This Friday I shall be in my prime. Hmmm. The Prime of Mr Cromercrox Of Cromer. That is to say, I shall be 47, which is a prime number. QED. But far from espousing hopless fascist causes – or, at any rate, any more hopeless fascist causes than those to which I already subscribe, which consists of a devotion to the writings of Mr Boris Johnson, whom history will show to have been the greatest statesman of this or any other age – I have decided that from my mighty frame a smaller man is struggling to be released.
So, about two weeks ago, I weighed myself on Mrs Cromercrox’s special Weight-Watcher’s Scales and found I weighed 19st 12lbs, or 126 kilos in old money.
I then instituted a diet which consist of avoiding snacks in between meals, and adding lots more fruit and vegetables to my diet. Given that exercise regimes any more formal than walking Canis cromercroxorum are, in my opinion, for the smug, the deluded or the certifiably insane, I don’t plan to gad around in a yellow lycra mankini gym suit with matching sweatband and a weight in each hand. Diet is the way it’s gonna be.
I’ve now stuck to this regime for two weeks, and have actually lost weight. I appear be down to 19s 7lbs, or 124 kilos. But there’s a catch – the day after I recorded this measurement on Mrs Cromercrox’s scales, the same device optimistically and repeatedly said I was 18st 3lbs. Despite the fact that the marked increase in fibre intake has resulted in a net contribution to the greenhouse effect, I didn’t think I could have had lost that much weight in 24 hours.
That’s when drastic mensuration was called for.
Yesterday I took the junior Cromercroxae to a local swimming pool, where I had the chance to weigh myself on a good old-fashioned weighing machine. You know, the sort with a footplate and a huge dial at eye level.
I stood on the footplate and put my 20p in the slot. Through the glass I could see reassuringly robust steel counterweights (none of yer digital malarkey here) slide smoothly into action, taking up the sudden load. The dial swung round, clockwise from zero, in a dreadful and incriminating arc of doom, almost a full circle – pointing soundly and surely at 19st 7lbs. At least it didn’t go all the way round, or speak to me in starchy tones, saying things like
No coach parties
or
One at a time, please
or (because I was dripping wet and in my trunks)
So now I know where I stand. No, not dripping wet in my trunks, but at least I have a decent baseline. My target is to lose 20 kg by Christmas – the weight of a standard sack of chicken feed. I know how heavy these are to heft, so it’s no surprise that I feel tired and my knees are knackered, if I am carting that extra tonnage around with me all the time. So by the time Santa hoves into view I should be down to a svelte 104 kilos or about 16 st 5lbs.
Help! Help! Call the Sea Mammal Research Unit!
There. I’ve said it. Your task, dear reader, is to hold me to this, and stop sending me bacon sandwiches in the mail. The postman hates this, anyway, especially when the grease starts dribbling out through the corners.
Good on you Henry! It will take a deal of determination, especially at first when nothing really seems to be happening. It is frustrating when different scales all give different readings. I used to think that after a session at the gym I lost a few kilos, but then realised that the scales in the changing rooms were wrong. I’m trying to lose a bit of weight this year, after discovering that my waist is not 36 ins but more like 40. I plan to do a weekly weigh-in and waist measurement, plus photo.
The Biology Editor tells me that it’s important to site scales on a firm surface. The bathroom floor in the Maison Des Girrafes is made of linoleum roughly laid on creaky floorboards, and this could contribute to some random errors. We’ll relocate the machinery to the concrete floor of the conservatory.You’re right about the determination. But the fact is that I don’t feel as hungry as I did even a couple of weeks back, and it helps to visualize the weight lost in – ahem – concrete terms, such as so many bags of sugar or sacks of chicken feed I’ll no longer be carrying around.
Good move, Henry. Although the fruit and veg is a good move, I’d reduce the fruit and up the veg – there’s a lot of sugar in fruit. On the other hand… I think I’ll go and have a banana. Mmm, bananas!
I love bananas – full of potassium, apparently. When I’m at home and hungry (as you know the munchies is a dreadful curse for home-workers) I now munch on celery or carrots rather than bread and biccies.
Agreed with the bio ed – if you want accuracy (which few, including me, do), then don’t put your weighing machine on the carpet.I subscribe to the time-honoured tradition of divesting oneself of all inessential garments, holding one’s breath, standing on one leg, and if necessary turning the dial back to minus a few stones before getting on. All that having been said, 19 st is a magnificent embonpoint! Congratulations. Can you make the full score by Christmas (shurely shome mistake, ed)?
Embonpoint is the word. If I reach the full score I’ll have a cleavage to rival that of the Divine Nigella!
Good luck Henry – you’re an inspiration to all of us aging, expanding old farts.Um, will you be live-blogging…?
I find that scales get in the way of losing the embonpoint. The thing to do is throw yourself wholeheartedly into beach-hiking and substitute veg-munching for number-crunching. Avoid sugar rushes (buns, batter, toast) and embrace the joys of broccoli, tomatoes and spinach.
@ Stephen: Not live blogging as such (and I’ve already had my vasectomy, so I missed my chance there), but I hope to keep you all up to date with my attempts at shedding excess mass. @ Barb: Right on. These days I eat fruit and veg where it would normally be biscuits and buns.This is what I ate todayBreakfast: One large super-turbocharged bowl of muesli, coffeeLunch: rather small sandwich, diet cokeSnack on Train Home: small bag nuts and raisins, two satsumas, apple, banana;Late supper: three matzot, lox, some edam.I do drinl a lot of vending machine coffee during the day at the orifice – have feeling some of the dairy dust might be fattening.
Bloody good luck old chap!
Dairy dust (which may or may not be a substance I failed to abuse in the 1970s)…that could be an issue. But lox, nuts, apples and oats are all good (although perhaps not in the same dish).
Good luck, Henry! I’m trying to shed a stone or two myself, but I have to use both diet and exercise. Lots of exercise. Swimming, walking, elliptical whatzit, horse riding, cycling, circuit training. Damned peasant genes.I was thrilled to discover nonfat Fage yogurt (which I ate every morning for a week, while I was in Cambridge) at the local grocery store; I make a lowfat, low-sugar granola at home and mix that with the yogurt. Keeps me going for 5-6 hours until lunchtime, with maybe just a piece of fruit mid-morning.
You can count on me to make myself unpopular by asking every so often how it's going, hmmmm? And sending you videos of knee-replacement surgery. That stuff's crazy violent, man. Stay away from orthopedic surgeons. Don't hate me because I'm beautiful, but two years' chaining myself to this dumb machine and having several truckloads of chocolate delivered and eating all the child's leftovers and doing really very little 8-10 hours a day besides sitting in front of the screen shoving food in my mouth have resulted in six pounds of pudge and a really mushy ass. I started a terrifying program called P90X yesterday, which is directed by a man made of plasticine called Tony Horton.http://www.beachbody.com/p90x/p90xdotcom/Note that it is Extreme Home Fitness. Extreme. I hear it's designed to transform my body from regular to ripped in just 12 weeks, though I'd be satisfied with not having a mushy ass and not having to buy new jeans.Here is what Tony Horton does, despite his doughnut-connoting name: He frogmarches you through a sadistic spa routine over three months in your own depressingly-furnished home gym. I have no doubt that this works. You do one of the exercise videos each day, and both days so far I've been so knocked out I started laughing partway through, and then kept going. My body's reminding me that I used to do this sort of thing for fun, because this ow ow ow I am my own furnace feeling three hours after the workout is familiar. I'm not sure I'll be able to move tomorrow, but I'll get over that, I'm sure.I'm actually pretty impressed by the menu/nutrition regime they send along. It's careful and serious, and the food is good. Spa food. There's also more of it than I can eat. The first week does this heavy-protein low-carbs thing, and apart from being expensive it lands you with enormous plates of food. Here's what I'm finding, though — I really have gotten used to shoving sugary crap into my mouth all day long. So actually being disciplined about eating is a real shock. I keep wandering into the kitchen and marching myself back out again. Not time yet. Not time yet. It's not that I'm hungry — nobody could be, with all this salmon and asparagus and steaks and omelettes and salads bigger than my head — but I just want a little nosh. Beware the little nosh. I have to say, those workouts are really very good. I've got a whole library of workout videos, but I think these are the only ones that've had me dripping with sweat halfway through. The guy is not without charm ( you just don't want to look at him too much, because he's wearing enough makeup to look like an archenemy), and he knows what he's doing. I realized too that this is the first set of videos I've had that's really aimed at guys, and I hadn't noticed before how much the other videos are aimed at "be pretty while exercising". Henry, as for scales, I think they're overrated unless they're really working as motivation. I like The Arnold's advice about jumping up & down in front of the mirror. Otherwise I like the pants gauge. The pants don't lie. Oh, and paying attention to calories in v. calories out — it's very important, I think. You can eat a tremendous amount in "healthy" food otherwise and not notice and then wonder why you're not getting calls for the next Armani show. Muesli, for instance – I don't eat it often because it's usually full of nuts and dried fruit, which means a satisfying bowl of the stuff is about as much as I need to eat for a day, unless the day involves hiking in the Alps. Plus it's just interesting, esp. if you haven't paid attention to the numbers before or for a while. I actually stood there for a while looking at the ginormous chef's salad with obscene amounts of meat and cheese and bits of avocado and salad dressing in there, and saying "Really? 325 calories?" Yes, really — I did the math, and there it was. Ginormous chef's salad (I couldn't even finish it in one sitting) = not nearly enough Toblerone.OK, I have to go put away the truckloads of veg.
The last two times I suddenly lost a lot of weight were when I started my PhD and when I was ill and put on a no-fat no-alcohol diet while they figured out what was wrong with me. So I recommend either starting a PhD, getting ill, OR cutting out fat and alcohol from your diet. Whichever is more convenient.Meanwhile, who am I going to mail these bacon sandwiches to? They’re only good for another few hours outside of the fridge!
@ Kristi – surely that horse-riding is great for posture, toning muscles and calorie burning?@ Amy – you really are worth the price of admission. Thank you for brightening up my day. And you’re right – beware the little noshes. And knishes. Whereas the Celts must avoid the Demon Drink at all costs, we Ashkenzim do love our nosh. As someone once said, you can summarize most Jewish festivals as follows* they tried to kill us* we survived* let’s eat.@ Eva – the last time I lost serious weight was in 1998 when I spent two weeks at a field camp near Lake Turkana, living on stewed goat, rice, tea, chapattis, corned beef, Marmite, and … er … that’s it – and walking miles and miles and miles every day in the heat. When I got home I was tanned and, in contemporary parlance, ‘ripped’, that Mrs Cromercrox now thinks wistfully of those times and drops hints that I should find a field expedition I can tag along with.
Good luck Henry!Faced with a choice between less food and more exercise, I will pick the exercise every time. Results mixed, to date…
Thank you, Henry. Progress after Week 1 of P90X!!1!: I have lost exactly no weight, but sleep like a rock, and am feeling quite butch. Still can’t do any pullups, but surprised myself today by finding I could sort of hoist myself up a little instead of dangling in the doorway. Am still sore, but not miserably so.Also, have eaten an embarrassing number of egg whites (I hear the alternate name for the diet plan is EGGPOUNDER 4000) and discovered that egg white omelettes aren’t horrible if you put cheese in them, because then they turn into a sort of souffle. I find I really enjoy these tremendous breakfasts — for me, it’s usually 6 egg whites with cheese mixed in, maybe some veg and/or chicken in there; fruit; yogurt; coffee; the Times. Dinners are nice too — things like swordfish with a sort of mango/lime chutney, veg, toast, and soup. Snacks are things like soy nuts, cheese, sports nutrition bars.I find I run out of time for eating all the meals, though. Despite all the eggs, steak, chicken, etc. I’m eating much less than before — I’m often surprised at the end of the day to find that I’ve only gotten up to 1500 calories or so. I’m told this is very bad, but I feel fine, so I don’t believe it.Anyway. So? How went the first week? (I’ll eventually propagandize you on the exercise part, you know. Good for bod and brain, also stops you from being prematurely 60. Oh look, I’ve started already.)
I’m with Cath … go for the exercise. Swam a mile yesterday, worked out at the gym this morning, more gym and horse riding tomorrow. Walking the dog every night for 30 minutes or so, but that’s just not enough. Though I have changed my diet as well: two meals out of three each day will be vegan. I’m way too fond of dairy products.
Weekly Weigh-in: 19st 6lbs
Hooray! Oh, and hey, have you seen the show we’ve got over here with the really tremendous fatties, Biggest Loser? My daughter’s fascinated by it and quite moralistic about it (and does not approve of the competitive aspect where people get thrown off the fat ranch if they don’t lose weight fast enough). It’s really interesting how they choose the participants — many of them are very goodlooking people, so as they lose weight and get fit they emerge as these studs and beauty queens. But it’s positively horrifying what they’re put through. They do drop a ton of weight — well, more, collectively — no idea how many keep it off. Here’s the show: http://www.nbc.com/The_Biggest_Loser/contestants/current_cast/Oh, I see the huge college kid got kicked off. Started at nearly 460 lbs, looks like he lost around 60 before he went. Meanwhile the father-and-son team’s still on — the son goes at it hell-for-leather, and the father seems to have stayed alive through crafty pity management.
The scales now say 19st 5lbs, but I reckon that’s not significantly different. Amy, we have a number of reality-TV programmes like that, notably the Fat Club, and (more nauseating still) celebrity fat club.Today I was forced to deviate from the path of righteousness. We had lunch at the Norfolk Game and Country show where I’m afraid to say I can haz cheezeburger and fries. They were delicious, but, you know? The past few weeks of discipline must have shrunk my stomach as they filled me to the extent of feeling bloated (or, as Cromercrox Minor says ‘as stuffed as a hunting trophy’) in a way that I wouldn’t have done before.