There's a hole in this blog for about 4 weeks exactly a year ago. I was in the middle of writing a huge article for Micro Mart, so I stopped blogging. I must also have been in the honeymoon stages with the work, and I was, quite particularly, not blogging in the office. In February, I'd been to a training course which was so boring and slow moving that I had plenty of time for blogging. It also provided lots of free biscuits, which I supplemented by buying more biscuits on the way home. In fact, my initial resolve to eat more healthily when I started this job had quickly deteriorated and, by the end of March last year, I was nearly as big as I'd ever been and feeling like I'd be getting bigger soonish.

Suddenly, on the 1st April, I was on a diet. Simple as that. I don't know why. I spent the first month of it eating mainly salad with very low carbohydrate intake. Then I ate more rationally. I lost about 4 stone.

I've noticed that my resolve to eat healthily has been falling away again. Maybe it's something about mid winter. Maybe I'm just a terminal fatty. I had been doing well, and when I first moved into my house, the combination of effort and healthy eating managed to lose me a few pounds. Now I'm on the brink of collapse into bad ways.

There are some good things I've done. I don't buy food for having in the house. I'll only eat it all. I have, this week at least, managed to stop myself from buying high calorie unnecessary crap while eating out. Though I did sit down and eat far too many Quality Street at a friend's house on Monday. In other words, I had a good day yesterday, following a high calorie weekend and a falling-off-the-wagon Monday night. The problem, I think, is that time moves so quickly for me that I assume that a huge period has elapsed since my last gastronomic indiscretion. So I give myself permission to eat more and more crap. This will not be good for me, short or long-term.

This weekend will probably be unhealthy, but perhaps I'll feel like people will be watching what I eat, as we'll eat as a group, so maybe I'll be shamed into portion control. Or maybe not.

Having read back a year in my blog, as I'm often found doing, I found this list of foods I'd be avoiding. I thought I'd see how well I'd managed to avoid them in the last year:

• Domino's Pizza/Garlic Bread - I've had maybe 3 or 4 of these in the last year. It was more like 3 or 4 a week previously
• Other takeaway pizza - I'd had a couple of these to myself while living in Farnborough - it was gross-out-style over-eating. I've had none this last year
• Sugar-laced vending machine drinks - maybe one or two. I found a vending machine drink which didn't taste of lots of sugar and assume that's better
• Flapjacks from the office cafe - both sorts - I don't know what the sorts are. I still eat carb-rich food from the cafe that's like an oaty-thing, but it's the low-calorie, low fat equivalent
• Cadbury's mini eggs - not guilty
• Cadbury's creme eggs - there were a few a week or so ago. I'll stop now, shall I. Ok. No more
• Chips - I was getting lunch with chips many days a week at the hot food place. While I have had a few portions of chips over the last year - most memorably this weekend just gone by in Edinburgh, where I had to have chips, salt 'n' sauce and a deep fried battered rump steak (well, probably burger, but it's called a steak) - generally, I've been in control. I should probably stop them again
• Sausages - I've had a few here and there. Some were prepared for me as the set-meal at home, others were happenstance while eating out. I've certainly not had any with regularity, and not at work. Work eating is a large proportion of my routine, so to avoid it at work...
• Tuna mayonnaise sandwiches - couple of times a month for colour - sort of greyish-pinky colour
• Anything made by Ginsters... - I have had a lot of Ginsters low-calorie low-fat wraps on the road, with maybe one or two sneaky pasties
• ...or Greggs - I think I've pretty much avoided the dirty Greggs - except I was naughty during my trip to Newcastle the other week, but I was on my holiday!
• Chocolate brownies (or chocolate any-member-of-the-scouting-movement) - this weekend, one chocolate brownie, not very nice - the cookies were better. I had been eating lots of the M&Ms brownies, which were lovely
• Bakewell tarts - ooh, I could just do with one of them right now... ok, no, not had any and not going to
• Sausage rolls - not as I recall

So, the upshot is that I've been pretty lax with my resolve and have been particularly bad in the last month. Today, for lunch, for variety, I had a salad at the cafe. It felt good. I've eaten a fair bit of fruit today too. Basically my diet has been a combination of a sandwich in the office in the day and a Subway near home at night. This has been quite dull for me and I guess that adding various treats to the mix has been my rebellion against the uniformity of the diet I've been putting myself through.

Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, wrote something interesting recently. He said that if you write an opinion down then you're more likely than not to come to believe that opinion. So, my opinion of today is that I'm going to retake control over my eating habits. I think it's not too late to avoid the total recidivism into the eating frenzy which expanded my waistline and reduced my overall comfort. I know that a combination of a healthy diet and a busy life can be a good way to slim down to "fighting weight" and maybe I'd like to be skipping, rather than puffing, around Edinburgh this August. It's something worth aiming at.