Fat Chance (28 page)

Bearing all this in mind, I elected to take a more biological approach to exercise.

. . . No, this doesn’t mean what you think it means. Don’t be so disgusting.

What I mean is that I spent a couple of days researching human biology to get a better understanding of how our bodies function. By doing this I learned what kind of exercises we are actually
designed
to do—on an evolutionary level, so to speak. If Darwin tells me what exercise I should be doing, then I’ll damn well do it!

Sadly, the main exercise the human body is designed to do is running.

Fuck it.

Long before we had cars, bicycles, and horses to ride, we got around by putting one foot in front of the other. For thousands upon thousands of years the human race relied on Shanks’s Pony, often conducted at a brisk pace to either catch prey or to avoid becoming it.

Deep down I knew this horrible fact before I even started my research, but I thought I might find something else that wasn’t as painful, boring, or time consuming.

I failed.

After having this annoying revelation, with a sigh and a heavy heart I laced up my (very expensive) Asics running shoes and prepared to do battle with the pavements of local suburbia.

‘You look happy,’ Zoe remarked from the kitchen. ‘You’d think you were going off to war, rather than a jog around the block.’

This has become a very unhealthy habit my wife has developed since we started this competition. She seems to take great delight and amusement from my failed attempts to find the right exercise regime for me.

‘Leave me alone. I don’t want to do this, but Darwin tells me I’ve got no choice, the hairy bastard.’

‘So you don’t like jogging, then?’

‘Of course not. It hurts. And I feel like a right plum.’

‘How so?’

‘I look like an idiot when I’m jogging. It’s embarrassing.’

‘Ah, so your ego is the real problem here?’

‘Oh, give it a rest. What else am I supposed to do?’

‘Buy a treadmill and do it at home?’

This is the irritating thing about Zoe: her suggestions and comments may be saturated by sarcasm, but nine times out of ten they’re also bloody good ones.

I unlaced the running shoes, picked up the iPad, and went back on Amazon.

Four days later I had a treadmill. At four hundred quid it’s the most money I’ve dropped on self-improvement so far, but I’m
confident
it will be a wise investment.

The treadmill goes in the conservatory and I embark on a daily routine of running myself into a dazed stupor, only stopping when funny white lights start flashing in front of my eyes.

And by Christ if it doesn’t actually work!

I’ve found my niche!

Running on the treadmill is far less painful than on the street, thanks to the give in the machine’s belt. The shin splints and thigh cramps that usually plague me whenever I go for a jog do not materialise. What’s more, I have control over the gradient and distance I run, so if I’m having an off day I can just run a couple of miles on the flat, but if I’m Captain Enthusiastic I can do four miles on an incline.

The treadmill is very convenient. All I have to do is stick on my running clothes and saunter over to it. I can even watch the television, if I angle the machine around so it points into the living room.

Marvellous stuff!

In fact, I eventually reach the point where I don’t even wear most of the running clothes.

I mean, why bother? Our conservatory is not overlooked, so I see no problem with having a three-mile jog in my boxer shorts and t shirt. No-one’s going to be looking at me, so why go through the inconvenience of getting my clothes all sweaty and having to put them in the wash?

If I’d just stopped there, everything would have been alright.

But one day it occurred to me that there was no real need even to wear the boxer shorts and t-shirt.

Our conservatory gets quite hot, especially during the summer months. If I run naked I will stay cool
and
not have to bother trying to work that flaming washing machine, with all its strange dials and incomprehensible settings.

It’s the perfect solution. Provided I shut the lounge curtains at the front of the house I will be able to run completely in the nuddy, without fear of discovery.

And so I embark on a new fun-filled regime of naked exercise—and before long I start to wonder why I ever did it with clothes on.

There’s something tremendously
freeing
about running in the nude. There are no shorts or jogging bottoms to chafe you around the delicate parts, no t-shirts to get covered in sweat and hang off your frame like an uncomfortable second skin. The whole process takes on a new, liberated quality I find extremely agreeable.

Zoe’s not so sure, though. ‘You only do that when I’m out of the house. The last thing I need to look at while I’m watching “
MasterChef
” is your penis bouncing up and down in front of me.’

I don’t know what she’s complaining about. I take a great amount of joy in looking down and seeing the old fella swinging merrily back and forth as I pound my way to a slimmer figure.

All in all, naked running is where it’s at, as far as I’m concerned.

With the end of the competition fast approaching, Zoe and I have really started to knuckle down on the exercise.

For instance, on Saturday morning she headed off down to the gym for a lengthy swim with Elise, so I decided that a good solid hour of naked running was in order.

At eleven o’clock I stick Metallica on the stereo at an absurd volume and bound onto the treadmill, ready to burn some calories. It’s a lovely sunny day so I point the treadmill out into the garden to give myself a pleasant view.

With heavy guitar riffs and strident vocals as my accompaniment, I’m off . . . running like a man possessed.

After twenty solid minutes I’ve built up a healthy sweat. It’s running down my back in rivulets.

My hair is stuck up at all angles thanks to the perspiration, while downstairs, my cock is slapping about to and fro on my thighs in perfect rhythm with the heavy metal sounds chugging from the stereo behind me. The heat of exercise and constant motion have made him agreeably large.

I’m feeling good.

I’m feeling strong.

I’m feeling fit.

. . . then I look round to my left and see Wilf the postman staring at me from next to the garden shed.

I wish I could say he’s looking at my face.

‘Oh fuck!’ I screech and promptly lose my footing. I start to stumble and have to grab the treadmill’s hand bar to stop myself from shooting off the back of the machine and doing myself a
serious
injury. I stab the control panel, bringing the treadmill to a halt. I also shut off the pounding heavy metal coming from the stereo.

Breathing heavily, and holding one hand over my genitals, I look up to see that Wilf has disappeared from sight.

Odd.

Maybe I imagined the whole thing.

Maybe all the running has starved my brain of oxygen and I just
thought
I saw our postman standing in the garden, looking at my naked, partially engorged penis. In reality, he might not have been there at all!

Ding dong
goes our doorbell.

Oh, fuck it.

I’m going to have to answer it, aren’t I? He knows I’m in the house, after all.

I run upstairs and grab my dressing gown from the back of the bedroom door. As I descend I try to think of something to say to the poor old bastard when I open the door.

Hi Wilf! How’s your morning going? Say, did you think my cock was impressive or not?
On a scale of one to ten, what would you give it?

No, I don’t think so somehow.

In the end I elect to go with the good old-fashioned awkward British apology. ‘Morning, Wilf. Sorry about that,’ I say as he hands Zoe’s latest purchase over to me.

‘That’s okay, Mr Milton. I should’ve rung the doorbell a few more times.’

Bless him. I’m the one who’s just indecently exposed myself, and he’s sorry for not being more proactive about announcing his presence.

A crushingly uncomfortable silence then comes between us, as is only natural when one man has accidentally seen the other
man’s co
ck.

‘Yes, well, have a nice day,’ I offer blandly.

‘You too, Mister Milton. Enjoy the rest of your . . . er,
exercising
.’

He’s saying
exercising
; you can tell he means
wanking
.

‘Yes, thank you very much.’

Having little else to contribute, I shut the door slowly in Wilf’s face and go back into the lounge. I then spend a good five minutes rocking back and forth on the couch.

Needless to say, I have been forced back into my clothes
following
that incident. My balls now chafe after half an hour of running and the sweat stains on my t-shirts are hell to shift in the wash, but at least I’m not risking a criminal prosecution every time I go for a jog.

I have also banned Zoe from ordering anything online until such time as Wilf the postman is dead.

Regardless of unwitting exposure to a divorcé in his early
sixties
, I have found the treadmill to be the best form of exercise for me. It’s helped me to shift five stone of bulk already, and in the next few weeks until the final weigh-in I intend to drop another, no matter how many hours I have to spend pounding along on the
never-ending
path the machine creates.

I guess that’s really the gist of what I’ve been trying to say here. You have to find what works for
you
. There are a thousand
companies
out there that will claim their product is the perfect weight loss tool for
everyone
, but it doesn’t work like that. You can’t just create a catch-all product that suits every Tom, Dick, and Harry. Especially Dick.

We all have different tolerances, strengths, and weaknesses, and it’s only through trial and error that you arrive at the right method for you.

Hopefully you can learn a bit from my mistakes, though.

There is no shortcut when it comes to exercise. You have to commit yourself to it properly—and understand that you
do
have to put a lot of effort in. Don’t be fooled by websites, infomercials, or magazine advertising claiming an easy way to a thinner body. They’re lying to you, and taking a great deal of money from your pocket that could be used for something far more productive.

Keep it simple, that’s my new motto.

Actually, my new motto is ‘Don’t exercise in the nude if you don’t want an old man to see that you’re not circumcised,’ but that wouldn’t look quite so good on a tea towel.

ZOE’S WEIGHT LOSS DIARY

Saturday, August 9th

10 stone, 3 pounds (4 stone, 4 pounds lost)

M
y relationship with Greg is by and large a non-competitive
one. We’re not the kind of couple that thrives on rivalry. We
both appreciate that there are things the other can do better. I,
for instance, am absolutely awful at ten-pin bowling. I am equally terrible at parallel parking, discerning between a good Merlot and a bad one, putting up shelves, and poaching an egg. Greg, on the other hand, cannot play table tennis to save his life, is dreadful at pub quizzes, wouldn’t know how to knock up a stir-fry if you put a gun to his head, and defers to me in all matters involving holiday arrangements on the internet.

In our many years of marriage I have built up a mental list of all the things I handle myself, and all the things I let Greg take a lead on.

By and large, this has been a highly successful arrangement that has prevented no end of petty jealousies, night-time arguments, and slamming doors.

. . . and then I am disgusted to discover that there’s every chance he’s a better writer than I am.

Before the competition started back in March neither of us had ever kept a diary, and neither of us had ever spent so much time writing about our lives. At first the whole process was like pulling teeth, but as the weeks have gone by I think we’ve both discovered that it’s actually rather a lot of fun. It’s made us both better writers as well, given that practice generally does make perfect, if you give it half a chance.

Between us we must have written well over a hundred and fifty thousand words in the last six months, which is quite
incredible
when you think about it. When we’re not exercising or dieting, we’re hunched over the laptop
writing
about exercising and
dieting
.

The Stream FM audience will never get to read a majority of it, of course. Our lengthy essays are generally chopped down into far smaller bite-sized chunks; they probably have to cut half of what we write out just to make it palatable to a family audience, to be honest. We know how much effort we’ve put into the process, though, and how many hours have been spent slaving over a hot keyboard.

Unfortunately, Greg and I now find ourselves in a situation where we’re both pretty good at something, which has inevitably led to comparison and the aforementioned competition.

I want to be better at writing than Greg—and I’m sure he feels the same way.

In fact I know he does, because I’ve caught him re-editing his diary entries on more than one occasion recently. Greg is not one of life’s perfectionists, and tends to pull the stops out only when he’s really invested in a project.

I’m just as bad. Where once I would dash off my entries, I now take my time to go back over them and make sure they’re as witty as possible.

I also read every one of Greg’s entries before he sends them off to Stream FM to be butchered. He does the same with mine. Quite often in the evenings the television is now switched off, and we sit in silence reading each other’s work and sipping on small glasses of wine. It’s a very pleasant way to pass the time.

I read Greg’s most recent entry on Thursday night, about all the exercises he’s tried. When I got to the bit about Wilf seeing his penis I nearly spat my wine out.

‘You never told me that happened!’ I said, making him look up from his iPad.

‘Nope,’ he replied with a broad grin. ‘I wanted to save it so you could read about it.’

‘Oh, so now you’re keeping stuff from me to use as material, are you?’

‘Don’t be so silly. I just thought it would sound better on the page.’

I have to confess it does. Greg is not a good oral storyteller. I’ve never heard him get to the end of a joke without making at least one cock-up along the way.

When I’d finished reading the entry I felt just a little bit jealous of how my husband’s writing has improved.

‘This is really funny, baby,’ I grudgingly admitted to him.

‘Thanks. It was fun to write. Very cathartic, I’d say. I wasted a lot of money on all that crap, so it was good to have a moan about it.’

‘I bet.’

‘You should do the same about all those ridiculous diets you’ve tried. What was that one? The Chapstone diet?’

‘Chatman.’

‘Yeah. That was it. I reckon people would love to hear all about that.’

Bugger
.

I hate it when he has a good idea I wish I’d thought of first.

So here we are, then.

I’m going to tell you all about my dieting experiences of the past few months—and I’d better do a good job of it or you’ll think Greg is a better writer than I am. Which would be just
awful
.

Let’s get one thing straight—most diets are idiotic.
Comprehensively
idiotic.

There really is only one diet that actually works, but I’ll come on to that later.

For now, let’s concentrate on all those weight loss programmes that sound like miracle cures in the short term, but are actually a complete waste of time in the long run.

I have to whole-heartedly agree with my husband on one thing: most diets—like the exercise equipment he talks about—trade on the idea that they can make you lose weight easily and quickly.

Why bother to put the effort in of eating a balanced,
calorie-controlled
diet, when you can just follow the simple three-step program you’ve just downloaded off the internet? The one that will see you three stone lighter and ten times more attractive within a fortnight?

Good gravy.

I’ve already talked about the cabbage soup diet, which made me fart like a cow and resulted in absolutely no long-term weight loss.

This is just one of a series of slimming regimes I like to call the ‘object diets,’ the ones that are based around the consumption of a single food type. They all trade on the idea that by restricting yourself to one food you will lose weight in no time at all. This is in direct contradiction of all evidence provided by nutritional science, but never mind: the internet says it works, so it must be true!

In all I tried three of these diets before common sense prevailed.

Yes,
three
. I am nothing if not a glutton for punishment.

After cabbage soup came the baby food diet.

Why not? Cheryl Cole and Jennifer Aniston swear by it, so why shouldn’t I give it a go?

It’s
disgusting
, that’s why.

The idea is that you eat about a dozen small portions of baby food throughout the day, thus keeping your metabolism ticking over nicely. Yep, you heard that right . . . a
dozen
.

How can anyone—other than a millionaire celebrity—possibly hope to find time to fit in a dozen small meals of pureed awfulness a day?

Perhaps you’re supposed to sneak a few mouthfuls of apple and pear while you’re sitting in rush hour traffic waiting for the lights to turn green? Or maybe you should eat some pureed butternut squash when you nip to the loo? That way what goes in will look exactly the same as what’s coming out.

I tried the baby food diet for a day. My taste buds still haven’t forgiven me.

It doesn’t sound too bad when you read about it. After all, what is pureed baby food other than a really thick smoothie, right?

Oh,
hell no
.

At least with a smoothie you can convince yourself that you’re just having a nice refreshing drink as the mulched fruit slides down the back of your throat. With baby food there is actual effort involved. You have to pro-actively set your mouth to the task of shifting it down your gullet. If you’re lucky this will involve just a bit of jaw movement and swallowing. If you’re unlucky it will involve—oh, God in heaven—
chewing
.

If anyone has invented a worse thing to put in your mouth than boiled, pureed parsnip and swede, then I don’t want to know about it.

Over the course of the day my gag reflex was put to the test more than that of a trainee sword swallower. If I wasn’t nearly throwing up banana all over the breakfast bar at home, I was gamely trying to prevent the up-chuck of broccoli and spinach over my keyboard at work.

There’s a reason why babies cry a lot when you’re trying to feed them. It’s because of the horrid concoction you’re trying to force down their throats.

For me personally, being on the baby food diet just served to remind me of my inability to get pregnant. So not only was I force-feeding myself disgusting gunk, I was also being reminded of my failings as a woman.
Brilliant
. It’s a wonder I lasted until six o’clock that evening.

With a muffled curse I spat the pureed potato and leek into the bin and put the whole sorry day behind me by making a lovely chicken and mayonnaise sandwich.

Don’t worry, I used fat-free mayonnaise and the chicken was free range.

You’d think I’d have had my fill of the ‘object diet’ after that, but then I saw the grapefruit diet.

Grapefruit!

Grapefruits are healthy, right?

How can you bloody go wrong eating a diet that recommends you eat loads of fruit?

Even the science sounds plausible. There is apparently an enzyme in grapefruit that burns fat, meaning you can eat small quantities of tasty unhealthy food, providing you mainly consume grapefruit so that that enzyme gets in your body and takes care of all those nasty fat molecules.

You can eat
bacon
, for crying out loud. This is the best diet ever, people!

Or so it seemed on paper.

Have you ever noticed how good things always
seem
on paper?

Diets, package holidays, car insurance policies, fashion tips . . . the list goes on and on.

I often wonder how much better the world would be if none of us had developed the ability to write. Then we’d actually have to see something in action before agreeing to have any part of it. I can’t help but feel this may have made our lives a whole lot easier. You can con me into wearing gold Roman sandals and a sequined poncho in the pages of a fashion magazine, but if I actually see some other poor bitch walking down the road towards me wearing such a hideous combination I’m going to avoid it like the bloody plague.

I started the grapefruit diet quite keenly. I dutifully ate my half grapefruit and drank my grapefruit juice with every meal. Okay, this did get a bit boring after a while, but I was happy to put up with it as it also meant I could eat bacon sandwiches.

This went on for five happy days until my stomach started to emit sharp, shooting pains at regular intervals.

Why?

Well, grapefruit may or may not have a fat-burning enzyme
in i
t, but what I can guarantee you it does have is a high level of citric acid.

I may have been loving every minute of eating bacon and eggs for breakfast, but my stomach lining was not having such a good time with all that acid I was dumping into it.

After a week, the processes going on in my intestines probably resembled the day-to-day activities of a chemical factory—one that will be shut down very soon for its poisonous health and safety record.

I have never suffered so much bloody heartburn in my life. The amount of milk of magnesia I had to consume just to keep the fire at bay was frightening.

Greg may think that the Electromax 2000 is a great way of curing constipation, but it’s nothing compared to swigging a bottle of milk of magnesia, I can assure you. It was a bloody good job we had two toilets in our house during that week.

Needless to say I stopped the grapefruit diet before the allotted ten days was up. I just didn’t think my stomach lining could take it.

That was the last object diet I tried. I may be a glutton for punishment, but even I have my limits.

You simply can’t hope to exist eating predominantly one food source for any length of time.

What’s more, any weight loss you do achieve is likely to be wiped out the minute you return to a normal diet. Our bodies aren’t meant to consume just one thing. We’re omnivores and need a diet that’s got a lot of variety in it. Forcing yourself to stick to one food because some stupid internet website tells you it will shift a stone in two weeks is nothing but an exercise in self-harm and disappointment.

To be honest, object diets are quite easy to dismiss if you just sit back and think about it for a while. They’re just too simplistic to work.

The process of effective weight loss is a complex and
time-consuming
business. After all, the human body is quite difficult to wrestle under your control at the best of times, so effecting radical change is always going to be a tricky proposition.

By extension of that thought, any diet that sounds quite complicated and scientific should be far
more likely to result in
long-term
weight loss . . . right?