The Fat Bloke Diaries
Episode Six – Quicksand
[WARNING! Today’s FBD wanders from the normal jocular path and strays towards the dark side. Those of you that are of a nervous disposition, look away now…]
They say that exercise is one of the best ways to help beat depression.
‘They’ say a lot of things, but they aren’t always right.
I’ve always been a big bloke, a portly person, a chunky chap… apart from back in the day, when I was a chunky child. Like many fat folks, I’ve also suffered with depression for much of my adult life, I’m not going to get into the argument about whether depression leads to fatness, or fatness leads to depression, but if ‘their’ theory is correct then – theoretically – I should be killing two birds with one pedal if I get on my bike, smiling as the pounds fall off.
Only it’s not been like that. One of my birds is in the rudest of health, dodging every metaphorical rock I toss at it, and the other still has one good wing. After more than a thousand kilometres the weight has taken an age to begin to drop, only really beginning to leave in the last couple of weeks. And the endorphins that I’ve heard so much about – my own internal happy pills, apparently – have failed to kick in. Perhaps I ate them without noticing.
That font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, says that these are the same endorphins that
are produced at a certain, erm… peak moment of adult fun and excitement. I’m sorry
to disappoint the Wikipedians, but there’s no way that the time spent pedalling away
like a sweat-
Sorry about that – I know it’s not a picture that any of us really wanted to paint,
but it does get my point across. I simply do not feel the much-
Once again, inherited wisdom lies.
The mythical ‘they’ also say that if we didn’t lose any weight yesterday, it’s not a problem; we can lose weight today, as each dawn brings a new beginning. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life”, we’re told. So how come I sometimes think that the rest of my life started yesterday, and I missed it?
We’re always instructed to imagine the person that we aim to be when we exercise, to visualise our target slim lined body shape. I’m all for this. Visualisation is an incredibly powerful mental tool, but it works both ways. The vision that I can’t shake is of me going hell for leather on the bike with my imaginary black dog of despair trotting alongside. It just reinforces the fact that I’m going nowhere (figuratively and literally), so perhaps I should get my faithful companion a little black imaginary treadmill?
Could these dark thoughts have some science and twisted logic behind them? As much
as I might wish it and strive for it, there’s no way on Earth that I can over a period
of time grow from my now-
Either the theory of exercise beating depression is flawed or my melancholia is worse
than I thought. And yes, those of you with the little grey cells working overtime,
there is a reason for the new-
© 2008 Shaun Finnie