I’m Hazel aka The Dizzy Dieter. I’m forty-something and live with my partner Kieran and our crazy kitty Luna, who likes to “supervise” in the kitchen. This is my blog to share my recipes and posts related to food and cooking.
I have had an on-off battle with my weight for about 10 years now, since being diagnosed with Meniere’s Disease. When I was younger, I was in restaurant work living on coffee, cigarettes and junk food – but I was slim. After all, when you work 12-14 hours a day, run around like a mad thing and don’t really eat the food around you because you are sick of the sight of it, it’s pretty easy to stay skinny!
Unfortunately, when I gave up restaurant work and went into an office, all that changed. Sitting at a desk all day is not a good way to stay skinny and the pounds begin to pile on, even when trying to eat healthily. I had also been diagnosed with Meniere’s Disease, a rare inner ear condition that causes vertigo attacks, general dizziness and poor balance and tinnitus among other delightful symptoms. Long story short, my time at work was spent sitting at a desk all day and it became hard to exercise in my free time.
Sadly the pounds did pile on and over the last 10 years, I have divided my time between struggling to shed them again and eating cake because I was miserable. Not a healthy balance really but the human psyche is a funny thing.
About 5 years ago, my Meniere’s progressed to the point where it became impossible for me to work. I was off sick for about half of each year and that’s not something employers are too keen on! I had one of those “dark” times that most of us have at some point in our lives – feeling pretty low in terms of self-worth and, quite frankly, bored with being at home doing nothing all the time. My wonderful partner (who knows me better than anyone in the world) and I were having a conversation about cooking which migrated to food and recipe blogs. This conversation resulted in Kieran suggesting that I start a blog of my own where I could share recipes and posts. I was somewhat dubious, not knowing anything about websites or internet-type stuff but nonetheless intrigued.
After some research, I found that actually, you don’t need any coding knowledge as there are wonderful platforms like WordPress that do most of it for you. All you really need is the ability to create a recipe or post, write a useful or entertaining article to go with it and make it look nice with a theme and some images or videos.
And so, the Dizzy Dieter was born. The site has been through an ill-advised rebrand (that seemed like a good idea at the time). I’ve also learned a lot in the 3 years that the Dizzy Dieter has been live (not least of which is the necessity of backing everything up – don’t even ask!) but this site has become my hobby, passion and job, all rolled into one and I have so much love and admiration for what I’ve created here.
The aforementioned rebrand was a misguided attempt to steer away from the “Dieter” part of the name. The site briefly became “Dizzy Delights” as I felt that the majority of recipes that I was sharing were not low-fat or diet recipes, which was kind of at odds with the original name. After all, you’d be a bit confused if you were looking at a site where the blogger was supposedly constantly preoccupied with losing weight, and then went to their recipe index to find that the biggest categories were cakes, snacks and pasta loaded with double cream and oodles of cheese!
This really is a reflection of me as a person, I try to diet, and I try to eat healthily but Meniere’s Disease is a horrible condition that does take its toll on your mental health. This means that sometimes you end up with a “Why me?” day where all you want is a gigantic bowl of pasta smothered in some gooey cheesy sauce followed by some rich chocolate cake slathered with a bitter yet sweet sumptuous icing… Oh sorry, I got sidetracked there! Anyway, it’s comfort-eating, pure and simple, so what are you going to do?
And that’s why the rebrand didn’t stick. My site and I are “the Dizzy Dieter”. Sometimes we will eat cake and sometimes we will diet (although I will strive to get better at the latter and do less of the former!) I’m also working on my portion sizes so I can bake my cake and eat it!
So, after all that, welcome! I just wanted to give you a better idea of who I am and what my site is before you dive in. For visitors who may be in a similar boat to me, I have a recipe accessibility feature. This feature appears on every recipe, at the bottom of the post right before the recipe card and will tell you if the recipe requires the use of noisy kitchen equipment (food processors, blenders etc), if the recipe requires you to be standing up or in the kitchen for a long time. I have added these things because they are the things I find difficult with my ears, balance and general capability. If you do have similar problems and can think of anything that you would like to see added as an indicator for a recipe, please let me know in the comments of any recipe or by using the Contact Me form and I’ll be happy to look at adding it in!
Enjoy! DDx
** If you have a vestibular condition, have a loved one who does or are just interested in finding out more, please click here to visit the Meniere’s Society website. They are a wonderful charitable society providing support to people like me who have a vestibular condition as well as information that they can share with their families, employers etc. They do not receive any government funding and rely entirely on donations, memberships, fundraising activities and merchandise sales for income.**