As anyone who follows me on Twitter knows, I am on a draconian fitness regime. It was my twentieth wedding anniversary in May, and I realised I was three stone heavier than when I got married. Something Had To Be Done! I looked at the causes and it was a no-brainer: sitting on bottom in front of laptop all day, regular trips to the fridge/kettle/biscuit tin, and over-dependence on the old Pinot Grigio. I’m sure I’m not the only writer with these symptoms, and I decided that if I didn’t want to keep piling on the weight in the same fashion, I had to take steps. After researching several diets and regimes, I decided to plump [!] for the one diet that is guaranteed to work – eat less and move around a bit more. Here are the changes I implemented:
1 Stop drinking! It was just a habit, after all – a fast track to relaxation, a way of getting all those characters in my head to shut up. But as another friend says, wine = liquid Mars Bars. You wouldn’t eat three of those in a night, but a bottle of PG can go down in a trice.
2 Keep word count and calorie count roughly equal – about 1500 a day. Both of which are totally do-able.
3 Avoid anything beginning with B – namely bread, booze, butter, biscuits. Brie, Bollinger, Battenburg, Beluga. You get the picture. [Broccoli allowed!]
4 Attempt some form of physical exercise every day. It’s amazing how a knotty plot problem can resolve itself while you’re out walking.
Four weeks in and I have lost nearly half a stone, am more toned, don’t get those sluggish slightly hung-over days, and my skin is dramatically less puffy and wrinkled. I’m hoping that by my publication day on 23 July I will have lost a stone – not that I am parading down Oxford Street in a tutu and angel wings to promote my book like Jordan, but it’s nice to have a target.
1 Stop drinking! It was just a habit, after all – a fast track to relaxation, a way of getting all those characters in my head to shut up. But as another friend says, wine = liquid Mars Bars. You wouldn’t eat three of those in a night, but a bottle of PG can go down in a trice.
2 Keep word count and calorie count roughly equal – about 1500 a day. Both of which are totally do-able.
3 Avoid anything beginning with B – namely bread, booze, butter, biscuits. Brie, Bollinger, Battenburg, Beluga. You get the picture. [Broccoli allowed!]
4 Attempt some form of physical exercise every day. It’s amazing how a knotty plot problem can resolve itself while you’re out walking.
Four weeks in and I have lost nearly half a stone, am more toned, don’t get those sluggish slightly hung-over days, and my skin is dramatically less puffy and wrinkled. I’m hoping that by my publication day on 23 July I will have lost a stone – not that I am parading down Oxford Street in a tutu and angel wings to promote my book like Jordan, but it’s nice to have a target.
Veronica's latest book MARRIAGE AND OTHER GAMES is released on the 23rd of July 2009.
When girl-about-town Charlotte discovers her husband has been arrested for fraud, she flees to the wilds of Exmoor to nurse her broken heart ...
This weekend's post will feature a recipe for ice cream to beat the summer heat by author Kate Hardy.
