So I’m in New York, right

which is particularly good because New York City contains this shop called Lane Bryant. Lane Bryant is a chain that sells plus-sized clothes that:

(a) cater for women who are big and curvy, not thin-legged and pot bellied and if any buyers for Evans are reading this can you PLEASE take some notes? and

(b) also appreciate that tall people can be fat and actually do trousers that cover the whole of a tall fat person’s leg, Evans buyers this is another one for you particularly YES YOU, and

(c) vaguely resemble clothes that fashionable people might want to wear, but are made a bit bigger to enable fat people to be fashionable and fat and tall at the same time. WRITE THAT ONE DOWN TOO PLEASE EVANS BUYERS.

I went into Lane Bryant this afternoon, which would be one of your UK evenings, with my usual game plan in mind: place credit card on counter; buy anything I feel like; close eyes; sign bill; continue to make minimum payments on credit card without looking at balance. I justify this on the basis that being tall, fat and small waisted means that I rarely find anything to wear in the UK and therefore a couple of hundred dollars in the US is acceptable, particularly as George Bush is currently cocking up their economy considerably more than Gordon Brown has yet done with ours.

I may be fat but I’m still in pretty good nick. STOP LECTURING ME.

Okay look this is really just a Sunday morning rant. I have noticed that people who are slim sort of assume, without thinking about it, that they are healthier than people who are fat.

I’m not sure that that is strictly true.

Yesterday morning the internet shopping arrived.

(a) Natural yogurt, cured ham, light cheddar, Philadelphia light. Cornichons, olives, onions in brine. Chopped tomatoes, fresh wholewheat pasta, tins of soup and beans.

(b) Fresh salad leaves, cucumber, aubergine, green peppers, skinless chicken breasts, neck fillet of lamb, lean mince, tofu.

(c) Ham and cheese pastry slices, steak pies, Scotch eggs, bacon, full-fat sausages, Meat Feast Pizza, chocolate-cream-filled profiteroles and a fresh cream Victoria Sandwich.

This is shopping for me (Licensed Porketeer), my mother (overweight) and my little brother (5′11 and 9 stone soaking wet).

So who’s going to eat what?

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