Ok, so I mentioned briefly in my last post about the fact that I was grossly overweight. Well, I’m not ashamed (or perhaps I should be) to confess that that is genuinely the case. I won’t divulge exactly how overweight but let’s just say there are probably hibernating Grizzly bears in the Yukon that weigh less than I do right now.

So if that’s the facts, why is this post titled Self Preservation Part 2 then Stevenson, ya big ox? I hear you cry. And you would cry with good reason my friends but here’s the point. Finally, after many years of yo-yo dieting (I can’t stand the taste of yo-yos though) I have finally done something about my wobbling, great, unsightly obesity. All because of that new-found desire to start looking after myself. And people say miracles don’t happen. Tut!

My problem with food goes right back to my childhood. I’ve always been obsessed with my gut you see and filling it has always been one of life’s myriad pleasures for me. My mother was a very good cook and had a propensity for baked goods such as cakes, pies and pasties (no Greggs when I were a nipper) and her Sunday dinners were to die for. Of a truth, we never went hungry and I thank God for that. And it seemed that whenever we went to anyone’s house for a meal and there was food left over, it was always piled onto my plate to finish. And finish it I always did. With gusto!

But despite my surfeit of food growing up I was never a fat kid, nay not even portly. You see, I was also a lover of the great outdoors and physical activity. When I wasn’t hoofing a football about I was tramping over the hills and countryside with our collie and my mantra as a child was always ‘Why walk when you can run.’ Ergo, the fat never had chance to build up as I was always burning it off in one way or another. Even into my teens and early twenties and yes thirties too, copious food went hand in hand with exercise. I’d think nothing of downing ten pints before polishing off a tasty curry and naan or a donner kebab because I knew I would work it all off on the squash court or my mountain bike or in the gym. Actually, I had quite the fit bod back then.

These days however I sport a barrel where once there was a six-pack.

And the reason?

Well, without wanting to go into too detailed an explanation I was struck down by SARS in 2003 which led to a nervous breakdown, mental health problems and severe fibromyalgia. Consequently my food intake increased greatly and my exercise routine came to an abrupt halt almost overnight. And it doesn’t take an Einstein or Newton to work out what happened next. I ballooned gentle reader. I swelled like a beach ball until my gut began to resemble one and my chest was more buxom than Nell Gwynn. During my darkest and most depressed times I developed what I can only describe as an addiction to ginger beer, milk chocolate and those white, filling-loosening spearmint chews that you get in yellow bags from Poundland and such places. Comfort eating basically.

Life changed for the better when I met the special lady that I’m now blessed to be married to and I actually lost over four stone in weight whilst courting the gal. My mood improved and I thought that at last I had a reason to get into shape. It wasn’t to last though. You see, Ange likes food every bit as much as I do and we soon found that we enjoyed often going out for meals or takeaways or cooking high-calorie meals at home and developed a sort of Friday night ritual where we would curl up together by the fire to watch DVDs, drink wine and eat bar after bar of chocolate. I was content and contentment does tend to ignore common sense at times and thus, all that weight I lost went straight back on and a whole lot more besides.

Ok, so where am I going with this? You didn’t come here for a gastronomic history lesson.

Well, last year, thanks to the encouragement of my lovely lady, I started on the NOOM diet. You may have seen it advertised on your television set. So far I’ve lost three stone and my attitude to food has changed radically. I know what to eat, what not to eat, when to eat and how to eat. And by gum it’s working. I feel so much better in my frame. Yes, the fibromyalgia is a constant pain in the old gluteus but I feel lighter in myself, my blood pressure is right down again and I feel happier in my own skin.

And I’m determined to keep it up as part of my new found self preservation regime. Where once I would chow down on a sausage roll or three I now choose grapes. Instead of gorging on a Big Mac meal I now select apples or oranges as a snack. I tell you what else is better also – my tummy. Going to the loo is no longer an ordeal, but then, perhaps, that’s too much information in which case I apologise. But hey! Just a natural function of the body which for me is now a more pleasant one.

My clothes fit much better, I go swimming without feeling embarrassed and I feel that I could lie on a beach now without small children trying to push me back into the sea and crying ‘Will it live Mummy, will it live?’

So ta very much NOOM. It’s all been good, not necessarily easy at times, but good. I feel like a new man and I have a target weight set that I’m hoping to achieve over the next eighteen months or so. I really am a reformed character where once I was just full of reformed potato.