On a diet, and I feel like biting someone's head off

TO any regular readers who think I’ve been sounding stroppier than usual just lately, I’ve got this to say: “How true.”
And any of them who have tried the 5:2 diet will know why, as soon as they read these words.
I’m sitting here with a rumbling stomach that feels like it’s eating itself, having skipped breakfast to save my precious 500-calorie allowance so that I can ‘enjoy’ something vaguely resembling a normal lunch: a small tin of slimmers’ soup. No bread. Nothing else.
That’ll leave me (after numerous cups of tea to fend off the hunger pangs) with 350 calories to see me through till bedtime.
I’ll heat up a ready-made slimming meal for supper because I can’t be bothered to cook. If I’m only allowed a toddler-size portion, it makes me feel like throwing a toddler-size tantrum.
And that’ll be it - an early night, because if I go to sleep I’ll stop thinking about food.
It should help that my husband has gamely agreed to diet along with me, but I just get resentful when he tucks into a slice of whatever constitutes the extra 100 daily calories permitted to a bloke.
“Is it worth the trouble?” I hear you asking.
Well, I’ve lost half a stone but it’s taken six weeks and I seem to have hit a plateau, while my husband is the one being asked by friends: “Have you lost weight?”
I suppose it’s karma - what goes around comes around.
In my younger days I was one of those infuriating people who eat like a horse and remain an enviable 36-24-36 (don’t ask me what that is in centimetres, I’m completely lacking in intellectual curiosity where numbers are concerned and I haven’t ever quite decimalised my body).
And boy was I smug. But when I hit those hormonal mid-forties and quit smoking, the pounds crept on. It was probably very silly of me to be surprised.
At 50, I recall a brief flirtation with one of those slimming clubs in a church hall where you all get weighed in every week and given a bracing pep talk, with a raffle for a box of fruit.
But I missed three weeks (life got in the way) and left in a huff when I was expected to pay for them anyway.
And after that I munched on regardless, telling myself that wearing long, loose tops over long, loose skirts was actually quite a good look in a hippyish sort of way.
Maybe I fooled some of the people some of the time.
I can’t pinpoint the moment when I realised I couldn’t kid myself any more. It was probably in a Marks & Spencer’s changing room, where the ghastly fluorescent lighting would make even Kate Moss look like a wobbly white pudding. Not the way to sell clothing, if you ask me.
Anyway, I’ve set myself a target and I do intend to stick to it. Another stone to go.
I promise I will try to be cheery in the meantime and to see the best in everyone. As long as they don’t annoy me.