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I had to go into Men's Health this morning to have my "before" photos taken before my six weeks of Personal Training "Abs Challenge". Although I am in significantly better shape than I was at the start of the year, I couldn't help thinking that the team doing the photographs had seen rather more impressive physiques in their time. Mainly because on the computer where my images were appearing they were using images of a superfit man to make sure they got all the angles on me right. My puffy, pale, old body next to his taut, ripped, muscle-covered torso was somewhat of a juxtaposition.
I haven't seen anything like this since I placed my saggy Morph next to a real Morph. There is no euphemism there. Though I do also have quite a saggy Morph.
But I am comfortable with who I am and have taken my clothes off enough for comedic purposes to not feel too self-conscious about slipping my top off in a photographers studio. If people want to use these images for their own masturbatory purposes then that is up to them. I just feel glad I can share this with the world.
I am more interested in losing fat than gaining muscles and for the sake of health rather than vanity. But it will be interesting to see where the professionals can get me in seven weeks time.Though if I look like the guy whose photo was next to mine (who had just spent 10 weeks living the lifestyle of a monk) then I think that might be quite freaky.
I had been led to understand that the magazine was delivering all my meals and organising four training sessions a week for me, but in fact they are just going to give me some nutritional advice and give me two sessions. So I am not convinced it will make a huge amount of difference, given I have been leading quite a healthy lifestyle this year anyway. But targeted exercise should help. They seemed dubious about me losing weight, but confident that I could lose fat. We will see. It's just good to have something else to distract me from my work...
I've had an unproductive week with the Rasputin script and agains tiredness hit me this afternoon and aside from a few vague thoughts I didn't get any further with the massively complicated task ahead of me. Hopefully fear is going to kick in and make things happen soon.
Then in the evening I recorded an episode of a new radio show called "Don't Make Me Laugh" hosted (and created) by David Baddiel. It's a bit like a 21st Century version of Just A Minute and the premise is that comedians have to talk about amusing sounding subjects without getting laughs from the audience. And the other comedians also get to challenge them if they think they have said something funny. It was a really enjoyable show to do and amusing to see comedians fighting their instincts (and often failing to) by not going for the laugh. It rocked along and we all failed quite badly to not make the audience laugh. I think it's on the radio next month. Worth a listen I think. Jonathan Ross took his trousers down in order to reveal why he tucks his shirt into his underpants. It's worth it for that alone.
