The Perfect Bikini Diet Plan

It's JUNE! That means most of us are now sweating bullets about our Bikini Diets. Fear not, I present you with The Saucy Cow's (tried and tested) Guide to Bikini Diets.

Day #1: Book a holiday. Accept that unless you end up in a convent-style resort, males are going to see you in a bikini. Many males. Some may even be scottish men. (mmm) Realise that for Braveheart fantasy to realise, must start diet and lay sizzling in the sun like package holiday location goddess.

Day #3: Widely publicise diet. Decide to put yourself under the pressures that celebrities in the spotlight are and attract everyone's attention to the pounds which will soon be dropping off you like flies. Announce it with much aplomb. (''I mean it girls! It is SERIOUSLY going to be just a blade of grass and ice cubes each day from now on!) Take a moment to fantasize about the moment you're so waif like, jealous friends organise intervention, convinced you must have an eating disorder. 

Day #4: Go to the supermarket and spend approximately €4,563,987 on foodstuffs which you have never heard of and aren't really that confident about pronouncing the name of out loud. Be reassured by the fact that most are dull brown in colour and flakey in consistency. This is surely a sign of wholesomeness. Ponder theory that if you eat poo coloured things maybe you can trick your body into thinking they are actual poo and thus bypass middle bit of digestive system and straight out, aka no calories. Stop pondering disgusting things. Skip around supermarket confident that you are intimidating other shoppers with your trendy trolley full of obscure hipster food. Have confidence crushed when you arrive at till and feel checkout girl scrutinising your purchases and appearance and become paranoid that she is thinking ''fat cow is clearly starting a diet to combat her massive arse''. Leave supermarket dejected and practically bankrupt. 

Day #6: Barely started diet but expecting immediate results. Start to view current weight objectively. Sob and wonder how you're so called friends let you waddle around at this horrific weight for so long without mentioning anything. Decide best revenge is to be the new skinny one in the group. Stand in front of mirror naked for awkward amounts of time poking at midriff and imagining horror on scottish men's faces as you emerge from the pool like the Loch Ness Monster. Decide to go for a walk. Feel extremely awkward as you're more than aware you are walking very purposefully but you and everyone knows there really is no purpose to this journey. Return for dog so that you have an excuse. End you & the dog's short-lived but glorious stretch of walks together after a conflict of interests - aka you are interested in going for a walk, dog is interested in rebelling against lead.

Day #7: Start period. Slightly annoyed as this means definitely 100% not pregnant so cannot explain away belly by claiming there is a human being in there. Turn into calorie psychopath due to menstrual turmoil and scream at shelf stacking boy in Dunnes Stores for only stocking ridiculously big apples, and 'does he not know how many extra calories that is?' Cry into muesli (dry, no milk) and accept fact that you can't even embrace your obvious imminent obesity as not jolly enough to pull of being fat person. 

Day #10: Morph back into human girl after your monthly ware-wolf like transformation. Bump into 'friend' who announces with nothing short of fanfares that she's lost 5 pounds. Resist urge to shove her stupid face in your stomach and smother her with your fat. Decide there is now an uneven playing field as there was no need for her to try and loose weight in first place. Make mental note to send her anonymous box of chocolates as sabotage. Decide to go out with the girls. Stumble out of nightclub and raid chipper inhaling carbohydrates like they're going out of fashion. Decide that this is fine, and calories do not count when you're drunk.

Day #11: Feel awful about weeks worth of calories you tore through like starving Ugandan child last night. Wonder if you can profit from your drinking habit and turn into a vodka-skinny girl like Kate Moss circa when she was going out with Pete Doherty, consuming only alcohol units for sustenance. Reconsider when you realise alcohol clouded lifestyle may result in you going out with Pete Doherty type character and this would be devastating, not to mention extremely counter-productive to the whole finding-your-scottish-dreamboat plan so may as well go out an eat bun as pursue that idea. 

Day #14: Get very bored of this 'cooking meals' all the time craic. Decide once this whole sorry affair is over and you're never going to look at a piece of broccoli again. While grilling chicken for the 11th time this week, become very tempted to eat it on the dangerous side of undercooked, remember the girl who got food poisoning 2 weeks before your Debs and arrived looking infuriatingly skinny. Wonder for the 25th time since you left school if she did it on purpose. Facebook stalk her. Notice she is now plump and also going out with creepy Darren who worked in Supermac's in TY. Feel better. 

Day #15: Confidence in the creation of your new beach physique starting to wane slightly as still no sign of life altering results. The only pounds you're loosing lately are on River Island bikinis in insane shapes and colours which you're buying for 'motivation'. Push thought to the back of your mind that you will not succeed in your diet and will look like a stick of pepporoni with miniature bits of cloth stuck to it. Bump into friend who makes the misfortunate move of asking you how your diet is going. Forget that she was there on the epic launch day (Day 3) and spiral immediately into vortex of self-destructive and paranoid thoughts, deducing that the only way this loathsome bitch would say such a thing is to drop hints about your imminent holiday and lack of weight gain, or as a underhanded sneer about the bikini you just purchased. Rush home and listen to Prince and try to dance away the fear. Decide cannot try on newly purchased bikini out of sheer terror and try to supress thoughts of ''itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polkadot bikini'' type situation on the beach when you finally put it on.

Day #17: Going holiday shopping. Slightly panicking. Aware girls are all expecting new skinny you to be unveiled in Mallorca. Wonder how convincing it would be to tell them all you've changed religion and simply cannot be seen without your Berka for the duration of the holiday. Only feel confident to try on sunglasses. 

Day #19: Desperately start spending a lot more time with the dog in the vain attempt to catch ringworm after reading crazy french women used to eat them to loose weight. Decide to consult pictures of celebrities on holiday for inspiration. Flick through a copy of 'Heat' in sheer horror. Decide will never download a Saturdays song ever again for the rest of your days. 

Day #20: Panic as you now have 5 days until holiday. Stress about being the token unattractive girl in the group and try to develop some sort of dazzling personality to make up for your appearance. Panic panic panic panic for the rest of the day.

Day #21: Acceptance. Yet another diet has failed.

Day #21: (later) Start the Special K diet and buy a wrap. 

The Saucy Cow

xxx

The War Of The Buttons

'And then we broke up.'

--------------------

I like being the centre of attention, alright. I'm woman enough to admit it. And when there's trauma in my life, I sometimes like to imagine the worst. Like, yesterday say, when the elevator halted itself a wee bit. Who are you to judge me if for that split moment, I imagined myself several hours later being dragged from the smoke filled elevator by Fireman Hunk, somehow covered in blood and to rapturous applause from the surrounding crowd of spectators and the assembled media? Yes, I like to milk my moments of drama. So as selfish as it sounds, I was quite relishing the melodramatic silence that followed my SHOCKING statement when Bee, my flatmate said:

'Soooo......have you changed your relationship status yet?'

Had I changed my relationship status yet? The more sensible among you might argue I changed my relationship status when I broke up with him. The rest of you are quivering as you realise I had yet to inform Facebook, a social institution even George Orwell would have struggled to imagine. I gulped hard. Everyone's eyes were on me now.

'I..uh...I?' I could feel Bee's laptop blinking at me pointedly.
'Is it not a bit too soon?'
'Babes, it's been like ten minutes' Marcy replied, without a trace of irony.
(Marcy and Bee are the kind of girls who say 'babes' and get away with it. I try to do it too, but every time I say 'babe' a voice in my head goes '....PIG IN THE CITY!!!')
'And, you need to let everyone know it was YOUR decision. You don't want people walking around thinking it was a mutual thing...'
Yes, perish the thought people should think we'd split amicably. To be honest though, I can be as cynical as I like here on my cosy retrospective perch but at the time I was hyperventilating from the scenarios which were quickly playing out in my head. I could envision everyone I'd ever met all being online simultaneously and watching my mini-drama play out on their newsfeeds as they tisked and said things like, 'well, she is ridiculously unattractive' and 'at least he's free from her now to pursue a relationship with that model who's been relentlessly poking him'. My eyes shot around Bee's bedroom for guidance from my assembled friends.
'DO IT SAUCY!'
I launched myself towards the laptop. I don't know if you've ever tried to do something in a hurry, but if you do in the future, I do not recommend a swivel chair as your seating of choice. I hold the inelegant shuffling on that blundering chair and some very hectic typing responsible for the valuable time wasting which ensued. And there, when I logged in, it was. He'd beaten me. That ominous little heart beside a changed relationship status at the tippity top of my screen, as if to say, ''THIS JUST IN: CONFIRMATION THAT SAUCY WILL, IN FACT, AS WIDELY SPECULATED, BE ALONE FOR LIFE''.
I swivelled (unsmoothly) back to the girls in horrified despair. They all managed to wipe the alarm off their faces just a second too late before assuring me that:
'It's fine! In fact, it's better this way. Now people will think that you're the mature and confident one who didn't immediately resort to telling the whole world over Facebook'
We were now going to pretend that clearly this was never the plan. As much as I liked to hang on to the idea of my ex-boyfriend sitting in the dark, face lit gravely by the screen, holding back his right arm as his finger hovered over the button to click 'single', barely able to see the keyboard through his tears, (before releasing pigeons to the vatican and a hand written letter to the Queen to confirm the split) I doubted very much that this was the case. As I looked back at the screen again, I had the foreboding feeling that my social network break-up was going to be a lot more stressful than my boring old real-life one.

My love of romantic comedies was not only responsible for my extremely destructive and unrealistic expectations of relationships, it also provided me with a benchmark for what break-ups should be like. I was then very upset with my newfound obsession with monitoring my facebook for post-relationship damage control, instead of doing other very important things; Like eating EVERYTHING. There was a bag of hula hoops lying seductively on the kitchen counter with my name on them. I knew this. Yet here I was quivering in front of a screen, and jumping every time I got a notification. Bit anti-climactic when I realised it wasn't the ex posting meaningful lyrics on my wall. Nor, I noticed, had he 'liked' any ambiguous links alluding to his inner turmoil. (E.g 'Smiling on the outside but wishing you were dead on the inside', or 'Knowin u will neva get ova dat 1 special person....') Eventually I shook off my conceited thoughts and tried to reassure myself that surely I would never go out with the kind of person who would do that kind of thing. Or that to the best of my knowledge, there did not exist on this earth a man who would be driven to such heartbreak over me. Unfortunately...
Bridget Jones-esque thoughts aside, what the christ had happened to me? I was obsessed with my kind of on-screen character. Why was it so crucial how I project myself in this fabricated society? Disgusted with myself, I leant back from the screen and digested fully the complete impact on my life this social media tool had taken. All the pictures I'd strategically tagged, all the statuses I had worded so carefully, all the people I despised but whose relentless drivel I trawled through day after day. And why? Seriously, why? And with that, before I could rethink what I was doing, I took a deep breath, and clicked ''Delete Account''.

LOL JK!!!!!!!

Yeah, as if. If you fell for that then regular reader you are not. My character doesn't have enough substance for such a bold statement. I'll only delete facebook when it's trendy to do it. (aka when everyone else does) Until then, back to Bee's room where I was in the middle of my 'I'maddictedtofacebook' epiphany. 

In walked Bee.

'So babes, have you deleted him yet?'

Deleted him? I hadn't even thought of that yet. Frantic, I checked his profile to see if that quick-witted bastard had beaten me to yet another punch. Slightly sedated, I realised I still had full access to his profile. Dare I delete him? In my head I could imagine him evaporating into a million cyber milli-pieces. 

'Better yet,' interjected Marcy, 'BLOCK him.'

For a moment I conjured up the image of me standing over my concussed ex, brick-on-a-string in my hand. Then I realised what she really meant. I bit my lip. If I'm honest, did I really want to sacrifice the one precious medium where I was guaranteed to be able to keep unrestricted tabs on him at all times? Alright, I realise at the proof reading stage that that last sentence sounds a little Glenn-Close-in-Fatal-Attraction. Anyone who can't admit to having the odd stalk of an ex on facebook, you're only kidding yourselves. Why not tamper with your weighing scales, and buy a treadmill as other additions to your farcical lifestyle? Hmm? Yeah, thought so.
Besides, he'd know I blocked him. Then what would he think? Well, I know what I would think. My self-obsessed reality proof cocoon would try to convince me that images of me having a whale of a time as a new glamourous singleton would have driven him so demented he'd have to purge them from his newsfeed and go drown himself romantically in a remote but picturesque lake. But is he as egocentic as I am???
'Oh Saucy,' I thought to myself with a proud smile, 'no-one is as egocentric as you are'
True, brain, true. But nonetheless, I wasn't taking that risk.

Anyway, if I can't see him, then he can't see me. Then how on earth, dear reader, am I supposed to subject him to my passive aggressive post-relationship propaganda? We had been broken up all of 32 minutes at this point and it had clearly, he'll be delighted to know, taken its toll on me. Frazzled and demented I was now re-examining my profile from the point of view of a stranger and meticulously editing my tagged pictures. I was like my own PR company. Every now and then I would click across one which was not to my taste and experience what I imagine cardiac arrest feels like. (''HOW DID THIS ONE SLIP THROUGH THE NET??! HOW??? HOW!? DAMN YOU AUNT IMELDA, YOU CALLOUS BITCH, AND YOUR 'FAMILY BBQ '08' PICTURES!!!!! DAMN YOU TO HELL!! *untag untag untag*'') I could imagine him sitting back on some bond villian type chair cackling madly as he zoomed in on the offending image and smugly made it his screensaver. I made a mental note to loose the best part of 2 stone before the weekend, buy something ridiculously fabulous which I would never wear, and make plans to go someplace chic and pretentious armed with around seven cameras and some seriously hardcore spanx. Must also download photoshop.
I was going above and beyond the call of crazy.
Manic, I reviewed my profile once more and scanned it for errors. Since the much-anguished "Saucy is now single <3" post, I had received 12 likes. Gushing, I checked them. 10 were from very close girlfriends. Fantastic. Unless I soon announced my transformation into a very much sought after lesbian, he is going to assume I text them all feverishly and made them like it. One was from an extremely random girl whom I haven't spoken to in years (such is facebook). Toyed with fantasy that she was in fact a lesbian and dangerously infatuated with me. I took a moment to prepare my ''alas, we cannot be....'' speech before noticing the final like was from a MAN. Yes, a male specie. Who had, as far as I knew, a fully functioning penis. Unfortunately for him, he liked it in a statement of solidarity as he is a lovely lovely friend. Now he was in the unfortunate position of either looking like my bitchy GBF or some kind of creep who had been long anticipating my return to the market. Sigh. As I was sulking about my lack of offers from suitors (it had been nearly 40 minutes now, people!) I noticed something else very, very wrong with my profile. Where was my little heart! That little heart which had caused me so much trouble in the first place had now vanished completely from my profile. Where is it??? Had I deleted it by mistake?  I double, triple and quadruple checked my settings. No. It seems you can post all the pictures you like of you vomiting onto your bosses lap at the christmas party, or as many statuses as you like about your disturbing obsession with your imaginary farm, but as soon as you announce 'Oh FACEBOOOOOOK! I'm singlleeeeee!', Facebook says: 'Hmm....we might just hide that little titbit of information, shall we?' I silently cursed Zuckerberg, the Big Brother I never wanted for enhancing my already festering Single Woman Syndrome. I sank into the chair, emotionally exhausted. I just broke up with someone, and I hadn't even been able to focus on it because I was spending so much time making sure it was subtly obvious that I just broke up with someone. I still had not eaten any chocolate, for Christs sake. Holy moley.
'You know what,' I thought, 'feck this.'
His profile was glaring straight at me, defiantly, I thought. It was time to do what I do best: self-indulgence.
'You know what Saucy!' I said to myself.
'What?' I replied, to myself.
'He is totally doing the same thing to your profile right now.'
'TOTALLY!' I thought.
And with that, I grabbed 'Love Actually' even though it could not be further from Christmas, a duvet, a bag of buttons and my least attractive pyjamas and clicked LOG OUT.

The Saucy Cow
xxx