Some you win...

...but then again, some you don't. A couple of friends we hadn't seen for several months came over for dinner on Wednesday night. They walked in, admired our kitchen (which was installed with much fuss and mess over two months at the end of last year), then Tess looked at Mark and said: 'Gosh you've lost weight'.

He may well have lost the odd pound or two. But I've lost a whole stone, nobody had noticed – and I felt like chucking my toys out of the pram.

Well, wouldn't you be a tad hacked off?

Dishes that pack a punch (part two)

It got quite cold last week, and I really fancied a nice, warming bowl of chilli con carne. A little bit of what you fancy does you good, even if you are dieting, and even though I know that chilli is a really retro 80s kind of a dish, and therefore a bit naff, I've always been fond of it. Besides, I'm addicted to Chipotle chillies (a Mexican chilli with a smoky flavour that I buy in bulk from The Cool Chile Company), and I use them to liven up both the chilli itself and the guacamole that accompanies it.

Needless to say, Mark's portion was about twice the size of mine – the portion sizes here apply to my portions, not his.

Chile con carne for 6

2 tbsp olive or vegetable oil
500g lean beef mince
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 large chipotle chilli, soaked in hot water for half an hour, then chopped
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1 can kidney beans, drained
200g canned chopped tomatoes
1 tsp chopped fresh oregano
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Warm a scant tablespoon of oil in a heavy-bottomed pan and brown the meat. Remove the browned mince from the pan with a slotted spoon and set aside in a bowl.

Fry the onion gently in the remaining oil until it is soft and translucent. Add the minced garlic and chopped chilli, plus the spices. Fry for a further minute.

Tip the meat back in the pan and add the kidney beans, tomatoes and oregano. There should be enough liquid in the pot to keep things moving relatively freely, if not add 100mls or so of chicken or beef stock.

Bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for an hour or two. Season to taste. Serve with a dollop of guacamole (see recipe below) and a spoonful of half-fat crème fraiche.


Guacamole for two

2 tbsp grated red onion
1/2 chipotle chilli, chopped
2-3 tbsp chopped canned tomatoes
1 avocado
juice of 1 lime
fresh coriander, chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Mix the onion, chilli and tomatoes together in a small bowl. Add the avocado, then mush together with the back of a fork – it doesn't matter if everything's a bit lumpy. In fact, lumpiness is part of the beauty of a home-made guacamole – who wants that bland smooth mush that comes in tubs at the supermarket? Stir in the lime juice and coriander and season. Serve as soon as possible, otherwise the avocado has a tendency to turn brown (although that's mitigated somewhat by the lime juice).

An unexpected surprise

After yesterday's blowout (and an epic Sunday lunch here with friends that involved bunny and pancetta cooked with verjuice, a cheese board and a blood orange and rosemary jelly for dessert) I didn't really expect to have lost much weight over the past week. So I was really pleased to step on the scales this morning and see that they read 88.3 kilos. That's down a thoroughly undeserved kilo on last week. I'm not quite sure what I'm doing right, but long may it last...

Excess all areas

This modest collection of bottles should give you some idea of a regular working day (if there is such a thing) chez Hughes.

Some time late last year I hatched a plan with one of my colleagues, The Guardian's Victoria Moore, to spend a day finding the right kinds of food to match with German Riesling. Now Riesling is one of those grapes that wine buffs love but most people are uncertain about. Part of this unpopularity is due to the fact that people think all German wine is Liebraumilch, Piesporter, Blue Nun, Black Tower or generic Hock. Even if they don't bundle Riesling in with these wines (which often have little to do with the grape in any case), people think the wines are too sweet (in fact a good German wine, even though it might have some residual – ie unfermented – sugar in it, balances this sugar with crisp acidity) or, if they're not sweet, they're so acidic and mineral that they come across as being austere and unfriendly.

Anyway, Victoria's column is all about finding good food matches for good wines – and I write an occasional food and wine-matching column for www.wine-pages.com – so we decided to call in some wines and spend a day tasting them with different dishes (I know: it's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it).

The day kicked off at 11.30 with a tasting of 26 Rieslings. Once we'd worked our way through them all, rejecting the ones we didn't think were up to scratch for one reason or another, we began working on finding wines that matched some of the dishes I'd prepared. We started with quail marinated in ras-el-hanout (see 'Jen, Coz, Leo and some wonderful wines' for more info), then moved on to slices of smoked goose breast served with caramelised apple slices, a Keralan prawn and coconut curry I plan on adapting for dieters (watch this space for a full recipe some time soon), grilled lemon sole and a mushroom risotto.

Not exactly ideal diet fare, although I made sure I took small portions and swallowed very little of the wine I tasted. The conclusions of the day's experiment should be up on the Wine Pages site in the next few weeks – and you'll probably find Victoria's take in the pages of the Guardian's Saturday magazine within the next fortnight.

Bad timing

Poor James. Yesterday morning he found out the hard way that I'm not much of a morning girl. It's not that I'm bad tempered or taciturn in the mornings, and I can certainly crank out an article in the early hours if under pressure of a deadline. But physical activity before about 9am doesn't seem to agree with me.

However, because James' schedule was packed, we were booked in for a session at 8 yesterday morning. I woke up early enough to have my morning muesli at the right time to provide fuel for my muscles (about an hour or so before exercise is the best time to eat complex carb-based breakfasts – if you're short of time fresh fruit will do just before exercising, at a push). But I was sluggish. Even worse, I whined more than a mosquito does on a hot summer's night when you're trying to get some shut eye.

Just how do those high-powered execs manage to work out at 6 in the morning before a big day of meetings?

A great spring salad

I'm rather partial to a bit of beetroot, love walnuts and yearn for soft, tangy goat's cheese. So it isn't that surprising that one of my new favourite dishes (especially as the weather seems to be warming up slightly) is a salad that combines these three ingredients.

A couple of points worth noting: beetroot, delicious as it is, is also packed with sugars, so go easy on it. You can buy beetroot ready-cooked, but make sure it hasn't been preserved in vinegar. Alternatively, buy uncooked beetroot, the smaller and more tender the better. I like to cook mine in the oven at around 200C, wrapped in tin foil with a few drops of water sprinkled around the beetroot to stop it drying out. Depending on the size of your beetroot, it will take somewhere between 1 and 2 hours to cook through – if in doubt, take it out of the oven and poke a skewer through it. If it slips through easily, it's done. If you meet with resistance, the beetroot probably needs to go back into the oven a bit longer. Don't forget to peel it before slicing it up for the salad – the skin slips off fairly easily.

It's also worth paying good money for decent walnuts. I nearly fainted when I saw the price of Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Chilean walnuts (nearly four quid for a bag), but they're so moist and flavoursome in comparison to anything else I've found that I've decided I'd rather have slightly fewer, tastier walnuts than a larger quantity of dried-out nuts.

You can use any kind of goat's cheese, from the hard and tangy kind to soft goat's curd that needs to be spooned onto the salad. Feta, although it's a sheep's milk cheese, is another good alternative.

Beetroot, walnut and goat's cheese salad for one

a good handful of salad leaves (I like the ones with aromatic herbs mixed in)
75g cooked beetroot, sliced
a handful of walnuts, roughly chopped
50g goat's cheese, crumbled

Dressing:
Walnut oil
Tarragon vinegar
Dijon mustard

Making this salad, once you've cooked your beetroot according to instructions, couldn't be simpler. Just chuck the beetroot, nuts and cheese on top of the leaves, dress and serve.

As you've probably noticed, I haven't given any quantities for the dressing – I'm crediting you with enough smarts to make a dressing all by yourself. Just go easy on the amount you use to keep the calories down.

A word from James...

When I first met Natasha late last year, and she told me about her weight-loss plan, I was immediately interested. Here was someone who didn't want a quick fix and wasn't interested in following the latest fad diet. Instead this was someone who wanted to do it the only way I'd recommend. Slowly but surely.

When we actually started our sessions early this year, she didn't try and con me about her abilities. She was very honest and told me straight that she was hard pushed to run for a bus without collapsing or, at best, being very out of breath. Everyone has to start somewhere and Natasha's first and hardest step had already been taken: deciding to do something about the shape she was in.

The initial tests I asked her to do (steps and squats) proved hard work. In fact, half-way through the step test, Natasha had had enough. However, she persisted and managed to complete the three-minute routine.

Over the past few weeks, I've got her to increase her workload bit by bit, moving through basic exercises (lunges, high knees, split squats), upping the intensity in terms of frequency, time, speed and numbers of repetitions – and I'm pleased to say that, thus far, I haven't needed a resuscitation kit.

In terms of increasing Natasha's aerobic fitness, we first started with walking, then fast walking, then added short bursts of jogging. Once she'd become a dab hand at that, the ratio of jogging to walking increased. Walks became shorter, jogs longer and faster, with less rest before the next activity (bench steps, for example, that she now takes in her stride).

The important thing to remember when you're getting fit is progression. Often clients ask me: 'Shouldn't I be getting better at this by now?' If I'm doing my job as a trainer properly, adjusting each session, the answer is no. There are many tools that trainers use to gauge a client's progress and the fact that Natasha asked me this question the other day was a clear indication that not only was she getting fitter and stronger, she'd not noticed me turning up the heat on our sessions. (Well, not unless I really go for it – then she knows all about it!)

My aim (and it's a highly achievable one) is that by the end of March Natasha will be able to run a comfortable lap of the park where we train, just over half a mile.

At this rate, given the traffic levels on our streets, she'll be beating the bus home any day now!

Sorry, but I can't resist...

For once, my lack of resistance has nothing to do with food. Nope – I'm succumbing to a strange urge to post one of the wedding piccies on this blog. From left to right, Brenda (my mother-in-law), my sister Lisa, my Mark (the one with the big smile on his face), Lisa's Mark, me (with the humungous great bouquet mum insisted on getting for me – it weighs a ton, but it smells delicious) and my mum, Caroline.

Oh – and some more good news. The scales this morning read 89.4 kilos. I'm pretty much back at last week's square one. Obviously yesterday's hike was either down to water retention or my subconscious trying to scare me back onto the diet.

Gloom, doom and disaster – and more than a handful of great meals

I've put on weight. When I stepped on the scales this morning, my weight was back up to 89.8 kilos.

On the other hand, there's a very good reason for that. On Friday, Mark and I got married in a quiet ceremony at the Chelsea Registry Office. Our two mothers were our witnesses, and the entire thing lasted about 20 minutes from a small interview with the registrar to check that our details were correct, to the bit where Mark kissed his new bride. OK, I know I'm going to have to get used to it, but that bit still sounds weird to me (sorry Mark!)

We spent almost as much time getting photographed as we did getting married, and were joined by my sister Lisa and her husband (also, confusingly, called Mark). After the photos were finished, we went for a slap-up meal at the newly Michelin-starred Wild Honey restaurant, http://www.wildhoneyrestaurant.co.uk. Not only was the food delicious, one of the owners, Will Smith, sent over a bottle of Château de Boursault's Champagne on the house, which impressed my mum no end.

This wasn't a weekend for sticking to the diet, I decided, and tucked into a starter of smoked eel served with sweet-sour slices of turnip, then had wild duck with spaetzle (a kind of Austrian gnocchi) and pomegranate. Then I added the coup de grace with a pudding of chocolate soup (a bit like a molten chocolate mousse) and nougat ice-cream (I have to admit, that, being unused to the sugar rush, I did feel a tad sick on the way home, but not sick enough to really regret tucking in with such relish).

We had some lovely wines, too – one of Wild Honey's strength is that most of its wines are served in 250ml carafes as well as by the bottle. I particularly enjoyed a Blauer Zweigelt from Austrian producer Anton Bauer (which smelled of flowers and currants) and a eucalyptus-scented Pinot Noir (the same grape used to make red wine in Burgundy) from Shadowfax in Victoria.

Mark's mum was staying with us that night, and we didn't do much. In fact, I joked to Mark that we must be the only couple to spend their first night of married life beached on the couch in the living room while watching a movie we'd recorded at Christmas.

The next day, we drove Mark's mum (Brenda) back home to Gloucester, then headed towards the Cotswolds for our one night of honeymoon. We spent this at the Trout Inn, http://www.trout-inn.co.uk/, where we had a pretty little room and another humungous meal. They, too, comped us a glass of Champagne (Perrier-Jouët NV) when they found out we'd just got married, to which we added a bottle of Descendientes de Palacio's Petalos del Bierzo, a rich, velvety red wine with lots of earthy, peppery spice and dark fruit, between us. I've obviously lost my head for wine (not that I've ever been much good at drinking in quantity) and found myself getting all giggly after the first glass or two, but I still managed to find enough strength to wolf down some crab and vichysoisse, then a plate of fillet steak, horseradish mash and wild mushrooms. Oh, and did I mention the rosemary-scented creme brulee?

We did have a lovely long walk the next morning, through frost-covered fields that ran alongside the Thames towpath. Laszlo romped ahead of us, looping his way through the long grass and then back towards us, his whiskers all covered in frost (and his legs covered in burrs, as we later discovered). Even though the temperature was hovering around freezing point, the icy landscape was breathtakingly beautiful and the sun shone weakly in a bright blue sky. All in all, it was a glad-to-be-alive moment.

So, despite the walk, it's no wonder I've put on a bit of weight over the past week. With any luck, it'll come off just as quickly as it went on. I'll keep you posted.

The importance of doing something completely different

I went to a tasting at the Tower of London today, and a colleague sidled up to me and said: 'You're clearly sticking to your diet – you've lost a lot of weight.'

This was kind of flattering, but then she went on to say that she, too, had been trying to lose weight, but couldn't budge an ounce, despite her four energetic sessions of ballroom dancing each week.

It made me think back to something James told me when I thought I'd hit a bit of a plateau. He said that, for most people, the first few weeks of any kind of diet or change in exercise regime are the most productive in terms of losing weight. After a while, though, your body adapts to whatever it is you're doing: the human metabolism is a very efficient machine. That's when you hit a plateau – and that's when most people give up on their diets.

The solution? Whatever you do, don't cut your calorie intake. Our systems have evolved to think of a drop in food consumption as being a sign of imminent famine. It adapts by learning to be more efficient with the calories it's getting. The proof of this is in the vicious circle many dieters have to deal with, the one that goes: crash diet, results, stop dieting, weight goes back on, leading to another crash diet, and so on for life.

You can tweak your diet, of course, but exercise is key. If your body has become used to exercising at a certain level or your muscles are used to performing certain movements, change the pattern. Two sessions a week with James were working for me. Then they started working less well, and I started adding a couple of sessions of my own, and now I do a bit of jog-walk-jog round my local park with Laszlo twice a week. It certainly seemed to help me bust through the plateau. Maybe my colleague should take up swimming twice a week to replace a couple of her dance sessions...

Weigh in number six

There was a moment, a week or two ago, where I thought I was getting a bit stuck on a plateau. I only record my weight on this blog once a week, but I often step on the scales every couple of days to make sure I'm heading in the right direction.

For a few days there, it looked like I was hovering. My weight went down 400 grammes, then up 300 grammes, then back down again. I felt it was touch and go as to whether or not I'd record any loss at all next week (although I ended up 600 grammes down on the previous week).

All of a sudden, though, I've shifted another 800 grammes since last week, and am down to 89.5 kilos, bringing me at under 90 kilos for the first time in – oooh, let's just say a long time and leave it at that.

Jen, Coz, Leo and some wonderful wines

Mark and I spent Sunday with our friends Coz and Jen, and their new baby, Leo. We hadn't met Leo before – he was born less than a month ago – so I took a bottle of Champagne with us to celebrate.

It was 'just' basic Bolly – one of my favourite of the big brand non-vintage Champagnes. I like its richness – I've never been a big fan of over-priced battery acid, which (to my mind) some Champagnes seem to taste like. I'd decided in advance to allow myself to have a glass (maybe even a glass and a half) of wine. After all, we were celebrating and even though I'm on a diet, there are certain occasions (like celebrating the birth of a baby) when it would just be wrong to stick to the rules too closely (the knack lies in recognising these occasions while not making excuses to indulge too often on some spurious pretext).

We arrived, wielding our bottle of Champagne, and I'd no sooner handed it over than Coz (who is incredibly generous with his wines) said: 'That'll keep – I was planning on opening a bottle I brought back from Champagne last year,' and popped the cork on a truly delicious bottle of Pierre Gimmonet Oenophile vintage fizz. Gimmonet, for anyone who hasn't heard of him, is a talented producer who makes his own wines in the Champagne region rather than selling his grapes to a big company like Moet, Bollinger or Mumm (which is what most growers do). These 'growers' Champagnes' are increasingly trendy in hard-core wine circles, and I think they're often really good wines sold at (relatively) reasonable prices.

So I sipped delicately at my half flute of Gimmonet, then had a mouthful or two of the Bolly. But I'd been quite cunning. Knowing how persuasive Coz can be when he starts opening interesting bottles of wine (and how I have a professional weakness for tasting them), I'd set myself up as the designated driver for our return journey. This certainly curbed my enthusiasm, and much as I'd have loved to hoe into the Champagnes (or any of the other wines that followed), I knew I couldn't – and so did everyone else.

I'd told Coz and Jen that I was going to cook them lunch – they hadn't had the time or energy to cook properly since Leo was born – and I'd come prepared. Or rather, my quails had been prepared, and all I needed to do was to shove them in the oven. They'd been marinating since the previous evening in a mixture of Ras el Hanout (a blend of Moroccan spices that includes cumin, coriander, cinnamon and rose petals) and some olive oil. I'd stirred about three tablespoons of spice into a couple of tablespoons of oil, then rubbed all that yummy spiciness into eight quail, crammed them into a tupperware container and put them in the fridge overnight. When I got to Coz and Jen's, I put them in a pre-heated oven at about 200C for around 40 minutes, then served them with a simple salad enhanced with a few chopped walnuts.

I happened to mention to Coz that I was thinking of using the recipe for a tasting I'm planning to do at the end of the month: an investigation into which kinds of dishes work best with German Riesling. Inevitably, Coz insisted on opening a bottle of Josmeyer's Les Pierrets Riesling from the 2001 vintage – a wine he'd bought on a trip we all took to Alsace two or three years ago. It was lovely with the quail – but I'm still interested to see how a slightly lighter, slightly sweeter German Riesling will work with the dish.

Dessert was even simpler than the main course: a salad of peeled, sliced blood oranges with some chopped dates, all sprinkled with a teaspoon of rosewater (go easy on the stuff – it's very fragrant). Coz opened another bottle to go with this, a Beaume de Venise from a co-operative in the Rhône. It was just right with the pudding: light, fresh and not too sweet.

Then, to round things off, he brought out another bottle of wine, a Schloss Gobelsberg Gruner Veltliner – just because we happened to be talking about Austria. If you've never tasted Gruner Veltliner before, I urge you to track down a bottle of this marvellous grape – it's one of the most food-friendly white wines in the world, and the hallmark grape of the Austrian vineyards, in the same way that Malbec has come to be associated with Argentina or Shiraz with South Australia.

The Schloss Gobelsberg wine was outstanding – but, as I did with the Riesling and the dessert wine, I did no more than sip at it to taste it. The same can't be said for Mark, who snored loudly all the way home...

The perfect dinner?

In an ideal world, I'd rather not eat complex carbs at dinner (which I eat earlier than I usually would, around 7.30, to ensure I've finished digesting the meal before I go to bed). It can be tough, though, trying to find a recipe that really satisfies my hunger – and my appetite – without including some kind of stodge.

Last Friday, though, I made a great meal that hit the spot for me – and got a 'Wooh, yeah, baby' from Mark. It adds fuel to the theory that a bite of spice in a dish really helps to keep those hunger pangs at bay.

The recipe that follows should give you some idea of how to recreate the dish – but don't take my version as gospel. Like any salad, this Thai beef salad is open to artistic reinterpretation, as long as you keep the general principles in mind.

Thai beef salad for two

Baby spinach leaves – as many as you want
1/2 red onion, sliced thinly
1 small red or green chilli, chopped
1 medium carrot, grated coarsely
1/2 green (unripe) mango, peeled and cut into thin strips (if you can't find green mangoes, you can either use a green apple, which has a some of that sweet-sour thang going for it, or use a ripe mango, although the salad will be slightly different in character)
10-12 cherry tomatoes, halved
1-2 tbsp peanut or vegetable oil
a good handful of cashew nuts
300g steak (I used rump steak, but you can use sirloin or fillet if you want)
fresh coriander leaves, chopped (use as much or as little as you want)
fresh mint leaves, chopped (use as much or as little as you want)

Dressing:
4 tbsp nam pla (Thai fish sauce)
1 tbsp sesame oil
juice of 2 limes

Put the spinach leaves into a large bowl. Top with sliced onions, then sprinkle with the chopped chilli. Scatter the grated carrot and the green mango over the spinach, then throw in the tomato halves.

Heat a dash of peanut or vegetable oil in a frying pan and toast the cashews until golden (I find if I don't use the oil, the cashews seem to burn rather easily). Once toasted, chop coarsely and put aside.

Heat another tablespoon of oil in a frying pan (or smear over a griddle) and fry the steak. You can cook the steak as you like it, but I always think rare works best for this kind of salad). When it's cooked, take it off the heat, season, then slice. Place the slices on top of the salad, then scatter the nuts and herbs on top.

Mix the dressing ingredients together and taste for balance. You may find you need a bit more lime, a bit more nam pla or even a touch more oil.

Dress the salad and serve.

An interesting conversation

I had an appointment with Tina, my hairdresser, today. Now Tina's a top chick - forthright, friendly and colours her bobbed hair a traffic-stopping shade of red. Like me, she's on the curvy side. Or rather, she has been every time I've been for a haircut in the past couple of years, and she's always been on some kind of diet or other ('It was the Atkins last year,' she said. 'I followed it for months, only lost three-quarters of a stone, and put it all back on again within a fortnight of starting to eat normally.')

This time, though, she'd lost weight. I noticed this and congratulated her, and she told me she's been on a diet since last October. During the course of the past four months, she said, she's lost almost two stone in weight.

'Wow,' I said, 'that's great.' Although secretly, I have to admit, I was thinking: 'Wow, it's taken you four months to lose just over twice the weight I've lost in five weeks.'

'What kind of diet are you doing?' I asked.

And that's when she told me that she'd been substituting breakfast and lunch with meal replacement shakes. For FOUR months. Now, she doesn't seem to mind – and I don't think she's much of a foodie, so maybe she doesn't. But four whole months with nothing but a small cup of liquid gunk to keep you going until dinner doesn't bear thinking about, as far as I'm concerned.

So, I'm eating more, I'm enjoying my food and I'm losing weight faster than Tina. In my book that's a positive result. So even though I've been jonesing for 'normal' food a bit this week, I'm feeling a whole lot better about what I'm doing and the way I'm doing it.

One of my next postings may well contain some theory about why I think I'm seeing such positive results with such little effort (well, little effort relative to the idea of replacing my meals with ersatz calorie-counted shakes).

An encounter with a sadist...

It's probably quite mean of me to describe Phil as a sadist when he was really just doing his job with extreme prejudice. He turned up last Friday morning, a late replacement for James, who couldn't make our session. Where James is very tall, with movie-star looks (he used to be an actor), Phil was small and wiry, with a shaved head and a broad grin.

The grin got even broader when we got out into the park. We warmed up with a lap of the park, then went straight to the tennis courts. James usually gets me running round the court once or twice, then jogging along the short end and walking down the long side. Phil had me jogging round the whole court, walking along the short end, then running again, with a few squat and thrusts and the odd star jump or ten. Then he started to get me jogging in towards the centre of the court, then jogging backwards out again to the perimeter. At first I thought I was going to die of a heart attack. Then, when I realised I wasn't actually going to die (just sweat a lot), I thought I was going to fall over when I started running backwards. Eventually, I survived half an hour of this treatment.

Just when I thought I deserved a bit of a break as a reward for putting in the hard yards, Phil got me to sit on one of the park benches. Not for a rest, though. It seems that James must have told him my shoulder muscles are pretty weak, so Phil got me to perform a range of exercises to work those muscles, including pushing up against his hands, which were hovering just over my head. Instead of making it easier as I got tired, he pushed harder and harder against me. Once he'd worn my shoulder muscles out, he got me doing push-ups with my hands resting on the bench (when I say push-ups, that really should read half-arsed push-ups – they ain't going to take me as a marine any time soon, based on Friday's evidence). Then another of James' favourite exercises: getting me to step onto and back off the bench several times. Sounds easy. It isn't. Phil got me doing several reps of each exercise, then got me to do them all over again before letting me go home for a few crunches and stretches.

I shouldn't say this (in fact I'm pretty certain that when James reads this he'll just use it as a reason to crank up the volume on his sessions), but a session with Phil makes a workout with James look like a stroll in the park...

Another week, another weigh-in

This week, the scales read 90.3. I've lost four kilos in as many weeks – and most of the loss has been relatively painless. If I can carry on like this, I'll have reached my target some time in September. I don't reckon the sailing is going to be quite as plain and smooth as all that, but this has been an encouraging first month.

The love of a good man

Before you all reach for the sick bags, I've got a serious point to make. If you're going to go on a diet for any length of time, you've either got to be single or have the full and wholehearted support of those you live with.

Now, the idea of gastronomic restraint doesn't come naturally to either Mark (with Laszlo in our kitchen last weekend, above) or myself. In fact, over the three years we've been together, I've put on around 10 kilos. I can probably put some of that gain down to work – but I reckon the fact that we love eating together has something to do with it too. A good weekend for both of us would involve a trip to Borough Market, where we buy loads of fresh fish, delicious ravioli, armfuls of seasonal fruit and veg, Italian cheeses (specially this aged Pecorino that Mark enjoys so much that I'm almost jealous of the cheese). For dinner we might enjoy a big steak with a baked potato, and there's often a dim sum lunch somewhere on the way to a film and a bottle of wine between us most evenings. Although we don't eat out in restaurants all that often, when we do we rarely restrain ourselves. And, when we moved in together just over a year ago, I took up cooking a big dinner for the two of us just so that I would get to hear how much Mark had enjoyed it.

I loved that bit of our lives – unrestrained, greedy and full of the pleasures of great food. But these days I can't give in to the luxury of rampant gourmetism. I'm not saying that the food I'm cooking and eating at the moment is boring – I'm trying my hardest to make sure it isn't. But I do know that Mark misses certain aspects of the way we used to eat. However, because he loves me, because he wants a slimmer, healthier me (and, to be frank, because he could stand to lose the odd pound or two himself), he's prepared to stick with my dietary game plan.

I sometimes give Mark larger portions of whatever we're eating than I take myself and I occasionally add a dollop of something indulgent to his plate, but by and large, he's eating what I'm eating. And he's trying really hard to be as encouraging and supportive as he can be – without looking like he's trying (if you know what I mean). How lucky can a dieting girl get?

Photos – one month on

It's kind of difficult to tell much from these pictures, I have to admit. However, I'm pretty sure that the profile views seem to reveal fewer lumps and bumps, especially round the tummy area. And even if I'm a long way off being able to do up the zip on the beige suede trousers in the middle images, I can at least get the things over my hips and up to my waist, which I wasn't able to do a month ago. The black trousers on the right, which fitted me snugly a month ago are now getting loose round the thighs and although it's difficult to see this in the image above, I'm holding the waistband away from my tummy – without breathing in.

I guess a month is not a long enough time to see much other than the most subtle differences, but those who know me best are beginning to see a difference. Honest.

Dishes that pack a punch (part one)

One of the reasons I've always dreaded going on a diet is that the recipes in most diet books are so bland. The prospect of nibbling on rice cakes, lunching on cottage cheese and dining on steamed chicken and veggies for a week horrifies me. The thought of eating beige food for several months, a year even, just doesn't bear contemplating.

But over the past few weeks I've stumbled upon a secret. For me, the key to dieting lies not only in eating little and often but also in making sure that the food I eat is really and truly tasty. Most of the meals I've really enjoyed over the past month have been packed with taste – some of them have been spicy while others have just featured strong flavours.

There's one particular dish that's becoming a bit of a regular round here: sweet potato and feta. Quick to prepare on a weekday evening, but full of punchy flavours, this combination of sweet, savoury and salt is something that appeals to both Mark and I. Mark's portion is almost double the size of mine and we both fill the rest of the plate up with a zesty salad (try a bag of rocket and watercress or herb and green leaf salad, slice up half an avocado and add a handful of roughly chopped walnuts, then dress it with a small amount of simple vinaigrette – I usually use some walnut oil to enhance the walnuts in the salad, plus a tarragon or white wine vinegar and a dash of Dijon mustard in my dressing).

Sweet potato and feta for one

1 x 200g sweet potato 50g feta, cut into small cubes 1 tsp cumin seeds, toasted in a frying pan 1-2 spring onions, sliced 1 tsp orange juice
1 tsp olive oil fresh coriander, chopped
freshly ground black pepper
Heat the oven to 200C, then roast the sweet potato for about 40 minutes (it's done when a knife will cut through to the middle easily).
While the sweet potato is cooking, mix the other ingredients together (you can add a pinch of salt, if you want, but taste the mixture first as the feta can be quite salty anyway).
Once the sweet potato is cooked, slice it lengthways, then pour the feta mixture over it. Serve with the salad.

Another dish I find I'm enjoying at lunchtime is inspired by Japanese cuisine. A mixture of rice, fish and vegetables, it's very simple to prepare, but its salty/smoky/umami flavours leave me feeling really satisfied for a long time.

Japanese rice and fish for one

50g brown rice
100g sprouting broccoli or broccoli florets
50 smoked eel
1-2 tsp light or Japanese soy sauce
furikake seasoning (available from Asian food stores)

Cook the rice and set aside to cool.
Cook the veg and set aside to cool.
Place the cold rice in a bowl. Slice the broccoli and eel and stir into the rice.
Season with soy sauce and sprinkle with furikake.
That's it. What could be simpler?

The loneliness of the short-distance runner

I think I may have mentioned before that I'm not much of a runner. I have made attempts to go jogging before, using a treadmill in a gym. Up until now, however, I haven't got very far – quite literally. Even when I've managed to get up to a point where I can run (slowly) for a quarter of an hour at a time, it's always been at the expense of a very sore right knee.

Somewhere round about my third or fourth session with James, he got me jogging round one of the tennis courts in my local park. I'd only gone a couple of hundred metres when he pulled me up to ask me whether I had a problem with my left leg. It turns out that my shortened Achilles tendon (a problem I was vaguely aware of) has been making me favour my left foot as I run, never planting my heel firmly on the ground. As a result, my right leg (and knee) was taking the brunt of the impact. Hence the problems.

We've been working on the problem for the past couple of weeks, with James watching carefully to ensure I use a full range of movements when my feet hit the ground. And the jogging is starting to get easier.

I'm doing a lot of stop-start jogging, going halfway round the court, then walking a bit, then jogging some more, then turning 180 degrees before jogging a bit further in the opposite direction, then slowing down again before speeding up, then turning once more. The reason I'm doing this, rather than trying to run further and further in any one particular direction, is that interval training – or so James tells me – helps get you fitter faster than endurance work. Apparently it's something to do with not allowing the heart and muscles to get acclimatised to working at any particular pace. So, stop-start-turn is the way to go. Jog, then walk, then jog some more, then run before slowing to a brisk walk, then starting up again. Add some twists and turns to the routine for optimum effect. Even I can handle that.

Fair Verona

I spent most of last week in Verona. Lucky me... Verona is one of my favourite cities in Italy. Unlike nearby Venice, lots of Italians live and work in the city, which means it isn't such a tourist ghetto. (Which is not to denigrate Venice itself, which is a wonderful place to be, especially once you're off the main tourist drag.)

There are a few touristy things to gawp at in Verona, including the Roman arena (left), which is the location for splendid open-air opera concerts in summer (or so I'm told – I haven't yet been lucky enough to go). There's a marble-paved shopping street lined with glitzy boutiques, quiet little side streets with tranquil-looking restaurants and bars, a delightful main piazza with a stunning clock tower and a couple of delis groaning with Italian cheeses and exotic salumi and hams. The historic centre is easy to get round on foot, yet large enough for you to get lost enough to make some serendipitous discoveries while you're wandering around.

We (the group was a veritable United Nations of wine hacks, with representatives from Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Canada and the US, as well as a British contingent consisting of me and one of my colleagues, Patricia Langton) also got to spend a couple of days outside the town centre in the wine-growing valleys that lie within a half-hour's drive from Verona. Most of the vines here are trained along high pergolas, a very traditional way to grow grapes (to the right are some pictures of pergola vines in winter – you have to imagine them in their full summertime splendour to get the full effect). The countryside – like that of many wine-growing regions around the world – is stunning. There are four valleys nestled between hills that extend upwards into the Dolomites. In late spring and summer, the vineyards that cover much of the land are green and leafy, while in autumn the leaves of each of the five or so main grape varieties cultivated in the region each turn a different colour. This, though, was winter, and although the vineyards look rather sparse, the majestic snow-capped mountains help to frame them rather beautifully.

Needless to say, like any Italian town, Verona has some fab restaurants. The Italians take their food very seriously, and as long as you stay away from places whose menus are too complicated and fiddly, you can eat very well indeed.

As I'm beginning to realise, when I'm travelling, the best way for me to deal with my diet is to revert to portion control and an attempt to guesstimate my calorie intake. There's absolutely no way I can dictate a GI-friendly plate-load, with its idealised 50% veg, 25% complex carbs and 25% protein. A case in point was the lunch provided for us on Saturday, the day of the big Amarone tasting.

The Amarone tasting was the reason I was there in the first place. A quick aside for those of you unfamiliar with Amarone: this is a dense, richly alcoholic red wine made from partially dried grapes that would otherwise be used to produce Valpolicella, a much-maligned wine that can provide an awful lot of bang for your buck. Amarone's have Valpolicella's tell-tale cherry flavours, but these are often layered with notes of dark chocolate and flowers, particularly violets and roses. Not wines for the faint-hearted, but utterly delicious when paired with big, hearty dishes like beef stew or roast duck.

Anyway, I digress. I'd been invited to Verona to taste the newly released 2004 vintage of Amarones, and after a quick press conference, we were let loose on a tasting room that must have contained some 70 big, bold young wines. Inevitably, we got hungry, and all that was on offer was cheese and charcuterie. Sigh...

Ah well. The dinners over the four days attempted to make up for this shortfall by providing us with ravioli with a variety of stuffing (there was one filled with brocolli that was absolutely delicious, as well as a heavenly truffled version the previous night), polenta with wild mushrooms, beef braised in Amarone and risotto, also cooked in Amarone (which turns it a wonderful purple colour). There was loads of cheese to enjoy, too – especially the local cheese, Monte Veronese, which comes in a number of incarnations, from mild-flavoured and daisy-fresh to a slightly aged version whose skin had been turned purple with (you've guessed it) Amarone and an aged, nutty cheese that tasted like a very tangy Parmesan.

Although I found myself tempted to eat all that was put in front of me, I resisted the urge and found an unexpected benefit. By the time we rolled back to the hotel it was easy for me to fall asleep – most of my colleagues, nursing full bellies, had a tougher time of it.