It’s been a year since I lost 16kg on the Fast 800 diet. Here’s where I’m at

Trigger warning: This article contains mention of dieting, weight loss and feeling good about it.

A few things happened after I bragged in writing last year about losing 16 kilograms from around my blubbery guts.

First my wife – my co-pilot on the 12-week Fast 800 diet – received a tongue-lashing from an acquaintance at a party. My “beefy to buff” story, our accuser complained, lacked a trigger warning for those who suffered from eating disorders. My bad.

Still smarting from this, I opened my emails to find a note from a professor who assured me in patronising tones that I would inevitably put all those kilograms back on again.

“A little research before advocating an extreme diet might have saved readers from emulating the risky approach you’ve taken,” the academic tut-tutted. He included a link to an article headlined, “Why People Diet, Lose Weight and Gain It All Back”.

Over my career in journalism, I’ve found many sources of motivation, and bloodymindedness is among the most reliable. So I resolved to wait 12 months, then publish my response to the world – and I was determined to be able to include these words or similar: “Nyah nyah, nyah nyah nyah.”

How did I go? The target weight I set and achieved after the Fast 800 diet was 83 kilograms. As I write this more than a year later, I weigh 83.3 kilograms. My wife, likewise, has maintained her trim silhouette.

To describe us as smug about this would be an understatement. I, myself, am both smug and self-satisfied.

I won’t pretend, though, that we simply shed our excess lard, then frolicked back into our normal lives. No, fearing regression, we kept hold of our “graduate membership” of the Fast 800 app (at $22 a month). And while we no longer follow it slavishly, we still cook its recipes, use its shopping lists, and draw on its motivation. For four days every week, we eat lightly and don’t drink. As a result, we’re permanently slightly hungry.

Then, at COB Friday, off come the traces. That first weekend beer or mezcal margarita tastes like freedom. Pizza? A choc top with your movie, sir? A whisky nightcap? Yes, yes and hell, yes.

For weekend breakfasts and lunches, we still tend to the lighter side. Our fallback first meal is berries and yoghurt with a sprinkle of muesli and nuts. We’re in an ongoing silent tussle with the gym bros to nab cottage cheese at the supermarket.

For lunch, it might be the Fast 800’s delicious broccolini and ricotta, or a caprese omelette. We rarely snack between meals.

Weekend dinners, though, are open slather. And then there’s the postprandial cheese. The French Shop at the market was relieved to see one of its most reliable customers hove hungrily into view after the diet ended – and brie and I have resumed our liaison passionnée.

Sunday night is always pasta and wine, a long family tradition.

Apart from that, though, there are no hard rules. I eat and drink up on book club night – a Tuesday. I often indulge in the baked goods set out by my colleagues on a sluggish afternoon in the office.

And every morning after breakfast, I get on the scales. That might seem obsessive – the kind of behaviour that warrants a trigger warning – but to me, it’s like looking in the mirror. A stocktake, a check-in.

And that’s been a revelation. A weekend’s indulgence can add two, even three kilograms with very little effort. Typically, I’ll start the week at almost 86 kilograms then, over an abstemious few days, peg it back to about 83 kilograms.

Being a bit hungry makes food taste better, and being lighter makes exercise more fun, and sleep more satisfying.

The price is hunger. So why does it take so much abstinence just to stay put?

In search of an answer, I actually read the article provided by my academic emailer. It talked about how the Biggest Loser contestants were, after six years, still ravenous and still feeling the effects of their radical kilojoule deprivation. (Note to self: schedule another article for 2031.)

As we cut kilojoules, the article says, our metabolisms adjust, with the almost inevitable result that we resume our old bulk.

There is an answer, though, and it’s the boring one. Eat healthy food, control portion size (allowing for the occasional treat) and don’t focus on “dieting” – focus instead on healthy habits, including exercise, good sleep and lower stress.

And, thinking about it, that’s what I’ve learned from the past 12 months. For the first time, I know I can control my portion size without starving to death. I don’t need the most calorific item on the menu simply to sustain me — because what was true in my youth is regrettably wrong for late middle age.

Being a bit hungry, in fact, makes food taste better, and being lighter makes exercise more fun, and sleep more satisfying. I feel great in my body and I like the way my clothes fit.

It also allows me to wallow in smugness. And that, perhaps, is the mightiest motivator of all.