We finally managed to get a nice day when neither of us was working (I thought it was illegal to have a Bank Holiday when it wasn’t pouring with rain, but maybe that is only for Scottish ones) so we climbed Beinn Bheula again as the weather was not great the first time we did it. The pictures are all by R because for some reason none of mine took. I have to say that my love affair with Windows Phone is now finally approaching its end. If all the rumours are true and there is really a waterproof iPhone coming out I’m seriously contemplating buying one – the combination of having a phone which you can’t take out in the rain and which doesn’t have your key app (View Ranger) available for it is a bit useless.

Anyway, did no harm and I would tentatively recommend it to others.

I’m in two minds about it at the moment. Firstly, I actually feel pretty good, which I suppose is hardly surprising as I have been eating a super healthy diet with no coffee, alcohol, red meat etc and taking loads of exercise. Secondly, I’m not really sure that I subscribe to some of the more weird and wonderful rules you are supposed to stick to. I mean – why no tomatoes, or bananas (I love bananas)? And why the insistence that it is better to drink juiced fruit and veg rather eating them whole? I was always under the impression that whole was better as more fibre.

Anyway – I have pretty much kept to it, apart from I have to have my ‘solid’ meal of the day in the evening to avoid ending up eating my duvet during the night.

I’ve come up with a meal which obeys the rules and has been my staple (rather than some of the awful sounding recipes in the Clean book). Make a salad with brown rice, chopped celery, chopped cucumber, grated carrot, pine nuts, raisins, peas and sweetcorn (frozen, cooked and chilled). Dress with balsamic vinegar. Serve salad with a green vegetable and a portion of protein (grilled salmon, chicken, sea bass etc.) Tasty and nutritious – but I have to say would be better with tomatoes in the salad….

The drink in the picture is actually very nice. Puree a punnet of raspberries and pass through a sieve to remove the seeds. Add powdered Stevia leaf (natural sweetener) to taste. Add almond milk (vegan) to the puree and blend with a hand blender until frothy. Healthy and low calorie too.

Basically for three weeks you eat a detox diet involving no alcohol, caffeine, gluten, eggs or dairy. You have two liquid meals a day (healthy smoothies not beer!) and one solid meal.

I am always a bit sceptical about diet books in general and ones written by Americans in particular, as I have always found the best way to lose weight could be summed up as ‘eat less, move more’ – but this one has very good reviews and sounds generally plausible. We will see how I get on.