In February 2024, following my annual blood test, I was diagnosed as pre-diabetic, not massively so, but enough to fall into that category. As part of the treatment for this condition, my GP placed me on an intervention course. I was, prior to this, becoming ever more conscious of increasing weight with a constant feeling of lethargy and tiredness. I now understand why.

I’m sad to say that despite being 6’3″, I did not look my weight at 110kg (that’s about 17½ stone) with a waste size of 120cm and a reducing number of clothes I could wear comfortably. I had become complacent about my weight and what I ate. The pandemic lock-down did nothing to persuade me other than to eat what I wanted, bake my own bread (white) and cakes and buns. After all, I was in my mid- sixties. It was, in my mind, too late to really worry about what I should and shouldn’t be eating. But I took on board what I had been told by the GP and looked at how I could actively take part in the intervention I’d been offered.

I have a subscription to Audible and BBC Sounds and listen to many books on a myriad of subjects- usually crime related. After all, I am a crime writer. I’d always had respect for Dr Michael Mosley and a long time ago partook of his 5:2 diet, so I thought I’d start with some of his work. I listened to his podcast Just One Thing (BBC Sounds) on several dietary themes, then read/listened to his book on the ‘Blood Sugar Diet’ with a guarantee to lose weight fast and keep it off only by changing the way one eats permanently so a healthy weight is maintained as I enter my dotage. I was, I have to say, sceptical. If his 5:2 didn’t work, what chance did I have to make this work?

I know ‘faddy’ diets abound, ‘Paleo’, ‘low fat’, ‘low carb,’ ‘Keto, ‘Atkins’, ‘Master-Cleanse,’ ‘Special K,’ ( and no that doesn’t mean the drug Ketamine),  none of which I’ve tried. Will power’s what it’s all about, of which I have little especially about food, so how was I to get myself into a mindset where what I put into my microbiome was going to help me lose weight and prevent a decline into full-blown diabetes.

I realized at this point that it would not be a straightforward task. I love my food and I love my wine. I enjoy cooking, but the last few years have seen a growing reliance upon easy cook packaged food warmed in the oven or the microwave.

I decided I would be happy if I could just reduce my ‘lockdown’ weight, and get back to where I was pre-pandemic. But when I started Dr Mosley’s book, I realised for the first time this was about more than just losing weight. It was all about the type of food you eat, and the exercise you do-or not, in my case. I quickly learned that exercising does not help you lose weight. It just makes you hungry. Isotonic drinks after all do nothing to stem that appetite, post exercise. So, lose the weight before you exercise, then exercise to keep it off afterwards, which in my mind was logical. If you’re going to stuff yourself with calories after exercise, you may as well have just eaten a chocolate bar and not bothered with the exertion in between.

Having read Mosley’s book, I started upon his blood sugar diet. In the first two weeks I lost 4kg, probably most of it as water. I started drinking green tea. I drink black un-sugared tea anyway, so it made no difference to me from a taste point of view. It was during this time that I realised that the times when I became bilious and my hands and everything else shook were because of my blood glucose levels, having dropped so low as to be almost hypoglycaemic.

Working part time for the Out of Hours emergency GP service, I was approached by one of our paramedics who asked whether I was feeling OK. (I apparently looked a bit grey around the gills). I was it seems, having a symptomatic hypoglycaemic episode.  Not a full blown attack, per se, but I think as a result of this new diet I was on.

It was with this in mind that I decided to look further into this thing called ‘nutrition’. I’d of course heard of it before, but never given it much thought. Strangely it has become all absorbing. I never knew so much about what and how we eat affected so much of our metabolism. The saying ‘we are what we eat’ became ever more pertinent as my research continued. I picked up on BBC Maestro’s Professor Tim Spector talking about the science of food. His book, Food for Life, shows a guy clearly inspired by or what happens in our guts. How it’s processed within that labyrinthine tube that runs from our stomach to our backside.

But that wasn’t all. While scrolling through BBC Sounds, I found a series of Podcasts by the Van Tulleken brothers and this piqued my interest further about what Dr Chris described as ‘Ultra-processed foods,’ or UPF. I’d of course heard of processed foods, generally something we can find in most kitchens, but he and Dr Mosley describes UPF as the content of your processed food you would never find in your kitchen, fats, saturated fats, dioxides and derivatives thereof. And the worst thing of all I discovered in his book ‘Ultra Processed People’ was that the food industry know that UPF are a major contributor to the obesity epidemic seen across the world, but are such a powerful political lobby they wouldn’t do anything about it because it would affect their bottom line. I am absolutely astounded that the largest trans-national processing companies in the world, Coca-Cola, Nestlé to name but two, whose sole intention is to make you eat more and increase their profit margins. There seems to be little consideration for the people whose life has been blighted by obesity in the knowledge that UPF is not real food, damaging that part of the brain that tells you to stop eating. I could go into how UPF affect dopamine, serotonin & other neurotransmitters to make you think you need more food when really you don’t.

Despite this eye opening and profound information about food in general, it didn’t help the current situation with my pre-diabetes diagnosis.  But what it has done is make me more aware of the foods I buy and eat. The need to eat whole foods and not UPF. I wonder whether anyone would be able to stop eating UPF completely.  It’s almost in everything we eat, but I can never not eat chocolate or biscuits, but I can cut down on the amounts I eat.

It means that I can spend more time preparing whole foods to eat. In fact, since starting my diet I have not eaten pre-prepared foods like Lasagne or curry. I’ve even returned a chocolate bar to the stand because of the ‘stuff’ that’s in it. In essence I have become acutely aware of what goes into the manufacturing of our food, the harm that it’s doing to us particularly poverty ridden families that have no option but to eat cheap ultra-processed foods. The harm that it continues to do to the planet, the production of Palm & Soy that we don’t really need to go in our food. (Most Soy goes on animal feedstuffs and Indonesia cleared an area half the size of Wales just to grow Palm).

I am by no means turning into a food activist. I have no intention of becoming vegan or vegetarian. It is simply knowledge and understanding about the amount of crap that goes into our food and what I as an individual can do to eat more healthy knowing that my body will be better off for it.

And how is the diet going? Well, my BMI has dropped from 32 to 29.9. My weight is now 103.5kg, my waist in 109cm, so I’m happy with the results so far. My future weight however can only be written by the foods I eat.

Welcome to the March Edition

Spring is in the air!

The development and writing of my fourth book ‘IN A FIELD OF BONES’ is progressing well. Character development still needs a bit more tweaking and I need to add a couple more ‘red herrings, but I’m generally pleased with it so far.
Next month I hope to bring you a sneek preview of Chapter One, so watch this space!!Having completed the screenplay for ‘Blind Murder, which has now been submitted to a number of producers, fingers crossed it might get optioned. One can hope.

I am now developing a TV series, with a working title of ‘WITHOUT FEAR OR FAVOUR’ (of FAVOR, if it goes stateside!). Set in the near future it examines the  state of the police service against the backdrop of growing anarchy in the country and abroad. Think of ‘Line of Duty’ meets ‘Trigger Point.’

LITERARY QUOTE OF THE MONTH.

“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.”
Hermann Melville – ‘Moby Dick.’

I have recently been featured in the online version of the Readers House Magazine.

You can access the feature by clicking JUST HERE