The Fat Bloke Diaries

Episode Fifty-Five – Put On a Happy Face

I’m going back to the dark side in this week’s Diary I’m afraid. You don’t need to come along if you don’t want, I’ll understand. It’s scary in there.

Fat people are always depicted as being jovial. If that’s the case then it’s probably a good thing that I’m no longer as fat as I used to be, because I’m certainly not as jolly. I was doing quite well in the lead up and immediate aftermath of my charity run, but now, with the memory of that glorious day fading away faster than the career of a Britain’s Got Talent winner, I’ve slipped into bad habits and depression again. My mood has darkened considerably since I handed over the last of my sponsor money and was officially absolved of street-pounding duty. Thankfully there was no Big Chicken outfit to dry clean and return.

Unfortunately the freedom from the shackles of training and self denial (at least in the dining department) has lead to me trying to make up for all those missed Pizza Hut dates. As a result of my disappointing but not unexpected lack of exercise and my return to eating junk (“just one more treat – you deserve it after what you did”), the needle on my scales has started to creep back up and this has inevitable contributed to another bout of depression.

Misery loves company, they say. As is so often the case, they’re wrong. This particular Mr Misery doesn’t love anything of the sort, in fact when the black dog bites I avoid as much company as possible. I’ve become withdrawn from my loved ones and feel terribly guilty because of that, which of course drives me further along the dirt track of despondency to the derelict shack of pessimism. I’m bluer than Picasso’s Chelsea shirt. I’m drifting aimlessly through my days, seeing each one as just another page in my diary (as Alison Moyet once said).

The shorter daylight hours aren’t adding to my melancholia though; as I said last episode, this is my favourite time of the annual cycle of seasons. I love the onset of autumn and the promise of winter. Dark, dry early evenings when the clocks have gone back, you can’t beat them. So I have to ask, how bad would my depression be if this were the start of summer, a time that I’ve never really cared for?

I don’t know, and I don’t care to. However I do know that I’m not where I should be in the coping-with-life stakes, I’m pretty rubbish at the day-to-day stuff like enjoying myself. If life were a ‘build-your-own-house competition, I’d be the one looking for a spade while everyone else was fitting their guttering. And if I’m mentally and/or emotionally unfit, how can I put my all into striving for physical fitness? It’s hard enough putting my all into my work clothes every morning. The motivation to go running – or do pretty much anything else – is lower than Satan’s cellar at the moment.

“Depression is the inability to construct a future”, said the psychologist Rollo May, and for me that seems to hold true. I can plan a future event like going to a show or concert, a small temporary happiness, but can’t really devise any long-term strategies to dig me out of my wretched gloom. Today is just today and it’s miserable. I’m not laying any money down on tomorrow being too cheery either.

Just like in the old cartoons, I have an angel and a demon on my shoulders. A white and fluffy-winged character whispering all my good intentions into my right ear, while a sulphurous, pointy-hatted chap in red counters with negative thoughts and base desires into my left. My inner dialogue comes from their imagined prompting:

Tonight I really should go for a run
But it’s dark and cold out there.

OK, then I could plug the Wii Fit into the TV and do some yoga
But Emmerdale’s on for an hour tonight.

Then what if I do some kilometres on my big old static bike?
Great idea (glug, slurp) if only you hadn’t just drank half a bottle of wine.

The intent is there but the motivation isn’t. But at least I’ve made a step in the right direction and pre-registered for next September’s Great Yorkshire Run. While that’s little more than an emailed verbal commitment, at least it means that I’ve got to keep in some kind of shape over the winter before I have to start jogging early next year. Now I have the small goal of not putting too much weight on before I have to begin a set training plan again. Mind you, I seem to remember a few weeks ago promising to lose nine pounds before Christmas “by any means necessary”. That’s going to be difficult now, as I’ve actually managed to gain nine pounds in the last month. My misery deepens. I’d wear a gloomy donkey costume, but I fear that I’d no longer fit into it.

I was quite happy wallowing in my own deep, dark pit of despair until I read Geoffrey Norman ‘s quote: “A lot of what passes for depression these days is nothing more than a body saying that it needs work”. I suspect that may be true. I just hope that my office manager doesn’t.


© Shaun Finnie 2009
 

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