It comes to something when your children feel obliged to take over as diet coaches.  In my case it’s my daughter, and my daughter in law.  And I feel immensely privileged.

I’ve often wondered if one of those plans where they send you meals would be the answer for me.  I badly need to lose weight for health reasons and they are worried too.  Hence the diet coach bit.

Firstly, I really didn’t want to weigh myself.  I don’t ever want to weigh myself and when I devise my ‘No Weigh’ diet system, no one should have to, but until that happy day, I accept it’s probably a good idea to find out if the diet is working.

My daughter weighed me.  I coached her carefully first.  ‘You’re not to say ‘Oh my God!’ or ‘I can’t believe you’ve let it get this bad’.  She wasn’t even allowed to look worried.  (Poor girl) and she managed it.  Although of course I couldn’t resist probing her a bit, and protesting, ‘I’ve had breakfast!  Usually I’d weigh before breakfast.’  I didn’t add, ‘leaning on my left foot’ or any of those other weird things people feel obliged to do before they face those scales.  She’s quite ‘no nonsense’ my daughter. 

Since then, she and my daughter have been bringing me truly delicious meals from a book that counts the calories.  Sometimes they are cooking the same meal for their families and give me a portion, sometimes I have the same meal twice.  My daughter in law has been making soup for the freezer so when I come down from my study I can eat almost instantly and not just open the fridge and stuff something in.

We haven’t had a weigh in yet.  I overheard my daughter saying to her sister in law that if I hadn’t lost any weight we’d have to choose lower calorie meals from the book.  I’ve been loving my meals and really hope things can stay as they are.

 have cheated a bit.  I had a bit of brown rice with my beef stroganoff and some brown bread and Marmite, with butter.  I have had a small amount of chocolate twice.  I hope I haven’t scuppered it, because really, what a very lucky woman I am, to have two busy young women in her life to cook  for her?

My husband has been cooking for me for years.  Sadly, his meals aren’t calorie counted.

In case you’re wondering, I’m quite a good cook myself.  Sadly, I’m a bit bored with it.  And counting calories?  Pfff!