I'm fat. No hyperbole here (which I may be guilty of at times... I am an English teacher after all). No - on all measurements on my scales, I am overweight. The top three categories (weight, BMI, body fat) all say 'Too High'. Not even just 'high', which would still be a kick between the legs. No - too high. Bloody Bastard scales.
Honestly though, I have only myself to blame (that and lockdown; I think I can legitimately blame lockdown). Although I have cared as I've incrementally put on the pounds over the past couple of years, the truth is that I simply haven't cared enough to make a proper change. It can be quite hard to care, in all honesty, when you're a dad; work is full-on, lockdown is back in action; yada yada. Excuses - valid and genuine excuses, but excuses none the less.
Up until I was around 19, I was skinny; underweight if anything. Here's a picture of me on a family holiday when I was around 15 I think... not only is there nothing on me, I appear to be channeling the aesthetic qualities of Ibiza Kids Club circa 1997. Just awful. However, it does illustrate the point that weight was once never an issue for me.
19 is legitimately where it all started to go wrong. I was lucky enough to spend a whole month with my family on holiday in Spain in July - August of that year (my nan owned a villa out there at the time). Great for my tan, not so great on my waistline. Before then, I'd been hovering from around 9 / 10 stone for most of my teenage years. After the holiday, I estimate I was around 12 stone. Oops. Then, in September of that year, I went off to the University of Lincoln. Let's just say that freshers excesses were not kind to me either, and by the end of my first year, I was weighing in at around 13 and a half stone. Luckily, the actual realities of university kicked in during Y2 and Y3 (read: no money), so I was able to slim down to around 11 and a half to 12 stone again.
From leaving Uni in 2006 (aged 23) to around 2017 (aged 34) my weight rollercoastered from low 11s to high 13s, down and up; round and round again. Stop the ride mum - I wanna get off!
The problem is, I can lose weight when I need to, I just struggle to maintain it. I always end up reverting back to convenience and instant gratification and away from long-term changes. Ironically, usually the catalyst is when I weigh myself and I haven't lost 'enough' weight compared with my mental expectations of how 'hard' I've been working. So I proverbially stick two fingers up at the 'diet' / regime and then fail to get back on again before its too late. Every. Damn. Time.
Since 2017 when I got married and was actually fairly slim, I've incrementally put on the pounds again, meaning that in the last few years, if I managed to get under 14 stone, I'd see that as a win. How far the mighty fall!
I remember last August, on the day we moved into our new house, feeling genuinely disgusting - visibly overweight, tired and just frankly unhealthy. It didn't help, by any degree, that it was literally one of the hottest days of the year that day, I had a hangover from the flames of Satan and I was forced, by virtue of moving house, to lug approximately 1 billion heavy objects up, down, in and out for literally about six hours straight. But still, a particular nadir.
Fast forward to now and I have lost some weight since then (8 or 9 pounds at a guess), however I am still way above any reasonable target weight. All of this being a very long and rambling way of saying that I have decided enough really is enough. The gloves are off and the (large) joggers are back on.
In the next blog, I'll outline the rules of the game and my progress so far.
Dan
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