The Fat Bloke Diaries

Episode Sixty-Two – He Ain’t Heavy…

Christmas is the season of pantomimes. Beware then, for in honour of this very British tradition, today’s Fat Bloke Diary might descend into pure farce. But at least I don’t lose my trousers. I have however lost somewhere in the region of two stones this year. That’s a huge amount, but it was a while ago that all this lard fell away. My weight loss has shifted into reverse recently, and with the season of festive gluttony upon us I can see me regaining most of that if I’m not careful.

So I need to be resolute. I lost it before and I can do it again. I told myself this the other morning when I was weighing myself and bemoaning the fact that the scales hadn’t moved again. At least they hadn’t gone up any, but I was hoping that the needle may have fallen a little. It was definitely more hope than expectation though as, yet again, I’ve done zero exercise this week.

As an encouragement to maybe kick-start some more weight loss I decided to see how much two stone (or thereabouts) really is. My plan was to see how heavy it really felt, then imagine what it was like trying to carry it around with me all day, which of course I did for years.

I glanced around the bathroom and my eyes fell on the washing basket (not literally…) which was full to the brim with damp towels. Oh yes, that would do nicely.

It’s at this point that I should probably remind readers that my balance is terrible. It always has been, even when I was a young boy, never really managing to ride a bike or skateboard properly. And you really don’t want to see me on ice skates (unless you’re hoping to make some cash from a ‘You’ve Been Framed’ video clip). I even managed to fall over just walking along the street this morning. Full length, rolling on the pavement with the trucks streaming along the dual carriageway inches from my face. Hilarious.

So it was with more than a little trepidation that I picked up the heavy washing basket and gently placed one foot on the weighing scales. They displayed the combined weight of me and the basket and using my O-level maths (Grade C) to the fullest I concluded that I was carrying an extra stone. This was nowhere near what I had lost and it already felt like I was holding a considerable amount. I felt pretty good about that which is probably why I wasn’t concentrating on where I was putting my feet. Actually, not being able to see my feet due to the big washing basket in my arms didn’t help either.

In my bathroom I have a beautiful polished pine duckboard beside the bath. It’s extremely comfortable for standing on while I dry off but it’s not very stable if you stand right on the very end of it. It’s not a death-trap (in case my Mum’s reading this) but you just have to be careful. Inevitably, I wasn’t. I trod on the very end of it. The board wobbled beneath me. I wobbled beneath the laundry basket. The bathroom floor wobbled beneath us both.

With this being a Fat Bloke Diary you’ll probably already be expecting a long convoluted tale of me bouncing off the bathroom walls and ending up lying in an undignified heap in the bath, covered with wet towels and with the upturned Dalek of a laundry basket over my head.

Sorry to disappoint, but for once it didn’t happen that way. After the initial unsteadiness as the duckboard settled down I astounded myself by regaining my balance and my composure. No falling for me, not this time. I calmly put the basket back where it lives and walked casually away. But the incident had put an end to my weighing scale-based experiments. I wasn’t going to carry anything else onto them, it had put me right off. In fact I was going to drop the idea entirely until, a few days later, I saw my five year old nephew.

A quick question and I was playfully swinging him around. We were both very happy. He was playing roughly with his favourite uncle (OK, I’m his only uncle) and I was delighted to find that I’d lost the equivalent of a whole other human being.

Now if only I could continue to lose weight as fast as he’s gaining it. Only one of us should be described as ‘a growing lad’.

© Shaun Finnie 2009

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