The end is in sight...

Day 4 of the Grapefruit Diet was particularilt uneventful. After cinema-gate 2010 which saw the inhalation of a bag of popcorn, the grapefruit diet plan was followed to the letter of the law on sunday!

This is the direction many of the diets I have tried have taken....bold one day good the next ec etc... so roll on Day 5...temptation was garunteed to ensue.

The fact that I was working furthered added to my doubts that this was not going to be a good day! I wasn't up in time for breakfast so I just through a grapefruit in the bag. There was then a power cut in the hotel where I work which meant no teabreak at 11....I was so hungry, the morning consisted of thinking up different ways to eat the grapefruit on the sly...I could just see myself like the butchers dog in cartoons...stealing bacon from the customers plates to get into me at the same time as the grapefruit. By the time lunchtime came I was tired, cold, starving and grumpy. Not surprisingly, the grapefruit and wilted salad I was allowed to eat did nothing to reverse the grump that had set in. That's the wonderful thing about carbs....they're great for putting you in a good mood....even if it is just for that half an hour before your blood sugar levels rise anf you find yourself sluggish again...but the buzz while youre enjoying your chicken fillet roll roll is amazing!

So leaving work at 4 o'clock monday evening I faced the same problem I had the saturday previous. I was hungry and about to make my way to Dublin City of temptation. For me it was the quivalent of making a starving person run the gauntlet through a string of restaurants. At the end of the race I was a broken person.I could not face into another salad the inly thing I wanted to do with my fridge full of grapefruits was to feck them out the window. At this point the bin wasn;t even place enough for them. I wanted them out of my house!

So before I had even reached home I had concocted a plan....

My goal with this diet had been to try and lose 5 pounds in 6 days..as the full grapefruit diet promises 10lbs in 12 days. So I decided that I was going to weigh myself on the eve of day 5...before eating obviously..and If I was happy enough with the results...I would allow myself a normal dinner before grapfruiting it up for the final time on day 6.

Into the chemists....bag off, phone and ipod out of pockets, jacket on top of them, and shoes in the corner... After 5 days of deprivation I was expecting big things,

And the result of my labour....A POUND AND A HALF! Had I not taken off my hoes to make myself lighter I most definitely would have kicked the machine in a rag...chemist or no chemist watching.

So I went home in a sulk and ate a big bowl of pasta...with BREAD!! Indescribable.

I thought about giving up on the whole diet there and then. Lying about it. Faking a lack of carb induced coma that would have someone forcing a sandwich into my mouth...

I decided to go ahead with the diet, but not as strict as before. So I would only eat the three meals, and they would be healthy but I allowed carbs and stuff. The grapefruit was much easier to eat knowing I would be following it with some food I actually liked.

I hadn't been planning on it but I reweighed myself the afternoon after I finished the diet. I hadn't gotten the 5 pounds in 6 days I had been half hoping/ half wishing to achieve....i had lost 6!

Day 3/4....starvation causes the time to blur...

I had a feeling I was going to regret going on about how easy this diet is....I do. In fact I regret it more and more every time I go into a shop, walk past a restaurant, see a bus with an ad on it for food... Ah no it's not THAT bad. Although think I was going to crack in Lidl yesterday. I never was a big believer in karma....until I saw practically all my favorite foods in the world...in the same shop....on special offers. The smell of the bakery in Marks and Spencers shortly after nearly brought a tear to my eye!

For the first two days my strategy was to leave it as late as possible to eat breakfast so that I would stay fuller until lunch...struggle on until dinner and then quickly get to bed before the next waves of hunger set in.

If you were confined to a house, or had a lifestyle which never required you to go near shops/ restaurants then this diet would be amazing! For lunch and dinner you can eat as much meat/salad as you want. you don't even have to hold back on the butter or dressing. I haven't varied very much in the foods I have been using...all my lunches have been salads with either chicken prawns or tuna. And by salads I mean that I literally eat the entire bag of mixed leaves or whatever it is I'm using. I don't think that eating that extra bucket of lettuce necessarily fills you up any more...it's purely psychological.

This diet, as I'm sure many others do really makes you realize how much food we eat that our body does not need. For me anyway, there is a very fine line between hunger and boredom.

My breakfasts have all consisted of 2 rashers and two eggs...I'm not a big breakfast person so it is strange getting used to eating so much in the morning. Dinners again have consisted of salad and steak( Day 1), lean burger with no bun (Day 2) and steak again (Day 4) I'll come back to day 3...

This is a totally different diet to what I'm used to. It comes from me being a very poor cook and not really liking any meat. All in all this has not been too difficult an experience except for Day 3 (Saturday) which I will come back to...

I have switched from regular White Grapefruit to Ruby Grapefruit which are unbelievably nicer. I would even go so far as to say that I like them! Although I did get some strange looks when I brought them to work on Saturday!

So Saturday....I really didn't know how I was going to wok this diet on Saturday because I was scheduled to work from half 7 to 5. I work in a hotel, but only started a week before last so it's still all very new to me. The early start meant that there was no way in hell I was going to doing any cooking so my Grapefruit got consumed all by it's lonesome.

You would imagine that this would cause you to lose even more weight, but not according to the diet rules. You have to eat Grapefruit in the exact combination with the foods listed.

Grapefruit uimhir a dó was eaten in the work canteen with some salad and fish without anyone staring or pointing and laughing as I had envisaged.

Saturday was not a fun day for many reasons, most of them work related. But going back to my newfound belief in Karma [I have done several bold things lately - Sorry Sadhbh! :( ] my job for the first 4 hours in work was to be in charge of making the tea and toast for the restaurant. A shit enough job without any grapefruit links, the karma link to this job is in the fact that toast is one of my favourite foods.Ever. I spent a good 4 hours watching my crispy little triangles get carried out to the guests. Tragic isn't the word.

The next challenge to Saturday was finishing work. I finished at 5 and had eaten lunch at 12. By this stage I was properly STARVING! But none of my usual post work treats were allowed. This was about the time I started to turn against the grapefruit. Dublin city in a grumpy/hungry mood is minus craic on a Saturday. Having to spend €60 on rotten work shoes further added to my strop home. A full on anti-christal overload was avoided when I got eating back in the house. Instead of another salad I ate the breakfast meal of 2 boiled eggs and two grilled rashers.

Headed off to the cinema later that night. Was slightly worried beforehand about resisting the temptation of popcorn, which is up there with toast on the top few fav foods. I queued for the tickets anxiously knowing that the popcorn was just above me. Thought about it the whole way up on the escalator. Couldn't even hide the fact that i was not listening to word of the conversation I was supposed to be engaged it. What happened next nearly cost me a relationship.

I had explained the popcorn predicament to the boyf whose response was 'Well I'm full because I just ate pizza, brown bread and coleslaw.'

Not a good response to someone who is on day 3 of salads. At this point I was on the brink of running up to the counter and taking into the popcorn with my bare hands. All I was looking for was to be encouraged to break the diet. The slightest hint of a suggestion would have been enough. But no, it never came. Sitting down in the screen all I could do was watch the other people coming in with their full bags of the stuff. They didn't deserve their popcorn. They didn't love it. I had to watch them carelessly drop little bits on the floor...

While some of this is slightly exaggerated, I genuinely couldn't even concentrate on the ads. I held out until the IFCO warning came up.....and then the dam burst...the popcorn and minstrels didn't stand a chance...neither did the boyf who barely got one of each, but my god was it worth it. I can't describe the happiness. Nom Nom Nom...

The whole thing mad me so happy that I proceeded to fall asleep half an hour before the end of Iron Man 2....

That happiness carried me through day 4 which was spent at home...all diet rules strictly adhered to....roll on day 5!!

With Day 1 finished and breakfast of day 2 out of the way I'm really wondering how this 90 year old diet works. It contradicts any other diet I have ever attempted. Phrases like "eat until you're stuffed" and "the more you eat the more weight you lose" would make you wonder. A first I thought I was reading my info of a website some evil soul had created to make you fatter while you "suffer" away thinking you're slimming down. I use the word suffer in irony, because in all honesty this diet is a walk in the park. Compared to poor Diana going without solid food, Joey surviving on apples my "diet" doesn't seem to be in the same league. While Denise was dreaming about cookies I was slightly missing a cup of tea?

The Grapefruit Diet promises a loss of ten pounds in 12 days. I'm going to see if I can get 5 off in 6 days. The major difference I notice being on it is just a complete change in the types of food I am eating. A hard core carbivore I live for bread in any shape or form. So over the course of the next few days withdrawal symptoms may arise from the lack of white flour my body is used to receiving in generous quantities. I had two salads yesterday - 1 for lunch with chicken and the other with dinner with my steak(!). That's approximately the same number of salads I have eaten in the last year. There is no form of starvation involved in this diet, just a complete change in what I would be used to eating. This morning I had my first boiled egg in about 15 years!

So a big apology so far on my part to everyone else that stuck to much harder diets than this one (again so far). I know it looks a bit dodge on my part having arranged the whole thing... I will try not to rub it in anyone's face when I have my Cheryl Cole figure in another few days!

The Road To Hell...

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. This be the case then my road is ridiculously well paved. This diet for example was supposed to start weeks ago, but as with any article,assignment or thesis I've ever had throughout college, it has been left to the last possible minute!

The diet I have chosen, having conducted much research to find the easiest one out there is The Grapefruit Diet. Also known as the Hollywood diet, this particular form of bodily torture has been about since the 1930s.

The premise of the Grapefruit Diet is based on an alleged "magical" ingredient in grapefruits, that, when eaten with protein, theoretically triggers fat burning and causes weight loss. There have been allegations that the seeds of the Atkins Diet may have been sown by the food choices of this random, low calorie, low carb high protein diet.

I have already made several mistakes with this diet. I thought when I first decided to go with it that all that was involved was eating half a grapefruit before any meal and it would work it's magic. No, no only a very certain selection of foods can be eaten.

In most versions of the Grapefruit Diet, a small variety of foods are required at breakfast, lunch, dinner, and at bedtime. Dieters are encouraged to drink black coffee and plenty of water throughout the day.

The meal plan I am going with today is one of the only samples I can find online. So it is looking like it's going to be quite the repetitive 7 day if I can't come up with anything else in the meantime.

Breakfast: 2 eggs, 2 slices of bacon, black coffee, 1/2 grapefruit or 8 ounces grapefruit juice

Lunch: Salad with salad dressing, unlimited meat, and 1/2 grapefruit or 8 ounces grapefruit juice

Dinner: Red or green vegetables (except starchy ones such as peas, beans, corn, sweet potatoes) or salad, unlimited meat or fish, and 1/2 grapefruit or 8 ounces grapefruit juice

Snack: 8 ounces skim milk

In the Grapefruit Diet you can use all the butter and salad dressing you desire and prepare foods in any method, including fried. Grapefruit juice must be unsweetened. Any food or beverage not on the diet is not allowed. Snacking is only permitted after dinner. Drink 64 ounces of water daily. Eat all of the approved foods.

When you look at this diet first all you see is the amount of food you are "allowed" to eat! Compared to everyone else who had to survive on apples, liquids or shakes this seems like a walk in the park.

One slight problem for me though, which I only discovered yesterday before taking on this misery fest....is that i don't even like grapefruit! Here goes nothing...bring on Grapefruit number 1!