Moderation

We went to a wedding (not a weeding, as previously stated) on Saturday. It was at 10am in Richmond. This meant an early start. I was not too impressed by this, particularly as I didn’t even know either of the people who were getting married. Anyway, despite the brevity of the marriage ceremony, the registrar certainly packed in more jokes that you’d get in a stand-up routine. There was much laughter, including at the brides middle-name to which the registrar looked at her and said conspiratorially “we all have out secrets” or when he asked if there was any legal reason that they should not be married and the bride started to turn round to look at the guests to which he said “Don’t look round! I’m sure all the guests were handpicked anyway”. I had certainly woken up by the end of the ceremony.

We all then went and drank tea and ate cake at a café, which was very pleasant and then went to a pub and ate some lunch and just sat about and chatted. A very laid back and different experience.

Two of the guests had both done a diet that involved only being allowed to eat 500 calories per day. I did ask one of them if she spent her whole day being bad-tempered, but she assured me she didn’t. Such a drastic change in eating holds no appeal for me at all (not that I am desperate to lose weight). The thing that concerned me though was these two women were saying that they didn’t think there could be any major long-term problem with eating so few calories as they had survived and also there are people like Fern Britton who have had a weight operation which means that they can only eat a very minimal diet. Except surgery like that can actually kill you. Also, women should eat 2000 calories per day, so cutting that by three-quarters doesn’t seem sustainable in the long–term to me. They had both lost several stone watch (at a huge financial cost), but I was most concerned that they didn’t seem to think that there was anything potentially dangerous about eating so little. There almost seemed to be a slight brain-washing behind it – and these were perfectly intelligent people. Everything in moderation is what I say.