Writer's Block

Starting Weight : 25 stone, 13 pounds. Previous Weight : 24 stone 12.3 pounds. New Weight : 24 stone. 11 pounds. This Week's Loss : 1.3 pounds Total Weight Loss : 1 stone, 2 pounds. Oh dear. I had planned to lose half a stone every week for the entire year, thus dropping my entire body weight and presumably existing thereafter as some form of gas. But not to be. Less flippantly, I had expected something like this after my heavy night's drinking and a number of not particularly great food choices during the course of the week, pizza and burgers among them. I've also snacked too much between meals and my Pepsi Max consumption is creeping up again. It's something I'm going to have to work harder on but I'm going to take the attitude that any loss is a good loss. Having been over 25 stone for at least a year, it also feels good to finally be 24 stone something. I don't want to be 25 stone plus ever again. This blog has gone up late again because I...

Starting Weight : 25 stone, 13 pounds. Previous Weight : 25 stone, 5.3 pounds. New Weight : 24 stone. 12.3 pounds. This Week's Loss : 7 pounds. Total Weight Loss : 1 stone, 0.7 pounds. Again, surprised and delighted with that. I didn't think I had a particularly great week food wise (pizza, sandwiches, macaroni cheese, too much Pepsi) but obviously it hasn't made too much of a dent. I had a couple of days off and did 34,000 steps across those two days which may have helped.  As of Monday 20th January I am slightly trepidatious about the forthcoming weigh in this Saturday, as I took on rather a lot of booze calories on Saturday and made some poor eating decisions in a drunken haze. But all I can do is make sure I have a good week between now and then. Fortunately, I am a very infrequent drinker (I may touch on this in a future blog) and last Saturday does not represent the norm. This sounds a bit like I'm preempting. I don't want to make it sound like lo...

I went to see my friend Tom Mayhew perform his show "I, Tom Mayhew" at the Soho Theatre last week. I have known Tom a long time and I've done gigs with him a few times, sharing with him the highs and lows of being a stand-up comedian. I always felt that Tom was a talented act and he has combined that with an impressive work ethic, gigging frequently and extensively around the country. For the uninitiated, Soho Theatre is the cool place to watch stand-up and sketch comedy in London. My friend Joanna used to work there and got me free tickets for lots of shows. I've still not quite forgiven her for the selfish act of moving on with her career. It's pretty much in the centre of the city, has three great performance spaces and has basically hosted anyone who's anyone in stand-up in the past twenty years. I think I speak for a lot of people who have done comedy when I say that we all aspire to do our own hour long shows there. To play there is a great achievement...

In the immortal words of the Barenaked Ladies, 'it's been one week'. Time for the first weigh in. Starting Weight : 25 stone, 13 pounds. Previous Weight : 25 stone, 13 pounds. New Weight : 25 stone. 5.3 pounds. This Week's Loss : 7.7 pounds. Total Weight Loss : 7.7 pounds. I am a natural sceptic and my first reaction this morning was that this figure cannot possibly be correct. But since I have no other reason to believe otherwise, I'll leave those thoughts there for now. This has exceeded my wildest expectations. I thought I'd had a good but not flawless week on the dietary front. I'm trying to establish a routine during the week. Porridge (or porridge equivalent) in the morning with a coffee for breakfast, rice or pasta with vegetables for lunch, chicken/salmon/something of that ilk with vegetables for dinner. With as little snacking as possible in the interim although I've occasionally been having chicken satay and sushi, which stri...

Happy New Year. It's around this time pretty much every year that I consider writing a blog again, so here I am. In 2015 and 2017 I attempted to write a blog every day, a ludicrous endeavour that was doomed to failure. If you are so inclined, you can look back through my efforts to churn out as much content as possible that had little to no value. What can I say, I'm a product of the age. This time around I'm aiming to post a blog a week that will hopefully be a bit more long form than my previous ones. They will also not all be as serious as this one. I am fat. More accurately than that, I am obese. More accurately than that, I am morbidly obese. I have been overweight for as long as I can remember and food has been my companion for all of that time. I'm probably no different to a lot of people with weight problems. I eat when I'm happy, I eat when I'm sad, I eat as a general coping mechanism. I have normalised overeating to a ridiculous and frankly troubling...