Mistletoe and Pies: Losing Weight At Christmas…

I wonder how many fat people all over the Western world are presently convincing themselves that this Christmas will be their one last blow-out before getting down to the seriously hard work of getting in shape. Lots I imagine. I know it’s not just me.

But this is definitely my one last blow-out. I swear. I’ll be spending Christmas with my mate, Keith, his girlfriend and her two kids in Guildford. ‘You’ll be like John Candy in Planes, Trains and Automobiles,’ Keith told me.

Hmmm.

‘So I’ll be like the annoying fat guy who Steve Martin takes pity on because he hasn’t got any friends or family of his own,’ I replied. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Is that not the case?’

Hmmm. Good old Keith.

Anyway, I spent the rest of today buying stuff to take, including lots of fine food and wines. I’m feeling fatter just looking at it all. And that makes me feel guilty. Speaking of which, earlier this week I watched a programme very much in the tradition of Can Fat Teens Hunt?, Help! I Sweat Lard! and F*** Off, It’s Me Glands!. That programme was Lose 30 Stone Or Die. It followed 36-year-old 48-stone Colin Corfield as he spent years losing enough weight to make a brand new set of Sugababes. The people who made the show described it as ‘poignant and moving’. Frankly I found it ‘repulsive and sick-making’. But also, I must admit, ‘heartening and inspiring’. It was part of the reason I was shuffling round the park with weights on my back this weekend.

I’m really not looking forward to it though, the actual hard work of not eating. I know it should be easy. It really should. And you hear it all the time from cocky thin people with no feelings. ‘Just stop eating,’ they say. ‘It really is that simple. Just stop stuffing the pies into your fat face.’ Boy oh boy, those people aggravate me. But they probably have a point. Unfortunately, as with many stout folk, food is for me a psychological crutch. Which I have to train myself not to lean on. And that’s what I’m not looking forward to.

I’ve actually been cutting down fairly substantially for the last couple of months. Trying to at least. I had this vague notion of losing a bit of weight in preparation for my new leaf. So I’ve been eating less. Mostly. And then pigging out and feeling guilty.

I’ve also been attempting to starve myself a bit, just to see how long I could last without eating. Bobby Sands lasted 66 days. And he was quite a skinny bloke to start with from what I can glean. I wonder how long I would last before I started to suffer ill effects. I’ve wondered this a lot recently, so a month ago I went in search of answers. Now if you want answers these days, there’s really only one place to the go: the internet. And although Wikipedia is good, you sometimes can’t be sure that the information you’re reading is 100% accurate. This is why I like to go to Yahoo Answers, where the net’s foremost philosophers hang out.

Hence this. They're so sweet! I actually lied a little about the 27 hours thing. It was more like 17, but I was damnably hungry. I’m hungry now actually. Oh bugger it. Let the festive feeding commence. Tomorrow I buy scales. In 11 days’ time, everything changes. Honest.

Happy Christmas, mysterious reader who left sweet comment.

Oh, and Belle de Jour has not accepted my friendship request on Facebook. This makes me a little sad. So sad in fact that I’ve decided to offer my friendship to some other people I don’t know. Starting with David Walliams. David Walliams has 4,435 friends. He must be accepting just about anyone, especially ugly men. We’ll see.

Happy Christmas, David. Happy Christmas everyone.

On Beauty. Or: God Makes Mistakes ALL THE TIME!

So I was pottering around online last night and I found this question Yahoo Answers in New Zealand: Did you know that there is no such thing as an ugly person? My favourite answer comes from Charity:

'I believe that no one is ugly. God made no mistake when he created any of us and we need to know that not because the person may be unattractive to us mean they are ugly, he/she may be the sweetest, loving and kind person you will ever meet.

Beauty is not on the outside but on the inside.'

Awwww, sweet. Barely literate and definitely wrong, but sweet. Anyway, it made me want to say a few things about the whole beautiful versus ugly thing. So here goes.

I know I’m ugly. People have been telling me my whole life that I’m ugly. I accepted pretty early on that it was true; that it was objectively, unequivocally a fact of my life.

I was an ugly baby. With elbows hidden in my face.

I was an ugly boy. With eczema on top of the elbows.

I was an ugly adolescent. With acne on top of the eczema on top of the elbows.

And now I am an ugly man. With elbows hidden in my face. And with scars. Lots of nasty, ugly scars.

Really. Accept it. I’ve accepted it.

But there are probably still those amongst you – probably Christians – thinking and believing that there is actually no such thing as ‘ugly’ or ‘beautiful’, there is only what society tells us or fashion dictates; thinking that beauty is not something on the surface, rather it is a light in the heart; thinking that ugly is a state of mind, beautiful thoughts make a beautiful person and that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Why, even Confucius he say: ‘Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it’.

To all of which I say: balls.

Ask the philosophers and the poets. Not Confucius, but the others. They knew. Anyway, it’s obvious. It’s screamingly obvious.

Beauty exists, objectively. And I can prove it.

For example, imagine a magnificent cheetah hurtling through a vibrant, verdant jungle. That’s beauty right there, you see. Now imagine a fat brown slug leaving a trail of slime on a dirty kitchen floor. Ugh. You see?

Or – maybe you’re a fan of slugs and you don’t buy that. Fine. Imagine instead a tropical sunset on a clear, lucid night, palm trees swaying in the breeze and waves lapping at a crimson beach. Now imagine a row of dilapidated council houses on a smoggy morning, a drunk old man staggering in the street and his wife coughing up blood and phlegm into a piece of crispy toilet roll. You see the difference?

And it’s the same with individuals. Only more so. I’ll show you. I’ll test you. I’ll show you some photos of some famous people, in pairs, one of them is – in my most humble opinion, objectively good-looking, attractive, a thing of beauty; the other a pig. If it isn't obvious to you as it is to me, then I will hold my hands up, admit that I was wrong and write a letter of apology to Charity.

George Formby vs George Clooney...




Jessica Alba vs Jade Goody...




Bruce Willis vs Bruce Forsyth...




Tracey Emin vs Monica Bellucci...




Wayne Rooney vs Thierry Henri...




Scarlett Johansson vs Sister Wendy Beckett..




Johnny Depp vs Shane McGowan...




Jocelyn Wildenstein vs Beyonce...




So there you have it. QED.