Womans Own

Rachel Roberts

Forget the sugary cakes and biscuits Tesco has on its shelves – my daily nutritionist-devised diet will provide around 1,500 calories. Sounds a lot but it’s divided over meals and snacks from 6am to 9pm , so I start to discover how hunger really feels! A typical day’s menu starts with a small bowl of porridge, followed by a mid-morning snack of two oatcakes with almond butter. Lunches include my favourite meal of the week – a feta and beetroot salad. Some of my fellow retreaters struggle with the food, but I’ve been preparing for three months, and don’t find it quite so tough. Only being allowed one coffee in the morning is harder than I thought – and I suffer a sense of humour failure one night when the chef serves up a fishcake that would even have Posh asking for seconds! I’m nowhere near full and request more oatcakes. When he teases me to ‘ask him nicely’, it’s all I can do to stop myself knocking the smile off his face. I blame it on my blood sugar level being low – which is restored when he eventually takes pity on me and gives me the oatcakes.