Time for something positive

Monday 12th July – Breakfast

After the gym session we all headed down, as one sweaty mass, to the cafe which is in the same building as the gym. Thankfully there was an escalator. I have seen this picture before and have, as everyone else has, laughed at the stupid Americans. It’s easy to do.

But having been to the gym, and turned my legs into two quivering blobs, I now understand that there is a safety issue at play here. I can make no case for the up escalator, but I would suggest that people’s lives would depend on that down one.

Anyway, I digress.

I was intrigued by the idea of the gym organising breakfast. I wasn’t sure what to expect. We sat down and Andrea said “OK, so now you’re going to learn how to eat.” I made some joke about “I think I know how to eat, ho ho ho” and then felt like a tool as soon as saying it. She then gave us a book, which I briefly looked at. (Enough to see a well oiled muscly man with a shiny “soul glo” kind of perm. Presumably one day I could look like him, if I eat well, exercise and use a Flux Capacitor to go back to 1985.) Andrea then talked a bit of pseudo-science about lean muscle mass and suchlike that I didn’t really take in.

An important part of any diet program is to pooh-pooh all other diet programs. These days, though, people have cottoned on to that, so now it’s important to assure people that what you are about to embark on is not a diet (because we all know diets don’t work, see?). Some programs will use words like “lifestyle change” and others, like this one, won’t classify it at all. So we need to reduce fat and pasta, and increase protein. But it’s not a diet. Cos in diets you stop eating those fatty foods you like, and those evil carbs, and you eat more meat. See how this is completely different from a diet?

Anyway, first thing to come out was some big bowls of yoghurt, plonked in the middle of the table. Then came a big plate of fresh fruit.

Put fruit and yoghurt in bowl, eat.

Now I don’t mind yoghurt, and I don’t mind fruit. Putting them together is also good. I actually enjoyed this breakfast (400 words in before we get to the positivity promised in the title, sorry about that folks). Of course fruit and yoghurt would never be enough for me, but hey this is a diet after all. Or a lifestyle change. Or whatever. Sacrifices would be made (at least on the days where I was being given free food).

But then, after that (and after seconds of that which, given they didn’t provide serving spoons for either the yoghurt or the fruit, was basically an exercise in discreet double dipping) came out more food. Namely cooked tomatoes (enough for 1 each), toast (buckets of it) and scrambled eggs (even bigger buckets).

It was, I must say, awesome. I really enjoyed eating it. I could easily eat this every day, assuming someone else was taking the time to prepare it. (After all, if we’re talking about a lifestyle change why not include a few wait staff and kitchen hands?). I don’t know how much the breakfast, and the talking that we get while at breakfast, will change my perception of food, or of gymming in general - and I am also not sure if brekky will be this great every time - but I am happy to turn up each week for it to find out.