So, New Year Resolutions...
As usual I am going to give up alcohol for a short period of time. I usually manage to make it through January (six months is the record - that's never happening again!), though last year I only managed two weeks. I will do better this year as I need to lose weight, Christmas having tipped me over the 15 stone mark which I hoped never to see again (it doesn't seem so long ago that I almost got under 13 stone, so this is a bad development), but I was in a slightly worse postion 3 years ago and managed to lose over two stone so there's hope (and don't point out that I put most of the weight back on eventually, so dieting is ultimately futile- that's not helpful right now). I have a sort of vague diet plan forming in the back of my mind where I am not allowed to have certain foods until I have got below a certain weight, but (and this is the genius part that will make me the new Dr Atkins, but more alive) if you then go over that weight you then have to cut the food out of your diet again. So let's say I am not allowed to drink alcohol until I am under 14 stone. This gives me an incentive to lose the weight, but also should hopefully stop me just drinking a massive ten gallon glass of beer the minute I've reached the goal and put all the weight back on. I will have to moderate and use alcohol (or whatever) sensibly. The Holy Grail of dieting is to realise that you have to change the way you eat forever (for example if you can make yourself eat by ingesting atoms from the air through your skin, the weight would fall off), not just for a month, but maybe such a system could help one regulate your intake in the long term.
There are three problems with my theory:
1) It is too scales based which I think is a bad thing, as dieting should really be about how you look and feel and failing to lose weight can be discouraging.
2) Like all diets there will come a point when I think, "Fuck it, I can't be bothered with that" and the whole thing falls apart.
3) I can't really be arsed to sit down and write down at what weight I will be allowed what things.
So it might not work. But I think it's probably good to have a weight at which you stop and realise that things are getting out of hand. Fifteen stone is much too much for a man of my size. In future I think fourteen stone should be the point where I book myself into a health farm and have my jaw wired. Or at least that I give up drinking alcohol and eating chocolate and get down the gym.
Anyway, I am glad that we have this arbitrary point at which to make a new start as I want to get fitter and get on with some work. So a month without booze should help me concentrate on my writing and working out which projects I am going to concentrate on. I am hungry to get to work again, and also as I've been dieting since the 27th December, quite hungry.
But my own self-indulgent and dull efforts with abstinence are put into sharp relief by a more worthy endeavour by a man called Danny Smith. He is having a year off alcohol to raise funds for research into Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a fatal muscle wasting disease, which his young son Sam suffers from. He asked me to show support by giving up drinking for just one day (December 10th 2005 as it happens), which I am more than happy to do. You can read more about this at
http://www.thelongestyear.co.uk/
and also donate some money there if you feel so inclined. It's a great cause and I know from my own futile efforts to stay on the wagon, a great gesture from the alcohol loving Smith.
