I Am A Cretin

There are a million reasons why people get fat, or can’t lose weight, or don’t want to lose weight, either consciously or sub-consciously. There are also a million different ways to motivate people who are losing weight and whilst Katy, Wendy, Anna and I all broadly have the same reasons for doing it, what motivates us will be very different. (As will the way we cope with for e.g. random scone attacks, sudden curries, The Effect Of Ladyhormones, not losing weight for a week when you are doing all the right things, etc.)

Regular readers of this blog will be aware that I am often the first to pipe up with ‘helpful advice’ for my fellow Porketeers, ranging from “shut the fuck up, stop your whining and just get on with it“, to “love yourself, yeah?”, via “It’s really simple! Just eat less and move around more!”, with many other interjections in between.

None of this, however, detracts from the point, which is that I have not:

1. Lost one pound since we started this blog;

2. Managed to combine going to work with doing exercise;

3. Listened to my own advice.

I found this post on my other blog last night.I was much more amusing back then; much more amusing than, in fact, I’ve been for about 530 days. But that is another story all together, and I shall not (for once) digress.

I wrote it on 18th July 2006. After having a quick lie down and a suck at the gin, I got out my scientific calculator and did some maths. A bit of really clever arithmetic told me that, had I stuck to my very reasonable and effective regime (and assuming I had lost weight the proper rate of approximately 7lbs a month), I could have lost 9 stone since I wrote that post, and that’s about five stone more than I need to lose.

What a fuck-awful waste of time. People being kind or encouraging makes no difference, and sympathy makes me want to vomit. I have never really listened to anyone else’s advice (unless I ask for it), and I hate being told what to do, or being told I “must” or “should” do anything; but the one thing that will get me off my fat arse (in almost any circumstance) is the prospect of looking stupid.

Yes. It is true. I have been stupid. I am a cretin. I am a fool to myself. I am an idiot. I have wasted time, and potential for cartwheels, riding horses at dangerous speeds, and not looking like a mentalist in jeans.

As of this very minute right now, when I am faced with an open biscuit tin, I shall shout ‘YOU ARE A CRETIN!’ and withdraw my hand sharply. If I decide that I cannot be arsed to either go to the gym or ride upon the noble crosstrainer that the best of all men obtained and assembled for me*, I shall remind myself of how miserable I feel if I do not, and shout ‘FOOL!’ in the mirror.  And if hot cheese is in the offing, I shall form its delicious fatty-fatness into the word “I-D-I-O-T”.

Yes. It is time. I must stop being an idiot and get my fat arse in gear.

* It is the least I can do. I have non-stop quiet support, 24 hours a day, in all weathers, hairy crack or not. I have not properly appreciated it until now.

SPECIAL VALENTINE EDITION: DIET ‘N’ EXERCISE TRUE AND FALSE

If you love someone, set them free. That is what they say - and by ‘they’ I do not mean that simpering fool, Sting.

And so, on this Valentine’s Day I intend to set you, our loyal and adoring readers, free. Free from self-delusion, self-justification and self-deception; free from Cabbage Soup Diets, mal-functioning glands and generously-proportioned bones; free from half-science involving metabolic rates and sausages, and free from the endless excuses that you make to yourself that, if said out loud to a passing and moderately intelligent stranger, would cause them to skittle alarmedly to the side, clutching their faces.

Yes. It is ‘diet and exercise true and false’, in which I examine and, with genuine scientifically sound analytic skills learnt whilst reading English and Related Literatures and the University of York, ‘debunk’ some popular diet myths. You will really love it!

Food Consumed When Travelling Contains No Calories

Long car journeys are often more amusing when punctuated by a visit to the petrol station, resulting in for e.g. packets of Hula-Hoops, Pork Farms Pork Pies, packets of Maltesers, all-in-one-breakfast sandwiches and entire packets of cheese, gnawed free-style whilst going at 60mph in the middle lane of the A40.

Similarly, the tedium of a trans-Atlantic flight is often broken only by chewing confusedly on an unidentifiable pasty/cake hybrid stuffed with curried chicken; and no aeroport experience is complete without a disconsolate visit to Prêt À Manger.

In days of yore, it was impossible to spend any proper amount of time on an InterCity 125 without a microwaved bacon sandwich; nowadays, of course, one simply passes by the Marks and Spencer Simply Food and purchases a prawn mayonnaise sandwich and ‘low fat’ crisps, to be chewed at whilst eyeing the family bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk, free with every copy of OK!.

All of this is consumed freely, in the mistaken belief that because you are (in theory) in motion, the calories do not exist.

Verdict: FALSE

The Dairy Book Of Home Cookery Diet (in association with the Milk Marketing Board of England and Wales)

In the olden days, before the internet, mobile telephones and Kerry Katona, there existed a thing called a ‘milkman’.

He drove about the place in a ‘milkfloat’ which was (and may well still be) an open-sided shop that travelled at no more than 5mph. From the ‘milkfloat’ the ‘milkman’ (with whom you would have arranged an account via, for example, Unigate), would deliver food and drink to your very doorstep, including a range of dairy items (inc. milk, cream, eggs etc), fruit juice (orange), bread (Mother’s Pride white), “Watch Out, There’s a Humphrey About” stickers and, in later years (as fashions changed and people became less sturdy) bottled water.

He also delivered books or, more precisely, the splendid tome you see here: The Dairy Book of Home Cookery, by Sonia Allison (Milk Marketing Board of England and Wales, 1977). It has been revised and re-issued over the years, but the edition you see here is an exact replica of the one my own mother would routinely throw at my childish monkey head when she caught me in the larder with my greedy monkey paws in the breadbin.