What would Bertie say?

The low cholesterol diet has not got off to a good start. I'm not particularly proud of how I took the news at the doctor's, to begin with. My doctor is Alexander McCall Smith's daughter and I keep thinking about how he would portray a middle aged, middle class woman throwing a massive tantrum because she's been told not to eat cheese.

Her recommendation was to replace butter and Greek yoghurt with Benecol products. One look at the ingredients list for the yoghurt was enough to shelve that idea - 4 different types of sugar and sucralose (which I can't tolerate even in tiny doses). There is no unsweetened version - the 'light' one just increases the amount of sweetener. How is that supposed to be healthy? I did try the spread but the 'buttery' version bears no relationship to butter - it's basically marge. Again - how is that good for you?

Before I get properly started on this low fat bollocks I'd like to lose a bit of weight (which means Atkins, which means high fat). Once I shift to a high carb low fat diet, I'll blow up like a barrage balloon. But I'm travelling quite a lot at present which also makes controlling my diet pretty difficult. I'm supposed to go back to the doctor in April for a follow up blood test to see how I've managed to reduce the cholesterol but I don't see that happening.

The only supposedly positive change I've made is to 'introduce' linseed into my diet on the suggestion of the local healthfood store. But on reflection, I already eat Vogel linseed bread (it's the only non-white bread I've found to date that doesn't worsen my IBS) and that hasn't helped clearly. Or did, given that Tesco recently seems to be using its unparalled customer data analysing powers to stop stocking anything I buy on a regular basis.

Given I'm single with no family and expect to get Alzheimers at some point over the next 20 years, frankly keeling over with a massive heart attack while wallowing in a bowl of foie gras doesn't sound that unappealing really.