Saved! At the very last minute

Wow, so there really are such things as last-minute rescue plans and fairy godmothers? There I was, contemplating WeightWatchers, like a doomed prisoner in her (thickly padded) cell. I was desperate but my hopes for success were not high. WW worked a treat the first time but second time round was an unmitigated disaster. Maybe it was something to do with our ‘leader’ (always love that phrase) – a solid girl with a Tango tan and anklets (no value judgments there, btw).

‘You know what?’ she told us, very seriously. ‘These points are amazing. This diet is SO flexible. You know what I did yesterday? I had four pints of lager and a bag of chips. I did! And all within points.’

But anyhow. I was thinking about the lager and chips diet and about how WeightWatchers makes me feel like a naughty schoolgirl when my friend Sheena got in touch. ‘Don’t do it!’ she wailed. ‘You’ve got to try Pete’s thing.’

Pete turned out to be Pete Cohen, the GMTV life coach and general gung-ho guru and his ‘thing’ turned out to be an online weight loss course. Sheena, in her usual irrepressible way, had chatted him up on Twitter and made friends. She’d been doing the programme for a month and lost “tons”. ‘I told Pete all about your problem,’ she said. My problem? Oh yes, the four stone I need to shed and the total lack of willpower that prevents me from doing it. That problem. ‘And he’s going to get you on his programme.’ He is? He did.

Ten minutes later I got an email saying I was signed up and then another one the next day telling me it was time to start. But hang on!!! Help!! I wasn’t ready. I’d just taken ownership of four boxes of Fudges’ biscuits for cheese (total utter foodie heaven). I needed...ooooh....at least four days to get through them (a packet a day? Hmm, maybe make that two days.

But no. Seems it’s okay to eat whatever you like really (within reason). And Fudges aren’t stuffed with sugar so really they could be considered a pretty healthy snack (maybe with hummus rather than that gorgeous oozing Stilton).

I’m now on Day Three and have to say it’s really rather clever. No lists of forbidden foods (though he does try to nudge you away from sweets and alcohol), no wagging fingers, no points, no prescriptions. The visualisation is really rather lovely too. I don’t have an MP3 player so had to listen to it on my PC in my office (hardly ideal). ‘Make sure you won’t be disturbed,’ said Pete, so I came up with the bright idea of doling out pigs’ ears to the dogs. Hence I spent the next twenty minutes with the sound of vigorous chewing and the slow release of aroma de pigs’ ear. By the time Pete’s dulcet tones were bringing me back to reality I had both dogs squirming on my feet, soggy pigs’ ears being dragged over my ankles.

Anyhow, it’s early days and I shall keep you posted.

By the way, I know that, for many of you, the main point of interest in this post will be the Fudges’ biscuits. So, for your delectation...  We tested four new flavours – cheese and black pepper flatbreads; stilton and walnut buttery flatbreads; oat and thyme squares and mature cheddar cheese and buttery flatbreads. I'm a bit of a fervent fan of their Cheddar wafers so my first thought was that these weren't cheesy or melty in the mouth enough for me (but then, as Adrian pointed out, they are intended as a complementary canvas for cheese).  Interestingly James was the number one fan – eschewing cheese and eating them totally nude. Adrian said he wasn’t entirely convinced (yet ate his way through two packets in a disgustingly short period of time). And my final thought? Very nice  – particularly when nibbled twenty times (to get the digestion going in the mouth).

Look here – and drool....