A year of living sensibly

It is a year and a day since I vowed to spend 12 months reading my shelf-full of self-help books in order to become a non-smoking, teetotal, detoxified slim woman who stays sane, never worries, eats like a french woman and is her own best friend.

It hasn't been easy (Paul McKenna seems to have written a lot of books) but the results have been good:

1. I must surely qualify as detoxified as I still don't smoke or drink, and in the past few weeks - thanks to personal trainer K - I have finally overcome my sugar addiction.
2. I'm not slim yet but I'm getting there because now, like French women all over France, I eat delicious home-cooked food.
3. I have lots of good friends, one of whom is me.
4. I worry less than I used to, I never, for example, worry about whether I've got enough ciggies to last till tomorrow anymore.
5. I'm still sane.

So I have thrown down mindstore by Jack Black mid-page and am off to start my next quest.

(I'm not sure what it is yet, my Matalan Challenge in which me, P and H would go to Matalan once a month and not leave until we'd found a fantastic outfit each which we would then pose in on the Great Matalan Challenge blog had to be abandoned after an hour and a half of trying on increasingly unsuitable clothes left H with a suspected blood sugar dip)

Help!

I have taken a little holiday from self-help. Just as The Beatles before me, I have realised that sometimes I can't do everything for myself, sometimes I need a little help from my friends.

So a couple of weeks ago, after unintentionally demolishing a wall in my attic and then feeling overwhelmed by the consequences (soot, dust, rubble and the loss of a bedroom), I sent out an emergency text to special friend P who came and helped me clear up the mess.

Then, after failing at yet another move-away-from-the-mars-bar diet (and being given a book on nutrition by the joiner who came to re-build the wall - an event too traumatic to go into in any detail), I negotiated a deal with my friend K, a fully-qualified personal trainer. K is going to sort out my diet and exercise regime and I am going to do all the odd jobs in her house (if she reads the paragraph above the deal could be off). Ks advice has, of course, been far superior to anything in a book and I am already feeling fitter.

So I have moved away from self-help for the moment. I have discovered something far superior. I am calling it get-someone-else-to-help. Wonder if it'll catch on?

Pride and Prejudice

My quest for self-improvement was featured in Woman magazine this week.

Although I am quite proud of my first appearance in a national magazine, reading the article has made me think that I've been choosing the wrong self-help books. As you know, over the past ten months I have been eating plates of mackerel in a bid to look younger, listening to a freaky hypnosis CD in the hope of finding my 'authentic' self, and sending out positive messages asking the universe to give me a red cardigan.

While all this has been going on Jo Kingston, the other self-help addict featured in Woman, has been swanning round London pretending to be a Jane Austen character and finding herself a lovely new boyfriend.

Well, two can play at that game. She didn't say which character you had to be so I took a quiz to find out who I resemble most. It turns out that I'm Lydia Bennet. Marvelous. I'm just off to the local army base to find myself a suitable man...

If I could find a way

Well? It could just be the lighting, but I have had lots complements this week!

If I could turn back time

Whilst on holiday I was reading the Woman's Own Summer Special (In between Candide and The Prince of course) and I came across an article which promised me I could 'look younger in just 3 days!'. Well, I thought, what better way to help yourself could there be than to eat yourself younger?

For 3 days from Monday 17th September I will follow the plan exactly as instructed. This will include eating 'facelift foods' such as oily fish, leafy greens and apples, drinking lots of water, and avoiding caffeine. (I can't help but notice that cake, sweets and chips are all banned too)

Here is a photo of me taken of me at 10 pm on Tuesday September the 11th. How old do you think I look?

On Thursday 20th at 10pm I will take another photo of myself and post it here. I wonder if anyone will recognise me?

Not Cameron Diaz - just some woman

Over the course of the year some of the confidence-boosting techniques in my shelf full of self-help books have rubbed off, and while I was on holiday in Cyprus last month I finally found the courage to get up and sing at the karaoke.

Now I am not the worst singer in the world but I found that singing Uptown Girl in a packed hotel bar is not as easy as singing along to Billy Joel on the playstation 2. As I walked back to my seat, and the people in the bar turned their faces away to save my embarrassment, I consoled myself with the thought that I had learned a valuable lesson that I would not find in any of my self-help books.

As well as learning about the importance of song choice in karaoke I discovered that there is no point in building up your confidence if you don't have the competence to go with it. The next time I feel the fear I am going to think about my abilities before I go ahead and do it anyway.

Wisdom

Just as I was about to give up on self-help altogether I read in the paper that Lindsay Lohan won't go anywhere without a copy of Machiavelli's The Prince which she is using as a self-help guide. It seems that I have missed the potential of a whole genre of political and philosophical works as self-help books. I have got some catching up to do.

Luckily I am going on holiday for two weeks on Tuesday. I will do some reading. Obviously I will be taking The Prince, I am also going to attempt Plato's Republic and Candide by Voltaire. There's an outside chance that I will find my choice of holiday reading a bit heavy going so I will pack Boobs, Boys and High Heels by Dianne Brill - a self-help guide that I bought in the 1990s that teaches you how to get ready to go out in just under six hours. I think I'll take the latest Maeve Binchy as well.

When I get back, after reading The Prince, I should find that I am as wise as Lindsay Lohan.

What would Margaret do?

It is becoming clear to me that my basic knowledge about how to live life is slowly being replaced by the lunatic get-happy/rich/thin-quick schemes that seem to pass for good advice in most of these self-help books.

I knew things had gone too far when I found myself eating maltesers for breakfast because I wasn't on a diet that day. A little voice deep inside my head pointed out that maltesers are not proper food. It was time to re-learn the sensible eating habits that my mum taught me when I was a child.

My mum would never eat maltesers for breakfast. She would have muesli or bacon and eggs or toast and jam, depending on how hungry she was. (Mum does occasionally have trifle for breakfast but we won't talk about that.)

At dinner time mum never eats a packet of crisps and two Fry's turkish delights. She has a sandwich or a bowl of soup or a salad or something. And at tea time she eats an evening meal followed by pudding. If she gets hungry between meals she has a snack.

Mum has never been overweight and she has never been on a diet.

So I have decided that until my brain has managed to forget that carbs are evil and fat makes you fat and red meat gives you heart attacks and fruit juice is full of empty calories... before I eat I will ask myself 'what would mum do?' and then I will eat something that she would agree was appropriate.

You could do the same, only I don't know how sensible your mum is so you'd better ask yourself 'what would Margaret do?' instead.

Cheddar gorge

I am about to start a new self-help book. It is a fascinating read and I feel sure that it will change my life. But first I need a snack. I've got the crackers and the butter but I can't seem to find the cheddar. Does anyone know where it's gone? I'm sure it was here yesterday.

Oh dear, I think someone has moved my cheese.

The Very Hungry Self-help Woman

In the light of the computer screen a slightly over-weight self-help woman sat on an Ikea chair.

On Sunday morning she got out her deep box full of diet books and pop! She decided to try them all until she was thin.

On Monday she read Dr Atkins' New Diet revolution. She ate through one plate of meat. But she was still hungry.

On Tuesday she read Rosemary Conley's Complete Hip and Thigh Diet. She ate through two bowls of rice. But she was still hungry.

On Wednesday she read Allen Carr's Easyweigh to lose Weight. She ate through two apples and a carrot. But she was still hungry.

On Thursday she read Carol Vordeman's Detox for life. She ate through one bowl of porridge, one corn on the cob, a pear and a cup of herb tea. But she was still hungry.

On Friday she read Paul McKenna's I can make you thin. She asked herself if she was hungry. She most certainly was.

So on Saturday she ate one slice of swiss roll, a bowl of porridge with syrup, a snack-size snickers bar, and another one, the rest of the swiss roll, spaghetti bolognese, garlic bread, a piece of toast and jam, oh, and a kiwi fruit.

That night she had a stomach ache.

The next day was Sunday again. The slightly overweight self-help woman put all the diet books back in the deep box. And after that she felt much better.

A day in the life

I have got a deep box full of diet books. I have tried most of them at least once. I have now decided that I am going to follow each of the different diets in my box for one day only. When I have got through them all I will start again from the beginning.

I am putting all other self-improvement projects on hold as I start what must surely be the diet to end all diets (after all, as special friend P pointed out, people who only work two days a week don't always need to learn about time-management).

There is such little time

Since giving up smoking and drinking (have I mentioned that I gave up smoking and drinking?) I have found that although I have the same amount of time as I always had, I feel like I have lots more. This is partly because whole days which used to be spent lying in bed wondering whether it was too soon for a cigarette can now be filled with other things.

So far I have used some of this extra free time productively. I have been on courses where I have learnt plastering and tiling and how to put up shelves and hang doors. I have made a lovely box for my jewellery and a toy bed for my little friend E. I have also been to a couple of art galleries, trimmed the hedge, fixed the cracks in my friend M's wall, and done lots of crosswords and even more Japanese puzzles.

But still I find myself spending large chunks of time wandering aimlessly round the house, watching Little People, Big World and Miami Ink, and secretly re-enacting scenes from films (if I tell you I think I have soot in my eye or ask for a royale with cheese at Burger King please just humour me, I don't smoke or drink don't you know).

This sort of behaviour is, of course, wasteful. So I have decided to read the time management book that my brother lent me about 2 years ago when I was trying - and failing - to write a thesis about a magazine published in Spain in the 60s.

Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play by Mark Forster promises to teach me how to do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done. Exercise 1 is mental strength training. Every evening you set yourself a task which you must do the following day. Each day you have to make the task slightly harder. Apparently by doing something that you've planned in advance you are training yourself to act decisively rather than impulsively.

Tomorrow I will change the sheets and hoover my bedroom, what are you going to do?

You spin me right round

'Why not write a newspaper column about your job?' asked my friend A, 'professional people love reading about the lives of minimum-wage slaves'. I replied that it was a great idea but it wouldn't work because sooner or later the readers would find out that I was a fake, only pretending to be a check-out girl. 'Lucy' said A gently, in the manner of a doctor telling you there was nothing more she could do for you, 'you are a check-out girl'. I blame my inner spin doctor.

I don't need Paul Mckenna's hypnosis CDs to tell me that I'm fabulous, my inner spin doctor does that for me. He convinces me that I look great even after I've put on 2 stone; that if I miss the bus it's probably for the best because I might have had to sit next to the old man who pretends to be a high court judge if I'd caught it; and that I'm not really a check-out girl because I'm only pretending (I've been pretending, off and on, for almost 20 years now. I'm starting to get quite good at it).

Many of the self-help books I have read in my extraordinary quest for self-improvement aren't designed to help you improve anything in your life, they simply want you to look at things differently. Clearly these books are trying to install mini Alistair Campbells in our brains, and their only aim is to get us all to shut up moaning and start looking on the bright side. It's too late for me but please be careful - you could be next!