Summer Days Drifting Away

Day 40

Then: 15 stone 5 pounds (215 lbs)
Now: 14 stone 2 pounds (198 lbs)

Last night we roasted 2 poussin with paprika and slices of Iberico ham on the breasts to keep them moist. When they were cooked, we sat them on a bed of wild rocket and let the warmth of the birds do the wilting and their juices act as a dressing.

Beside them, we heaped a stirfry of sweet peppers, bok choi and spicy mustard leaves, with thick slivers of garlic and hot dried chilli crumbled into the oil. We used peanut oil with some Mirin – Japanese rice wine – and a splash of dark soy. A spoonful of minted peas blanched straight from the pod, and long thin whole baby carrot soldiers, with green stalks cropped like Mohican haircuts. Garnishing the dish, a row of baked cherry tomatoes still on the vine, dotted with a mist of balsamic.

We looked at the plates, kaleidoscopic in their various textures, colours and flavours and we thought: there’s only one thing this meal needs. So, for perfection's sake, and indifferent to the rules of the diet, we poured two glasses of cold, fragrant, dry pink Sancerre. The ultimate meal for a summer’s evening.

And still the scales show two pounds lost since yesterday: that’s 17 pounds in 40 days. Where will this end? Only 3 pounds to go now to my primary target of 195 pounds – and still 3 weeks before the dreaded photograph.

I think I will soon have a dilemma: when to stop? How thin can a chap get?