Why I am Fat

I promise this is the last time I'll blog about weight related stuff for a bit, but my eye was caught by This is Why You're Fat which is all wrong, but right in a terrible way. It's just pictures of terrifying American food with descriptions that boggle the imagination ie:

The Garbage Plate
A combination of either cheeseburger, hamburger, Italian sausages, steak, chicken, white or red hots, a grilled cheese sandwich, fried fish, or eggs, served on top of one or two of the following: home fries, fries, beans, and mac salad. The plate is adorned with optional mustard, onions or hot sauce.

I will move on now.

The Mountain

I'm a blur of ache after an hour with A in the gym. It seems I have a stone to lose and he is demanding to see what I eat. I don't eat badly (it seems to me) but I'm strongly aware of giving in to fish and chips once in a while so I am stalling him.

Just like the last time several phrases of 'A's are haunting me.

"I am very worried about this (indicating the roll of fat around my belly); this is actually dangerous."

"The next ten minutes will seem like an hour" (adjusting the gradient and speed of the running treadmill).

"So you go swimming. Do you actually take it seriously?"

"If you don't stretch after you go running your muscles will contract and you'll end up walking around like an old man."

It seems I have a mountain to climb, but I'm serious about this (after the 'dangerous' remark I'm actually a bit frightened) so I have booked ten sessions. In the meantime I take great heart from an old friend who has conquered her own mountain in fine style, and writes bravely about it here.

Stuff In My Head

My head is full of banks and the image of four fantastically wealthy men lined up at a select committee hearing like naughty schoolboys in detention, and a figure heard in my headphones as I ran around the park this lunchtime: the average earning of bank employees - the ones out in the branches - is between 14 and 16k a year.

To take my mind off these crazy times I'm hitting the gym like never before but my newly hired personal trainer seems to be avoiding me. He did all the tests on me last Friday (at 7am!!) but now he's going off the idea. Perhaps he just doesn't like the size of the challenge. He says he could conceivably meet me this coming Thursday. But he hasn't texted me to confirm. So for motivation I have had to turn to the tweets of Chris Moyles who is trying to train for a celebrity trip to Kilimanjaro. They arrive in my twitter feed around three times a day (yes I have finally grasped Twitter). Disturbingly he seems to be training harder than I am. I cannot cannot cannot be more unfit than Chris Moyles, I will not allow it.

One of the Problems...

...with trying to lose weight is - obviously - the number of distractions that living a life involving anything other than sitting locked in your room offers. For me having friends seem to equate to gross calorific intake, as last night when we went out with Ellen and Will to Bar de Marche. BDM is a sort of unofficial French embassy and your monkey of a correspondent surrendered cheesily to:

- Pate, with toast.

- Bread - with butter

- Steak. With frites.

- Creme Brulee, which Ellen ordered but then decided she didn't want.

For crying out loud I now eat other peoples left overs!

"You Won't Like This"

For some time my lack of resemblance to Daniel Craig and my marked similarity to a fat dwarf has been noted, joked about but tolerated by my friends. Being squat and overweight hasn't really held me back, but at 44 you have to decide what the future is going to be about. Do you 'Rage Rage Against the Dying of the Light'and murder yourself in the gym every day, or do you slip into comfy twee lardiness (and an early death?)

Reader, I have put aside fears over the usefulness of my pension arrangements and chosen the former path. I have lost five pounds since Christmas, and to help me lose the rest of my squalid bulk I went to the gym on Tuesday evening to meet my personal trainer. We will call him A. He wasn't what I expected.

I was expecting a sort of bouncy motivational bunny/human cross who was going to inspire me to cardiovascular heights. Instead A looked at my portly form with an unusual degree of scepticism. He made it clear he'd help me. But he thought I wouldn't last.

Several sentences of his haunt me two days later.

"You're not going to enjoy this."

"If you give me bollocks during a session I will tell you. I don't tolerate bollocks."

"Do you drink coffee?" (Yes. I LOVE coffee.) Sigh. "Oh dear"

"See this?" indicating a two litre bottle of water "Drink one of these a day." (I HATE water unadulterated by tasty toxins.)

For all his doomsaying A is an early riser. I have to meet him at 0700 Friday!

All that Jazz

A gloriously sunny Friday afternoon so, it was down to the Photographers Gallery near Piccadilly with Rachel for a look at a fabulous set of pictures showcasing Soho in the fifties and early sixties. A gloriously sordid set of prints (which you can get a taste of on the gallery's website) showcasing the musicians, strippers and punters from a fabulous looking era in the capital's history. Plainly a massive raucous party was in progress, held under the nose of an austere and disapproving post-war Britain. We need a party like that now. Perhaps there is one, but I have not been invited.

I went home after a good lunch and drank three glasses of red wine, so effectively jettisoning the prgress I'd been making with my diet. Ah well, onwards and upwards.

Strictly Decompressing

Spent today adjusting to the fact that sunshine and a beach won't be featuring in my life for the forseeable future. Fortunately there are compensations:

- Strictly Come Dancing has started , and Enid (our superb cat sitter) recorded the episodes we missed. I was going to review it but TV Dinners does it so much better, so rendering my effort pointless.

- Our cats. I kind of missed the little tykes. There was a cat at our hotel called Banjuk but he scratched me.

- Radio. Bunged on the Today programme on the way home from the airport and heard one of Norman 'Storming' Smith's politics two ways. These go out on the show most mornings at around 0630, and if you like politics they're about the best three minutes you can spend. This one summarised the Brown/Milliband position with great clarity and I felt bang up to date.

But I have some weight to lose. 13 stone 1 pound is too heavy for me, so it's no drinking for the forseeable and it's back to running and weight watchers points tomorrow. There can be no sin without retribution.