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I have started going to a personal trainer who lives about four doors down from our house. If it was any further away than that I'd be too lazy to go. She's been putting me through my paces for a month and it's going OK. I've lost 0.3cm off my waist in that time.
Today she measured everything (and I mean everything- oh actually no, not that, why would you think such a thing?) and there were a few unpleasant truths. I had been feeling pretty good about the 15kg weight loss this year (though I've plateaued a little bit now, mainly because I haven't been trying too hard and July might be the first month that sees my weigh increase slightly), but my body fat is still about twice what it should be and the worst news is that I am 2cm shorter than I thought I was.
I had been going by the measurement I remembered from school of 170cm but the years and gravity seem to have taken its toll and I am now 168cm. For one foolish minute I thought that this might be good news for my BMI, but of course it isn't. Her scale puts me at a slightly higher weight than mine does so the depressing news is that according to those measurements I am back to being obese according to BMI and given my shorter stature the top range of my weight should be 70kg rather than the 72kg that I knew I'd never reach anyway.
To be fair it gives me incentive to double my efforts. The first 15kg were really easy to lose (once I'd made the decision to stop drinking and main-lining chocolate- the true secret to losing lots of weight is to get very far), but I am now going to have to put in a bit of work to knock off some of that body fat and get a bit closer to the unrealistic target set to me by mathematics.
The good news is that my personal trainer thinks I have a proper weight-lifter's body - she asked me if I'd done much weight work before as I look like I have, but apart from carrying around babies and stones I haven't . I didn't tell her about the stones. But I am a weird short-legged barrel of a man, so it'd be good to discover late in life that I could be strong.
I had been resisting starting these sessions because of my painful arm/shoulder, but it turns out that exercise has very nearly sorted out the problem, which is the best news.
Of course I have personal trained before, five years ago, when I got a pretty rigorous schedule for a couple of months as part of my Men's Health challenge. I regretted letting that go, so I am hoping I will do better this time as one final stab at holding on to what little remains of my youth (I am not sure, but I think my personal trainer said she was older than me, which is utterly astonishing as she looks at least 50 years younger than me - given I look about 80). The only good news was that the machine churning out the figures about my excess body fat and shortness told me that I had a body age of 53, so only one year older than I actually am. But if I train as hard as she clearly does then maybe I can make myself 33 again and if I train even harder then maybe I can actually turn back time and have another go of making a success of my life. Before realising that actually the life I have now was better than anything I might have had. But it being too late as eating pies turns out not to turn time forwards again. So I die lonely and ashamed and my children never exist and stay trapped in a vortex in space where all non-created human souls are imprisoned.
It's not a bad plot for a film. I hope Richard Curtis will direct it. And not ruin it by concentrating on some boring romantic sub plot rather than the horror of the concept. Call me Richard if you're interested and promise not to ruin it.
