The Dazzle #9

The only diet I'll ever do (it's not what you think)

The Eye Diet: Watch what you see, not what you eat

I turned my back on diet culture what feels like 800 years ago. Having grown up in the eighties, watching every grown woman I knew go on the Cambridge Diet, the Cabbage Soup Diet, the Eat For Your Blood Type Diet (and so on), it has taken me some time to deprogramme my brain from the pernicious belief that my worth is measured by the numbers on a bathroom scale. Diets have only ever made my health far, far worse, so I dumped them a very long time ago. Each to their own and all that.

But this week, I have started what I call the EYE DIET. It doesn’t involve only eating carrots to improve my sight (both eyes hovering somewhere around -7). It doesn’t involve food or dietary nutrition at all, actually. Because the EYE DIET is all about watching what I see, not what I eat. It’s about looking after what I allow my brain to consume, rather than my stomach.

The EYE DIET came to me as I read an email from an online troll, calling me fat and useless and utterly vacuous. I couldn’t claim innocence at opening the email - the subject was USELESS VACUOUS WOMAN - and as the words streamed into my brain, I wondered why I had clicked on it. Why hadn’t I deleted it? Why do I allow myself to read this endless abuse that has been non stop since the mid-noughties when newspapers properly went online, and the Green Ink brigade - who used to write mad letters that could be thrown in the bin - joined them?

Why do I read comments under cruel pieces about celebrities? Why do I read cruel pieces about celebrities, full stop? Why do I frighten myself by watching horror movies, or listening to grisly true crime podcasts? Why do I click on the grim news stories? Probably because I’m human. But if I’m going to do all of this, then I at least need to counter it by treating my eyes and my brain to loveliness. So that’s what I’ve made a concerted effort to do this week.

I’ve been gawping at the incredible January sunsets we’ve been treated to for the last few days in London. I’ve taken my family to the seaside for the weekend where we’ve gone on long walks along the windswept beach. I’ve been playing Scrabble. On a train journey to Norfolk earlier in the week, I ignored my phone in favour of the countryside rolling past the window. I’ve been re-reading You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay, which is all about saying nice things to yourself. I’ve been nourishing my brain with the EYE DIET, because if I don’t do this from time to time, my nervous system ends up in absolute shreds.

Here are some other things that have been lifting my spirits this week:

Seeing the first copies of Mad Woman come off the printers If you’re a lucky author, at some point you will get taken by your publishers to Clays, a factory in Norfolk where almost every book in the UK is printed. I got the tour for book number 8, Mad Woman, and honestly I felt like I’d just won Pop Idol, and Andi Peters was taking me to see my first CD get pressed. Obviously, I cried.

Traitors Listen, the final of this most excellent BBC show is next Friday and SOMEBODY has to be having a viewing party where we all spend the evening playing Mafia (the DIY version of Traitors), and waxing lyrical about Claudia Winkleman, right? If so, please extend your kind invites in the comments box below. Thank you in advance.

An Oto massage I don’t know if I’ve mentioned, but in April, I’m going to run the Brighton Marathon and the London Marathon and the distance in between the two cities, to raise money for Mental Health Mates. Very kindly, the lovely people at OTO gave me a massage at one of their dreamy spas this weekend, and my legs are eternally grateful as they prepare to take off on yet another bloody long run.

Scottee

It’s so difficult to find fitness influencers on social media who don’t look like… well, fitness influencers. Step forward Scottee who does incredible inclusive online yoga, and is my favourite thing on Instagram.

My new Anxiety Aunt column I have wanted to do something like this since I was 13, when I would pour over the agony aunt/uncle pages in Just Seventeen (shout out to anyone who remembers Anita Naik and Nick Fisher!). So I feel very lucky to have been given my own ‘anxiety aunt’ column at the Telegraph. I answered my first problem this week, and you can send any question you have howareyoureally@telegraph.co.uk. You can remain anonymous, and I will read every single problem, though I regret I can’t enter into personal correspondence.

Wishing you a whole heap of delicious sunsets and loveliness,

Bryony xx