The Fat Bloke Diaries
Episode Fifty – Sharp Dressed Man
Sometimes I look in the mirror and see a (relatively)
thin bloke in a sack. I still love my old three buttoned t-
I really need a new wardrobe. Not the big wooden thing in the bedroom, that’s still
fending off a trip to Ikea after twenty years of loyal service. Some of its contents
have been in there for almost that long too, and these days they seem so large that
they could cover a lion, a witch and an entire battalion of talking animals. I’m
in dire need of a clothing upgrade.
I had a good rummage and quickly realised that
if I keep the old stuff I’ll have the fallback option of putting weight back on.
Yet if I send them to the charity shop I’d have to resort to nakedness if I reloaded
the lard, and nobody wants that.
I bit the bullet and started throwing. Clearing
out the wardrobe is cathartic, like taking a new broom to the corners of your soul.
Old stuff, new stuff, good stuff and stuff that was only fit for decorating in. If
it had suddenly become long enough to reach my knees, out it went. Most of my old
suits bit the bin bag, but there was one that still fits. I went to ‘a bit of a do’
last week and it was deemed good enough for that. To tell the truth it was even better
than good enough; I could actually fasten the jacket. I haven’t been able to comfortably
button a suit jacket since my first pinstripe in my days as an office junior, back
when we used quill pens and called our managers ‘Sir’.
My surviving suit is a lot
higher quality than that old one was, and it looks even better now that it fastens
up. Sure, the slimming of my shoulders have caused the sleeves to appear a little
too long, making me look more than a tad like a Thunderbirds puppet, but all in all
it looked presentable. For me.
It must be even worse for women. Not that I’m saying
that they’d look like Lady Penelope or Stingray’s Marina (unless that’s the look
they’re after), but that there’s so much more choice for them. Men have either smart,
casual or smart/casual. Ladies seem to have a plethora of in between grades that
we men never even consider. Work-
Some of the other clothes that
I’ve kept need adapting slightly as well. I never needed a belt before. I just ate
until my trousers felt tight. That kept them up. Now I not only need to wear a belt,
but I have to move it along a notch almost monthly, it seems. This is strange as
I haven’t actually lost any substantial weight for about six months. I rapidly lost
around two and a half stones and then hit a plateau. I look much better though, so
my body must have changed shape. I’ve heard that it can do that. Perhaps if I keep
exercising enough I may weigh the same but eventually look like something totally
random; a golden tamarind perchance, or maybe The Leaning Tower of Pizza.
The problem
still remains that I like my food so much. This was fine while I was training for
my charity run – I’m well aware of the basic maths of food as energy, eat what you
like as long as you burn it off – but now that I’ve successfully completed that challenge
I have no reason to go running of an evening.
I tried it the other night. I realised
that a long enough time had passed, I couldn’t claim that I was recovering and resting
any more. I could put it off no longer. I tried a simple route that I’ve run many
times before. Just a local loop, less than two miles.
I was astounded at how dull
it was. Plod, plod, plod, one foot in front of the other in monotonous drudgery.
Even the birdlife seemed less exciting, They’d long lost their pulling plumage and
now looked as dreary as I felt.
I know why it was so difficult of course; I had no
motivation. I need something to focus on, a reason to explain why pounding the streets
is better than staying home with a beer in front of the TV, especially now that it’s
football season again. It’s high time that I set a new target. With that in mind
I’m planning to lose another nine pounds by Christmas “by any means necessary”. So
I’ll be instructing my Beloved to board up the fridge and place ‘Beware of the Leopard’
signs on the biscuit barrel.
If that doesn’t work I’ll get the chainsaw out. How
much can one thigh weigh?
© Shaun Finnie 2009