Wright On! - Shelley Wright takes a wry look at life

IN the last three weeks I have been to the gym at least 20 times, ploughed up and down the local swimming pool another 10 and even taken my mum's two hounds from hell for a two mile walk- and I'm still not thin.

Do you think there's something wrong with me?

And I wouldn't mind but all I had to eat yesterday was a bowl of Fruitibix and Bananabix mix with skimmed water - sorry, I mean milk - an apple, a banana, a particularly tart satsuma and two Ryvitas complete with a pathetic scraping of Golden Churn.

Though I suppose if I'm being honest I should also count the emergency packet of Frisps I scoffed at 4pm when I thought I was about to faint and the chicken tikka masala, pilau rice and garlic naan I had for supper when I spotted it lurking in the back of the fridge and realised it was about to go out of date.

Well, I wasn't going to just throw it away you know.

I wasn't going to tell anyone either, but there you go.

I don't really mind admitting I'm not that good at all this dieting malarky though, because who is?

Rosemary Conley or that woman off the Slimfast ad maybe, but not most of my pals that's for sure.

In fact we've all joined the local gym in an increasingly optimistic bid to be thin for Christmas - though the next Millennium would be a more realistic target if you ask me.

Because instead of eating less, working out and seeing some results for our trouble, like any normal people would, it seems all we're succeeding in doing is eating more by using the handy disclaimer: "I'm going to the gym later so I'll work it off". So despite the fact I've given it 25 minutes maximum welly on the cross-trainer every day for the last three weeks - and stuck with it despite the fact it flings your arms and legs in every direction at about 100mph and leaves you looking like Animal off The Muppet Show - I've lost zero weight because I never work off more than I've eaten that afternoon.

My pal and I got so fed up we decided to adopt the diet advice of another friend who recently plummeted beneath the Holy Grail weight of nine stones for the first time since she had two kids.

Basically she reckons she's done it by starving herself all week with the added motivation of stuffing her face and pigging out on whatever takes her fancy at the weekend - and, for the purposes of this diet, weekend is any time from Friday lunch on, thank you very much.

So we decided to give it a try, but just two weeks on and I've come to the conclusion it is simply not going to work where I am concerned.

You see the amount I have consumed over those two weekends would keep a small Highland community going for a month, never mind me for the five designated diet days in between.

Take this weekend for example. I started with semi-good intentions, thinking I'd just have a couple of treats while trying to keep the calories under relative control.

Yes, I did have prawn curry, chips and fried rice followed by a box of Thornton's Special Toffee on Friday night, but then I was up and in the gym at the crack of dawn on Saturday. In hindsight, I shouldn't have bothered because it went downhill from there on in.

I then tried to skip lunch knowing I was going out for tea but gave in to the hunger pangs as I pulled into Asda and ended up scoffing the only piece of food I had in the car - a chunk of chocolate cake I'd stuffed in the glovebox on Thursday and forgotten about. It's amazing what you remember in emergencies, you know.

I then attempted to work that and the subsequent three course meal off in the pool Sunday morning, but when I downed three cheesy crumpets with a family-size tin of baked beans and sausage for lunch I knew I was well and truly on the slippery slope.

And at that point it seemed ridiculous to bother about a bit of chocolate so I finished a tub of Miniature Heroes while I watched EastEnders and went on to have two Cornettos after tea.

Perhaps there is something wrong with me after all eh? An award-winning lack of will power and self-control or, worse, worms.

Either way, it's not good.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.