my wasteline

Do calories count if you don’t tell anyone that you’ve had them? I’ve always been sure that it’s OK to break diet as long as you don’t admit it to anyone - including yourself, but I’m beginning to think I may have been mislead about it.

I can’t remember when I started dieting. It feels like I’ve been doing it for ever. Whilst away at sea with the Navy in my Twenty’s I was trying to reduce food and run round the deck. I wasn’t doing this because I wanted to be in peak fitness for the Military (as I ought to have been doing), but because even then I knew I had a battle on my hands. The battle of my waistline seems to have been raging on for as long as the battle of my hairline and that is not good news for someone that still thinks he is sexy; clearly I’m right it’s just that the media have set false expectations to the world’s women about what they should be looking for in a man.

It’s not so easy for a man to look good anyway, well not without feeling like a complete pillock anyway. We have to put up with our natural skin condition and hair and the only thing that we can do is exercise in the hope of keeping a decent shape. Women can hide behind moisturisers, make up, hair dyes, hair extensions, fat pants and Wonderbras! According to Gok even the flabbiest mingers can strut on down in lingerie if they’ve had ½ inch of make up plastered on their face and a cut and blow dry; two weeks walking about in the right shape top and fitted skirts can apparently turn Susan Boyle into Nigella Lawson (they really wanted a boy didn’t they?). Meanwhile, men get told to cut out the pizza’s stop tucking T shirts into jeans and that’s our lot!

So there we are unfortunately we have what we are born with and that’s it. The only thing we can do is try not to balls it up. Sadly in my case I’ve spent so many years feeling sorry for myself because of an unavoidable loss of hair that I’ve failed to properly take charge of the one thing that I really can do something about. There are no excuses, I’m not big boned. I don’t think my metabolism is any slower than Brad Pitt’s and I know for a fact that I’m better in bed than him (though Jennifer was still bitter about him at the time so probably shouldn’t be trusted). So if I’ve no excuses what’s going on?

It’s not rocket science – I eat too much tasty but rubbish food and don’t exercise enough. FULL STOP. Too many calories in and not enough out = fat, end of story. This is why I have to review my basic idea that secret calories don’t count. The theory is that if I sneak out under the pretence that I’m going for a walk, and actually tell myself that this is what I’m doing, then I can walk to McDonalds. If I remind myself that a chicken burger is just chicken with a bit of salad between a small bread bun, then I can easily assure myself that a McChicken burger is actually quite healthy and is therefore fine. Milk is healthy, every one knows that, and potato can’t be that bad can it? Hide yourself downstairs and swiftly tuck into the McChicken burger fries and milkshake before your head works out what’s going on and then back out walking the long way back to the office.

Taking the long route back to the office helps to cover up the incident in your mind. The belief that you have actually been on a nice walk can take a better hold and seem more convincing. Work colleagues don’t know about the calories, your wife doesn’t know and the front part of your brain isn’t totally sure about them either so how does your stomach get wind of it? Why is it that my trousers know about my secret lunch when as far as I’m concerned it never happened?

Taking the long route back to the office also serves a second purpose as it gives you chance to cover up disasters. Carefully banging your nose on the wall can bring on a useful nose bleed to cover up ketchup stains on your shirt. Popping in Tescos to buy some chewing gum covers up BBQ sauce breath nicely. Lastly it gives you time to finish the thick milkshake.

It’s no use, I’ve re read this and decided that it definitely doesn’t work, secret calories DO count. What else is there to try? If I eat two chocolates at exactly the same time does my body only think it’s had one?...