30 March 2014

Stone

A stone is fourteen pounds. If a woman gave birth to a baby that weighed in at fourteen pounds, she would really know about it. The screams from the delivery room would be heard in the next town. Fourteen pounds is seven bags of granulated sugar. If you walked back from the supermarket  with seven bags of sugar in your shopping basket your arm would be hurting. And fourteen pounds - one stone- is the amount of weight I have lost in March - a shovel full of quivering, lardy fatness.

My motivation came during the trip that  Shirley and I made to Cardiff at the end of February. In the Mount Sorrell Hotel in Barry, I caught sight of my naked self  in a long mirror from the side with belly fully distended and I thought to myself, "Who is that fat bastard?"

Though we have some bathroom scales at home, I had never used them until we returned from Cardiff. I peered down at the dial below me and realised that the mirror in the hotel had not been lying. It was true. In spite of my general good health and physical stamina I had turned myself into a fat bastard. The time had come to make a change and lose some weight.

One problem with this would be my extremely healthy appetite. Whereas many people regularly seem to leave food on their plates, this is not something that has ever happened with me. Fish skin, gravy,  bones, everything - at the end of a meal my plate is always clean. Sometimes I even feel like eating the plate as well. Not just a fat bastard but a greedy one too.

I couldn't see myself nibbling at salads or depressing Weight Watchers' meals so I invented The Yorkshire Pudding Diet instead. I decided to give up beer for a month and no late night suppers like cheese on toast, a sausage roll or a "John Gray" brand scotch egg. Furthermore I planned to eat fruit whenever I felt the urgent daytime desire for a snack. As someone who always has a spoonful of sugar in tea or coffee, I decided to add zero calorie sweeteners instead. So essentially that is The Yorkshire Pudding Diet.

I know that losing the second stone will be much harder - especially as I plan to resume beer drinking in April. But there will no longer be any beer cans at home and I plan to guzzle beer in pubs no more than three times a week. 

They used to say that smoking a single cigarette took four minutes off your life. I have no idea who calculated this and the claim may have had no proper foundation. However, it is surely true that losing body weight will in most cases extend a human being's life so that a pound of weight lost could be a month of life gained. This makes more sense to me than the old cigarette claim.

Anyway, I am feeling rather proud of myself tonight. I have never tried to lose any weight ever before and to lose a whole stone in a month hasn't been too much of a struggle. I guess it's principally all about motivation and I am hoping that the motivation that has led me successfully through March will endure as we tiptoe into British summertime.

16 comments:

  1. Congratulations YP on your achievement in March ~ and the confidence and determination to go after that bikini body for Summer.
    Remember ~ "Nothing tastes as good as thin feels"

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    1. Carol - Not even battered fish and chips with mushy peas on the side?

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  2. Congratulations. It's hard to lose weight. Keep at it. You are very active so that's a plus.

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    1. Thanks for your encouragement Red. Appreciated.

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  3. Well done! I found the 5/2 diet worked reasonably well for me as I didn't have to give up stuff I like. And exercise helps, yuk. Luckily I like cycling instead of taking the tube.

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    1. What is the 5/2 diet? Is it five days of normal eating and two days of starvation? Thanks for calling by Jenny.

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  4. Well done, YP! And you've done it the best way possible: not some radical change of regime, that always comes with the danger of giving it all up in a moment of weakness (the dreaded "yo-yo effect" is the result), but making small, manageable changes of habits. You best habit in that respect is walking and hiking - something you love to do anyway and don't need to force yourself to do just for the sake of weight loss.

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    1. I appreciate your encouragement Arian - and it's coming from someone who is as svelte as a catwalk model!

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  5. Well done YP! If you really cut down on carbs, the next stone will fall off you in no time. You could even have battered fish and mooshy peas sans chips and still lose weight.

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    1. But I love "The Carbs". It's one of my favourite cartoons. My favourite character of them all is Molly Carb. She's a hoot!

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  6. Fantastic. Keith has been on a diet for the past month or so and has lost about a stone too. He has cut down on carbs and is not eating any potatoes or bread at all.

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    1. Go Keith! Let's see how the next month goes. It could be a TV reality show - "Battle of the Giants" in which YP (England) takes on The Locksmith (Wales) as they compete to reduce blubber.

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  7. Well done, YP! The only way I would lose a stone of ugly fat so quickly would be to cut my head off. Mind you, since I gave up the amber nectar, I am down to the last hole on my belt so I am quite pleased as well!

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    1. But hippos are meant to be fat - grazing and wallowing down by the river. Sounds like you have already won "The Battle of the Giants" challenge Tom. Well done.

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  8. I am impressed, very impressed.

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  9. Well done!! I lost a stone too once - my diet involved no evening meals for a month and no crisps at any time. Soon managed to put it back on though!

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