Monday, July 30, 2007

Get what you ask for...

Ok, so last week I complained about my body being boring and alsways losing exactly two pounds, no more, no less.

This week I lost one pound.

Yip - bloody - pee.

(Although, it's better than putting one on, I suppose...)

Thursday, July 26, 2007

To the management...

Dear Sirs,

Whilst passing through the Focus hardware store in LocalTown the other day, my eye was caught by one of your advertising screens extolling the semi-miraculous cleansing properties of “Product X”. On the strength of this advertisement and with a feeling of ”Oh, well, it’s only five quid, what the heck, it’s worth a shot…” I added a pot of “Product X” to my trolley and proceeded to the checkout.

On arriving at my home, I took said pot of “Product X” into my kitchen and, with a mounting feeling of excitement, set to work upon eliminating the cooked-on food stains from the top of my batchelor-belaboured cooker.

I have to say that your achievement with this product is truly astounding. I do not think I have ever encountered a product that has so completely, so unreservedly, so perfectly failed to live up to any of the claims made for it. This stuff could not clean a bar of soap in a disinfectant factory.

Not only could it not clean off the cooked-on food stains on my cooker, it could not even lift the fat-splashes that had resulted from my most recent fry-up. Quite frankly, I could not have achieved less successful results had I tried to lick the cooker clean with my tongue.

Not wishing to admit defeat, however, I then moved on to attempt to clean those rather bizarre, sticky marks that randomly appear on the bottom of one’s steam iron from time to time for no readily discernible reason. Indeed, the ease with which the miracle-worker in the “Product X” advertisement had cleansed the bottom of their steam-iron was one of the major factors in influencing me in my impulse purchase. Sadly, however, a prolonged period of vigorous scouring achieved no discernible result, beyond the comprehensive clogging of the little steam holes with fine, white powder.

Undeterred, I moved onto the bottom of my extremely expensive, heavy-bottomed frying pan. A few quick swirls of the sponge by the Hogwarts-trained thespian in the advert, a quick scoosh of water, and the bottom of their pan was restored to pristine virginity. Several minutes of determined scrubbing on my part, however, merely served to demonstrate the sad truth that a scrubber and virginity are seldom re-united in the real world.

I must confess that I did then get a certain amount of enjoyment, although not, I feel, a fiver’s-worth, from running around my house to see what else “Product X” would be entirely unable to clean. Certainly my bathroom presented no barrier to its inexhaustible appetite for failure. Gold I do not possess, but I decided to avoid letting it near my silverware just in case an insatiable capacity for completely dissolving silver turned out to be the final twist-in-the-tale added to the mix by the sadistic genius who compounded this Machiavellian product. I only wish that my car had alloy wheels, in order that I could have obtained a more complete set.

In short, Sirs, whilst I am not usually one to complain; whilst I hold to the principle of “caveat emptor”; and whilst I have sympathy with the idea that anyone expecting to be able to buy a product capable of producing super-natural results for less than five pounds really does deserve to be fleeced, I have to say that this particular product is so wholly, so comprehensively and so utterly useless that I really would be grateful to receive your cheque for £4.99 in respect of a refund for my purchase.

Under such circumstances, you would, naturally, be entitled to request that I should return to you the unused portion of my tub of “Product X” which I would be happy to do, although what conceivable reason you should have to do so, or to what earthly use you could put it if I did, is entirely beyond me.

Alternatively, on the other hand, if you feel my criticisms to be unjustified, you would be most welcome to send a member of your staff around to my address to demonstrate exactly where I was going wrong with the utilisation of the product. I suspect, however, that sending a cheque would be cheaper.

I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,


M.A.D.

Monday, July 23, 2007

I've been here before...

Well, I've been pretty good this last week, and guess what, I lost 2 pounds.

My body is a dull sort of creature. It has no originality. 2 pounds on, 2 pounds off. You might think that it might try a bit harder to entertain us. It would not be difficult, one week lose five pounds, next week gain three, the week after, grow an extra leg... The possibilities are endless.

This upping and downing by two pounds each time is a tad on the dull side. It's also a bit unfair, because everyone else seems to lose a load really quickly when they start trying to lose weight. Why can’t I? It would be a bit more encouraging if nothing else.

My other exciting news is that I had a urine sample tested the other week and it had traces of glucose in it. Yippee. Now I’ve got to go and have a blood test next week to see if I might have diabetes.

I can’t remember if I have mentioned before, but I have a pathological – and totally irrational – fear of needles. The Blood Test is going to be bad enough. If I have to go onto a regime of injecting insulin, then I will probably have a nervous breakdown…

Deep joy. Oh well, the blood test is a week on Wednesday, so I shall pretend that it isn’t happening. Positive thinking, that’s what the sheila with the irritating voice told me on
The Secret. Think thoughts of wellness and good-health and wellness and good-health shall be delivered unto you. Sounds good to me.

Monday, July 16, 2007

Hmm...

Well, I've been pretty good for the last week, I've done my cross-training and I've done my new multi-gym sessions -and I've not been going mad on the food.

And the result?

Fuck all.

I still weighed in at 15st 10lbs (that's 220 lbs to you yanks) which stilll equates to fat bastard.

Sigh. It's very demoralising.

But I shall stick at it and see whether things improve....

Monday, July 09, 2007

Back to where we started

Sigh. Weighed in this morning at 15st 10lbs. Bummer. Right back where I stared this blog.

Ho hum. Well, the main point is not to get dispirited and give up altogether. Keeping to the exercise schedule at the moment, so this should go down, rapidly, I hope. Onwards and upwards - well, downwards, as far as weight is concerned, I hope.

Went to visit my friends in Wales this weekend. Decided on the spur of the moment at 7.00pm on Friday night and by a quarter past midnight I was there. Marvellous. A friend said to me the other day "you are lucky just to be able to drive off all over the country and have places to stay" and she is right. I am very lucky. Sometimes I loose sight of that.

On my way down, I bought a copy of "
The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne, and read by the Author. It's a but full of hype and "California Woo-Woo" and she does have a irritating tendency to read in a overly done "drop-my-voice-in-tones-of-awe" manner that, for a stiff-upper-lip English type can be a bit wearing. However, that said, it does seem to make a lot of sense.

They make some pretty outrageous claims about what "The Secret" can achieve for you (pretty much, anything at all). Now if it were me, I would have toned that down a bit. If the secret can achieve anything at all, let that be a nice surprise, or reveal it to more advanced initiates or let them work it out for themselves.

However, I suspect that claiming that from the outset is going to give a lot of people credibility problems, and as the system is pretty much built on self-belief, that’s not necessarily a good start.

However, that said, it still makes an awful lot of sense, and I have already started including it in my life.

Watch this space.

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Still around, starting going again

I started exercising on the cross-trainers again last week. Been going well with regular morning sessions.

Took delivery of a new multi-trainer yesterday, and spent a happy couple of hours putting it all together. I did have a TotalGym1000 which I really liked and which I thought was effective, but I found it too much of a faff changing it around to do the different exercises.

Also, one of the main reasons that I don't exercise is that I find it bloody boring. Running, riding, cycling out in the countryside just makes me feel like I'm in prison. Apart from the fact that I don't particularly enjoy the feeling of a work-out (I've never been a relish-the-burn sort) I just find it dull, dull, dull.

I work in the countryside anyway, so going out into it for a run or whatever is not a bonus. Lots of people say that they do lots of thinking whilst they are running. That doesn't work for me. I love to spend time alone in my head. I can plan and plot and think about all sorts of things that need cogitating. Unfortunately, however, I find that my brain does not work well whilst exercising. I am a man - I can't multi-task.

Like the cross trainer, this new toy can be used in front of the telly, which the TotalGym was not very well designed for. This way, my mind can be diverted whilst my body slaves away. I have a digital TV recorder which means that I can record stuff that I fancy at any time (I hardly watch any real-time TV) and watch it whilst I work out.

My game plan for the next couple of months is to use the Cross-Trainer for half an hour every morning (or as many as I can) and to use the Multi-trainer three times a week, for half an hour or so on Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. This schedule will fit in with the work regime riding, when it changes in September.

Weight-wise, I haven't weighed myself in a while, but I know that I will be back up at the top end of the 15st range (all my good work last year piddled away... sigh...)

Having done a bit of training, I shall weigh myself Monday morning to see where I am starting from this time.

I think that I shall also take some measurements, as weight doesn't really bother me; it's more shape that counts. I don't want to "get ripped", as they say in fitness-geek-speak, I just want to get a bit more definition and lose some more of that flab - the eponymous Middle Aged Spread.

On other matters, I'm still not smoking. I have had a couple since February and that's it. I had a drag on someone's fag a few days ago, just out of curiosity more than anything else, and I really didn't enjoy it. A real case of "why on earth did I like that?" As I've said before, I think I will always be an occasional puffer, but I’m not sure that I will go back to being a regular, this time. We shall, however, see.

I'm also trying to psyche myself up into doing a "before" photograph for a before-and-after set, but we shall have to see about that one.