Hugh Reilly: My body’s a temple, albeit a bloated one

AS usual, my New Year resolution is to lose some body ballast.

I wish to end the weekly humiliating ritual of stepping on to the bathroom scales in my birthday suit, taking a deep breath to pull in my stomach in order to see the calculation that evokes such a heavy degree of self-loathing. Putting one foot on the scales, the red needle wobbles like Hughie Green’s clap-o-meter measuring audience applause for a pensioner playing the spoons – on placing my second foot on the weighing machine, the needle surges violently to the right before finally settling just short of 15 stones.

According to my body-mass-index measurement, I am overweight, only a few doughnuts away from achieving clinically obese status. Like most over-nourished people, I deny responsibility for my body being a bloated temple. In the absence of any medical evidence, I have self-diagnosed that I have a slow metabolic rate; possessing a fast pie-eating-hand certainly doesn’t help.

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I long to throw off my, erm, winter coat, a blubbery coat so thick that it would keep me cosy inside an industrial freezer. Recently, my toned ex-wife gave me an old photograph she had found. There I was, emerging from the Mediterranean Sea, a diving mask atop my head, with a six-pack torso. God, I was so hot that any woman who touched me had to be rushed to the burns unit of the local hospital. Alas, these days, it’s less Daniel Craig, more Ailsa Craig.

For half of my adult life, I weighed around 12 stones. My one-way journey to Chubbyville began when I stopped playing amateur football. Little by little, I grew larger and larger. I suppose the first inkling that I was, let’s say, generously proportioned came in 1993 when I arrived at Holyrood Secondary. A female teacher, whom I hadn’t seen for seven years or so, initially didn’t recognise me in the corridor. She blurted out: “Hugh? What’s happened to you?” A second, if slightly less disturbing, wake-up call occurred when an L size T-shirt started to become something of a snug fit. Sadly, these warnings failed to give me food for thought.

I’m not sure what it will take for me to eat and drink sensibly. Two of my former teammates now have Type 2 diabetes yet I continue to gorge and binge drink on a Saturday night. Perhaps, like my father before me, I need to suffer a heart attack to convince myself that gluttony is a vice, not a virtue.

Worryingly, I think I have accepted my fatty fate. Full-length mirrors no longer intimidate me and, thanks to the reduced life expectancy associated with obesity, local charity shops always have lots of outsize clothing in stock. Those dearest to me have stopped nagging me, sorry, encouraging me to diet. Eighteen months ago, I lost about ten pounds but within months my silhouette once more resembled that of Alfred Hitchcock after a five-course meal.

Living alone means there is no-one to scold you for making umpteen visits to the bread bin. Heck, as an atheist, I know that even God isn’t watching me heap mayonnaise on to the tuna sandwiches. My girlfriend is wonderful in the kitchen – and in most other rooms – but she insists on baking gorgeously tempting banana loaves and fruit scones that act like kryptonite on her Superman. When asked what size of banana loaf portion I want, I always say a “sliver”, in the knowledge that I will have several slivers over the next few hours. I’d be more honest if I ate the entire loaf in one go with her shouting in the background: “Down in one! Down in one!”

A helpful idiot friend likened my food addiction to that of alcoholism. Highly offended, I pointed out that I hadn’t reached the stage where I was hiding cakes and white bread in the washing machine (I thought it prudent not to mention the three Mars bars secreted in the glove compartment of my car). At least an alkie is not constantly offered spirits every time he drops in on his mother. Every time I visit my auld bat she brings out a plate of chocolate biscuits and says: “That’s some size of kite you have oan ye!”

My imminent four-week teaching gig in Bangladesh offers me an ideal opportunity to regain my self-esteem. No alcohol and an inevitable bout of Dhaka-belly should do the trick, I imagine. I look forward to lean times.