Monday, July 16, 2012

Losing

I am rubbish at losing.

Really bad.

When I was a little boy, my parents threw a birthday party in my honour. There were games. Oh the games. You know the ones: Pass the Parcel, Sleeping Lions, Musical Chairs. That sort of thing.

Pass the Parcel at this birthday party went like this: parcel is passed, wrapping is unwrapped, the eventual prize grows tantalisingly closer with each child, the parcel goes to one of my friends, the parcel looks TOO SMALL, there are surely NO MORE LAYERS to be removed, the prize is REVEALED, is grasped in the sticky hands of my (soon to be former) friend, is NOT IN MY HANDS ON MY BIRTHDAY.

I forget what happened next. It's difficult to remember anything bar the unbridled fury of my childhood self. The misplaced feeling of entitlement that my birthday had given me. Surely it was my RIGHT to win on this day?

No doubt mortified, my mum carried me away to explain the intricacies of pass the parcel (the game's not rigged, you grumpy little git, etc...) while my friends continued with the party.

I'm better at that sort of losing now. Several years of playing for an exquisitely mediocre basketball team has given me a fantastic familiarity with losing. Also, I'm English so, in terms of sport, losing is pretty much hard wired in.

The losing I'd like to be a bit better at just now is losing weight.

Me and food have a great relationship. I love it. It loves me. We are as near to symbiotic as it's possible to be without actually relying upon one another to continue existing.

Before we had The Creature in our lives, I mitigated my food intake with enough exercise to ensure I did not pile on too many pounds. I ate what I wanted, and enjoyed it. Hours of (mediocre) basketball and plenty of cycling were the antidote to my obsession with carbohydrates.

Since The Creature, I've cycled probably ten miles in total and played just a few hours of basketball.

I've been in denial about my growing mass. But this weekend I decided to weigh myself.

Purveyors of the ugly truth

Error.

Not the scales. I didn't break them. But they did confirm I'd certainly been worshipping at the calorie altar a little too frequently in the last few months. I then added to my feelings of weight based woe by placing my details in this delightful "How much of a fat bastard are you?" calculator, courtesy of the BBC. The answer, somewhat depressingly, is that I'm a fatter bastard than 84% of the world's population.

Fuckeroo.

That's pretty grim. The bitter icing on that particular cake was the little bit of extra information: "You are most similar to an American in your age group". Oh good. In terms of BMI I'm most similar to the nation which is the poster child for gluttony.

The Enemy

As you may have seen already, I'm on holiday this week, and EVERYBODY knows there's no point trying to diet/ration myself while that's the case.

Therefore, as of next week, I'll be making some changes to the food intake and the effort output. Because, apparently, it's not just the ladies who need to shed so-called "baby weight", it's me too.

Top tips welcome, leave them in my comments box, along with any spare cake you've got lying around.

13 comments:

  1. I weighed myself last week for the first time since my 6 week check after having H. I cried. I need lose weight but I am lazy and I like food and wine too much.

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  2. I was exactly like that at my birthday parties too. Hell, if you can't win everything at your own party, when can you?
    My partner also decided he needed to lose weight a few months after our son was born. He invented "the six things diet". You can eat anything but only six "things" a day e.g. a sandwich, a bowl of cereal, some pasta, whatever. It worked surprisingly well (I would have cheated and made a "thing" a family-sized bar of chocolate or a whole cake - you have to be very disciplined about it).
    Only other tip I have for post-baby weight-loss is breastfeeding... Oh, hang on...

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  3. Cut the carbs. Or calorie count. Same thing, really....

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  4. Apparently Michael Winner shed the lbs by halving his portions. So there you go just eat half the chocolate bar....




    ...then have the other half tomorrow

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  5. Ah yes. Good old baby weight. Not the same amount of available free time to exercise anymore... Not the energy to cook the same healthy meals anymore... I dieted once, cut out crisps and chips altogether and lost 1stone in two weeks! Then I found out I was expecting MiniRev and woohoo, diet over!
    Good luck with the weight losing x

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  6. I think you know what you need to do, good luck in losing the baby weight!

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  7. God I can relate to this so much, bad loser, piling on the pounds yep thats all me.

    Good news is as your LO becomes mroe mobile so will you, chasing around after a crawling cruising boy has made me lose some weight without really realising it.

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  8. You are not alone. Yes I piled on the baby weight. Mainly down to my cake and biscuit addiction rather than the fault of my beautiful son. But my other half also piled on the weight. You see he too exercised less when baby came along. Also being a good father and partner, if I felt the urge to eat cake or biscuits because I was starving due to breast feeding, he wouldn't let me eat alone. He would accompany me in my mission to eat my weight in sweet goodness. In fact he would often instigate it. A feeder in the making. However, 4 weeks ago we decided to take action. We started calorie counting with the help of a phone app and started exercising, all be it light gentle exercise on my part. So far my other half has lost just over a stone and I have lost ten pounds. I won't lie, missing out on all the sweet stuff has been really hard but the weight is coming off now so worth it. The bonus of calorie counting is I can eat what I like, even the odd cake, if I balance it with dust ;-)
    Good luck!

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  9. This has been the year of The Diet in our house. Gem's been going to Slimming World, we've both increased our exercise (Wii Fit, then Wii Zumba and I'm now running) and between us we've lost 7 stone. We're both lighter now than we've ever known each other, and it's a great feeling.

    Personally, I've lost more than our 3 year old weighs and will be done in about 6 pounds time. Gem's diet plan has a bit further to go - she's hoping to have reach her ultimate goal round about next Easter.

    Although I've not been attending Slimming World, I'm eating their way by proxy, certainly at home. And at work, I'm much more aware of how things like doughnuts and muffins will affect me.

    Gem started blogging a few months ago, and has found it really motivational. http://dietville.blogspot.com/ is her blog, which includes (amongst other things) recipes and pictures of the dinners we've been eating.

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  10. Incidentally, I started that BBC thing at Tonga, a few spots higher than the USA. Almost 6 months later, I've reached Nicaragua, and don't have far to go to get to Turkmenistan, where I'll hopefully settle for the rest of my days :)

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  11. Baby weight and lack of exercise was one of the contributing factors to me hurting my back last year. With Henry I fared better but also weighed myself recently. I am in fact the heaviest I have ever been in my life at 14 stone. But actually not that fat, I can still run 5 miles in 40 minutes so not that bad but do now to re-focus on my running.
    Despite all the marketing there is no short cut here is there? It's just calories in calories out. Cutting down on sugar helps and getting out exercising, even if it's just walking everyday.

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  12. I put on a bit after the kids were born. I'm no skinny but I did put on a bit. Then I lost loads around Christmas last year but I would not suggest going down my route.
    Good luck my friend. I'd offer up a high five but I doubt you can see your hands under that massive bulk. #joke

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  13. Give in - Cam will be able to live out your unfulfilled sporting aspirations in only a few short years. X

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