London - A few days ago, I logged what I ate. It was an exercise in self-abasement; a catalogue of shame.
I crunched through a few handfuls of granola — without milk and scooped straight from the box — for breakfast, snacked on nuts and dried fruit throughout the day and demolished a small loaf of bread in hunks mid-afternoon and a family-sized chocolate bar during the evening.
Nutritionally unbalanced? Without a doubt. Lazy and uninspired? Absolutely. Reprehensible? Certainly.
But this, I’m afraid, has become my habitual eating pattern. I graze. I skip meals. I succumb to a sugar slump mid-afternoon and assuage it by gorging on a couple of buns (maybe three or four) or a vast bar of chocolate.
Then, when my partner Iain comes home from work, I’m too full to eat supper with him. But just before bed I feel compelled to stock up on more snacks to quell some primal fear of expiring from hunger during the night. (Scant chance of that.)
Of course, I know this is all unforgivable. I know precisely how I should be eating: three sensible meals a day, preferably protein-rich to sustain me and with piles of mixed vegetables and salad to supply essential vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.
For years, I did it properly. I dished up wholesome, home-cooked family meals that we ate cosily round the kitchen table — never in front of the telly — while chatting about our days, as all good middle-class families should do.
I’ve served up salads of spinach and rocket, glistening with organic olive oil and sprinkled with omega-rich seeds.
I’ve chopped mountains of kale and spring greens and harvested my body weight in fruit from the pick-your-own farms in Sussex where I live.
So why has it all changed? Why has my diet become a chaos of snacks and binges?
The truth is that I lapsed when my daughter Amy left home for university in 2010 and I became an empty nester.
I didn’t have to follow a slavish regime of shopping and cooking any more. Meal times became moveable. Lunch could segue into dinner or be skipped altogether. I no longer needed to set a good example. So the bad habits set in.
And I know that plenty of other parents, abandoned to their own devices, have also become recalcitrant eaters.
Indeed, a study last week revealed that millions of empty nesters confess to the same guilty secret as mine.
In fact, 60 percent of those polled in a survey by Seven Seas — suppliers of vitamins and supplements — admitted skipping breakfast at least once a week.
Almost eight in ten missed at least one lunch a week, while more than half said they regularly substituted a meal for a packet of crisps, slice of toast or just a cuppa.
The main reason for these transgressions against dietary good sense? Nearly half said it was because their children had left home and, no longer burdened by the need to be paradigms of healthy eating, they fell into bad ways.
There is, I suppose, a small crumb of comfort in this. The awful habits we regard as ours, and ours alone, feel guiltier than those shared.
And there’s more in the survey. One in ten admitted they never — never! — sit down to a home-cooked meal, which makes me feel quite virtuous, as I manage to rustle up something at least two or three times a week.
Then there are those — one in 20 — who say they cook only when they have visitors.
Now this rings a bell, because when the whole family assembles — Amy, 24, her step-sister Louise, 31, and step-brother Robert, 30 — I revert to type. I become pinny-wearing, saucepan-toting, home-cooking Mum again.
I dust off the recipe books, whisk up sauces and prepare towering platters of vegetables. I even make puddings!
And we make a ritual of these family feasts, polishing the table, buffing up the glassware, lighting candles and setting out the best cutlery.
I suppose that this is the nub of it: meals are best shared en famille, when we have the leisure to savour them and chat. After all, I’ve told myself, there’s scant joy in mulling over a pork cutlet when you’re too tired to make more than perfunctory conversation.
The nature of my work also fosters slovenly eating. I sit at my desk alone, writing. There is no one to reproach me when I demolish all the pretzel rolls.
There’s no one rolling their eyes when I scoff the entire box of Swiss chocolates I bought to take to dinner at a friend’s house. The solution, of course, is never, ever to buy anything that might prove remotely tempting to snack on.
At the supermarket, I march past the biscuit aisle, eyes averted. I buy 100 percent cocoa chocolate — don’t, it tastes like tar — in an effort to kick my sugar habit.
I’ve instructed Iain to hide any sweets and biscuits he buys, but I possess an unerring capacity for finding them. (Once, I discovered chocolate digestives in his sock drawer.)
Despite my good intentions, invariably, I lapse. I’m pleased to say, however, that no one else in the family shares my dreadful traits.
Indeed, Amy, an athlete, has an exemplary diet. She tells me that a typical day’s menu comprises scrambled eggs, spinach and smoked salmon for breakfast; lean meat with veg for lunch; and wholesome dinners of oily fish and salads.
I suppose I can congratulate myself: I’ve schooled her well. But I recently realised, with a jolt, how much of a problem my eating had become.
It was at a lovely family wedding a couple of weeks ago. I dispatched a hearty lunch: fillet of beef, apple tart, cheese and petits fours. Later, the wedding cake — a glorious four-tier confection — was cut.
“I couldn’t manage another crumb,” said my sister Annie, sensibly. Somehow, however, I did. I ate a slice of each differently flavoured tier. It was a Herculean feat, but it would have been rude, I figured, not to.
“How did you manage that?’”said Annie, aghast. I confess I felt ashamed.
It is said that once you admit to a problem you’re ready to surmount it. So yesterday, I had my first session of hypnotherapy. Linda, the hypnotherapist, was my guide on a metaphorical journey.
I could take the left-hand path and regress into a morass of bad, old ways, or the right one and become a new, vibrant, healthy me.
Last night, I whizzed up some cashews with a dollop of mango chutney, turmeric, coriander and some Greek yoghurt, spooned it over a couple of grilled chicken breasts and served it with salad and lentils.
Simple, nutritious, tasty. It took all of 20 minutes and Iain and I ate it with relish.
Today, I’ve been pausing at the biscuit tin, asking myself: “Right or left-hand path?” And I’m pleased to say I’ve kept to the straight and narrow.
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