The Fat Bloke Diaries

 

Episode One – A Single Step

 

It was the “oomph” that did it.

 

That was the moment that I realised that maybe, just maybe I was a little bit overweight. Plump. Big-boned. Chunky, even.

 

It wasn’t even me that said it. It was my partner. And she said it at bedtime. I’ll spare you the exact details as to at precisely what point in the proceedings she said “oomph”, but suffice to say that her timing was impeccable and devastating.

 

I’m forty-three, male, and I’ve spent most of my working life behind a desk. In the last ten years I’d say that I’ve done approximately zero exercise; which just about matches the amount that I’d done in the decade before.

 

It showed. At five feet ten I know that I weigh far too much. Let’s get it out of the way now. I’m just the wrong side of nineteen stones. I get short of breath walking up stairs. Running? Yeah, I’ve seen guys on the TV do that, usually while I’m shouting at them to score with a beer in my hand.

 

So it’s time to do something about it. I’m under no illusions that I’m suddenly going to evolve into Peter Crouch’s shorter twin, but I could definitely do with losing a stone or five, if only to make those long-haul flights in cattle class a little more comfortable.

 

I could never go to a gym. I’m shy. No honestly, can you imagine a guy like me, forty inch waist and owner of the biggest boobs in my house, sharing the shower with those bronze Adonis types? Warm up those snapping towels, boys, I’ll bring the face, you kick the sand.

 

Swimming too would involve waving my bits in public. Why would I possibly want to submit myself to the humiliation of being semi-naked in a pool full of mums and school parties. No thanks. I’m sure that would involve me inadvertently contravening some child protection law.  And my dodgy knee really takes any sport involving sprinting out of the equation. Or jogging. Or walking in a brisk fashion.

 

That only really leaves cycling as my exercising drug of choice, my gateway to an inner me, a thinner me. But churning away miles outside in the cold and wet doesn’t really appeal either. Here in the wild North it’s Autumn for around fifty weeks of the year and if I’m to see this through for more than a couple of weeks then I’ve got to be enjoying it. Hosing a street bike down every night after a few miles doesn’t appeal. Neither does trying to plough through rampaging hordes of feral kids in the backstreets of Barnsley.

 

A quick trawl through the Argos catalogue solved the problem; a static bike. Naturally it had to be sturdy enough to carry me through my journey to health and fitness, and fortunately I found one. It’s the size of a small family saloon car, and looks like a pile of badly erected scaffolding with pedals, but it’s just the job. A quick arm and leg donation and it arrived a few days later.

 

Now I’m the first to admit that I’m seriously unfit, but I thought I was a little better than this. On my first day I didn’t even turn the pedals; I was completely exhausted just putting the huge contraption together. But on day two I was ready to give it a go. I clambered aboard, not the easiest accomplishment in its own right, and begin to gently pump my legs. At this point I actually surprised myself. This was easier than I expected it to be. Admittedly, I had it on the lowest possible setting, but the first half kilometre sailed by without too much trouble. The sense of achievement when I passed a whole kilometre was almost palpable. I cheered a little cheer but didn’t break stride. I was sweating a bit by now and my pulse was up way more than it should have been, but this was it, the real thing. I was cruising, I was in the zone… I was exercising!

 

And then I wasn’t, because the saddle collapsed beneath me.

 

Apparently there was another nut that I’d omitted to tighten. Somewhere among the instructions that seemed to have been translated from the original Venusian by a one-eyed, drunken Barbary ape, there had been something about a push pin that needed inserting before connecting the saddle assembly to the main frame. It was a painful lesson, one that left me with a badly bruised ego and an even worse bruised coccyx, but these are the trials I’ll have to go through if I’m ever to become a thin bloke.

 

At the moment I’m just a Fat Bloke, but not for much longer. As of today, I am an exerciser!

 

 

© 2008 Shaun Finnie

 

 

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