Note from Mother

My Mum is now emailing me with what can only be described as 'pep talks'. I've decided to post this up on the blog. Enjoy.

"Any mother would give her right arm to have a child that isn't a fussy eater, so I thought that I was lucky in that Matthew would eat most things. Maybe he was not that keen on all vegatables and prefered tomato sauce to gravy, but all in all not difficult. The problems began to appear when he was old enough to help himself from the cupboards and fridge and got worse into his teenage years. He had aboslutely no idea of portion control. One glass of milk or orange juice wasn't enough, it had to be nearly the whole bottle or carton. Not content with either a cheese or a ham sandwich, it was a cheese and ham sandwich. I gave up buying biscuits and snack bars and started making cakes for special occasions only.

It got really annoying when I would check the fridge to make sure I had enough milk and food for breakfast and lunches only to find the next day that Matthew had come in and made himself a late night snack and emptied it.

I don't know if you still like a small plate of something before bed but if you cut out anything it ought to be that. You will sleep much better because your body isn't working to digest the food, and you have no chance of using any of the calories up. It isn't a bad thing to go to bed feeling slightly peckish and you can last 12 hours without food. That is why breakfast is called break-fast!

Rather than give you don'ts, I will give you:

• Eat less food
• Eat main meals only
• Eat as early as you can in the evening.

A small rant

So, I read that Madonna has 2 hours a day, 6 days a week in the gym with her trainer, and is said to look half her age ( coming up to 50 ). I bet that her chef, nanny, P.A., cleaner, gardener, Tesco shopper ect. don't look half their age because they don't have the time to spend 2 hours a day in the gym!

Most people would love to have 2 hours to spend on themselves a week. Which brings me to your excelent timetable for training for the 10K. I hope you find the time to follow it, and wish you the very best of luck."

Reporter Matt's Mum