Angel No Food, No Cake

Are you there, God? It's me Joshua.

I've just had the worst week of my life and I spent seven days wearing a donut on my arse after I impaled it as a child. But that's not what I want to talk to you about.

I've been battered, Lord. Both physically and mentally, and now I'm feeling totally exhausted and bruised. This must be what one of those little Chinese ladies feel after a night of "Five-Dollar Sucky Sucky" specials.

It all started really with the onset of spring and some well-meaning but totally misplaced good intentions of undoing the horrors of the past winter. You see, I've put on a bit of padding – the kind that a bear in hibernation would be totally jealous to have. Mother's cooking and her magic pantry have been much too good and well, before you know it, I'm starting to look like a great candidate for John Goodman's body double.

So, in preparation for the warmer weather ahead and if I were to have any chance of wearing the skimpy polka-dot speedos given to me last Christmas by my still single 50-something year old Uncle (don't ask, it's a touchy subject), I have to shed this weight and be my fabulous sexy self again. And quickly.

So, what better way than a week-long detox?

Out went the sweet chilli and sour cream chips that I devoured by the bag fulls, the blocks of Crunchie chocolates that I munched on with so much glee and my midnight snacks of apple pie with ice cream and caramel custard. No more coffee and alcohol either. Instead, I've been subsisting on steamed vegetables, fresh fruits, protein bars and lots and lots and lots of plain tasteless water.

It only took until the afternoon of the first day for the headaches to arrive and there they've stayed for the last four days. The caffeine and sugar gods are no longer being appeased and I guess this is my just desserts. So to speak.

If the constant poundings in my brain weren't bad enough, then came the indigestion on the second day. Thanks to the combination of water and fibre I've so suddenly ingested, I was more bloated than a bloat fish stranded on Bloat Island in the Kingdom of Bloatdom. Honestly, Lord, I have never been so full of gas in my life, and you remember that episode with the helium tank. What's worse is the ensuing release of said fermented gases. Oh the smell! I should have come with one of those biohazard warnings. Really, I felt very sorry for my family. Even the dog was disgusted.

The fifth day proved the most challenging of all as the bloatedness gave way to cramping. And boy did it hurt! All that crystallised salt along with the sugar cubes and fat blobs being pushed oh-so-forcefully and yet so efficiently through my lard infested insides. It was certainly doing a number to my otherwise delicate constitution. I have an all-new respect for the girls who all have to go through this feeling each and every month and to mothers for the, well, mother lode of cramping ever. How do they do it, Lord? That's probably why you made sure they had higher pain thresholds than us blokes.

The sixth day is nothing to write about. It was full of shit.

And so we come to the last day. And how glad I am to have gotten here. There were moments during the week when I felt like I wouldn't make it, when I thought I would break, when I was tempted by the Devil and all his vices to quit. Especially when Mother decided to cook one of her famous feasts: deep-fried wonders, succulent roasts and sticky sweet delights...................

But I persevered, God. I persisted. I pushed through. I made it. And it's all because of you. And the Angel you sent to watch over me.

So, thanks be to you, oh Lord.

The Good Food Angel: off to her next victim, erm, charge.