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.