I see her standing there, chatting away airily with a glass of champagne in her hand, and I ask myself, 'Why, why can't I do that?' She is wearing a tiny little pencil skirt which nips in gracefully at her slender waist. Her collar bones jut out in a charming feminine fashion, and her slim legs appear to have lengthened, and end in a pair of signature stylish Derya shoes.
The truth of the matter is, I can do it, if I am to stick to a set of rather strict eating rules she has appointed herself. A stern reminder that the grass is always greener on the other side, and in this case, the grass is generally of the fat free variety. To give her the credit she deserves, she has worked terrifically hard to look this good, and is not in the least bit smug about it. Rather, she is wonderfully inspiring, generous, and motivating with her tips and advice.
Everything she has told me, makes perfect sense. Cutting out saturated sugars and fats, eating leaner cuts of meat (she has actually removed red meat from her diet), not snacking between meals etc - all standard weight loss stuff. However, the biggest cause of her weight loss she says, is not eating late at night. She eats dinner at 6pm at her desk at work, and then nothing again until breakfast the next morning. The body apparently metabolises at a far slower rate at night which means that the later you eat, the more of it goes on your hips.
Now this is where I have a problem. Whereas I am more then happy to go hungry if I am on my own, I love the ritual of eating with someone. That wonderful mixture of tastes in your mouth, accompanied by a good glass of wine, and a juicy conversation you look forward to all day. Robert and I eat together each night, unless of course we are seeing friends or have other engagements, and it is our opportunity to talk about our day and have a gossip, and generally connect with each other. At 6pm, he is just getting home, changing his clothes and making a beeline for his computer with a cup of tea. Once we have done our various forms of evening unwinding, we land up eating between 7.30 and 8pm.
I have to agree with Derya; when I want to loose weight, eating a big lunch and skipping dinner tends to do the trick. However, Robert tends to have big business lunches which are part and parcel of his job, which means eating early (if we are are to eat together) is not an option.
More so, cooking is also a joint favourite activity; which sometimes involves Robert getting all Gordon Ramsay on me; ushering me out of the kitchen in the direction of the sofa, sticking a glass of wine in my hand, and then returning the stove to embark on his culinary creativity undisturbed.
I am beginning to realise that all of this points to only one alternative; getting my metabolism up, and burning all of those extra late night calories, which, unfortunately, means a regular dose of one thing...
Today we went to the gym at lunch-time. I had no idea how full it was going to be, and if I'm honest it also had a hint of the pick-up variety one tends to associate more wth the 151. I guess all those endorphins can have a similar effect to the cheap wine one gets at the 151, as there was a fair bit of checking out going on. Still, heads down and all that, and I managed to get in a good hour; 20 minutes on the treadmill at a fair rate, and then a variety of weights designed to torture, I mean work out, all the various muscle groups.
Those big balls they have look like fun don't they? Wrong, they are instruments of pain - the worst kind of pain. My induction person showed me a great excercise using one of these balls to work the thigh muscles, specifically those one uses when skiing. I recounted my various ski fears/theories, and she reckoned that with strong, fit legs, my skiing would improve in leaps and bounds. I hope she's right, because this evening I am struggling to walk, and I just know upon waking up tomorrow morning I am going to be in agony.
Still, I have visions of myself careening down mountainsides wearing an all-in-one Bond Girl ski suit (which in reality is very naff unless you are tall, blonde and Sweedish), looking, and more so feeling, terrifically confident. I need to hold onto this dream if only to motivate myself to keep going to the gym.
More importantly, there is our wedding, and I would very much like to wear a dress which doesn't reveal upper arms of the Russian lady wrestle kind. I want to look slim and toned, not like I got stuck into the wedding cake the night before.
So, it's gym, gym and more gym - eating sensibly, and trying very hard not to be too jealous of Derya, whom I would very much like to keep as a close, albeit it annoyingly thin, friend.
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