Sleep Apnoea and how to get over it

Instead of going for a run I made another video diary.
In my head I did it to draw attention to a very serious health issue related to being overweight, which is sleep apnoea.
But looking at it I worry that it's all just a bit weird. Up to you guys to decide I guess.
Click here for video diary

Weight loss is the new religion

Pic caption: Waiting for a miracle in the Church Of Weight Loss.



I'm sure it has already been said, by many and more eminent people than me, but something I have felt over the past weeks and months is that my obsession with weight loss and dedication to dieting is easily comparable to following a religion.
For a start the meetings tend to be held in church rooms, (maybe because we're all hoping for a miracle every week) and there is an overarching organisation which runs the services, I mean meetings, according to their own particular doctrine.
Weight Watchers has its own ministers, or leaders as they like to call them, who are sent out to spread the word and convert people.
But of course there are other fat fighters clubs out there, and I wouldn't rule out the possibility of some kind of violence breaking out between Weight Watchers and Slimming World for example. It could be called the Doughnut Wars, or something similar. And there are those weird, break away extremists who practise a dangerous cult of eating nothing but soup and porridge for months on end.
Every week we walk into church, sorry, the meeting room, feeling a mixture of guilt and hope. You know you are going to have to pay for your sins and have been living in a kind of limbo for the past week, punishing yourself for each little transgression. Instead of using rosary beads to pray you scatter a load of dried lentils on the ground to kneel on seeking forgiveness through the pain.
When you get into the meeting you wait in line to walk up to the altar to take communion, or get weighed as they call it, hoping for the high priest to absolve us of our crimes against the God of weight loss. (who would be the patron saint of weight loss, Saint Katona? Saint Idris? - see last blog) But there is no escaping the Truth. God, or the scales as they call them, can see everything and his word is, the word.
Then we confess our sins to our leader, we hope for forgiveness after coming clean about that second helping of lasagne, or the possessed way we attacked the barbecue at the weekend and partook of the devil's brew, or home made cider.
After the rapture of the scales we vow to lead a better life for the next week, and get given the latest scripture (or information leaflet they call it) from on high about how to be a better person.
Then follows the communal gathering to hear the sermon for that day; how to get a bikini body for the summer, or how to drop a dress size, or how to eat healthy food without dying of boredom at the dinner table.
Then we all go home and try to be good for the rest of the day before going back to normal the next day and pigging out in front of Eastenders making a silent promise to yourself to try harder next week, but you know you're going to hell in the end.
And of course you have to pay for it in cash as well as emotional suffering.

Breaking through the 16 stone barrier

Apologies for tardiness on the blog of late, been a busy few days in terms of work, actual work that pays real money, so that was a good thing.
But more importantly than all of that, I had my weigh in on Monday and I'm now down to 16st and 2lbs, which is two and a half off last week.
That is great and it means I'm the lowest weight I have been for perhaps more than two years.
Although my euphoria is tempered by the knowledge that if I hadn't put on two pounds last week I would now be under 16st.
I feel like I have been hovering around the 16st mark for weeks now, trying to break through the barrier. A bit like standing outside a trendy nightclub for hours waiting for the chance to get in and just getting knocked back by the bouncer. Sort of.
Also quite slightly unbelievable that I have lost weight at all after the week I had. Got quite wine-drunk on Thursday night as we had a couple of good friends over for dinner, which also involved lots of lovely food and another pavlova.
Then there was my brother's stag do on Saturday, and I didn't exactly sit chewing on a celery stick all day Sunday either.
So this week I'm determined to shave off that couple of pounds and get down to a svelte 15st 13lbs. I'll hardly recognise myself!

How to lose 11 stone in six months - don't eat

Pic caption: Idris Lewis in his special trousers which come complete with a wife.

This week the Bristol Evening Post ran the almost unbelievable story about a man who lost 11 stone in six months, read it here.

The secret of his success? He stopped eating.

Well, that is definitely one way to approach it. The starvation diet, as practised by prisoners of war, concentration camp victims and the two thirds of the world that lives on a dollar a day.

Idris Lewis, aged 69, of Nailsea in North Somerset managed in six months to do something people like me have been struggling with for about six years, although even I would stop short of 11 stone.

But he had good reason for his extreme approach. The doctor told him he needed to lose the weight before he could have an operation on his heart valve, which he needed to save his life.

I can relate entirely to that of course having had a heart valve replacement operation almost two years ago. That news was enough to make me stop smoking right there and then, so I can see how he got the motivation to live on nothing but mineral water mixed with a protein supplement.

According to the report he was over 26 stone at his heaviest before he started the weight loss, and he is pictured in the now-oversized trousers he used to wear.

Of course there is part of me that is very jealous of his success, but is it really a success or simply a desperate measure to ensure he has the life-saving operation he needs. It can't possibly be seen as a way of life, and definitely not a balanced diet.

As soon as he starts eating anything again he is surely going to put some weight back on. Hopefully not as much as he had done before, especially if he has had a new heart valve fitted, but going from eating nothing, to eating something, even one of those Weight Watchers chocolate biscuit things, has to mean weight gain.

If nothing else it does show that it is possible to lose weight quickly, if you really want to. Whether it's healthy or not is another issue, but if I ever get tired of munching on veg and fish and trying to run for miles and miles, I can always head down the doctor and get him to suggest a course of liquid laxatives. Perhaps.

Essentially I can't make up my mind whether to worship him as a patron saint of people trying to lose weight, or an example of the dangers of extreme dieting. It would be good to see a follow-up a year from now in the Evening Post to see how he is doing and whether the weight loss has been sustainable.

What the hell, pass me the Slim Fast.

Liquid lunch

Strange thing the body. I drank six, possibly seven pints of lager yesterday afternoon, and this morning the shonky scales in the bathroom read 16st 1lbs, which is less than what I weighed last week. I thought that was odd. Especially as I binged on a Burger King on the train back from London late last night.
I spent the day in London yesterday as it was my brother's stag do, so all thoughts of dieting, training or being vaguely healthy were abandoned, which felt pretty good if I'm honest.
In keeping with recent bad behaviour, the usual slimline soda and lime was kicked into touch for many pints of beer, each one slipped down as easy as the last.
Some hours later when I reached Paddington Station I realised I hadn't eaten very much so could probably justify something like a double whopper with cheese, with fries and onion rings, to help soak up the booze. It's been a long time since I dined out on something as disgustingly delicious as that, and I think my body is not used to it any more.
About half an hour after eating it, as I was sat on the train desperately hoping nobody would need to sit next to me, I started to feel a bit sick.
I realised that it was the massive amount of salt I had digested. It felt as if it was clogging my arteries as every second passed. I felt almost dizzy with the rush of the salt coursing through my blood stream, and the sheer effort my internal organs had to make to deal with it.
There was nothing for it but get a cup of coffee and counteract the effects of the salt with a massive sugar boost courtesy of a big bag of Minstrels.
Then I fell asleep, to be woken shortly after leaving Swindon by some MORONS who decided to play some dice game a few seats down and used a cup to shake the dice making more noise than I thought was possible or polite.
Didn't they know there were half drunk people trying to sleep and forget the horror of dealing with public transport.
I moved to a different carriage, but not before making a bit of a huff of having to move and giving them a bit of a look as I passed by them.
I had a good time in London but had completely forgotten what a dump it is in places.
I always loved the tube when I was a student in London, there was something about disappearing underground and popping up a few minutes later into the bright sunlight somewhere completely new and undiscovered. This would often happen as I tried to get home after a session of cheap beer consumption and get off at the wrong stop, or be going in completely the wrong direction.
But yesterday I was, almost, shocked how dirty and dingy and generally depressing the whole thing is.
Maybe it was just the stretch I was on, and I know some parts of it have been overhauled, but the journey from Paddington to Southgate was just miserable.
The lighting seemed really dim and gloomy for a start, and the platforms were really depressing and looked like they haven't been tidied up since the end of WW2. I almost expected to see Pearly kings and queens sheltering from the Luftwaffe. I can only assume none of the judges from the Olympics Committee used the underground when they visited London as you wouldn't want anybody to come and see that.
It's the city equivalent of that patch of damp you don't want visitors in your house to notice.
But it also reminded me how much I enjoy living and working in Bristol, and not having to put up with that every day.

10K non-stop Peevo Express

Pic caption: Idea in my head of how it felt running last night.



Had a great run last night, without really meaning to.
Seems like a week off the training actually did me some good as I ran the furthest I've run for years last night.
And thanks to the thumping tunes and euphoric trance on the iPod it was as if I was transported to a new spiritual plane.
I took on one of my favourite routes for the first time in ages, which involved going across the Downs, through Coombe Dingle (which I always think sounds like a lovely village in a kids' TV show), skirting round the edge of Shirehampton, then dropping down to the Portway and back to Bridge Valley Road. For a better idea, here is the route.
Bridge Valley Road is a really steep hill, I mean really steep, which runs down from Clifton on to the Portway. Normally when I get to the foot of it I end my run and decide to walk up the hill back home.
I have always told myself that it was best to walk up the hill rather than try to run because it acts as a good warm down. Obviously I've never had energy to attempt it.
But last night, with the wind at my back, I managed to run, in the loosest sense of the definition, all the way up it. It was all I could do to ensure my feet were off the ground long enough to call it a run.
I didn't stop there though, I managed to plod all the way up the sharp little hill that takes you back up to the Downs and finished by running back to the start at the water tower.
I couldn't believe it. The distance was 6.7 miles, which is about 10.7 km. But my sense of achievement and bursting pride was slightly tempered by the fact that it took me 1hr 32mins, which is only 4 minutes quicker than the 10k I did back in May which I walked a lot of.
Still, I was very pleased to be able to run for an hour and a half non-stop, even if I'm looking at six hours plus for the marathon next year.
But conquering Bridge Valley Road and the Downs in that way was really amazing.
I remember years ago when I first used to do that run with Marc that we'd talk about maybe being able to run up it if we ever got fit enough. Marc managed to run up it, but I never did attempt it. I'd always seen it as the kind of thing you see at the end of a movie, like Rocky, where this final challenge has evaded our hero all the way through the movie. Maybe he has tried to race somebody up it and fell over and broke his back or something.
Then one day, away from the crowds, he has another go and just keeps on going, finding his strength from who knows where, but with every step his goal gets closer and he finally makes it to the top where turns around and looks over the city and jumps in the air with delight.
I don't mean to go on about it but I never thought I would be able to do it.
I had been listening to a Ministry of Sound mix all the way round which was fairly uplifting in itself, but it definitely helped when I got halfway up the hill and was flagging badly. Insomnia by Faithless came on. I was instantly transported back to the early to mid 1990s and started running to the beat just to keep my feet moving and I'm sure I resembled what dad dancing at a rave would look like.
But it was just what I needed to keep going.
I hadn't intended to run the hill, I just felt like I'd give it a go, and kept telling myself I could stop at the next junction, but it got to such a point that I felt I should really keep going just to complete the challenge.
So when I managed with very small plodding steps to get back up to the Downs, I was back on the flat and the sun was shining.
I had timed the run perfectly as it had been raining all day but the sun came out in the evening.
It was just starting its descent by the time I got back up to the Downs and the most amazing trancey euphoric track came on. With the pain of the hills behind me, running on the flat with this great tune and the beautiful sun shining over the best views in Bristol, I couldn't help feeling a little emotional.
It was like being on a beach in Ibiza after a long weekend having lots of fun.
I staggered back to my car and the Downs was full as usual with lots of lithe young people involved in various sporting activities. They probably clocked me as some unfit bloke who was struggling to walk back from the burger van which sits temptingly at one end of the Downs.
I had a weird idea about inventing some kind of electronic mileometer that I could wear on my back to show everybody that I had in fact run nearly seven miles, doncha know, and so win their respect, which I wasn't really bothered about anyway.
Had to spend a good few minutes drinking water and stretching while trying to get my heart rate down from the clouds.
I think the new heart valve I had inserted a couple of years ago is what gave me the extra energy I needed to complete that run, I reckon I have much better capacity for excercise now. A bit like putting a Formula 1 engine in my old Citroen. Almost.
I made it home, had a most welcome Radox bath and treated myself to low-fat sausages and mash. I certainly slept well last night, and not feeling too bad today for it either, but I'm definitely going to let myself recover before attempting that again this week.

Mondays - they're rubbish

I've been a naughty boy. I've spent the past week deliberately avoiding exercise, eating pretty much whatever I wanted and yesterday it ended in a massive blowout and some afternoon drunkenness, which was a great laugh.
Sadly, I've had to pay for it today as I have put on 2lbs officially at my Weight Watchers weigh in.
But I had a great week.
I'm happy to get back into it again this week and have just been out to buy salmon fillets for our dinner tonight, but I just felt a bit like life wasn't much fun so chose to take a week out of my training/diet schedule, which has probably resulted in untold damage to my fitness.
I'm surprised it wasn't more than 2 lbs to be honest, especially after cooking a Sunday lunch for Marc and Carla who came over. The best part of the meal for me was the home made strawberry pavlova that Amy and I had managed to cobble together somehow without it going horribly wrong.
I realised the rock 'n' roll days were really finally over on Saturday evening as we spent a couple of hours making the meringue and waiting expectantly for it to come out of the oven to see if it had worked. There have of course been many and far greater gastronomic achievements down the years, but we were pretty pleased with ourselves.
During lunch yesterday several bottles of wine were consumed and by the time Marc and Carla left I was definitely a bit squiffy, or else why would I have dragged Amy around the living room singing Fly Me To The Moon as if I was Bobby Darin on stage in Las Vegas in the 1950s or something.
Then we went to the pub which I know doesn't sound like the most adventurous thing to do on a Sunday afternoon but I haven't sat down with a pint for so long I can't honestly remember.
We only stayed for one drink in the end, it was more than enough. But it was a wonderful feeling as the sun was streaming through the stained-glass, something like Lou Reed on the juke box and the first taste of that pint slipped down. No wonder they call it the amber nectar.
Then to just to be really bad we even got another bottle of wine from Threshers on the way home to finish off the evening. But it remained unopened in the end as we both got home and collapsed into a stupor and dozed for several hours in front of the telly. Hardly Bonnie and Clyde, but it was a great weekend.
Now to get back to not having any fun.

Ikea

Here's an easy way to lose some weight, trawl through bloody Ikea on a Friday afternoon, spend 20 minutes gnawing your own arm off at the checkouts while people seem to lose all ability to just ENTER THEIR PIN NUMBER, and then dump all the flat pack crap in your car before remembering you FORGOT A LOAD OF STUFF.
Then walk all the way through again, because they don't let you just nip in to the section you want, oh no, you have to go past all the garish kiddies bedroom stuff and endless cushions and throws to finally get what you need.
Repeat checkout performance and some how manage not to dive into the hotdog bar and demand everything in a bun. Although I might have done that had it not been busier than a football crowd at half time looking for a pie.
So glad to be home. Does modern life need to be so challenging?

Bored of the news

Pic caption: Me in Afghanistan a few years ago, without a helicopter, or much of a clue.


Is it me or has the BBC been running the same news story all week?
It seems every time I switch onto the 6 o'clock news that ridiculous big blue graphic of the swine flu virus is sat there wobbling at me menacingly.
It is the signal for my brain to turn off until something more stimulating appears on the screen.
Don't get me wrong, I realise people are very ill and dying, and I'm not taking anything away from that, but I can't help feeling that the TV news in particular just love to get mentally overexcited about it. I can imagine the news conference 'We need big graphics, all reporters to be reporting live from places where somebody has sneezed to talk about how people haven't sneezed like this for a generation'. It's really like something out of The Day Today, they are literally standing in a news trench.
Then they seem to be running the same story about the row over helicopters for the armed forces in Afghanistan, each day it has a slightly different yet not very different angle. The underlying fact is our troops will never be as well equipped as the Americans because we simply don't spend the same amount on them.
When I had a proper job as a journalist I went to Afghanistan to spend a week with the Royal Marines. At Kandahar it was as if a small town in America had simply been airlifted thousands of miles across the world and plonked in the camp. There really is a Burger King, games arcades, ice hockey pitches and pretty much anything else you'd want in a huge Walmart-esque store.
Our boys were apparently happy shivering under their canvas tents with nothing but the sound of my snoring to entertain them. I'm amazed I didn't get shot, I must have deprived entire brigades of hours of sleep. But they were pretty tough looking chaps, probably had more fearsome foe to worry about.
But the sad fact is all governments since the 1970s have slashed defence budgets, Tory and Labour, and it's not likely to be reversed unless we all start paying more tax. Anybody?
Not much to do with running or weight loss I realise, but this is what happens when I spend too much time watching telly instead of doing stuff.
Haven't managed to actually get to the gym or do any running so far this week, which is pretty bad seeing as it's now Thursday, and very nearly Friday.
I even had an ice cream on Wednesday and lunch which included bread for the first time in weeks. Don't know why I'm rebelling as I would hate to put any weight on, but for some reason I've gone all petulant and sulky about the whole thing and I don't want to play any more.
I'm sure this won't last, I think it's good to have a week off sometimes.
What I really need is some more interesting ideas for healthy eating. I can never get bored of cheese and red meat and bread, they all taste great on their own and indeed combined, although not much good for the waistline. But the whole veg and salad thing is a little tedious after a while. I keep trying to liven it up with olive oil or mayonnaise, but I know that is just wrong and pointless.
What I really need is a cook book which has easy to cook every day meals you want to eat for your tea, not Michelin Star haute cuisine, which are ideal for unemployed layabouts on a tight or ever-dwindling budget, and are really healthy for you. In fact so healthy that the mere act of eating the dishes will make you more healthy and a better person.
I had a banana for breakfast, thinking I could get through to lunch on that, which I did. But then had a bowl of Special K for my lunch, followed by an apple. Big mistake and school boy error. By 3.30 I was starving, well not quite but couldn't concentrate on anything for feeling hungry. So I chopped up a load of fatty French sausage in a load of salad and drowned it in olive oil AND mayo. I consoled myself with the thought that at least I hadn't made a huge sarnie and snaffled a bag of Kettle chips and then had dinner. Tonight we had Chicken Supreme a la Colman's packet sauce, which did the job. We had a packet of Weight Watchers chocolate snack bars and I couldn't help having one for 'pudding'. But just as my hand reached into the cupboard to pick one out, I suddenly found two of them in my hand. Well, you have to have at least two to notice you've eaten anything at all, they're that small.
I feel a bit like I've had a blow out today, but actually compared to a few months ago it's nothing like as bad.
But I promise I will do some exercise tomorrow, and the weekend.

Eats strugles and leaves

I'm a bit worried that I'm having some kind of supernatural negative effect on anybody who dares to join me in any kind of sporting activity.
Back in May I started out running regularly with Marc who was one of the original Fat Bastard Running Club members way back in the day, as they say. We were getting on fine when a recurring back injury put him on the bench. Looks like he's out of the game for a while now.
Since then I have also been playing tennis with a friend called John Jo, who is several years younger than me as well as being significantly fitter and better at tennis.
Despite this I have taken a couple of games of him, oh yes, I've even broken his serve once or twice.
Anyway, we were due to play this morning as normal, (although the heavens have opened and God is taking one big slash right now) but he texted last night to say he's broken a rib! I didn't ask how.
So it is beginning to feel like anybody who joins in the whole fitness fun with me ends up with some kind of serious injury.
I wonder if I will suffer an injury of my own simply on account of being me?
I should have gone running last night but I didn't, shame on me. I am intending to go today, when the rain stops, and I have worked out a five mile plus route that should test me and increase the mileage sufficiently to stay on target for the half marathon. There is less than eight weeks left and I think I need to get in at least one ten mile run before it. I think it could be a struggle and I can't even begin to think about how much I have to do for the marathon itself.
Felt a bit lack lustre about most things yesterday so committed the sin of eating half a loaf of French bread with my home made spaghetti bolognese, which by the way is not spelt bolognaise as I have seen it recently on menus in service station restaurants. It may be a service station but there's still no reason for standards to slip that badly.
Not as funny as a huge banner I saw the other day advertising a fitness class for women called something like Amazon Training Session, with a picture of a fierce warrior princess over the top of the slogan Strength Through Strugle. I took a moment to wonder what Strugle might be and decided it could be a dessert dish of some kind, possibly from somewhere like Switzerland, with a Germanic influence, and felt that eating dishes of it would be a great way to achieve strength. Especially if I could have ice cream with it too.
By far the best example of this was a few years ago when a small Somerset newspaper (not the one I worked for I might add), ran a huge headline on the front page over the top of a picture of Yeovil's war veterans for its Remembrance Day parade issue, which said "Least We Forget". Oh dear.

Monday weigh in - lost again

Pic caption: Chuggers. Sod off and get a proper job.



Now, I don't want to sound like the ungrateful kid at Christmas who pulls a face when he realises he's been given an X-Wing, when what he really wanted was a Millennium Falcon, (apologies for dated Star Wars ref), but I did feel a little deflated at my weigh in today. Although not as deflated as I wanted to be, badoom, tish.
I have lost a pound and a half this week, according to my official Weight Watchers weigh in.
That is good, and my leader pointed out it is the steady rate that is recommended and usually means the weight will stay off.
But my lip curled like Veruca Salt on the verge of a particularly spoilt tantrum as I greeted the news with less enthusiasm than was probably expected. In fact anybody watching might have thought I'd piled on half a stone, such was my 'dropped a fiver picked up a dog turd' look.
The thing is I worked my ass off last week. I did two 1 hour runs, went to the gym twice and played tennis. I guess it was the two cheese burgers I had last Thursday that might have damaged my chances of hitting 16 stone today.
I was really hoping to get to 16 stone as that will be two stone down and a real milestone.
I suppose I could have eaten steamed veg and fish every day for seven days, but that's not really how people live is it?
If I was Sienna Miller or Julia Roberts, which is a bit of a weird idea but go with it, I'd probably be paid to drink nothing but yak's urine and eat emaciated celery on sour dough sticks to lose weight to order. But then they don't have anything else to do. Probably.
I already spend my days alone in my office at home trying to think up ways to earn money, and life would become even more dull if I didn't go out for dinner now and then.
So I guess the visit to Strada on Saturday with Amy and her sister was probably enough to undo some of the good work, but I have to learn to live with that.
I thought I did okay by just having the risotto, but I did also order a side salad of mozzarella cheese on tomatoes and basil. Which would have been okay, probably, if I hadn't also ordered the melted chocolate pudding with ice cream for dessert. But I had a really nice evening and my life is enriched just that little bit more because of it.
I had to keep this in mind as I sloped out the meeting room and headed for a bus stop. I had walked down to the meeting from home, thinking it might shave off the odd pound or two.
In fact I'd virtually danced down Gloucester Road and across the city centre thinking about how I'd probably lost at least 4 lbs, possibly more.
It's a bloody long way back when you don't feel quite so chipper and my legs suddenly felt quite heavy. I'm afraid the well-intentioned charity muggers got pretty short shrift from me today.
I have to say I find these 'chugggers' to be quite a pain in the ass. You know the kind of people; students standing around town centres trying to get you to sign up to whatever charity they've got on their stupid t-shirts that day. Probably pocketing your details anyway.
I know I don't have a particularly good word to say about most of humanity most of the time, but this lot really wind me up.
It's the whole approach, they give you an exaggerated greeting, quite often waving their arm out like an Elizabethan courtier which makes their presence so obvious even I can't pretend not to have seen them and carry on listening to my iPod as I try to hurry past.
Then they open with some saccharine nonsense like 'Hi, are you having a good day today?'! To which I would love to reply 'No f&?* off, what business is it of yours? For your information, no I'm not, and I'm telling you now you wouldn't want me to go through it all because in the few short years you've been poncing around on this earth you'd have no chance of beginning to understand.' But instead I just give a polite 'fine thanks', through a forced indication of mild humour.
And then they'll say something like 'do you have a few minutes to save the children/old people/rain forests/suffering pets' - delete where appropriate. As if the multitude of issues that surround the suffering, injustice or destruction to any one of the groups his charity represents can be solved in a 'few minutes of my time' and my bank account and sort code.
I could go off on how our taxes are being wasted on a plethora of pointless quangos, politicians and layers of unnecessary bureaucracy which could easily solve most of the problems of the world, making the very need for charities redundant, which would surely be better.
Instead I decline politely, make some excuse about needing to get my bus and carry on past.
But then comes the really low blow. Just as you've manoeuvred past the grinning idiot and think your safe you hear the barely-broken voice chirrup from behind 'Have a great day then', as if to say, 'because now a innocent puppy will die because you didn't sign my form'. The guilt thing they try and lay on you is just totally unacceptable. Perhaps if Boy Feckless and his clipboard went and got a proper job instead of wasting my hard-earned taxes on his three years of drinking cider and trying to fondle girls in dark corners of dodgy bars in Bristol, there would be a bit more cash to go around in the first place. Maybe. And in any case, why would I want to buy anything from somebody looking like an extra from Lord Of The Rings with those terrible white-boy dreadlocks and a pair of jeans around his arse that have has as much to do with washing powder as I have the NASA Space Program.
If you hadn't been able to read between the lines, those chuggers do annoy me. I can't even remember what the hell I was talking about in the first place.
So yes, after all that I got home and tried to make sense of the whole weight loss thing.
Fortunately I didn't take my misery for lunch at Burger King and stuck to sushi and salad, which was lovely of course. And I guess it's time to step up the training a little more as well. Here's to next week, bring on the yak's piss.

The magic pants of running are back!

I had a couple of great runs this week which have really inspired me to keep going.
On Tuesday I headed out across the Downs and probably hadn't been running for a few days, but for some reason it felt really good.
I don't mean that it was less painful less like one of Dante's cycles of Hell, but it was actually a good feeling, positive euphoric energy was coursing through me. I thought I might have to test myself for drugs at one point.
I have been to the gym a few times lately and I am lighter than I have been for quite a while, which will have helped.
But I've had the feeling before when your legs just keep going without having to think of every laden step and your body is happy working at that level, like a well-tuned engine cruising along the motorway. Perhaps I shouldn't get too carried away, but it was great because I knew that was the point when I went from somebody struggling to run a few miles and having to stop every few hundred yards to walk and rest, to somebody who can run some distance and is fit enough to keep going. It all clicked back into place.
I ran just over four miles and did it in 55 minutes, which is slow of course, but the key is I didn't stop.
At that rate it will take me about six hours to do the marathon, if I could even keep going at that pace. But I've always said I would be happy to finish with 12.
For the first time in years running was enjoyable again, it felt like everything was working properly. I had some fantastic tunes on my iPod, thanks to a Ministry Of Sound mega-anthem-mix or something like that, so at times it almost felt like I was dancing across the Downs. And most importantly I was wearing my favourite running shorts and Lycra running pants, which is probably not an image anybody wants to entertain.
I haven't even been able to wear the shorts for years so it was good to get into them again, and likewise with the Lycra cycling shorts which I wear under my shorts for comfort and to harness the power of my massive thigh muscles. And for comfort, which is important in my advancing years.
I went out on Friday to have another go at the run just to make sure it wasn't a fluke and managed the same thing again, although I wasn't quite as spritely as on Tuesday, and finished in 56 minutes. But it was good to do it again as I know I've got that distance to build on, and I really need to do that as the half marathon is only weeks away now.
I think if I add a mile a week to my training I should be okay, that's as long as I don't get carried away at my brother's wedding which is the day before, and decided to toast the bride and groom with ten pints of Stella!
I cut the slack a bit this week as a reward for training so hard and on Thursday I had BURGERS for dinner.
I just got a bit sick of a constant diet of fish, veg and salad. I think I've eaten more fish than a performing seal at Sea World lately. I'm in danger of going off it completely.
So I got a couple of the more expensive type of burgers and had them with cheese, on a bun, but there wasn't as much bad stuff in them as I thought there would be. Burger buns have got much more green on the wheel than bread, weirdly, and the burgers didn't have any red on them.
And last night, after quite a big plate of pasta with a carbonara sauce, I actually had two double chocolate chip muffins. I do feel a bit bad about that, but the Weight Watchers toffee flavoured yoghurts I've been trying to kid myself with really don't hit the spot.
But I guess it's back to the salad this weekend, really want to get down to 16st at Monday's weigh in and hit the 2 stone target.

Now I remember what belts are for

Pic caption: Arse posed by model.

I may be about 15 years too old, and I don't wear fancy pants, but it seems I have joined the ranks of the brain dead who walk around with their trousers falling down around their arses.

For the past couple off weeks the jeans I have been wearing have been getting a lot looser and now slip down past the old glutinous maximus when I walk.

I have stopped wearing them in public without a belt for fear of committing some kind of public indecency offence.

But, it's great news of course because it means I can see how much weight I've lost now by how baggy my jeans are. There are also a number of shirts that have gone from extremely tight fit to baggy as well, which is really pleasing.

Let's not get carried away though, the jeans are a 38" waist, so not as if they weren't massive to begin with.

But I'm thinking that perhaps I could walk down Gloucester Road with my M&S pants hanging out the back of my jeans, bowling along with my hoodie up looking all menacing and that, innit.

Here comes a GETTING OLD ALERT but, I've never been able to understand that whole thing about having your jeans around your knees.

I can see that David Beckham looks cool in his Gucci pants with his £1000 jeans slung low round his backside, but some scrotey kid with dirty boxers and cheapo jeans from Asda walking around Broadmead just looks an idiot.

But the whole mechanics of it defies gravity surely. How can they walk without tripping up, and how do the jeans stay at half mast, are they secretly pinned into their pants so they don't fall all the way down.

It's probably not worth that much attention. I guess they don't look any more ridiculous than I did at 14 walking round in jeans with rips all over them, Grolsch beer bottle tops in my trainers' laces, my dad's waistcoat and quite possibly some kind of head gear, a trilby of all things. No wonder my parents were worried.

A blatant attempt at free advertising

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Morbid obesity - now there's something to think about.

Did you know being overweight can be worse for your health than smoking?

It shocked me when I heard that. Not as much as being told I was morbidly obese. That actually stopped me in my tracks.

I went to see a doctor the other day, a great chap called Peter Brindle who is based at the Wellspring Healthy Living Centre in Barton Hill.

I felt it was important to get a professional opinion on what I am doing and to see whether I needed help in the brain department for attempting this thing in the first place.

I came away feeling more determined than before to push on with the project because in no uncertain terms he told me that if I didn't lose weight and get fit, my life would be cut short.

It took a few days to run that around my mind, and even now writing that out it sounds just as stark as when he said it ten days ago.

The fact is I had become officially 'morbidly obese'. That is to say, I was so overweight that all the health problems and illnesses that causes could kill me eventually. And in fact it is more dangerous at that level of obesity than smoking. So I'm glad at least I gave up the fags a few years ago.

Dr Brindle took all my measurements, blood pressure, fat index etc, and obviously it was no surprise to learn I was overweight.

But what did surprise me was that my BMI was 39. The morbidly obese scale starts at 40. So bearing in mind I have been on a diet for two months and had lost a stone before I saw the doctor, my BMI would have been way over 40 for a while before that.

In fact last year was my heaviest when I weighed in at 18st 11lbs. Knocking on the door of 19 stone is quite something, almost impressive, but had I continued the way I was living it is likely I would have developed diabetes, been more at risk of heart disease and cancer, to say nothing of the damage it does to your mental health.

I realise none of this is particularly cheery or my usual 'wry take on the ups and downs of weight loss', but I think it's important for people who may be in a similar situation to understand that being really overweight isn't just a problem on a cosmetic level, but is a serious threat to your health.

I had accepted being obese, (when did we start using that term all the time anyway) and even made light (excuse the pun) of it and tried turning it into something to be proud of in a perverse way.

The idea of being morbidly obese is something else entirely.

You think of the 50 Stone Man or something almost inhuman and grotesque when you use that term. But the reality is that being so dangerously overweight that it becomes a life-threatening illness, is just a year of living badly away.

Needless to say I've been eating Special K, tons of veg and salad and low fat soups ever since. Not all at once of course otherwise it would be in danger of becoming an interesting meal.

Monday's Weigh In

Clearly a diet consisting mainly of meat, veg and salad is paying off as I lost another two and a half pounds this week.
I am now down to 16st 4lbs, which is a total of 24 lbs lost since May 3. Just four lbs away from hitting two stone, with just another six to go after that.
I'm very pleased with that considering I went to a wedding and a barbecue at the weekend.
I think staying away from booze and cutting out bread has been the key to success so far.
After not eating bread for a few weeks its weird how much I enjoyed a couple of sarnies at the wedding on Saturday.
When I walk into garages now I find myself salivating at that row of pre-packed processed crap between two slices of bread which have probably passed through a dozen pairs of hands belonging to people who enjoy a casual relationship with hygiene.
The sandwiches sit there on the top shelf, like food porn, tempting my with their promise of illicit delights on the packaging.
Images of half-dressed salad sit alongside exposed thighs of chicken, with a bit of mayo for a touch of sauciness.
I gotta stop obsessing about this stuff, it's just getting weird.

Two miles and running

Pic caption: Haile Gebrselassie, legendary marathon runner. I'm not quite there yet.

A bit of a breakthrough last night as I managed to run two miles around the Downs without stopping.
I realise on the world stage of running that probably wouldn't register alongside the achievements of the likes of Paula Radcliffe or Haile Gabreselassie but for me it meant a lot.
It was of course pretty hot and sticky all day so I left it a bit later in the evening and once I started going I felt quite comfortable and just kept going.
I think the biggest thing is that I found my iPod after mislaying it in the bottomless pit of the glove box in my car (does anybody keep gloves in their glove box), and stuck some very essential tunes on it.
I have been exercising all week as well so I think that helped.
Don't know how long it took, a fair while I suspect. I do worry that I'm probably about three months behind schedule in my training though. The Bristol half marathon is about ten weeks away, maybe just less, and I am a long way from ready for that.
Maybe I can add a mile a week to my running in the lead up and hopefully get myself round.
I came home and grilled a lovely piece of salmon and had that with some veg and a dollop of Hollandaise sauce. For afters I tucked into a bowl of strawberries with Greek yogurt.
Hmmm. Who needs chocolate and stuff like that?

Food and exercise diary, Tuesday June 30.

Haven't done one of these food diaries for a while because I was getting bored of it to be honest, but I think things have changed quite radically since I did the first ones back in May, so I thought it would be useful to update.
So, for breakfast I had a bowl of 'high fruit' muesli. I am a bit suspicious of muesli, not sure I trust its holier-than-thou facade, when underneath lurks a lot of sugar. But it was one of Sainsbury's Be Good To Yourself range. Although I did have a laugh at the health wheel thing which shows you what's in it, as it was all green except for the sugars part, which was into the amber. But the calories etc were based on a 50g serving. So I weighed out 50g, and it's about as much as you can get into an egg cup. So I probably had about 200g in my bowl.
For lunch I got suckered into another ridiculous Sainsbury's marketing ploy by buying a carton of gazpacho soup, which is 'full of flavour and perfect served ice cold for the summer'. After my sushi and salad I poured out the tomato and vegetable gazpacho which had been chilling nicely in the freezer.
Now I do like gazpacho and made fresh it is delicious, but from a carton off a supermarket shelf I soon realised that really I was eating cold soup.
There was no way round it, I was sitting there thinking how wonderfully healthy and metropolitan I was being dining on my gazpacho, when really I was at the same level as a greasy haired student tucking into an uncooked tin of baked beans.
This was followed by a banana.
Had a good session in the gym later. I had been avoiding it a bit because I thought it would be so hot and sticky, which it was. But avoiding it was not a good thing either so I did about 45 minutes cardio vascular, including ten boring minutes on the bikes.
Then I did about 20 minutes on the weights. The weights was inhabited by more macho tossers than normal for some reason. I like my gym because you don't get many tossers who like to strut around like they think they've just walked off Venice beach, but it was full of them today.
For dinner I stir fried a couple of chicken breasts with onions, bean sprouts and a couple of peppers on a bed of noodles. Probably did a bit too much for one person but I was hungry after my work out.
And see, not a chocolate muffin in sight.