The Rules

When I set off down the road of weight reduction, I consulted no books, joined no societies, asked no advice and adopted no scientific theories. This I wanted to do on my own, and I was so aghast at my own developing fattitude that I resolved to design my own rules. I never called it a diet. Diets, fundamentally, don't work. The emphasis is too much on weight reduction and too little on the consequences and the aftermath.

So here are the rules:

1. Eat less

The simplest, most obvious and in some ways the easiest rule. I had put on all the weight, largely, from eating too much. I had and still have too little exercise in my week but exercise, while burning up calories, does not achieve the weight loss which I was after. So, I had to become more disciplined about what I was eating. This really meant, in the first instance, to start paying attention to what I was eating instead of just eating it and then regretting it afterwards.

2. Coffee

This was a symbol. I have never drunk much coffee but I had started drinking filter coffee each morning at work, accompanied by milk and two spoonfuls of sugar. Every visit to Starbucks or Costa would involve a similar order, though without the lashings of frothy milk which I find overfilling and burdensome. I decided that black sugarless coffee would be my start to the day. I think initially this amounted to a form of punishment as my impression of black coffee was sour and tasteless. It quickly became a symbol for my new eating habits. Not only did I tolerate it but quickly came to the conclusion that I had been wrong about coffee for years. I enjoyed it better than ever. I can now tell the difference between different coffees and know which I prefer (freshly ground Green Mountain, if you want to know, only available wholesale other than the large sack donated to me by my lovely friends the Proudfoots when Eilidh was closing her excellent cafe at the Hermitage golf course). Mornings cannot begin without a steaming draught of black caffeine and a banana. Slightly unnervingly, evenings now frequently end with a similar effort, but without the banana.

3. Lunch

Hitherto I had lost all control at lunchtime. Despite frequently being keyed up at lunchtime in the middle of a frantic day, I would indulge in the standard three courses of lunch: two thick shop bought sandwiches (always from the fridge - but who keeps bread in a fridge?); a bag of crisps; and pudding in the form of a snickers or mars bar. All washed down with a bottle of diet Coke.

Early afternoons always left me feeling overfed and dissatisfied - not unsatisfied but uncomfortable. Since lunch is supposed to be refuelling, my energy levels were so badly degraded that for all the eating I might as well have had nothing. I am sure that a nutritionist of relatively low standing would be able to point out where I was going wrong but if you're not thinking about what you're eating you're just not conscious of any of this.

I'm still hungry at lunch but fruit and fruit juice and a sandwich usually meets the need, and often a cup of coffee and a cereal bar will suffice.

4. Snacks

This is an area with which I still struggle. A cup of tea or coffee on its own doesn't seem right. It may be hunger, or habit, or simply the need to break the monotony of lifting the cup to the lips, sipping, and putting it down again, but I was eating a lot of chocolate at work, and at home once it came to 10pm I was sitting down to a plate of oatcakes and cheese or breakfast cereal with maple syrup. And not just any oatcakes. My mother's oatcakes, which as I understand it rolled pinhead oats, flour, salt and lots of butter. And then add cheese, and since these are thick oatcakes, a layer of butter to make the cheese comfortable.

I have not completely resolved this one but I have certainly found that salvation can lie in the fig roll. There's nothing in a fig roll. You can apparently lose weight eating one, so if you have two...

I still have butter and cheese but much less than before. Giving up chocolate was not an issue - at heart I don't really love chocolate the way many people do, but I do love cheese. Emma says I am scared of three things: silence, no cheese in the fridge and bouffant hair, all three of which are irrational but real. For someone who once listed his hobbies as butter, pastry and sitting down this was a hard row to hoe.

Emma did once say to me that it was okay to be hungry, and for a time I had to allow myself to be hungry in the evening. I also had to eat less at evening mealtimes and try not to eat too late.

5. Puddings

I anticipated that I would have difficulty with puddings so I simply decided to go cold turkey. That was much easier than I feared. Actually, I have come to the conclusion that I am a sort of pudding fantasist, and that I impose expectations on puddings which they cannot possibly meet. I have spent years hoping to find the sticky toffee pudding which meets my hopes, but only a couple have come close. Mostly pudding is an obligation which I felt I had to my stomach, so for a time my stomach could go hang (rather an apt description of the condition which led to these rules in the first place).

I have a strange relationship with puddings. Brought up in a house where self control is a moral obligation, I was also encouraged at every turn to finish everything on my plate and to take on each course offered out of politeness and because to do otherwise could imply that the cooking was sub standard. In other words, food is an area of remorse and offence, and pudding, which always struck me as the self-indulgent add on to the important part of the meal (the good for you part), was terribly important. You didn't refuse pudding. I could never quite reconcile these different positions.

It placed a little strain on my relationship with my mother in aid of losing weight. I had, naively, assumed she might be pleased that I was seeking to achieve this target. There have been, for some time, a number of things my mother never says to me, including "You look nice", "I like your hair" and "You've lost weight". But no. Instead, "What's wrong with it?", when I turned down a plate of crumble; or more likely "What's wrong with you?"

The reason, ultimately, is simple. In the highlands, food is the language of love . To refuse good food is a form of rejection. It had to be handled carefully so I didn't cause offence. Now, it's "You've lost far too much weight" and "You're tired and irritable because of this silly diet you're on". Secretly I think she's pleased and it's now just another form of banter between us.

Those were the rules. They worked. Well, either they worked or something else which I was unconsciously doing at precisely the same time did.

I lost three stones.