Walk this way

Yes I'm still alive and blogging and I hereby promise / threaten to post more regularly. I've also hopped on this wild horse that is the web and will shortly have a pretty website all of my own so am currently embracing all things web. Stay tuned. (Also inspired to post again by my hilarious friends at The Unibrain... you really should follow them.)

I have a somewhat embarrassing confession to make. It seems I took my own advice a little too seriously (the diet another day bit) and managed to stack on a few kgs over the last few months. Blame Europe. Blame Winter. Blame the festive season. Blame the boyfriend. But really it's all my fault for eating and drinking more than my little body needed to actually live. Now I suffer the consequences of a wardrobe that only half fits. Pop... that's the top button of my jeans committing suicide.

But this is a good news story. Still carrying the weight from my last overseas trip in July last year, I recently took off for another sojourn to Mexico and London. Egads! I hear you say...Mexico? London? These are the anti-health food capitals of the world! Not to mention I'd been commissioned to write a story about food in Mexico - so I was legally obligated by the tax office to do as much eating as possible. (For details of my eating you can check out the Sept issue of Women's Health for some of that food porn).

I remind you this is a good news story and the happy development is, that after 3 weeks of eating my way through Mexico, London and LA I came home lighter and more toned than when I left. Not 'oh my god, is that Posh Spice?' thin but reduced enough that I could squeeze myself into a pair of jeans that would not do up before I left.

The reason is very clear. I walked. A lot. I trekked from the ranch to the beach in LA, I walked up pyramids and mountains in Mexico, I traipsed up and down stairs at Tube stations, strolled the length of airport terminals and powered through shopping malls is all places. And I have the blisters to prove it.

I have been reading and writing about the power of walking a lot. Bob Greene, Oprah's trainer and weight-loss guru (er, maybe not the best professional recommendation) says walking is his favourite exercise. The National Weight Control Registry in the US (a massive longitudal study) reports walking is the best way to lose weight and keep it off. And studies of populations who live the longest and healthiest show they are walkers, and not gym junkies.

Now that I'm home and reacquainted with my laptop and the Foxtel remote the temptation is to spend more time on the couch than pounding the pavement. I've been trying my best to go for daily walks and even posted this is the hope for further motivation. When all else fails I typically remind myself that the more I walk, the more I can eat.

Like water into wine

I've hit a new low. Or possibly hit on an ingenious new diet tip. TKF and I have taken to drinking water from wine glasses with our dinner. Much like those people who use the plastic replacement cigarettes from Nicroette, we are treating our penchant for wine at night as a psychological issue – that it's habitual rather than a real desire. And yes, just like those people sucking back on plastic toy cigarettes, we look completely ridiculous.

I'm blaming TKF. Her sister-in-law back home in the Kiwi motherland lost 12kg in some miracle amount of time this way. She cut out the booze, tricked herself into thinking she was relaxing with a glass of vino, continued to eat pineapple lumps and other NZ delicacies and the weight just melted off.

Neither TFK or I want to lose weight, we're just in the grip of ' two alcohol-free days a week guilt'. That is, we tend not to have them. (The other reason we've stopped drinking is neither of us is prepared to take off our chic home ensemble of house cardie, house trousers and le Ugh boots to go out and buy a damn bottle). There's no shame in the fact that I like to enjoy a glass of wine with my dinner, it's the best way to enjoy wine. The issue for me has been not being able to enjoy dinner without the wine. Le sigh.

So we sit up at the table of an evening, the finest in home cuisine prepared by moi served with a perfectly chilled glass of tap water from the Warrangamba Dam region. We make lame teatotal jokes that we could 'be wild and have the whole bottle!', and when we feel like a 'red', we pour it straight from the tap rather than have it chilled from the fridge. As I said, we've hit a new low.

But I've had three alcohol-free days in a row this week (possibly a personal record) but I can't say I feel any better or worse for it. However, this could be because I have a vested interest in this experiment failing miserably given aforementioned interest in wine (yes, I may once have escaped from the Golden Door Health Retreat in a covert operation to go buy wine and cheese). But I have saved myself from un-tolled empty calories and that, my friends, is the point (kind of).