The Poker Diet

I've been on a diet all this month, as I had been slipping back into the old, bad habits, and my waistline was expanding rapidly.

Breakfast consists of porridge with a couple of apples and a banana. For Lunch and dinner I have been having a big pile of lettuce, broccoli or cabbage (although I have to go a bit easy on the cabbage to avoid unpleasant side effects!) with jacket potato and a portion of meat.

The diet has been working well - I have shed 20 pounds and now tip the scales at 17 stone. I'm getting there - just another 3 or 4 stone to go. The promising thing with this diet attempt is that I haven't felt hungry on it, and am not feeling at all bored with it. I have hardly snacked at all - just the occasional extra piece of fruit/tin of soup. I have had one slip up, when I succumbed to a craving for an ice cream binge after a night on the tiles a couple of weeks ago.

I have cut out bread, pasta and rice completely, limiting my carbohydrates to porridge, jacket potatoes and sweet corn.

Accompanying the diet, I have been working on improving my poker skills - I have been playing online tournaments with larger fields - 90 players rather than the usual 9 player games that I play. I have noticed some encouraging improvements to my game. I have two online tournaments coming up, 1 this week and 1 the next, which offer me a chance to bag a seat at next years game in Vegas.  I have signed up to a new poker site for these games and have used Dad's winning lottery syndicate name as my poker nickname, hopefully that will give me a bit of extra luck!