Stuck On The Plateau

Days 12 & 13

Then: 15 stone 5 pounds (215 lbs)
Now: 14 stone 11 pounds (207 lbs)

The French doctor said it would happen: once I started eating vegetables again, the liquids builds up and the weight loss happens much more slowly. This despite continuing my rigorous, absurd, anti-social and almost certainly unhealthy diet of “one day just protein, the next protein and vegetables, but never any fat, carbs, alcohol or anything that remotely takes your fancy”.

Jo says I’m turning green, even though I’ve already lost one of my chins and my stomach is now two-thirds its original size. In the bathroom in the morning I can look down and see things I haven’t seen for years, if you catch my drift. I actually do feel lighter and my back is straighter; I walk more confidently and I don’t get puffed out when I take the dogs round the fields.

But I do feel permanently sleepy (a lack of energy, she says – she seems to know a lot more about diet than Dr Dukan), and that’s not good at all. I think I may have stopped snoring, but Jo has always been asleep when I’ve wanted to ask her. She won't mention the bad breath - I'm cleaning my teeth eight times a day just in case.

However, the most disturbing side effect is that Jo says I smell like a different person, and she doesn't like it at all. Friends of ours who have been on the Atkins Diet say that they positively stank - to the point of separate bedrooms. Jo says that isn't the problem, it's just that I no longer smell of me, and that's upsetting her. She liked my smell, apparently, and used to go to sleep with an old, used t-shirt of mine whenever we were apart. I asked her, "What did I used to smell of?". "Alcohol", she moaned. "Please can we have a glass of wine?"

I wonder what Izzy is making of her new Dad. I suspect she finds me much less cuddly. Though I can now kneel down on the floor and positively bounce back up like a young thing, she used to rely on my extra-pillowed stomach for falling asleep. At least I don’t feel like a slug when I sit down.

It’s been just 11 days so far, and I’m down to a weight I haven’t been since 2008. My immediate goal is to lose another 12 pounds – to reach 195 lbs, by which time I think I should be ready for the family photograph. That would make me lighter than I was in California, back in 2005. I calculate that at this new, slower, rate, this will take me another 5 weeks. Jo says we will be divorced by then. It also doesn’t allow for the peas.

You see, the pea crop is flowering in the vegetable garden, and Dukan says they’re off-limits. As I love home-grown peas more than life itself, I suspect the doctor and I are going to have a major confrontation before July is out.