I devoured a large chocolate for breakfast.  It was thick dark whipped truffle, sitting in a crisp white chocolate base. And it followed a little icing-sugar-covered croissant stuffed with custard.

Just an experiment, you understand. To see what it’s like eating such delicacies first thing in the morning.

I always think you can tell how much people consume, simply by looking at them. I can usually tell who’s going to want a double full English in my B&B. No surprises that one of the fattest men I have ever seen helped himself to four similar pastries at breakfast yesterday.  I really don’t want people to think I’m like that – or bulimic or something, as I stretch out and admire my newly long, lean brown legs, and look down at my tanned tummy the first time I have seen such a thing for ten years; now that I’m dressed in just a bikini – for the first time since everything went wrong a decade ago.

And all of this has been made possible simply by not eating. Or drinking. For three months. A total weight loss of around 1 1/2 stone.  Half a sack of horsefood.  Quite a lot really, and I look quite different from the liner I was becoming. Yet is’s all so simple to achieve.  You Just Consume Less.  No cutting out this, mixing that, eating some days but not others, or horrible drinks made from powder.

Most of us have simply got used to eating and drinking more than we need. Simple as. An occasional rumbling tummy is a healthy sign – not something to be feared.

While we don’t want to make ourselves short of key vitamins and minerals, nor deplete our energy resources – I seem to be fine.

I don’t have very good mirrors at home but Faye and I are currently on holiday in Nerje, on the Costa del Sol, in a luxury suite with floor to ceiling glass cupboard doors, and I am astonished by what I see reflected back at me. I’m thin!  Well quite thin anyway. I even bought a little white dress yesterday, and I look nice in it! I never thought any of this would ever happen again!

The trouble is – who or what is it all for? Nobody is interested nor cares. Nobody is going to see it, feel it, appreciate it.  I have nobody to share this whole new me with.  And it makes me feel that almost all the ordinary men on the dating sites will be ‘punching’ – a new word used by the young meaning ‘punching above your weight’ – now that I look so amazing.

What was it all for, and how long will I manage to hang on to my new lithe self if I continue with chocolates and custard croissants for breakfast?

I am looking forward to fitting comfortably into my £450 hunt coat again, when the season approaches, looking good on my horse and being able to leap on and off her again.  And that’s about it really.