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So five weeks without so much as a lager shandy and five or ten miles of walking every day. Last week the scales told me I was 16 stone and 2 pounds. This week I ought to have hit the 16 mark...maybe I would be 15 something!

In Inverness last week Jan, one of the producers, asked me why I had decided to lose weight. I told her that before Christmas I was squeezing into 40 inch waist trousers.
"When I first joined the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú, " I explained, "I had a 34 inch waist."
"Yes, and you were fat even then," said Jan, with the kind of brutal honesty that eats away at her Christmas card tally every year.
Then, in Glasgow, Caroline from the Radio Events team suggested I change the photo of me that appears at the top of this diary because it made me look fat. I called Anne Paterson, who looks after this website and she duly obliged, but added.
"I think this other photo makes you look even fatter."

Charming.

So, determined to prove them all wrong I skipped onto the scales this morning and...and...I'm a pound heavier than I was last week. How can this be? Think. Think. Maybe, just maybe, it was the fried chicken I had in Edinburgh on Saturday. Or the basket of bread I hoovered up in a tapas restaurant in Glasgow.
Or that yummy big chocolate that came with the coffee in an Inverness cafe. And let's face it. Just five miles walking this week. Pathetic.

So I return to my Five Hundred Mile diet with a new sense of purpose. I even jogged a little tonight. I'm gonna beat this blubber! This time next year I'll be tip-toeing across cattle grids in case I slip and go under.

Or else I could just ask Anne to do some digital jigger-pokery with my photo.
What say you, Anne?