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Fat Loss Diary — Day 1
I’m too fat. That’s my assessment and it’s personal to me, so I don’t need to hear about body standards and healthy body images. I have a muffin top, and I can’t see my abdominals anymore. It makes no difference to me that I’m a forty five year old man. It makes no difference to me whether anybody says we should be comfortable with our shape. My shape is not the shape I want. Also, I want to see my children’s fiftieth birthdays, at least. That means I have to live into my eighties, at least. Being overweight is one of the easiest things I can change, to stave off the largest number of avoidable illnesses. And there is a history of avoidable illness in my family.
That’s enough pointificating. A couple of years ago I lost over ten kilograms. It only took me two months. The difference that losing that much weight made to me was significant. More energy, better sleep, better self-esteem that came not just from looking and feeling better, but from knowing that I was that way because of the effort and discipline I had exercised. Neighbours I grew up with didn’t recognise me when I visited my parents. They thought I was a younger sibling they’d never known about. Losing all that weight made me look five to ten years younger than I had.
Since then I’ve gained back a lot of the weight. Fat accumulates like dust on windowsills. The additions are infinitesimally small but continuous. A few…
