Green Tea v Vedett

One by one, I started knocking bad dietary habits on the head in the last few months. Some have been more successful than others. I haven't touched a fizzy drink and could count on one hand the number of glasses of anything else sugary I have had. The once a week pizza regime is still firmly in place and sometimes I don't even register that in a week.

However, as I wake from the winter hibernation, the challenges increase. I was supposed to stop visiting the sweet machine at work and in fairness, with a few exceptions, I haven't done too bad. However, to coincided with this, the coffee shop at work starting stocking 'Kate's Cakes'. Their slogan 'delicious hand made cakes' is truly true, especially in the case of the chocolate chip brownie. Worse still, they give you a free mug once you accumulate four purchases. It's a kind of loyalty programme. I'm very loyal so now have ample supply. It reminds me of the potato head men that I religiously collected out of McDonalds Happy Meals when I lived in the States.

Anyway, Vedett is providing me many problems. I suppose it's not the Vedett itself, but drinking in general. The hangover forces you to drop your defences. It makes you want to let the good habits dip as your body seeks comfort, usually in the form of a sugar rush. It's tough and can even last a couple of days. That puts in jeopardy the rule about not buying biscuits in the evening on week nights. Again, this has been exasperated by my discovery of a new corner shop around the corner that stocks New Yorkers. Most of you won't be familiar with them but mention them in front of Johnny Phelan and watch his face light up. At €1.20, they are the best value chocolate chip cookie in town.

Accepting I am indeed flawed and incapable of a total overhaul, I needed a counter balance. It has come in the form of Green Tea. I'd been discussing it's benefits as a kind of detox drink for sometime with Bolster. I even bought a box in Delhaize but left it sitting in the cupboard for months. Then I read something about how if you drink a cup in the morning that it kick-starts your metabolism and can boost it by up to 15%. So now I drink it, every morning, without interruption. I hate tea and had only drank two clubs prior to the intervention of the green variety. No milk, no sugar - bland. However, it is to me what egg yokes were to Rocky.

I even actively encourage my colleague Nick to drink it. He's a coffee man but maybe I'll make him my project. Another colleague, Christelle is a French lady who I discovered is quite an expert on the subject. We had a detailed conversation about the different varieties of green tea last week and I was forced to ample a particularly aromatic version. She even game me a packet; Genmaicha. I'm not sure what it's all about as the text on the packet is in Japanese and French. Furthermore, it's not in tea bags. Instead it's just a packet of tea leaves. So I need one of those metal contraptions that isolate the leaves in the water. Tricky.

Stevie G also swears by it. He returned from Japan recently and is now a regular drinker. He says they drink it before every meal. In fact, it's credited with keeping Japanese people looking so young and lean and keeping their skin well. Surely it's a no brainer in that case!

On we go. I'm determined to knock the biscuits on their head and fortunately Kate's Cakes are currently sold out. The next ten days will be a minefield; Paddys Day Thursday, Autoworld Saturday and Spain the following weekend. The battle continues.