That's MS. Piggy to you: a dieting horror story

This is why study breaks are bad for you.

On the Saturday before the break, I went for a 6-kilometre run because I felt restless and the desperate need to move. So I dragged the shoes on, bravely wore a very short pair of TRFs despite the cold and with a friend, stretched out for a brisk trot around the lake. The effects of the run were somewhat mitigated by the subsequent affogato which I had when meeting Pudgy McBlingy and the Dubious Lesbian for coffee, but I reasoned, I would more than make up for it when I went clubbing that night.

Staggering home at 5 am, smelling like Sampoerna and having come dangerously close to losing my temper trying to herd drunken and/or stubborn friends back to the car (I had somehow became the designated driver, never again, fucking hell, no. Especially when it means climbing up and down three flights of stairs over and over again looking for the missing munchkins in 3-inch heels. Bah.), I showered, tried to wait til my hair dried, gave up at 6 am, and dragged my ass out of bed at 8 am to go for my 2-hour riding lesson.

It all sounds good, right? Lost of healthful bouncy exercise, perfectly pink-cheeked and glowy.

Well, it all went downhill from there.

This is a play-by-play account of what was eaten on each day.

On Sunday, we attacked a vegetarian restaurant I had been dying to try after they conned me into trying their food. I managed to snarf about four serves of sweet-and-sour mock pork (tasting better than any other actual sweet-and-sour pork I've tried in the last 2.5 years that I've been here), three serves of deep-fried mock ribbonfish (I might have accidentally eaten some eggplant along with it, but they were collateral damage), mixed vegetables (the dietary equivalent of using low-fat cream on your double-choc triple-butterscotch-fudge sundae), tea and about four deep-fried fake fish fingers. Oh, and some rice and noodles. I think. All the fat is forming a smeary greasy glaze over my memory. I later found out that each serve contained about 10 grams of saturated fat, which went a long way towards explaining how tasty everything as, especially given my sneering bias against vegetarian food in general.

If Sunday was the metaphorical poking of my metabolism with a middle finger, Monday was the day where I really laid the smackdown on it I may have kicked it in the head while it was lying in the dust too, but you be the judge of that.

On Monday, I started off with breakfast. Three Weetbix, honey, strawberries and full-cream milk. This was on the (very erroneous) reasoning that lunch would not come until a lot later and I would get hungry in the meantime. Ten minutes later, I was at my seminar and started on my second breakfast. (Brace yourself, dieting readers. It only hurts if you read it slowly.) I had one cup of Milo into which were enthusiastically dunked about five or six of these raspberry biscuity things which I rapidly decided were my new favorite thing, an apple-spice and a chocolate muffin, one cream biscuit (this was a curious foray into to see if anything was as good as those raspberry things were. Nope. Back to the raspberry things.), a coconut-fudge brownie and a giant bottle of water (sugar makes you thirsty).

And if you think the muffin being the size of a baby's head is hyperbole – it's not.

This as gradually followed up by a Mars Bar, a Subway chicken sandwich (only 6 grams of fat – gee, like that really makes a difference. Like trying to hold back the Niagara with a plastic spoon.) and possibly some lollies. This is was all eventually washed down by an 8-inch hotdog, a hamburger patty rolling in enough oil to drop petrol prices for good, some seriously amazing coleslaw, grilled onions, some token tomatoes with feta cheese, potato salad and a square of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting which was, I kid you not, about 3 inches square.

By Tuesday I was seriously losing steam. I wisely decided to have only one breakfast, and ended up engulfing a brownie the same size as the carrot cake on Monday evening, washed down with more Milo and raspberry thingies (which I have since found out are apparently called Monte Carlos, which surely is inadequate to describe the gastronomic delight that they are). I just about managed to finish the giant fudge brownie while doing a mock consult without throwing up on the dog, then went off to suture a styrofoam block and a banana. I was offered the option of eating my successful-sutured patient, but I passed in favor of lunch, which was an extremely generous serving of char siu fan.

There was a brief respite from the eating on Wednesday, but the damage was already irretrievably done. And it was just a lull in the storm, because on Thursday an unexpected dinner party came up, where I discovered the silky, salty joys of cheese broccoli paired with tortellini. I also introduced my palate to the strange German chicken salad, which seemed to have a lot of pineapple and some pale orange sauce. I happily reacquainted myself with more potato salad, some rather good sar poh fan (I really need that recipe), Malaysian curry chicken, salad (a feeble, and token, attempt at healthy eating), lamb kebabs, yet another large hot dog slathered in mustard, ketchup and onions (I have a fatal weakness for them), steak and meatlover’s pizza. This was chased with wild berry cheesecake, black forest cake and pavlova. By the end of the night the room was beginning to waver in my vision, but I ate like a trooper. Bonus: I got to cuddle a 6-week old puppy. The poor chap for whom the dinner party was thrown for didn't rate a single word from most of us the entire night. (hello, 6-week old puppy versus anonymous random guy in a roomful of the animal-crazed? No contest. After all, we're not media students (ooooh I'm gonna get me some hate mail for that one).)

The rest of the week, in case you're wondering, has consisted of salad and green apples, less because I want to lose weight and more that my stomach might stage a violent uprising against the rest of my body. My jeans are only slowly beginning fit again. I'm sitting here, balancing my laptop on my deplorably rotund stomach like Babe dressed in La Senza and somewhere out there, Jenny Craig is screaming.

Never again!