Avoiding the Microwave Mafia
It's an effort of will, losing weight. A long, hard slog to fit back into the clothes I loved, to achieve the ability to run without breathlessness, to make the world see me as more than some big, jolly bloke who hides behind an even bigger laugh.
I struggled to lose weight this week. I tell myself it's because of the snow, because of the cold and the need for seasonal comfort. But the trouble is that the reason I put on weight in the first place was because I sought comfort. As it was, I lost half a pound - presumably thanks to all the crunching through snow and chucking snowballs like I was 11 again. But when one is fat one rarely feels 11 again and must go out and celebrate the fact that the small boy broke through, however briefly. Actually it's not so much a process of celebration as of adumbration; the joy is overshadowed by the need to eat comforting crap. One may feel 11 but the knowledge that one is not, really, casts a long shadow.
I lost weight the first time round for many reasons. One of the deciding factors was the death of one of my oldest friends, Gaius, who took his own life five years ago after a period of mental ill health that was so severe, and consumed him so completely, that I can only describe the condition as psychic cancer. His death shook me, and all of us who went to school with him, to the core and I realised (with the help of others) that I too was killing myself, simply by being lazy and seeking comfort in food.
And so I cut out the pizza, the chocolate, the beer (I wish I could say that the comforts were a little more exotic than that, but they weren't) and lost 7.5 stone. And then, after a couple of years, it all started to creep back on. A different sort of comfort started it this time, that of happiness with relationships and the sedentary lifestyle brought about by being trapped in the house writing a book (oh how I wish I could afford an office three miles from home which I could cycle to or get the bus to on inclement days). The idea that it wouldn't hurt to stretch the rules a little here and there became a rule in itself again and I let the pizzas and chocolate and beer creep back in through the door with sheepish grins smeared all over their packaging as if I'd never worried that I was killing myself at all.
When work is all-consuming, you need to fuel yourself. The choices one makes are important. This is a poor life if we give in wholly to the 'let's make it easy and fill it with sugar and fat' brigade, the microwave mafia, the sandwich fillers. I get as much satisfaction from a plate of well-cooked, low fat food as I do from a cheese sandwich. The trouble is the latter is just so easy and convenient. And fattening.
I am trying, now, to make the evening meal a little more of a ritual, as the Japanese do with tea. It's hard work, simply because there is so much to do in a day and, when I've spent the whole day in the house working, all I really want to do is run screaming out into the nearest pub for a couple of pints. I learned before that a semi-ascetic lifestyle can bring comfort in itself; I know this, it is rooted deep in my brain. I can do this. I will lose weight. I will will myself thin.But right now, I am looking at the word 'pizza' (typed above) and slavering gently. With any luck, an apple will cure the craving...
