Easter 2020 has been and gone, Good Friday was over a week ago and I’ve been social-distancing for thirty-eight days… and counting.
The temporary but at this stage, indefinite, closure of my massage therapy business, social-distancing and the threat of a strange, new virus, has not done wonders for my waistline. I don’t know what it is about global pandemics and carbohydrates but I’ve been embracing the latter like there’s no tomorrow.
While some people have been resurrecting their dreams of learning a new language or completing university degrees online, I’ve resurrected my bread machine that has lived unused and unloved under the kitchen sink for the past decade. The resulting deliciousness has not gone unnoticed on my hips.
There’s nothing like having your weekly income reduced to zero to make you appreciate every item in your pantry. Even those items in the far back corner of the pantry that may have passed their Best Before dates the better part of quite some time ago, are now suddenly looking far too good to throw out. A one kilo bag of mixed dried fruit from 2017 was beautifully revived after soaking it in some cheap brandy for 36 hours – hello, hot cross buns. I discovered a tin of water chestnuts from 2002 – still as crunchie and tasteless as the day they were made. A tiny jar of anchovies from 2013, proved to be a great addition to my eggplant parmigiana the other week. Vintage self-raising flour with a few weevils? Sift out those critters and get baking!
While all this additional experimental cooking has been fun; spending my days cooking and eating is not doing wonders for my physical or mental health. It’s time to introduce a bit of structure and direction back into my life, lose a couple of kilos and perhaps write a bestselling diet book that pays the bills.
Weight loss is a fairly basic concept, you need to burn up more energy than you feed yourself. It’s all so simple and yet so hard to achieve, especially when you are spending your days cooking delicious meals in social isolation… you can’t invite your family and friends around for dinner, so you end up eating the whole lot, yourself.
Meal replacements in the form of shakes or nutrition bars are very popular with people wanting to lose weight and a handy money earner for multilevel marketing (MLM) distributors, retail diet companies and some doctors. I’ve decided that, I want in on this multi-billion-dollar weight loss industry, so I’ve come up with a diet of my own, specifically for this time of year. I give you, “The Post Easter Egg Diet”. Combining the principals of meal replacement, clean eating and AIF (almost intermittent fasting) into an exceptionally easy and affordable two-week diet.
The concept: eat a nutritionally sound breakfast, make lunch the main meal of the day and for dinner, eat one hard-boiled egg. That’s it.
I’m not quite sure how I’m going to spin this out into a bestselling diet book of any great length but at this stage, I’ve got time on my side.
Annie Barr
