Week 25

This week I feel the urge to rant about cup sizes. And, before you blokes turn away from your computer screens with a maidenly blush upon your freshly shaven cheeks, that's not the sort of cup size I mean.

I've given up with the Weight Loss Resources website which I've been using to track my calorie consumption so far. Since April I've been unable to access it properly at work - something to do with temporary cacheing or some such technobabble. This has reduced my motivation as I cannot record the calories I've "earned" from my walk to work or track the latest expensive Count on Us product I've bought from M&S for lunch.

So I've moved onto a new online service, called MyFoodDiary.com, which is much more attractive to use. It has all sorts of tricks to help motivation - from a series of enlightening quotations (and you all know I like my quotes) to little smiley faces telling me "Saturated fats only accounted for 5.5% of your calories. Good job staying below the 9% limit!"

But there's a catch. It's American. And the Americans not only have very different foods to us (what is a corn grit anyway!?), but they also measure it differently. Hence the cup size rant. I can't have 75g of blueberries - or even 3oz - I have to have them by the cup. And a quick survey of my kitchen cupboard (or board of cups, if you will) supplies me with quite a variety of such vessels, ranging from espresso size to latte grande with all the trimmings. Once I've decided upon the cup, the possibilities for creative calorie accountancy still seem to be legion. You can fit a whole lot more blueberries in a cup if you pulverise them first. Similarly, cereal soaked in water can be squelched into the measure, enabling the cunning dieter to eliminate all that irritating air which previously took up valuable room. Melted chocolate must also be given very serious consideration - yes, very serious consideration indeed.....

Anyway, I'm sure you'll all be thrilled to know that my new motivation has held firm (well at least for the last 4 or 5 days) and I have shifted another pound this week. I've been so good that I expected it to be more, but let's hope the weight loss speeds up from now so my cup size can be a cappuccino before I know it!



Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there
Will Rogers