Day 2 - The Cabbage Soup Diet

Rigamoon

It’s always a bit depressing when you wake up and realise that you’re on a fad diet; hunger, headaches and temptation to look forward to.  And this morning dinner with school friends and saying no to a lot of food and wine was what I had to look forward to, but I was full of a new found conviction.  Forcing myself out of bed I gaily trotted to pilates at 7.30am and came away feeling super smug; diet and exercise?  How awesome am I?

Then the hunger kicked in and I remembered that all I could have for breakfast was vegetables, so I had a carrot, weird.  The soup isn’t bad, at all, but it’s still the same vegetable soup every day.  For lunch I liquidised it to see if that made it more palletable, it was slightly more enjoyable but it’s not the soup I’d choose to make.  Roasted parsnip and parmesan, leek and potato, courgette and brie, yum!   

Dinner was superb, a baked potato with butter, steamed kale and a spinach and watercress salad.  Really very delicious and savouring every mouthful, I never wanted the potato to end, knowing full well it was my last carbohydrate hit until the brown rice on Sunday.  The noises coming out of our mouths were more suited to a porn film than a fad diet dinner. 

Then over to North London for dinner with old school friends.  I was full and although their homemade curry looked delicious I wasn’t tempted to break the diet … that was, until the arctic roll came out, mean, plain mean!  I sipped my white tea pretending I hated arctic roll and couldn’t think of anything worse, my friends know me better and all I wanted was to savour the cold sweet ice cream and the soft, bouncy sponge.  Before I knew it, they’d gobbled the lot and I was fine again.  Dinner - survived, phew.

Bruno

“The soup tastes better blended.”

Good Lord, have we been duped. Properly and undeniably tricked.

Have you ever eaten a savoury, irresponsibly spiced soup for breakfast? It’s a peculiar sensation. It’s rather like the feeling you’d get if you ate leftover Chinese food before going to work on a hangover; the thrill of being naughty immediately trumped by weak anger and sickness. Odder still is what has happened to the soup overnight. All those taut nuggets of varied vegetated goodness have merged into a great slick of pointless, down-and-out sludge. It’s as though all the ingredients had a nocturnal boxing tournament and beat seven shades of colour out of each other. They all hate each other now. The cabbage is floppy and bruised, the carrots are frayed and the green peppers are close to death. All the re-heating has made them moody. It’s the gastronomic equivalent of spending time with a single-mother stoner.

I turn elsewhere for my fix. We are instructed to gannet green vegetables until we burst. There’s broccoli, watercress and kale. Surely the Holy Trinity of weight loss? Different day, identical problem. How can this cocktail of earthy health possibly fill anyone up? Rescue workers don’t drag starving babies out of an earthquake ruin and sit them up with an enormous plate of undressed salad, do they? I could eat stems and leaves constantly for six hours and, presuming I’ve not begun to cut myself, I would still harbour a hankering for a bread roll.

As the day drags on I become seriously hungry. This is not a nagging desire to eat something substantial. This is an aching, weakening, bilious tumour of a feeling. Minutes before I pass out, a beautiful angel appears out of the oven. Her name is Baked Potato, and alongside her small, fat sidekick, Knob of Butter, she is my literal saviour. I want to take my time and suck every last morsel off of my plate. Not lick; suck. An hour later I eat a few more spoonfuls of the soup, which is beginning to resemble a dying old relative.

I retire to bed with a confused stomach and a pain in my chest. I already know how hungry I am going to be tomorrow, and quietly hope I pass silently in my sleep.