I am sure that there are many of you thin folks who will be screaming “fat bastard” as you read this. You would be right. But I am on a journey as I try, again, to tackle type two diabetes and that journey started, just after Christmas, seeing me tip the scales at closer to 17 stone than 16. Now, today’s weigh in shows that I am closer to 15 stone than to 16 stone. I am, by nature, one of life’s fatties and weight has been a lifelong battle.
The Body Mass Indicator which is, these days, a bit discredited but gives me an idea of where I should be going now has me at 29.3 which is 0.7 points below obese. I passed the obese to overweight threshold last month.
The overweight to normal threshold is something I have rarely achieved. The nervous breakdown. universal pile on diet, as described by Toby Young, delivered for me too but I do not want to go there again.
I achieved my latest weight loss despite eating some crisps and having a modest, celebratory, Protestant Whiskey (Bushmills) as my friend Conor and I watched Ireland’s triumph at the weekend. That was my first drink since early January and it will be my last until God knows when.
I am now firmly back on the wagon and my diet is based heavily on chickpeas, kale, tuna and a kipper for breakfast. Every day I labour in the garden at least once. I really need to show you the compost my heap is now producing after four years. I am very proud of that compost.
The target is to get the BMI down to 28 point something just after Easter (no chocolate eggs for me). And then it is to get my weight down to closer to 14 stone than to 15 stone by the time I head to Greece in the summer.
Losing that much more weight really would see my blood sugars, already c40% down since Christmas, heading further South. It is all good. So, I am still fat. My blood sugars are still far too high. But the direction of travel is all good.