This Week At The Gym: Week 8

I may also have neglected to mention that I'm on a diet. That's because I want to lose weight, and I want to do that partly because lugging ninety-five kilos around at my age is getting a bit much, but also because I am vain - to the point where the only mirror in my house is in the bathroom and used for shaving. It's a door from a bathroom cabinet I threw away and it's not even attached to the wall. (Very vain people don't look in mirrors.)

The idea that you can lose weight by "exercising" is right up there with the idea that you can save enough money for a decent pension as one of the bigger bits of codswallop passed off as sensible advice. The human body is a very efficient machine which with training can run an entire marathon on a very large plate of pasta and some water. According to the tables, running at just over 9 kph for an hour (!) at my weight will burn 940 calories. So if I run for four hours, 36 kilometres or roughly a marathon, I will burn one pound of fat. So let's just drop this "exercise helps you lose weight" thing. It doesn't. What it does is make The Diet easier to bear, and I suspect it helps even out the blood sugar and stop the metabolism going into Low-Power Mode quite so frequently.

The US Army has a Weight Control Program which at Appendix C on page 41 gives you an idea of the kind and amount of food you can eat. It is also simple and smacks of common sense - also since the US Army can't afford to have its troops falling over from silly diets, I'm inclined to believe it. Of course this means I look at the calorie-count labels in Pret and other places. 540 calories for the Tuna Fish Bloomer?! 400 for the Chocolate dessert?! 350 for the Smoked Salmon? 500 calories for a bar of chocolate and 100 for a luxury biscuit?!

The Big Lesson is: stop eating the junk: the morning croissant, the afternoon bar of chocolate, the bag of crisps, let alone the three pints of beer and MacDonalds that you put away and I don't because I don't drink. Next is avoiding food that spikes your blood sugar and therefore insulin response: for me that is mashed potatoes, rice and Stockpot's apple crumble, amongst others.

So just after Christmas, I set out on this diet. 1,500 calories a day. No junk, no fast-action carbs. Basically, I eat what I usually eat, but in smaller amounts and without the extras. It is working, but by God am I glad I don't have to do it forever.

Gory details to follow.