Bang goes the diet

Why is it that the minute you start some kind of health kick you get more ill than ever before? I just don’t get it. Bangers and mash and half a bottle of red wine – no problem. Juice of a jungle’s worth of mangoes though, and I feel at death’s door.

It’s no exaggeration to say that I have never had such a healthy lifestyle as over the last three months. On paper, at least. The gym has turned my bingo wings into biceps. The grape juice I drink is now predominantly fresh rather than alcoholic, and if I eat any more oily fish I think I will turn into a salmon.

And just in case, I’m taking supplements. Vitamin B for healthy skin (and to stop the mozzies eating me) and fish oil (on the basis that my Dad, who never took a day off work sick, swears by it).

So how am I rewarded by this healthy regime? By waking up with a sore throat and feeling bleugghhh! Now I could understand it if I was scraping the snow off my driveway in England (as I know you will all be doing right now), but on a bright, sunny and hot day in Singapore, it just seems wrong.

Well, the next two weeks will be a sort of controlled experiment, as Dom is on a trip to his US office (3 feet of snow), via the UK (just the one foot, I believe). Place your bets now as to who will be sniffling in a fortnight’s time.

Or rather, don’t bother – because Dom’s immune system has so far resisted every childhood illness known to man and on those rare occasions when he catches a cold, it’s over in a matter of hours.

What’s particularly annoying about all of this is that if my body is a temple then Dom’s is a slum. Sorry dear - but to you, vitamin B comes from beer, chips form a valid part of your ‘five a day’ and green stuff should be avoided at all costs (unless it’s Jello shots).

As a food scientist and microbiologist by trade, I cannot find any plausible explanation for all of the above. So what to do then? Well, courtesy of our recent barbecue, the freezer is well stocked with sausages…and I think I spy a bottle of Shiraz in the rack…

So today, at least, I’m ditching the juicer and going full-fat.