An Irishman's Diet/Final week: the war of mind over matter seems to be yielding results
Ten weeks ago, after many years of hardship and unease with my body, weight and eating habits, I made the radical decision to go on an all-out diet - the mother of all diets I called it - with the intention of losing a few barbells around my tummy, wearing clothes that compliment the body instead of hide it, and living a healthier more all-encompassing life.
Now, down about a stone and a quarter and two inches in trouser waist, while happy that everywhere I go I'm not lugging around a small suitcase with me, I do feel that I should be doing better.
My greatest difficulties have been psychological. No sooner had I made the decision to swap the belly for the ironing board than the securocrats who run my body were running around in my head causing all sorts of blue murder - calling it a conspiracy and sending a clear message to my brain: "not on our watch, you won't".
Voices in your head you say? okay, so it's a fat-bloke phenomenon. And how do these sounds get their message across? Well, it's sort of subtle really, and probably plays me at the game I'm trying to play them.
I can best describe it as mind games or, to be brutally honest, old-fashioned diabolical lying. When I decided I was going on a diet, I tricked my body, mind and self into believing that I wasn't really going on a diet at all - merely duck-walking a longer journey to the food mountain.
Or, as the voices in my head would have it, a slower way to mega-obesity. So, I put it about that with a little window dressing, the pretence of a bit or two of veg, the odd soup on the side, and the occasional walk, sure everyone will think I'm the best fat-bloke ever and sure amn't I the great fella Francie for thinking it, so to speak.
Well, as anyone who ever watched the George Sanders in the classic Village of the Damned will know, it's not so easy keeping up in your mind a pretence behind a poorly built wall - especially with the id, ego and super-ego screaming at you in their bottle-blond wigs pulling it apart brick by brick.
Of course, the three Freudian amigos knew something was up. No sooner had I put away the last morsel of Christmas pudding and everything else, literally as well as metaphorically, the little gurriers had gathered restlessly around the cerebral hemisphere's water cooler gossiping on the secret messages that were been carried between my dietary advisers and my gut.
Having tricked them into thinking I was on a diet, I was about to suffer a backlash. However, like any good liar - frantically keeping pace with the pacman of deceit, doing summersaults on the best ferris wheel ever tied into complimentary offshoots of DNA molecular geometry - I knew tying my lie to a modicum of truth would save the day.
This truth being that yes, I wasn't going to forsake fast food forever, merely suggesting "let's give up fast-food for a few days" knowing that after a few days, my eating habits would be on a more even kilter and I wouldn't need to eat fast food. This argument luckily saved the day and a diet was born.
Over the past 10 weeks while falling off the dietary cross, at least three times, the three Freudian amigos continue to trouble and forsake me, particularly in my hour of greatest need. And, of course, I'm still lying to myself, hood-winking an extra walk out of the old legs or forsaking doughnuts for salads.
Now, when I get an urge to have fast food, I tell the boyos - particularly the hedonistic id who's always been the hardest to control in these circumstances - "yes, let's have some fast food" but "let's go for a walk or have some soup first".
Happy in our nappies with a detente of sorts, and a quick jog around the block or two ladles of homemade carrot soup later, I and the rest of me is too full or tired to want anything else. It seems a pain in the ass, but hey, it works for me.
And to be fair to my psyche, department policy is now firmly in favour of weight loss, proper diet and proportionality. The conscience, no longer the harbinger of fast food and midnight feasts, is now in training for the marathon, holding out a slim chance that the body will actually run one.
It also spends more shopping time in the vegetable isles and hasn't been to biscuitland for weeks. It might not be everyone's idea of a diet, but it's one man's Irishman's diet - till the next time.