Help! Mr Blobby has a sugar craving and can't stop it!!

THE nine-mile Sunday morning run around the heart of the New Forest was perfect. On a scorching day, it was the best possible antedote and a confidence-booster after a couple of pitiful leaden-footed runs earlier in the week.

A dozen of us ran along remote paths through woodland, over heathland, past a tiny ford - it was a veritable pot pourri of terrain, including a couple of tough climbs, on a glorious day when the speedies at the front looped back every mile or so to tag onto the slower runners so we all ran as a group.

As we finished the run in a car park close to the Royal Oak pub at Fritham, soaked to the skin in sweat and with the sun beating down hard, one lady looked at my bare-chested torso and cruelly remarked to everyone "Look, he's got a baby!"

Everyone else laughed and I did too, but what a blow to the solar plexus. Although it was a remark meant in jest boy did the barb hit its target. Yes, I am developing a bit of a tum which is out of the proportion of a relatively lean body. My stomach does stick out, and for the first time in my life I'm having to think seriously about diet.

For years I've been able to satisfy my sweet tooth with cakes, biscuits and chocolates without fear of putting on weight or developing any kind of midrift cushioning.

I remember Saturday mornings at work heading by Tesco's to buy a couple of almond croissants, a box of Bakewell tarts or battenburgs, some chocolates and a huge carton of fruit juice and that would do me for the day.

And throughout my running career I've loaded on sugar for runs, carrying jelly beans and jelly babies in a bum bag. For my last London marathon I collected a bag laden with a Mars Bar and Kendal Mint Cake at the half way point.

I think I'm addicted to sugar, particularly chocolate, and now it's got to stop. But how?

You see, it's not about the weight. My weight is fine, around 11 stone on a 5ft 10in body which is fine and with the running it's something that can be reasonably controlled. But what about the Mr Blobby belly, that's the conundrum? It's almost unfair. It's not as if I am a couch potato not bothering to exercise, or only exercising lightly. So why can't the belly stay in check?

I've got this set of scales at home which checks for body fat and body water content, and this morning the body fat was just short of 23% (the range for someone aged between 40 to 49 years is 13%-23%) and body water is 53% (it should be 55%), which suggests my weight and body fat is okay, but I have insufficient water intake.

I've scoured the internet for answers, but there is so much rubbish about, so much money-making baloney out there that it is hard to believe which course to follow. I don't need WeightWatchers or some strict diet, but surely it's more than doing 100 sit-ups every morning?

My dad,  a former paratrooper who's now got a bit of a stomach on him in his 70s, reckons that just like King Canute genetically, there's no way you can turn the tide of body fat. "You're going to have to live with that son," he told me kindly this week.

My friend Keith, whose wife is my dentist, reckons that the uber belly is down to diet and the fact that sugar sits on the stomach and accumulates. The only way to rectify this is to rein back the sugar diet, he told me, as he settled down to his supper of raw broccoli and dip.

I've tried to research this little gem on the internet, but not come up with any evidence to say it is so. But, sugar sitting on the belly sounds like a logical outcome. So, those sweet toothed days are coming to an end and boy has it been painful. Gone are the biscuits, the cakes and the chocolate. I can't quite give up sugar in tea, so that's been replaced by saccharine which makes the tea taste lousy and grainy.

The hard part is what to snack with?

At work, we have one of those charity sweet boxes brim full with jelly beans, midget gems, wine gums and chocolate buttons; it is placed on a desk right behind me and is so teasing and tempting.

At home in the evening after supper, while watching TV, just as a smoker will have a post-dinner cigarette, my vice has been a cake or two, or to demolish half a pack of ginger nuts or even Party Rings (still got the kid in me!) with a sugary cup of tea.

When my boys come to visit, I'll buy a couple of boxes of Bakewell tarts or chocolate mini rolls, and help them to finish the box. And inevitably, any visit to the supermarket or newsagents will not be complete without a Mars Bar or Wispa.  That is my snack routine. Isn't it everyone's?

So this week the routine has had to change. For snacking I'm eating fruit or bowls of Alpen, but somehow this snack diet doesn't have the satisfaction of a bar of Galaxy!

I've been told about these graze boxes (www.graze.com/) which are packed with nutritious snacks and which a friend of my wife swears by - there are dozens of empty Graze boxes stacked in the lounge of her home. My worry is that I'll adopt squirrel-like features with all the nuts.

The one concession is that on a Sunday I can have a bar of chocolate. My once a week guilty please. You can't go cold turkey straight away, so yesterday, after my first full week without cakes, biscuits or chocolates, I devoured a small chocolate bar which was like manna from heaven.

I'm not sure if I'm doing the right thing. My body continues to crave sweet things. Right now, a hot sugared cup of tea with half a dozen bourbon biscuits would go down a treat with my rumbling stomach. But I want to get rid of Mr Blobby and logic suggests rid your diet of major sugar items and the stomach will go. It will keep your teeth healthy too.

The trick is can I sustain this? It's like any diet, crash diets are rubbish unless you can sustain the strict routine and enjoy it. I hear from so many people who take sugar out of their tea or coffee and say they don't miss it. I can't believe that. Is there anything more satisfying or sating that a gloriously hot, sweet mug of tea with a couple of digestives?

For any successful diet you have to work the question you have to ask yourself is will you be doing this in a year's time? If you won't, then why bother starting the diet? After all the grief, you're only going to balloon the weight back on again.

This is not about vanity, actually it's about getting a better diet and hopefully it might improve my running. I'm bricking it slightly about my fitness ahead of the Swindon Half Marathon in six weeks' time when I've got to pace round an eight-and-a-half minute mile group. I want to be fit and ready for October 14th.

Anyone with any bright ideas about getting rid of bulging tums, apart from lipsuction, I will warmly listen to. In the meantime, roll on next Sunday's chocolate treat!

P.S: Just seen this article on the Daily Mail website. Take with a pinch of salt or not?
www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2194506/Why-having-pot-belly-bigger-heart-risk-obesity.html