Falling off the wagon

For a couple of months now, I have been on a low-GI diet. I took a break over Christmas, so as not to be awkward for my in-laws (and enjoy roast potatoes on Christmas Day!) and, while I haven’t been hugely strict since then, I have mostly stuck to it. It’s gone pretty well. No drastic weight-loss, but fairly consistent and steady weight-loss or maintenance. More importantly, I was enjoying it and the vast majority of the food has been really, really nice. (A lot of the recipes in the book above are gorgeous, even if they have been taken from an old book and re-packaged as low-GI!) Unlike many diets I have tried, where you do it for a month and, as soon as you stop, you go straight out and buy a dozen cream cakes, this was one where you want to stick to it. You can eat as much as you like, just keep off certain foods. In fact, even some bad foods can be made into low or medium GI by accompanying them with a big bowl of salad or fruit. Perfect.

But… I have fallen off the wagon and gone back to my old, bad, high-GI ways. Since we have been trying to save money and therefore keeping to a daily grocery budget, it’s become more difficult to maintain. Why? Because potatoes are really cheap. So C said that we really need to add potatoes into the repertoire as it was difficult coming up with cheap meals without having potatoes sometimes. Fair enough.

I could have just gone with some occasional potatoes, but kept it up in other ways. I could have made sure we always had salad when we had potatoes. I could have said OK, but I’ll not have any potatoes when you do. I could have planned out menus, like I did at the start and make sure they use cheaper seasonal vegetables, and no potatoes. But instead, I’ve fallen completely off the wagon. I’ve been eating toast and peanut butter, drinking squash, eating chips, eating lots and lots of digestive biscuits, instead of the low-GI Nairn’s fruity oat biscuits (which are gorgeous, though not cheap), having cheese sandwiches for lunch…

I can feel my stomach being stretched again, I can feel all the good being undone. The descent into unhealthiness has almost certainly contributed to me feeling really really rotten today. I have a sore throat and a horrible cold, I am exhausted and I ache. My creativity, which was bursting out of its box at the weekend, has been put away again and buried at a bottom of a pile in the basement.

But, despite knowing all this, what do I want now? A bowl of ice cream.