Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
My husband has had his kilt since he was at university. Like all good kilts, the waist fastening allows plenty of room for growth, but not, however, quite as much growth as my husband has undergone in the past few years. This means that whenever a kilt-wearing occasion looms, he invariably goes on some mad, crash diet to remove the offending flab.
In this way – and only in this way – he’s like Charles Saatchi, the millionaire ad-man and art collector, whose wife, Nigella Lawson, has revealed that her husband’s recent massive weight loss is down to a strict diet of nine eggs a day. He ate three for breakfast, three for dinner, three for supper and nothing else for nine months and lost a whopping four stone.
It’s crazy, but I applaud the man’s willpower. How difficult must it be to lose serious amounts of weight when you’ve got Britain’s most famous domestic goddess slinking around the house, licking whipped cream off her fingers and purring about the joys of tiramisu?
Nevertheless, he did it and his new, somewhat gaunt look (scarily like Nigella’s dad, Nigel, who lost several stone on a similarly draconian eating regime a few years ago) is testament to his alpha-male ability to create a new reality for himself, however much that new reality might smell of sulphur and make his wife describe him as "grumpy and crotchety".
Saatchi’s doctor despaired at such unhealthy eating habits, saying: "It’s neck-and-neck whether Charles keels over or loses the weight first," but somehow Saatchi survived the bizarre nine-eggs-a-day diet and now, with the date of a kilt-wearing wedding approaching, I can tell my husband is thinking about trying it too.
Men and women tend to diet very differently. Unless we’re Hollywood stars and need to lose a stone in ten minutes or we’ll never work again, women generally choose boring, eat-less, exercise-more options, which involve meeting other women, drinking Diet Coke and moaning about how difficult it all is.
We compare diets endlessly; we weigh up calories; use points systems; stretch our legs behind our heads, or feel the burn. We worry about whether we’re absorbing enough chromium and painstakingly juggle menus to make sure we’re getting our five a day.
Traditionally, women are supposed to be the weight obsessives, but when it comes to sheer, fanatical, single-minded self-reduction, the boys win almost every time.
All dieters want the quickest fix possible, but men seem to want it even quicker than women, so they’re much happier than we are to risk their long-term health in the quest to achieve a thinner tomorrow, today.
I’ve noticed male dieters are particularly seduced by the stringent, all-or-nothing approach. I know women who’ve tried things like the cabbage soup diet, the maple syrup diet, or nothing-but-cucumber, but these methods are usually employed as short-burst slimming strategies within a wider game plan.
Admittedly, Saatchi’s diet lasted much longer than the average male’s weight-loss regime, but I’m guessing now he’s triumphed, it’s possible he’s already edging towards the kind of eating patterns that got him into trouble in the first place.
A male friend recently ate only soup and water for a month. He did it alone and hardly ventured outside the house, but that was all part of the mastery-of-self battle he was waging. The results are stunning, but typical of the extreme masculine dieting patterns I keep coming across, which never seem to be about making small yet meaningful changes to your lifestyle, or simply eating slightly less.
For example, my husband is currently trying the Stone Age diet. If it’s authentic, then stone-age man took absolutely no exercise and sat around his cave all day bingeing on burgers (without the bun).
So far, the effects on his waistline have been minimal, but he says he likes it because it’s simple and it means he doesn’t have to think about recipes, or anything boring like that.
And that sums it up, really. When men want to lose fat, they want to do it simply, spectacularly quickly, and with no thought for the future of their bodies. Which is why I’m worried by the return of my brother-in-law from Nepal, looking unusually svelte. An attack of Kathmandu colon caused him to lose two stone in as many weeks and my husband is impressed. "It’s perfect!" he enthused. "You go somewhere exotic, eat whatever you like, and lose loads of weight just by sitting down! It’s the perfect diet!"
I can see there’s only one thing that might stop this madness – I’ll have to buy him a new kilt.
Source: The Scotsman