog. At this point you should avoid all attempts to reason with them, there will be more tears than at an onion chopping convention, England shirts will be burnt in the street, and the St George’s Cross bunting and flags will suddenly feel about as appropriate as a Gary Glitter poster in Mothercare. Best thing you can do here is hide. Statements such as “Don’t worry there’s always the World Cup in 2014” will simply earn you a punch.

9)      And if none of these things work, escape while you can. As long as you don’t want to go to a pub you’ll be surprised how deserted the streets are during an England game. You can get so much done without the tedium of others, shopping, commuting, getting your haircut – there won’t even be a queue at the Post Office!

Hopefully this guide will prove of some use, and if not don’t worry it will all be over within a fortnight. And very decently England will almost certainly have finished at least a week before this deadline!

Oh and of course good luck for tonight England!

Where's the Jubi-Glee?

In case you’ve managed to miss all media outlets for the last few weeks, you may have seen all the bunting and incorrectly deduced that the BNP have swept to power and Lenny Henry has been put to death. Don’t worry that hasn’t happened, it was just the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Though having seen his performance at the concert I can’t guarantee the safety of Lenny Henry.

Yep the Queen has been reigning for 60 years, and as nice touch the flotilla organisers managed to orchestrate the weather so that everyone appreciated what raining for 60 years felt like. Unfortunately the double bank holiday allowed Fearne Cotton to escape from her maximum security prison. Not only was she seen displaying a jubilee-themed sickbag to Paloma Faith, but she also interviewed some World War II veteran’s. If surviving terrible armed conflict wasn’t enough, these people were then forced to endure an interview with the human form of stale candyfloss. All of them remarkably grateful Hitler had never deployed such weapons of evil back in the 40s. We also saw John Barrowman discussing the bells on the Queen’s barge and Anneka Rice watching some people painting some awful pictures of the Queen – only to see them destroyed by the typhoon force rain, in what can only be described as a merciful act of God. Based on this last paragraph you may think I didn’t watch the coverage of the Jubilee on the television and I made all that up. If only…

Televisual coverage aside, the main problem for me with the Diamond Jubilee is that it’s another opportunity for “organised fun” or by that I mean forced fun. I have no problem with the monarchy, Queen, Jubilee or anyone who wants to celebrate it. But like all socially retarded people, I’m never quite sure what to do at these events that are designated “fun”. I get the sense that I should be having fun, and that I should be enjoying myself. Yet I can’t work out how I’m supposed to enjoy the event, and what I am supposed to be doing. For instance, if I went to the river pageant, what am I supposed to do? It’s nice to see all the boats, but I’d be crammed in with a million other people trying to do the same, briefly glimpsing the boats as they sailed past. A bit like being crammed on the Victoria Line trying to crank your neck to see the station sign through the window. Logically it seems a lot more sensible to watch it on television. Apparently you are supposed to “soak up the atmosphere”, what the hell does that mean? And how do I do that? Was I off sick the day they taught this skill at school? Judging by the bedraggled spectators on the TV coverage, some people had done a very effective job of soaking up the atmosphere – but I don’t think that’s what people mean.

I am coming to the conclusion that “soaking up the atmosphere” simply means daytime drinking. All these events are just an excuse to not feel like an alcoholic when you’ve cracked open a bottle of bubbly at ten to eleven in the morning. Here again I’m left out, because I’m not really a big drinker. I know what you’re thinking “with a face like that, how can he not be constantly drinking in a bid to distort the hideous image his brain sees every time he looks in the mirror?” but no I take the hit, I just don’t drink very much – and have got used to my own hideous visage. So where is the fun, for those who aren’t pi**ed.

There are lots of other events like this that I don’t get the point of, New Year, St Patrick’s Day, even just a general night out clubbing. They are supposed to be the most fun you can ever have, but essentially they just consist of me not having fun, watching people who are having fun. And not having fun, while watching people having fun is probably the least fun thing of all. I just don’t get why they’re having fun – it can’t just be the drinking.

At least Christmas, they tell you what to do, there’s the cards, the decorations, the meal, the family row and the becoming obese because you really felt your family of 4 needed 16 tubes of Pringles. Ut most of these national events don’t come with instructions on how to have fun,. I’m never sure what I’m supposed to do, and instead it leaves me feeling rather empty.

Gay Pride is another one of these, I realise technically not a national event – unless you consider me a citizen of Homotopia. Essentially Gay Pride is where gay people all meet up and have a big celebration of the fact they are gay. They do these festivals in every major city up and down the country, even Hull, who knew there was anything to be proud of in Hull? I’m usually dragged to at least one of these events a year, I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing. People appear to be having fun in all sorts of ways I simply cannot comprehend. All I know is that as a gay man this is supposed to be the most fun day of my life. It isn’t. There’s some kind of parade full of floats of gay men. I’m worried that these parades are actually Julian Clary’s attempt to recreate the Hitler Youth movement, but at least at this point I get what I’m supposed to do – stand there and watch. But then the rest of the day sort of seems to be hanging out in parks or gardens drinking, sort of like being in a very big pub without any tables, chairs, roofs or way of getting easily served – you know all the good things about pubs. Instead you have to be introduced to friends of friends of friends, who you don’t really want to meet and pretend to them you’re having the best day of your life ever – because “we’re soaking up the atmosphere”. I just don’t understand, what I am supposed to be doing?

With all this in mind, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be doing for the Jubilee either. At least the Queen was privy to some kind of instructions. I toyed with going down to the river, but that seemed awfully sociable. I was invited to completely ignore the event at a barbecue, but that felt wrong, I felt I should be celebrating the Jubilee. So instead I just sat on my arse and watched it on the telly, a pathetic attempt to be involved in a national celebration of fun. And then was shown news footage up and down the country of all kinds of people having fun. Fun I wasn’t having, fun at street parties and on The Mall and in pubs. I didn’t understand why what they were doing was fun, but they were having fun. They didn’t show any blokes sitting at home, not really having fun because they didn’t know how to join in did they?

Oh well, Olympics coming soon. Didn’t get any tickets for that… Probably just watch it on telly…Whilst everyone else has fun.

P.S. Due to Facebook's incompetence you may have missed last week's blog all about my trip to the USA if so why not click on "Born in the UK" under the May 2012 for double Matty misery!