Petra not only cooks, she is now making herself fat..

New year, new beginnings - since I took up running 3 and a half years ago, my weight has stayed very constant and after losing masses of weight through Weight Watchers I have not had to do much about it since. This Christmas that has changed though. Whether it was the fact that there was stress in my life (apart from Christmas stress) or that my running has not been particularly challenging - one way or the other I have been eating non stop and the scales are showing it.

So far, so boring - yet another person who needs to lose some poundage (about 8, to be precise - I know, I know). But now the interesting bit - how the h**k am I going to do this? The choices, as I see it, are as follows:
- moderation - the sensible plan. If I can truly moderate my food intake, that would be good and I will lose weight without too much pain. Problem is that I've upped my food intake so any reduction is going to hurt. Without a plan to stick it's going to be very tempting to still not really watch portion control (and this, my friends, is one of the areas where I fear I've fallen off the wagon).
- speaking of which - the wagon. December has been a pickled month. I just cannot resist champagne and there has been so much of it about. Unrestricted at times which is just horrible for me. So a quick way to lose weight would be go on the wagon.
- a diet of some kind. This would impose some discipline on my eating again and, after a day or two I tend to get used to it. There was an interesting diet in The Times this week endorsed by Amanda Ursell but it just seems too laborious to follow. I'm going to sound really unadventurous but the ingredients were just too far out for me - apparently now the sexy thing in food is goji berries. I'm turning into a grumpy old woman - every year it's something new - blueberries, cranberries, pomegranates - now goji berries... Too much of a faff your diet, Mands...

No - I'm going to do WeightWatchers. Don't groan! Support me. As long as you steer clear of the hideous additive filled meals and substitutes they suggest themselves it's actually quite doable. I know people complain about the points system and weighing but you get used to it very quickly AND there is a good reason behind it - you actually check how much you're putting into your mouth. Very important for me as outlined above. So - the best way to do it, i my opinion - is to do it online. No public weigh-ins for me thank you. And their website is very snazzy indeed now. So I've just registered and set myself the target of going down to 60kg which means losing 4 kilos. Doable I hope. So far this morning I've had a grapefruit and a small bowl of muesli. Still coping at the moment - am going to postpone lunch (miso soup, green salad and some crackers) a bit as my terrible time is 5pm ish so I've got to try and get to that time not too famished. Because I'm nowhere near overweight (yet) I've not got many points to eat each day so alcohol will have to be off the menu for the time being. It'll all be painfully healthy.

The challenges for me will be:
- keeping off the booze - easier now that we've drunk our way through our Christmas cellar..
- staying away from the fridge and children's meals around 5pm..
- coming up with interesting evening meals. Loads of vegetables have no points (tomatoes, salads, courgettes, etc.) so I'm going to go crazy on them. I've just taken receipt of my new posh LeCreuset TriVita steamer / pasta pan so that'll be good. Suggestions for good low-fat healthy meals are welcome - I'm going to scour the net for some blogs with ideas.. and tips are more than welcome.

I found a photograph on Saturday which was just horrendous. It was me on my honeymoon - oh lord! it was awful! I was so fat! I think I'd been kidding myself that I wasn't really fat until I had 2 kids but really, I had been creeping up the scales for my entire twenties. It shocked me and made me realise I had to stop the rot immediately. So herewith. Recipes to follow shortly!