Morning All, she chirruped in a pretty enthusiastic and motivated tone actually!! I survived Day 1 of my fast, yay! When I last wrote I was just about to take the plunge after a day of eating soup and fruit juices, but now I've completed Day 1 and am feeling ever so slightly pleased with self, thank you very much!!

So, I gingerly drank my laxative tea on Wednesday night expecting sparks to fly, mumbling pre-emptive apologies to the fiancé (who's response to all of this, by the way, was a nervous "What am I gonna eat?"), went to bed and prepared to feel thin and instantly revitalised and fully detoxed in the morning. But nothing. A little confused, I boiled my litre of salt water, guzzled it down like a champion I have to say and once again prepared to stay close to home for the violent detox I'd been promised. Still nothing.

Now, unfortunately, I am no Beyoncé (sigh), I can't afford to spend my detox period on a tropical island having my feet massaged and hair tousled while I cleanse, I have to work to put lemons on my table, so off to the office I went, still nervous that the combined efforts of my laxative tea and salt water flush were about to cause social suicide in the work bathroom. But my fears were abated by lunch time when I resigned myself to the fact that nothing was going to happen just yet.

So, on to my first glass of 'lemonade'. Well, lemonade's a misnomer, this is so far removed from Sprite it's not funny. I made it just as the website told me: bottled water; the juice of half a lemon; four dollops of molasses and a tenth of a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. I took an excited gulp, as this, after all, is my only meal for the next ten days, it was important I made friends with it, but oh no, it was horrid!! Shuffling back to my desk to the mocking cries of my colleagues as they tucked into their tea and biscuits I was silently mortified that I didn't take to my lemonade, but held my head high, inwardly chanting mantra that I SHALL be fabulous!

I think one of the hardest challenges so far (listen to me, I'm not even 48 hours in but talking like a seasoned pro!!) is the anticipation of what I'm doing. I can't help thinking of it as 10 days without food, rather than taking one day at a time, so I'm really going to try to do that from now on. Also, me being me, decided to tell all of my friends and family what I'm doing (this Blog alone is testimony that I'm not one of those animals that takes itself out of the pack to die quietly by the roadside), so I now feel that I am accountable to them as well as to my hips which is maybe added pressure but I needed people to be on board. People's reactions have actually been really interesting: you get the ones that are really supportive and enthusiastic, wanting to know all about it; then there's the ones that are morbidly fascinated in me like I'm a hideous car crash and are convinced that I'm about to drop down dead from starvation any minute; you get the dismissive ones that tell you unequivocally (through a wobbly jowl full of pastry and cheese) that you're an idiot, 'Look at me, I eat whatever I want and I'm happy', yep, see you in the cardio ward my friend, and then you get the seething women that tell you vitriolically that you must be anorexic and that you have 'issues' although you can't help feeling that they'd like to try it themselves...

Try telling anyone it's not just about weight loss but improved vitality and a better sense of well-being, they'll just poo poo you and stare pointedly at your wobbly bits, but I personally am v much looking forward to being like those women from the old sanitary products ads that used to jump smilingly from planes and leapfrog over bushes. All in lycra, of course.

Anyway, I digress, and I must tell you that I DID survive my first day and it really wasn't so bad! I'm sure at the moment it's all still a bit of a novelty, but I felt very self-righteous just sipping my (hateful) lemonade and glasses of water throughout the day. The problem came when my friend invited me to dinner, at my favourite restaurant no less! But bearing in mind that 90% of my social engagements are around a dinner table, lunch bar, cake-stand, I thought I needed to accept just to get the biggest challenge out of the way. So off we go, we sit down, I forlornly move my linen napkin aside and ask for a glass of water with ice and lemon (I'm not even allowed sparkling!!), the waiter cocks his head and raises an eyebrow, I am, after all, a reliable source of income for these guys normally, however I explain my predicament and he angles the Specials board diplomatically towards my friend. She looks at me and asks whether she should order something I love and tell me all about it so that I can eat vicariously through her, or something that I don't like so that I wouldn't want any anyway, I graciously shrug my shoulders (chanting inner-mantra) and say that I really don't mind (please, please, please don't order the steak...). She orders the steak of course and tucks into that thing like it's her last meal, I meanwhile am sucking lemons and getting high off the meaty fumes, trying not to stare directly at each forkful. This is an exercise in mind over matter like no other, but I can't cave in on Day 1, even my Mum knows I'm doing it!

So we got through dinner, but by this time I'm hungry, really hungry, I didn't bring any of the lemonade out with me so I'm just on water for the rest of the night. And it's Salsa night, so I have to keep going. We make our way to Salsa and, full of cow energy, she instantly gets carried away on to the dance floor, while I sit feeling weak and exhausted on the sidelines. Does Victoria Beckham feel like this all the time? No wonder she never smiles, poor thing, the effort alone would cause her to keel off her Louboutins. Anyway, soon enough some snakey-hipped lothario comes sliding over to me and asks me to dance but I have to say no, I really can't, I'm absolutely shattered and spend the rest of the night on the outside looking in. Miserable though that was, the fact that I survived was a little pearl in my pocket and I drank my laxative tea with veritable gusto when I got home, crawled thankfully into bed ready for Day 2!