Deputy Blog: Delight's delight!

Snowy Oldham has hit the fitness regime

RESEARCH on two topics simultaneously can have its drawbacks.

I have certainly found that over the last week when the latest trials and tribulations of losing the ten pounds in ten weeks on the Chronicle's Get Moving to Health programme clashed drastically with one of the less arduous tasks of my job, that of food writer.

Now nobody says that you can't eat out healthily, but having managed to lose a couple of pounds on week one I was determined not to take a backward step.

I was scouring my 'restaurants due to visit' list looking for somewhere that I could be a good boy and be as light as a feather when I stepped on the scales to show the 12 volunteers on the scheme that the Chronicle was with them every step of the way.

Then I got a call from our advertising team: ''Don't forget you said you would do the Delight Spice in February,''

He was right. But Indian was not quite what I had in mind.

I remembered from nutrition messages on the Get Moving to Health programme in previous years how PCT star Emma Haman had changed my thinking.

She was the one who gave me a real grilling over not having breakfast in the morning. ''Without breakfast you have nothing to burn off and you will not help yourself to lose weight,'' she told me finger-wagging and all.

She was right. Breakfast (and I don't mean a greasy fry-up) now kick-starts my day - and it is only a few extra minutes in the morning if we remember to set everything up for it the previous evening.

But she also taught me that Indian was not a 'no-no' so long as you chose the right dishes. Avoiding the thick creamy-sauced curries and butter-cooked dishes was the main thrust. So was I going to be a really good boy and go for chicken tikka or a shashlick?

No, I had another plan.

What I - or rather we - would do, is burn off lots of calories before the meal and that way I would be able to earn myself whatever I liked off the menu.

Solution!

So we walked it - all the way from Shaw to Peel Street, Chadderton.

When we later told friends we had undertaken such a hike they thought we had 'lost it'.

It was around 90 minutes of good old yomping as we made our way down Broadway, cut across the edge of little Wembley and Clayton playing fields, past the new Pentagon salesroom and down Victoria Street.

By the time we reached the much-criticised horror signs of Chadderton Town Hall we could see the neon of Delight Spice and we were starving.

We enjoyed three-courses that were delightful.

I'd like to tell you how refuelled and reinvigorated, Mrs W and myself then got ourselves wrapped up against the cold again and set off back towards the wilds of them their hills of Shaw.

I'd like to tell you that, but I can't. Because we actually succumbed to the calling of the fireside and a cuppa and minutes later we were winging our way up Broadway - in a taxi!

Suffice to say that we realised that all the walking that evening had done no more than cancel out the excesses of Kathmandu chicken tikka and special mixed Samber so we were off again on our walkies at the weekend with a giant loop of High Crompton and a weightlifting exercise on the way back trying to even out the four Shasda (local terminology for the supermarket - it's Chasda in Chadderton) carrier bags.

Once more I'd like to tell you that it all added up to a good week on the scales but I blame the snow for stopping me getting in some more outdoor exercise and cancelling Mondays weigh-in so you'll never know.

The truth is I hopped on the scales at home and I had lost precisely nothing this week.

Alright the real truth is I had put on the two pounds I'd lost the week before but I'm sure our scales at home are not as accurate as the mega version at the Sports Centre.

 Let's just hope this dreaded snow disappears soon, otherwise our walks will be non existent and golf will certainly be confined to the 19th hole.

You see, so many distractions - and none of them help the cause.

NOTE TO DIARY:  Do as much in the gym as you can this week. It's a special party at Nutter's this weekend and I am certainly not going for the diet option there!