Diet drinks make you fat!

According to a study published last week diet drinks make you fat. Apparently results showed fairly conclusively that those that drank diet drinks over a period of 10 years put on considerably more weight than those that preferred their full fat counterparts.

Apparently the scientists aren’t entirely sure why this happens, but it may be something to do with tricking your body into expecting a large sugar boost and then not delivering it. Sorry, but D-U-H! Do you ever listen to reports like this and think “ummm, save those pennies Mr Medical Minister I know the answer to this one”?

If you’ve ever read my post The difference between thinnies and fatties you’ll see I’ve already got this one sussed. Diet drinks don’t make you fat any more than people tub up from too many ryvitas, just that only fatties drink them. Thinnies drink full fat coke, fatties drink diet coke. Simple. Look at any supermarket trolley on a Saturday morning and my hypothesis will be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s only overweight people that have low fat yoghurts, ryvita minis, diet colas, sweetener etc riding their belt at the shops. Anyone remotely sane (i.e thinnies) wouldn’t go near this sorry stuff. They eat exactly what they want, when they want, but the difference is they will stop when they’re full.  So of course they choose the stuff that tastes the best.

Fatties on the other hand, will stockpile these cardboard delights in the vain hope yet again of regulating their eating that week, only to send hubby out at unsociable hours on a chocolate run after a few wines have robbed them of their self-control. (That or raid their children’s biscuit tin of course). And they’ll eat these chocolate delights way past fullness, and right on into sickiness. And the diet drinks? Easy – only fatties will walk into a Macdonalds, order a big mac extra meal with quadruple size chips, and request a diet coke on the side. Why? Because we don’t want to waste the calories on a drink. There’s simply not enough fun in a 200 calorie drink to make the subsequent guilt and self-loathing worthwhile.

So why do diet drinks make people fat? They don’t. We just get fat eating all the other rubbish we get to go with them. (My pleasure Mr Medical Minister, I’ll take doughnuts for payment.)

Friday 101: Part 4 (changing rooms)

Addendum: First past the post politics burnt on the bonfire first, followed by today’s 101….

The thing i would like to toss on today’s metaphorical bonfire (with a generous lashing of gasolene)?

Changing rooms in clothes shops.

My top 3 worst things about these cubicles of horror:

a) curtains that are way too small
b) three-way mirrors
c) total inconsistency in what i look like

So let’s take them in turn as all warrant a severe dressing down (ha ha, did you see what i did there?!)

a) I call them curtains but they could more usefully be described as a midget’s hand towel. Certainly, the only place they could possibly serve as window dressing would be in a child’s dolls house.

It usually takes me at least 10 minutes to work out whether the right or left opening is best sacrificed to peeping toms and / or whether i can hold the thing shut with one hand while simultaneously standing on one leg and hopping about like an unbalanced pogo sticker trying to get one trouser leg on.

b) I know women are vain, but women are also daydreamers, fantasists, especially when it comes to their own body image. Why an earth do we need 3 mirrors, all placed at different angles so that we can see our bodies in all their 360 degrees of glory?

When did we say we wanted to see our bottoms straight on? Our wobbly arms from the full benefit of front, side AND rear view?

Why can’t you leave us with the one remaining fantasy we cling to that our rear view is actually okay? That in motion it doesn’t really wobble as much as it feels like it does?

And the worst thing about it is that they’re so carefully positioned that you can usually see the reflection of the reflection of the reflection of your bottom in each mirror. Why in god’s name would i choose to have my fat arse tesselated like a screensaver in tile mode?

c) If mirror=reflection, why do i look different in every mirror i see myself in? The real problem here is that i always seem to visit the shops with the thinny mirrors first. I get lulled into a false sense of security. Then each shop after this seems to offer a progressively fatter image of me.

My typical shopping trip goes something like this.

Mirror no.1) ” Wow, I actually look okay in this. Maybe i haven’t put on as much weight as i thought”

Mirror no. 2) “hmmm, that’s not so good, ok maybe this is just an unflattering mirror”

Mirror no. 3) Jesus Christ, ive really let myself go,…No, not the rear view, please not the rear (exit sharpish and head straight to Starbucks to console myself with a quadruple chocolate muffin).

Still, I expect it could be worse.

I remember the days when all changing rooms were communal. You had to put up with all those skinnies feigning disgust “Oh Juliette, i just look sooooo fat in this”.

I was young then, and i didn’t like it.

Thank goodness privacy won over, even if i do have to make do with a piece of kitchen towel to hide my modesty.

The difference between thinnies and fatties

I was once interviewed about the gap between how i would like to control my eating, and how i control my eating. i found this a bit confusing at the time because, put simply, i don’t. Control my eating that is.

I am a fatty.

I’m terrible for spending ages sizing up the Guillaume’s chocolates trying to work out which shell is the biggest. Looking through the packet of pitta breads to identify which one will hold the most filling. Carrying the dinner plates to the table and wondering if i can give the smallest portion to him in a manner that looks natural and not preplanned.

I can’t be the only one that does this sort of thing?

The truth is, i have an appetite. Now, as my friends will tell you, i’m not fat. Yet…. But i owe that to a huge amount of nervous energy, borderline ocd when it comes to cleaning, and not for want of trying.

The problem is that when i start eating something delicious, i just can’t stop. Take chocolate for example. I can eat chocolate until the point where i feel so sick i think i might be sick, and have to go to bed hoping that it will have passed by morning.

Paul Mckenna tells us to “eat consciously”, get back in tune with our bodes and just stop eating when we’re full. Simple. Problem is i’ve tried this, and i just can’t tell when i’m full until i’m so full i know i should have stopped eating a while ago.

I’ve always suspected that there must be evil people in laboratories mixing ingredients in the hope of finding the perfect combination for sending our brains into meltdown. The secret behind what makes “bad food” so damn yummy, addictive, “pernicious” (a brilliant word favoured by my dad).

It turns out that i was right. It is an exact combination of fat, salt and sugar to give what they call the “bliss factor”. And not only that, but it’s designed to melt in the mouth, so that the brain misses the full signals that would normally be triggered by chewing.

How bloody sneaky is that?

The problem is, i know people who don’t have this issue. I’ve watched them. They eat exactly what they want, when they want it. They just don’t eat when they’re not hungry. They never have to “control” their eating, because their body tells them when they’ve had enough.

You know the people i mean. They’re the ones that actually have biscuits and full fat yoghurts in their trolley at the supermarket. Us fatties would never “plan” to eat junk food and so buy it at the weekly shop. Our conveyor belts are full of good intentions – weight watchers this, slimming world that, cottage cheese and rice cakes (no normal person would eat these after all).

The difference is we buy all our chocolate and crisps at the local shop, when we can’t resist the temptation any longer. And we buy twice as much. (it’s for the kids after all)

So if addiction to junk food is chemical, why don’t thinnies get sucked in? Do we have more addictive personalities? Are we more succeptible to these horror chemicals? Is our “bliss” experience more mesmeric and so difficult to control?

In any case, it seems i’m off the hook. It’s all down to genetics.

What a relief. I can now reach for the biscuit tin guilt free. Blame those sneaky scientists.

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